US Politics

A Washington state man who used a megaphone to orchestrate a mob’s attack on police officers guarding the US Capitol was sentenced on Wednesday to more than seven years in prison.Royce Lamberth, the US district judge, said videos captured Taylor James Johnatakis playing a leadership role during the January 6 riot.Johnatakis led other rioters on a charge against a police line, “barked commands” over his megaphone and shouted step-by-step directions for overpowering officers, the judge said.“In any angry mob, there are leaders and there are followers. Mr Johnatakis was a leader. He knew what he was doing that day,” the judge said before sentencing him to seven years and three months behind bars.Johnatakis, who represented himself, with an attorney on standby, has repeatedly expressed rhetoric that appears to be inspired by the anti-government “sovereign citizen” movement. He asked the judge questions at his sentencing, including: “Does the record reflect that I repent in my sins?”Lamberth, who referred to some of Johnatakis’ words as “gobbledygook,” said: “I’m not answering questions here.”Prosecutors recommended a nine-year prison sentence for Johnatakis, a self-employed installer of septic systems.“Johnatakis was not just any rioter; he led, organized, and encouraged the assault of officers at the US Capitol on January 6,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.A jury convicted him of felony charges after a trial last year in Washington DC.Johnatakis, 40, of Kingston, Washington, had a megaphone strapped to his back when he marched to the Capitol from Donald Trump’s so-called Stop the Steal rally near the White House on January 6, when he was claiming not to have lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.“It’s over,” he shouted at the crowd of Trump supporters. “Michael Pence has voted against the president. We are down to the nuclear option.”Johnatakis was one of the first to chase a group of police officers who were retreating up stairs outside the Capitol. He shouted and gestured for other rioters to prepare to attack.Johnatakis shouted “Go!” before he and others shoved a metal barricade into a line of police officers. He also grabbed an officer’s arm.“The crime is complete,” Johnatakis posted on social media several hours after he left the Capitol. He was arrested in February 2021. Jurors convicted him last November of seven counts, including obstruction of the January 6 joint session of Congress that belatedly certified Joe Biden’s electoral victory. The jury also convicted him of assault and civil disorder charges.Approximately 1,350 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Over 800 of them have been sentenced, with roughly two-thirds getting terms of imprisonment ranging from several days to 22 years. More

The power of the far-right commentator Charlie Kirk was illustrated when his tweet prompted the governor of Nebraska to support a bill to change the state’s system for presidential elections in order to deny Democrats a single electoral vote that could decide the presidency later this year.“Nebraskans should call their legislators and their governor to demand their state stop pointlessly giving strength to their political enemies,” Kirk wrote.Jim Pillen acted soon after.Nebraska has five electoral college votes. Since 1991, it has split them. Two go to the candidate with most votes statewide, the others to the winners of three electoral districts. Though the state skews heavily Republican, it gave Democrats one electoral vote in 2008 and 2020.This year, Joe Biden could lose Arizona, Georgia and Nevada to Donald Trump but win the electoral college 270-268 if he won Nebraska’s second district again. All five Nebraska votes going to Trump would produce a 269-269 tie, throwing the election to the US House, where Republicans control more state delegations and would thus pick the winner.On Tuesday, Kirk posited that scenario and said: “Despite [Nebraska] being one of the most Republican states … thanks to this system, Omaha’s electoral vote leans blue … [and Biden is] likely to win it again this year.“California would never do this. New York would never do this. And as long as that’s the case, neither should we. This is completely fixable. Nebraska’s legislature can act to make sure their state’s electoral votes go towards electing the candidate the VAST majority of Nebraskans prefer.“There’s already a bill ready to go – LB764. All Nebraska has to do is put it up for a vote. As I write this, the Nebraska legislature is still in session … call @TeamPillen and let him know you want this fixed.”Kirk included a phone number. As noted by Semafor, a little over five hours later the Nebraska governor issued a statement “in response to a callout for his support”.“I am a strong supporter of Senator [Loren] Lippincott’s winner-takes-all bill and have been from the start,” Pillen said. “It would bring Nebraska into line with 48 of our fellow states, better reflect the founders’ intent, and ensure our state speaks with one unified voice in presidential elections.”The only other state to allow for split electoral college votes is Maine.Pillen said: “I call upon fellow Republicans in the legislature to pass this bill to my desk so I can sign it into law.”Not long after that, Donald Trump saluted what he called “a very smart letter”.The Nebraska legislative session ends this month. Democrats said they were ready to block attempts to pass LB764.“The Nebraska Democratic party is watching this bill closely and still believes we have the votes to stop the Republicans from removing a fair electoral system that represents voters,” Jane Kleeb, the Democratic state chair, told Semafor.“The only reason Governor Pillen sent a release today is the extremist Charlie Kirk sent a tweet that, of course, our governor jumped up to respond to.”Kirk, 30, is a co-founder of Turning Point USA, a youth-oriented fundraising juggernaut, and an influential rightwing podcaster. A dedicated controversialist, he recently made waves by claiming “birth control really screws up female brains”.On Wednesday, Kirk tweeted footage of pundits discussing his Nebraska gambit, writing: “MSNBC is panicking about Nebraska. BOOM!” More

Voters in Enid, Oklahoma, have decisively kicked out a city council member with a history of ties to white nationalist groups from the elected body almost a year after he was admitted.Judd Blevins lost his position as Enid’s ward 1 council member, according to Oklahoma’s state election board. The move comes months after Blevin was shown to have attended a deadly neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 and was later shown to have led an Oklahoma chapter of the white nationalist group Identity Evropa.Blevins denied he was or ever had been a white supremacist, and said he was motivated by “the same issues that got Donald Trump elected in 2016”.A small group of 36 Blevins supporters had won him election last year, but he lost Tuesday’s vote to fellow Republican candidate Cheryl Patterson who had campaigned on a platform of returning Enid to “normalcy” and appears to have defeated Blevins by a 20-point margin, or 268 votes.In his campaign to maintain his seat on the council after a recall election was approved earlier this year, Blevins noted his achievements, including voting for a movie theater in his ward, storm water drainage improvements and the opening of a branch of the Texas Roadhouse steak restaurant chain.He had said voters had elected him “because they believed I was the best candidate who shared their values, their concerns and their hopes for the future of Enid”.An earlier effort to censure Blevins for failing to explain or apologize for aligning himself with white nationalists collapsed after a fellow commissioner, Derwin Norwood, the only Black member of the city governing body, said he accepted Blevins’s statement that he was opposed “to all forms of racial hatred, racial discrimination and any form of government that would suppress the rights that are enshrined in our constitution”.But as the election drew close, some claimed that Blevins’s extremist ties had not been severed.At a public forum last week, his opponent said she believed in “second chances, but my opponent has not been forthcoming in his continued association with members of the white nationalist movement”.After Tuesday’s results rolled in, Connie Vickers, a Democrat who campaigned against Blevins, told NBC News: “We won. Blevins lost. Hate lost.” Even on voting day, Blevins said he had a good chance of retaining his seat. “I’m pretty confident I’ll come out on top,” he told the outlet. “And if not, I fought the good fight.”He said that if he was defeated, he planned to “just go back to private life. Life goes on.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the race between Blevins and Patterson at times grew heated. He disparaged her as a tool of radical social justice campaigners and compared himself to Donald Trump encircled on all sides by a faction of far-left “perverts”. Someone had tried to kill him by cutting a brake line on his pickup, he claimed.Blevins’s opponent, meanwhile, campaigned on a platform to restore Enid’s sullied reputation. “It was time to step forward,” Patterson said of her candidacy. “It’s time to restore our reputation.”“Enid is not a town that promotes white nationalism or white supremacy in any way,” Patterson was quoted by NBC. “And the people are good.”The Enid election results have yet to be certified, which could happen on Friday. More

Donald Trump used a campaign stop in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to describe meeting the family of a woman killed by an immigrant in order to spin a narrative about what he calls “Biden’s border bloodbath” – except Ruby Garcia’s family now say he never did.Garcia, 25, was found shot to death on highway US-131 on 22 March of this year. Court records later showed that her boyfriend confessed to killing her and dumping her body.The man, Brandon Ortiz-Vite, had come to the US as a child and was allowed to stay as a so-called “Dreamer”. He was deported in 2020 before re-entering again without documents.Many have read Garcia’s murder not as an illegal immigration issue but one of domestic violence, given authorities said Garcia and Ortiz-Vite were dating.Trump tells the story differently. “She lit up that room, and I’ve heard that from so many people,” Trump said about Garcia. “I spoke to some of her family.”But according to her sister, Mavi Garcia, who is acting as a family spokesperson, neither Trump nor his campaign had reached out to her or her relatives.She said Trump’s comments were intended merely to blame immigrants for crime in order to justify a border crackdown.“It’s always been about illegal immigrants,” Garcia told the local news station Target 8. “Nobody really speaks about when Americans do heinous crimes, and it’s kind of shocking why he would just bring up illegals. What about Americans who do heinous crimes like that?”The Trump campaign has yet to comment on the former president’s claim, but the Washington Post reported he did not mention Garcia again at a stop in Wisconsin later on Tuesday.On Monday Trump had called into a Michigan radio show before heading to Michigan and Wisconsin, two crucial battleground states, to highlight the immigration theme, which he has called the top issue in the 2024 election.“This is a horrible incident with Ruby,” Trump told the conservative host Justin Barclay. “Let Ruby’s relatives and everybody know that we’d love to say hello to them.”Last month, Trump did meet with family and friends of Laken Riley, a nursing student who became a potent symbol for the border issue after an undocumented person from Venezuela was charged with her murder.But Mavi Garcia told Target 8 that Trump was misleading people.“He did not speak with any of us, so it was kind of shocking seeing that he had said that he had spoke with us, and misinforming people on live TV,” Mavi Garcia said. More

It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the Florida state supreme court would not have allowed Governor Ron DeSantis’s six-week abortion ban to go into effect. In a challenge to a previous 15-week ban, the court’s seven judges, all of whom were appointed by DeSantis, overturned 35 years of precedent this week in order to find that the right to privacy enshrined in the state constitution does not protect the right to an abortion, as Florida state law has acknowledged it does since 1989.The court’s approval of the 15-week ban will allow a stricter, previously stayed six-week ban to go into effect on 1 May. Justice Charles Canady did not recuse himself from the case, despite calls for him do so from no less an authority than the Florida supreme court’s former chief justice, Barbara Pariente. Justice Canady’s wife, the state representative Jennifer Canady, is a legislative co-sponsor of the newly approved six-week ban. There is no rape or incest exception.The harm this decision will do to women across the American south is immeasurable. Like many states, Florida dramatically restricted access to abortion in 2022, in the wake of the US supreme court’s Dobbs v Jackson decision that overturned Roe v Wade. Florida’s 15-week abortion ban, signed into law by DeSantis in April 2022, went into effect just days after the ruling. Despite those new restrictions, however, abortion remained much more available in Florida than it did elsewhere in the south.The south-east corner of the continental United States is home to some of the most restrictive abortion bans. A woman living in Florida finds herself without a right to an abortion at any stage of pregnancy as far west as Texas and Oklahoma and as far north as Missouri, Indiana and West Virginia. Abortion is also banned outright in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee; it is banned after six weeks in Georgia and South Carolina. Florida’s 15-week ban was a dramatic reduction of women’s healthcare rights from the pre-Dobbs status quo. But due to the even more sadistic anti-choice zealotry of its neighbors, it was among the most permissive states in the region.Under these circumstances, Florida became a haven for abortion seekers. Despite the new 15-week ban, abortions soared in Florida in the year after Dobbs, as women from across the south fled their homes in search of the care that was still legal in the Sunshine state. According to the abortion and contraception data project #WeCount, the number of abortions in Florida increased by a total of 20,460 in the 12 months following the Dobbs decision. Now, both Floridian women and those who traveled from out of state for care will be forced to look further afield, to more distant and more expensive locations, in search of legal abortions. Many will not be able to get them.View image in fullscreenBut in addition to this catastrophe for women’s rights, the Florida court also upended this fall’s election in the state. That’s because, in a narrow vote, the justices allowed a ballot measure to appear before voters this fall that would enshrine abortion rights explicitly in the state constitution.The proposed constitutional amendment would declare Floridians have a right to an abortion before “viability”, the medically imprecise but politically palatable standard that governed the Roe v Wade legal regime for 30 years and is usually interpreted to allow abortion until about 24 weeks of pregnancy. After that, women whose medical providers declare their pregnancies a danger to their health would also be able to receive abortions.The ballot measure would need to receive approval from at least 60% of Florida voters in order to be enshrined in the state constitution. But if the measure is successful, it would invalidate both the six- and 15-week bans, and could theoretically be used to expand abortion access even beyond pre-Dobbs levels.The addition of the abortion rights ballot measure to the November election has dramatically changed the political calculus in Florida overnight. Long the home of a growing sunbelt Republican base and an uncommonly weak state Democratic party, Florida has been considered a shoo-in for Donald Trump, who won the state by three points in 2020. But abortion ballot measures have proven a persistent electoral winner, with measures to preserve or expand access to the procedure winning every time they have been put to voters since Dobbs – including in heavily Republican districts such as Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio, as well as in swing states like Michigan.And the salience of abortion to an election has been an excellent predictor of Democratic success since Dobbs, with the 2022 midterms and subsequent special elections all delivering Democratic victories whenever the abortion question is at the front of voters’ minds.In Florida, the new ballot measure may not just influence the presidential election, but the re-election bid of the Republican senator Rick Scott – a one-time governor and fierce abortion rights opponent who has said that he would have signed the six-week ban if he were still in the governor’s mansion. That stance has come under harsh criticism in Florida, where even the comparatively less strict 15-week ban has had horrible human costs.Anya Cook, a Florida woman whose water broke too early in her pregnancy, almost died from blood loss after the 15-week ban prevented her doctors from administering miscarriage care. Deborah Dorbert was forced to remain pregnant for months after her fetus was given a fatal diagnosis; she delivered an infant who died in her arms. These stories have made an indelible impression on the public. In Florida, more than 60% of voters say that they oppose the six-week ban. Now that it is slated to actually go into effect, that opposition is likely to grow.If the post-Dobbs era has shown us anything, it is that abortion is controversial only in theory. When faced with the material consequences of banning it, Americans find themselves unequivocally on freedom’s side.Democrats, then, may find that they have an unusual asset in the Republican opposition to abortion. The bans are consistently unpopular, and the issue has proved persistently salient, moving voters to the polls even two years after the Dobbs decision. But this political boon for the Democrats has come at an unbearable cost: women’s health, happiness and freedom.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

On Wisconsin’s presidential primary election day, Donald Trump made his first campaign stop in the state, where he railed against so-called “migrant crime” and doubled down on false election claims.“We won in 2016 – we did much better in 2020, hate to say it, we did a hell of a lot better,” the former president told the roaring crowd, nodding to the disproven and unfounded “rigging” numerous times during his speech.“We will throw out the sick political class that hates us,” he continued later. “We will route the fake news media, we will drain the swamp and we will liberate our country from these tyrants and villains once and for all.”Hours earlier, the rainy weather in Green Bay had turned sludgy, icy and painful as gusts of wind blew the precipitation sideways. It did not stop thousands of Trump supporters from thronging there for hours, forming a parade that snaked up and away from the venue and over the bridge crossing the Fox River two blocks away.Trump is, according to most polling, fighting for his life in Wisconsin, a state he lost to Joe Biden four years ago. But one would never know that in the KI Convention Center, where his red and white and sequined supporters gathered to him speak for the first time this campaign season.“I personally like that he’s unashamed,” said Ethan Nielsen, an 18-year-old who attended the rally with his father as he waited in line. “He believes what he believes and he doesn’t go back on what he says.”Committed attendees, who had waited for hours in hypothermic weather, packed into rows of seats. The rest of the crowd milled around patiently, the lull punctuated a few times by MyPillow founder and elections conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, who engaged the audience from his perch at the heart of the television news gaggle.Before Trump’s speech, senator Ron Johnson, a loyal ally of Trump and a vocal promoter of the elections and vaccine misinformation that animates his base, gave brief but impassioned remarks. It was up to Wisconsin, he said, to help deliver Trump a big red wave in November.View image in fullscreenTo do that, Republicans would need to embrace absentee voting.“Today is the perfect example why,” said Johnson, to muted applause. “We can’t afford to have a miserable election day in November and not have our vote already banked – so embrace early voting, we have to do that.”His plea reflects a contradiction within the Republican party, whose star has spent the last four years inveighing against absentee voting and falsely claiming the method facilitated widespread fraud during the 2020 election. Trump’s claims about voter fraud have even propelled a movement at the fringes of the GOP to do away with ballot tabulators entirely and revert to hand-counting – an unreliable method that would be nearly impossible to carry out in large municipalities.In Wisconsin, where a small local campaign to do away with voting machines has taken hold, absentee ballots are at the center of election conspiracy theories.That’s just one of many fractures that have torn the GOP since Trump left office, spilling out publicly in the House of Representatives, engulfing the Michigan Republican party in chaos and taking hold in Wisconsin, where Trump’s most fervent grassroots supporters have launched an apparently endless campaign to take down the Republican state speaker of the assembly, Robin Vos.Even the idea of another Trump candidacy has sparked controversy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The party is fairly solid on immigration, and where we stand in the world,” Andy Williams, an attorney and prominent party activist from Brown county, told me as he waited outside the convention center before the rally. “The thing that kind of drives them apart, [is] whether or not Trump should be the candidate or somebody else.”Republicans gave a show of unity at Trump’s Green Bay appearance where he took a moment to endorse Senate candidate Eric Hovde, who is running to unseat Democratic senator Tammy Baldwin, before continuing his tirade.View image in fullscreenIn his speech, Trump focused on his favored bogeyman – undocumented immigrants. He peppered the crowd with anecdotal examples of crimes committed by migrants, eliciting jeers from his audience.“This is an invasion of our country,” said Trump. Earlier on Tuesday, the Republican National Committee, which Trump’s team has overhauled and staffed with loyalists, created a new website dedicated to, in their words, “Biden’s border bloodbath”, attempting to twist Trump’s violent rhetoric around.As his speech drew to a close, Trump turned back to the topic of elections, remembering that he would still need people to vote for him.“So if you want to save America, then get everyone you know registered as Republican, as soon as possible, volunteer for our campaign and get out and vote in record numbers,” said Trump. “We want record numbers – even tonight, it’s important to get out.”Outside, the streets were slick with slushy rain that had turned to snow as attendees left the rally. There were still two more hours left to vote. More

Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump won primary elections in four states, including the crucial battleground state of Wisconsin.Hundreds of delegates were up for grabs in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Wisconsin on Tuesday, and Biden and Trump have already amassed enough delegates to win their respective nominations. But the turnout could provide more clues about the general election in November.Voters also had a chance to register their discontent with the nominees. Connecticut and Rhode Island gave voters the opportunity to vote “uncommitted” in the primary, while Wisconsin offered a similar option of “uninstructed delegation”. Wisconsin Democrats will be closely watching the turnout for “uninstructed delegation” after progressive activists launched a campaign encouraging voters to withhold support from the US president to protest his handling of the war in Gaza.The Listen to Wisconsin campaign, based on similar efforts in states like Michigan and Minnesota, has attracted support from some rank-and-file union members as well as an influential group of low-wage and immigrant workers in the state.Those voters represent key constituencies whose support Biden will need to win in November, and even a small erosion in support could spell trouble for him in Wisconsin, where he defeated Trump by just 0.6 points in 2020. In 2016, the former president defeated Hillary Clinton by roughly 0.8 points in Wisconsin, and he hopes to repeat that performance this fall.Polls closed at 8pm ET in Connecticut and Rhode Island and at 9pm ET in New York and Wisconsin, with results coming in shortly afterwards, and Biden will soon have a better sense of his standing in the battleground state.With the presidential nominees already decided, Wisconsin Republicans are more closely focused on two ballot measures related to election management in the state. The first measure raises the question of abolishing the use of private funds in election administration, and the second asks whether “only election officials designated by law may perform tasks in the conduct of primaries, elections, and referendums”.Republicans have encouraged supporters to vote “yes” on both measures, after their legislative efforts to change election rules were repeatedly blocked by Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers. Republican leaders have expressed pointed criticism of the grant money that Wisconsin election officials received from the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life in 2020 to address the challenges of navigating the coronavirus pandemic.Those leaders have derided the grant money as “Zuckerbucks”, a reference to the $350m that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, gave to the non-profit to help election offices across the country in 2020.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRepublicans argue that such funding must be abolished to ensure voters’ trust in election results, but Democrats warn that the approval of such a measure could drain resources from government offices already stretched too thin from budget cuts. On the second ballot question, Democrats have criticized its wording as vague and accused Republicans of attempting to intimidate nonpartisan voting rights groups from their usual registration and turnout efforts in the state.“Rather than work to make sure our clerks have the resources they need to run elections, Republicans are pushing a nonsense amendment to satisfy Donald Trump,” Ben Wickler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said in a statement last month.“Thanks to long-standing Wisconsin law and the dedicated service of thousands of elections officials in municipalities across the state, our elections are safe and secure. Donald Trump’s lies about his 2020 loss shouldn’t dictate what’s written in our state constitution.” More

View image in fullscreenVoters in Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island and Wisconsin cast ballots in the presidential primaries on Tuesday. Much attention will be paid to Wisconsin, where voters will signal strength and weaknesses in the critical swing state for Joe Biden and Donald Trump.There are also options in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Wisconsin for voters to choose “uncommitted” in a show of protest against Biden’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza.Here are the results.Republican delegatesDemocratic delegatesRepublican resultsDemocratic resultsWho’s runningView image in fullscreenDonald TrumpThe former US president’s campaign to retake the White House and once again grab his party’s nomination got off to a slow start that was widely mocked. But after decisive wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, his campaign has steadily moved into a position of dominance.Trump declined to attend any of the Republican debates, has used his court appearances and many legal woes as a rallying cry to mobilize his base, and has run a surprisingly well-organized campaign. His extremist rhetoric, especially around his plans for a second term and the targeting of his political enemies, has sparked widespread fears over the threat to American democracy that his candidacy represents.His political style during the campaign has not shifted from his previous runs in 2016 and 2020 and, if anything, has become more extreme. Many see this as a result of his political and legal fates becoming entwined, with a return to the Oval Office seen as Trump’s best chance of nixing his legal problems.View image in fullscreenJoe BidenBiden is the likely Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election. He announced his campaign for re-election on 25 April 2023, exactly four years after he announced his previous, successful presidential campaign. While approval for the president remains low, hovering just above 40%, political experts say he is the most likely candidate to defeat Trump. Biden has served in politics for more than five decades and is running on a platform that includes abortion rights, gun reform and healthcare. At 81, he is the oldest president in US history.View image in fullscreenMarianne WilliamsonThe failed 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson dropped out of the race in February before then resurrecting her long-shot campaign after the Michigan primary. Williamson, an author of self-help books, launched her bid with campaign promises to address the climate crisis and student loan debt. She previously worked as “spiritual leader” of a Michigan Unity church.View image in fullscreenJason PalmerJason Palmer is a Democratic candidate who was only on the ballot in American Samoa and some other US territories. He won the primary in America Samoa after donating $500,000 to his own campaign. Palmer is a Baltimore resident who has worked for various businesses and non-profits, often on issues involving technology and education. More