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      Trump prosecutor Fani Willis tells misconduct hearing: ‘I’m not on trial. These people are on trial for stealing an election’ – as it happened

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      In one furious outburst, Fani Willis is angrily pushing back at what she says are personal attacks on her and Nathan Wade, and says opposing attorneys should focus their attention elsewhere.Asked if she objected to records of flights she took with Wade being demanded, she said:
      I object to you getting records. You’ve been intrusive into people’s personal lives. You’re confused. You think I’m on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020. I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.
      Willis is also defending Wade’s character, saying they are “good friends”.The judge has ordered another short break.We’re closing the US politics blog now after what was an extraordinary day, on two fronts, in the various legal cases against Donald Trump.
      In Georgia, the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis gave testimony in a fiery first day of a misconduct hearing that could see her removed from the election interference case against the former president. “I’m not on trial here,” she insisted in one of many angry exchanges over her affair with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
      Willis tussled with Trump lawyer Steve Sadow over the “tough conversation” she had with Nathan Wade ending their relationship and, crucially, when it occurred. Telling Sadow “you don’t have to yell at me,” Willis said their relationship was over before she indicted Trump last August.
      Willis insisted she paid Wade back for money he spent on two cruises and other trips he took with her in 2022 and early 2023.
      Willis accused Ashleigh Merchant, a lawyer for another Trump co-defendant, of telling lies about her in another heated exchange.
      Wade also took the stand, confirming their relationship ended last summer.
      Robin Yeartie, a former friend of Willis who worked in her office, testified the relationship began before Wade was hired.
      In New York, a judge set a 25 March start date for Trump’s trial on charges he made illegal hush-money payments to adult movie star Stormy Daniels, and Playboy model Karen McDougal.
      The two stories dominated the day.Also today:Join us again tomorrow, when we’ll have more from the second day of the Fani Willis misconduct hearing.A fiery first day of the misconduct case against Fani Willis, in which a judge will decide if the Fulton county district attorney will be disqualified from prosecuting the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump, has just wrapped up for the day.The final exchange was Harry MacDougald, lawyer for Trump co-defendant Jeffrey Clark, asking Willis about any financial gifts above $100 she received from Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she hired for the case, and with whom she had a romantic relationship.Willis says she never received any, other than him paying for dinner. She says she reimbursed him for everything, and pushed back when McDougald said there was nothing to prove she had withdrawn any cash to do so.“That’s not accurate,” Willis replied.It was a tamer exchange than those that preceded it. In one particularly hostile moment, Willis accused an attorney of repeatedly lying about her, and in another furiously exclaimed: “I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.”Judge McAfee has told all parties to reconvene at 9am ET on Friday. It’s been quite a day.Steve Sadow’s questioning of Fani Willis has now concluded, and the judge overseeing the misconduct hearing, Scott McAfee, says there’s time for a few more questions before he wraps the hearing up for the day.Next up is Allyn Stockton, lawyer for Trump’s co-defendant and former attorney Rudy Giuliani, who opened with questions about travel Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade might have made together, including trips to Washington DC that Willis has already denied took place.Next, he’s wondering about Willis’s hiring practices and contract-issuing procedures as Fulton county district attorney.It’s not yet clear where he’s going with it, but he seems to be suggesting there might be something improper about the status of employment of two of Wade’s colleagues who reportedly did work for her Willis’s office.Steve Sadow and Fani Willis are now tussling over the “tough conversation” she had with Nathan Wade ending their relationship and, crucially, when it occurred.“The physical relationship was over pre-indictment,” Willis aid, referring to the criminal election interference charges she brought, aided by special prosecutor Wade, against Donald Trump in Georgia in August 2023.But she said women and men “think differently” about what might constitute the end of a relationship. She also said there was a good deal of tension in her relationship with Wade towards the end:
      He told me one time only thing a woman can do for him is make him a sandwich. We would have brutal arguments about the fact that I am your equal.
      I don’t need anything from a man. A man is not a plan. A man is a companion. And so there was tension always in our relationship, which is why I always gave him his money back.
      I don’t need anybody to foot my bills. The only man who’s ever footed my bills completely is my daddy.
      Sadow tried again. “The romantic relationship ended before the indictment was returned. Yes or no?” he said.“To a man, yes,” Willis replied.Steve Sadow, an attorney for Donald Trump, is next to question Fani Willis, and their exchanges are even more hostile than those that preceded them.“You don’t have to yell at me. I’m able to understand. So I would ask you to not yell at me,” Willis replied when Sadow asked a question about her living arrangements during the period she was having a relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.Willis is also repeatedly claiming the phrasing of Sadow’s questions is “inaccurate”, as is definition of “romantic” to describe her relationship with Wade.“A romantic relationship doesn’t necessarily have to be just sex. It can be dating, it can be holding hands. It can be any of those things that one might call romantic. I’m asking you whether or not prior to November 1st 2021 there was a romantic relationship with Mr Wade,” Sadow said.Willis replied: “I do not consider our relationship to have become romantic until early 2022 … sometime between February and April.”Almost inevitably, Donald Trump has now weighed in with an emailed attack on Fani Willis, and almost as inevitably it’s a fundraising appeal from his campaign, which is clearly watching today’s courtroom drama closely:
      Fani Willis was responsible for taking my mugshot! First she coordinated with the Biden White House to take me down! Then she hired her lover to go after me and paid him with taxpayer dollars,” an email to supporters says, repeating numerous unverified allegations.
      But now, right now, her corruption is being broadcast live to the whole world. I told you she’s corrupt as hell.”
      The email concludes with the oft-heard claim of a “witch-hunt” and a request to “patriots” to chip in to defeat Willis.Ashleigh Merchant, the attorney questioning Fani Willis, is asking why she chose to run for district attorney, citing a claim that Willis said she didn’t want to be “finally effed-up again”.It appears relevant because Donald Trump has claimed Willis ran for the office because she was out to get him.Willis says she felt that with her experience she was “the appropriate person” for what was a tough job:
      It was a huge sacrifice to be district attorney in Fulton County. I was doing just fine. I had a municipal court judgeship that was paying me 100 something thousand a year, and we got to show up twice a week … [the] easiest thing I’ve ever done in life.
      I also had private clients that were paying me to represent them, so I was able to have a law practice and raise two daughters by myself. They were times in life where things were hard.
      So I was telling people I don’t really want to for DA. I’m in a good position right now, I got this easy job that I enjoy being the chief judge of the city of South Fulton, making money at the law firm, and I’m not sure that I want to make the sacrifice.
      Eventually, I prayed. I think that I was the appropriate person.
      Merchant’s questioning of Willis has now concluded.Judge Scott McAfee says the heated atmosphere in the courtroom needs to cool down, and ordered a short break.When the session resumed, with Fani Willis still on the stand, he admonished all parties to respect the decorum of the court.Here’s my colleague Sam Levine’s latest take on this afternoon’s fiery proceedings:In her time on the stand, Fani Willis has twice sought to remind the audience about the stakes of the case. At issue isn’t her relationship with Wade, but democracy. “Ms Merchant’s interests are contrary to democracy your honor, not to mine,” she said at one point.In a heated exchange later she said “You’re confused… I’m not on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020.”Willis’s testimony so far has sought to explain some of the biggest questions from Wade’s testimony this morning.Explaining why she repaid Wade in cash for travel, Willis explained that she has always kept significant amounts of cash wherever she lays her head. She took from that stash to repay Wade. She has also been blunter about calling out “lies” in motions seeking to disqualify her.By way of explanation, Ashleigh Merchant, mentioned above, is the attorney currently involved in the back-and-forth with Willis on the stand. She represents Michael Roman, one of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the election interference case that Willis is prosecuting.In one furious outburst, Fani Willis is angrily pushing back at what she says are personal attacks on her and Nathan Wade, and says opposing attorneys should focus their attention elsewhere.Asked if she objected to records of flights she took with Wade being demanded, she said:
      I object to you getting records. You’ve been intrusive into people’s personal lives. You’re confused. You think I’m on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020. I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.
      Willis is also defending Wade’s character, saying they are “good friends”.The judge has ordered another short break.There were only a handful of trips together with Nathan Wade, Fani Willis is now telling the court:
      We went to Aruba, I consider that one trip. On New Year’s Eve, we went on a cruise to the Bahamas. That’s the second trip.
      We went to Belize. That was my trip, that was, you know, his 50th [birthday] and then Napa Valley. We went around May. I don’t know the dates, but it seems to me like it was close to Mother’s Day.
      And those are the only trips.
      Fani Willis is talking about two cruises out of Miami that she took with Nathan Wade, one in October 2022.She says Wade booked and paid for the first one, but she reimbursed him “whatever it was”:
      He is the one that would book the travel. But we need to be clear when we’re talking about just because he’s booked it doesn’t mean I consider him ever having taken me any place.
      He paid for the cruise and the fights… whatever he told me it was, I gave him the money back.
      She was asked where the cash came from:
      I am sure that the source of the money is always the work sweat and tears of me.
      For many, many years, I have kept money in my house… on my worst day probably only $500 or $1,000. And my best days, I probably had $15,000 in my house, cash.
      There’s always going to be cash in my house or wherever I’m laying my head.
      But Willis said she never paid Wade more than $2,500 in any one payment.The Guardian’s Sam Levine is tweeting from the courtroom about Fani Willis’s testimony.The Fulton county district attorney is angry about “lies” told her earlier in the case, including by her former friend Robin Yeartie, who testified today that a relationship between Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade began before she hired him to work on Donald Trump’s election interference case.She’s being asked about her dealings with Yeartie, and vacations she allegedly took with Wade.Fani Willis said she was “very anxious” to testify today, and ran from her office to get to the courtroom when she heard special prosecutor Nathan Wade’s testimony had concluded.She said she had some “choice words” about the motion to disqualify her from Donald Trump’s election interference case but denies she had any substantive conversation with Wade, or anybody else about it:
      I would not have. I don’t believe I’ve had any conversation with him that is substantive related to this.
      Willis has adopted a defensive, verging on aggressive stance, and says she takes exception to allegations she slept with Wade the first day she met him, at a conference:
      Your motion tried to implicate I slept with him at that conference, which I find to be extremely offensive. Mr Wade was my teacher.
      It’s highly offensive when they replicate that you slept with somebody the first day you met with them, and I take exception to this.
      Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis has just taken the stand in the election interference case in Georgia.Almost as soon as she sat down, the judge called a five-minute break for certain documents to be copied and distributed.She’ll be testifying soon about the nature of her relationship with, and cash payments to special prosecutor Nathan Wade, who wrapped up his lengthy period of testimony just now.Stick with us…Rumours that Russia is planning to deploy nuclear weapons in space have been dampened down by experts who say that while such technology is possible, there is no need to push the panic button.The furore kicked off on Wednesday when the head of the US House of Representatives’ intelligence committee, Mike Turner, called for the Biden administration to declassify information on what he called a “serious national security threat”.While Turner gave no further details, it was later reported by news outlets, citing unnamed sources, to involve Russia’s potential deployment of a nuclear anti-satellite weapon in space. The Kremlin dismissed the claim as a “malicious fabrication”.Dr Bleddyn Bowen, an associate professor at the University of Leicester who specialises in outer space international relations and warfare, said the the lack of detail was no reason to panic. “It’s so vague and cryptic, it could be a number of different things. [But] no matter what they are, none of them are a big deal, to be honest. Everyone needs to calm down about this.”Russia is bound by several legal restrictions regarding the use or presence of nuclear weapons in space. Article 4 of the Outer Space treaty (1967) bans nuclear weapons from being put into orbit, installed on celestial bodies or otherwise stationed in outer space, while the New Start treaty aims to reduce the number of deployable nuclear arms. The Partial Nuclear Test Ban treaty (1963) bans nuclear explosions in space.You can read more here.The White House just announced that the US will engage with Russia and allies on the Outer Space treaty and has no intention of violating it.The White House national security spokesman John Kirby is telling reporters gathered in the west wing a little more detail about the “serious national security threat” that emerged into the public eye yesterday.“It’s not an active capability,” Kirby said, after confirming that the threat was related to “an anti-satellite capability that Russia is developing, while adding that “there is no immediate threat to anyone’s safety.”Kirby did not elaborate on reports that the new capability is about Russian plans to deploy nuclear weapons in space.Kirby said Joe Biden has directed a series of actions by the administration, including briefings to congressional leaders and direct diplomatic engagement with Russia about the program.The administration has not permitted more information to be made public yet, the spokesman said.It was a surprise yesterday when the head of the House intelligence committee, Mike Turner, called for the Biden administration to declassify information on what he called a “serious national security threat”.The emerging Russian system can’t directly cause “physical destruction” on Earth, Kirby just said.The White House media briefing is underway. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre opens by lamenting the mass shooting in Kansas City, Missouri, yesterday.Gunfire erupted towards the end of the victory parade for the Kansas City Chiefs football team, after they won the Super Bowl last weekend.She repeated the White House’s call for the US Congress to ban assault weapons for the general public.Joe Biden has frequently called for such a ban during his presidency, so far to no avail. More

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      Mayorkas impeachment: petty, doomed … but still potentially damaging

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      In 1876, the last US cabinet official to be impeached, William Belknap, resigned before the House could vote on the matter. Ulysses S Grant’s secretary of war was tried in the Senate anyway, on charges of corruption, but escaped conviction.Nearly 150 years later, in the House on Tuesday and at the second time of asking, Republicans corralled just enough votes to ensure Joe Biden’s secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, suffered Belknap’s fate. But Mayorkas has not resigned – and nor is he likely to be convicted and removed.Democrats control the Senate, which means Mayorkas is all but certain to be acquitted at any trial, regardless of reported doubts among Republican senators about their party’s case.After the 214-213 vote to impeach, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, set out what will happen next. House managers will present the articles of impeachment after Monday’s President’s Day holiday. Senators will be sworn in as jurors. And Patty Murray of Washington state, the Democratic Senate president pro tempore, will preside thereafter.Schumer also issued a stinging statement.“This sham impeachment effort is another embarrassment for House Republicans,” the New Yorker said. “The one and only reason for this impeachment is for Speaker [Mike] Johnson to further appease Donald Trump.”The Mayorkas impeachment is of a kind with Senate Republicans’ decision last week to detonate their own hard-won border and immigration bill because Trump, their likely nominee for president, wants to campaign on the issue.Schumer continued: “House Republicans failed to produce any evidence that Secretary Mayorkas has committed any crime. House Republicans failed to show he has violated the constitution. House Republicans failed to present any evidence of anything resembling an impeachable offense. This is a new low for House Republicans.”Most observers agree that the charges against Mayorkas – basically, that he performed incompetently and violated immigration law regarding the southern border – do not remotely rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanours”, as constitutionally required for impeachment and removal.Perhaps with a nod to the unfortunate Belknap, the Biden White House weighed in, saying: “History will not look kindly on House Republicans for their blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship that has targeted an honorable public servant in order to play petty political games.”But history also records that all impeachments (and impeachment efforts, such as that mounted by Republicans against Biden himself) are inherently political, so this one could prove as politically potent as did those of Trump. Both Trump impeachments concerned behaviour – blackmailing Ukraine for political dirt and inciting the January 6 attack on Congress – much closer by any standard to the status of high crimes and misdemeanours. Regardless, Republicans ensured Trump was acquitted in both and have since fed Trump’s fierce desire for revenge.The Mayorkas impeachment was driven by Trump-aligned extremists prominently including Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.Speaking to reporters on the Capitol steps on Tuesday, the same day the Senate passed a $95bn national security package including funding for Ukraine in its war with Russia, Greene said she was “very thankful to our Republican Congress. We’re finally working together with the American people to send a message to the Biden administration that it’s our border that matters, not other countries’ borders. Our border matters.”Claiming Mayorkas was guilty of “willful betrayal of the American people and breaking federal immigration laws”, Greene also said the impeachment “sends a message to America that Republicans can get our job done when we work together and do what’s important and what the American people want us to do.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf there were any remaining doubt that Mayorkas was impeached in service of pure politics, Greene said senators set to sit as jurors should “look at the polling. They know that our border security is the No 1 issue in every single campaign in every single state, every single city, in every single community … They better pay attention to the American people.”It is not certain, however, that a trial will happen.Joshua Matz, a lawyer who has written extensively on impeachment and worked on both impeachments of Trump, recently told Politico: “Impeachment trials are meant to be deadly serious business for matters of state – not free publicity for the House majority to air policy attacks on the current administration.”The Mayorkas impeachment articles, Matz said, are “so manifestly about policy disagreement rather than anything that could arguably qualify as high crimes and misdemeanours, that it would be unwarranted to waste the Senate’s time with the trial on the matter.“The articles are formally deficient in so many ways that any trial would be flagrantly unfair and create such grave due process issues that it would be outrageous to even proceed.”Senate Democrats could bring up a simple motion to dismiss the Mayorkas charges, a gambit which would be likely to succeed, given indicated support from the West Virginia centrist Joe Manchin, a key swing vote in the narrowly divided chamber. Less starkly, Democrats could seek to tie proceedings up in procedure, options including sending the charges to a committee, there to sit in limbo throughout an election year.All choices carry political peril, however. On Wednesday, the news site Semafor quoted an unnamed Republican aide as saying: “If Democrats give Republicans the opportunity to say that they are sweeping this under the rug, we will gladly take it.“If this is the sham Democrats claim it is, why would they be afraid of holding a trial?” More

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      The US supreme court may turn this election into a constitutional crisis | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Imagine it is 6 January 2025. The bell tolls for the day of electoral college certification again. All the events of 2024 converge:The US supreme court’s likely ruling in Trump v Anderson denying Colorado’s disqualification of Trump under the constitution’s 14th amendment, section 3; the exoneration of Joe Biden by special counsel Robert Hur for handling documents while sideswiping him as near senile; the ruling on Trump’s immunity; the trial for his coup attempt; and Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s defiance of federal court rulings in deploying his national guard to the border, supported by other Republican governors who have mobilized their guard units in similar acts of nullification – all these happenings could hurtle to a convulsive confrontation.The supreme court was precisely cautioned against fostering “potentially disastrous turmoil” if it were to rule against Colorado, in an amicus brief submitted by Benjamin Ginsberg, who for decades was the leading Republican party attorney on elections, along with two prominent legal scholars, Richard Hasen, professor at the UCLA law school, and Edward Foley, professor at the Ohio State University law school.The brief by Ginsberg et al was unvarnished: “A decision from this court leaving unresolved the question of Donald Trump’s qualification to hold the office of president of the United States under section 3 of the 14th amendment until after the 2024 election would risk catastrophic political instability, chance disenfranchising millions of voters, and raise the possibility of public violence before, on, and after November 5 2024.”The brief added that “the grounds for avoiding the merits are not credible: Colorado manifestly had the authority to determine Mr Trump’s legal qualification for the office he seeks, and this court has jurisdiction to review that federal-law decision on its merits. To punt on the merits would invite chaos while risking great damage to the court’s reputation and to the Nation as a whole.”But apparently the justices failed to read this brief, just as they apparently failed to read the various amicus briefs filed by distinguished historians.Picture how the scenario might unfold as though reading it as a history from the vantage point of one year from now. The Ginsberg brief predicts the dire consequences that would flow from the supreme court ruling against Colorado. If we layer on to that prophesy the seemingly disparate events of this winter of our discontent we can see, through a mixture of fact and speculation, a disastrous unraveling.Start with the supreme court ruling that a state is not the proper body to determine a disqualification under the 14th amendment, section 3. That would, as the Ginsberg brief states, leave enforcement inevitably, by a process of elimination, to the Congress. The justices’ frantic effort to escape responsibility for upholding the plain language of the 14th amendment in the name of saving the country from a hypothetical political crisis would potentially create a very real constitutional one.In that light, the election result might prove irrelevant. The reason is that now, according to this scenario, the 119th Congress, sworn in on 3 January 2025, could reject the electors from states for Trump by deciding that he is an insurrectionist. The supreme court would have set the stage. If the Democrats were to win the House, they could remove Trump. If the Republicans win control of the Senate, the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, refusing to whip the vote for Trump, could allow a number of Republican senators to vote for Trump’s disqualification, which would void his electoral votes by both chambers.If there is a deadlock, the Ginsberg brief argues, the House still would have an option to remove Trump. Under the Electoral Vote Reform Act, the House would establish rules under the constitution’s 12th amendment in which each state delegation gets one vote in the House. But before that would have taken place, the House could vote that Trump is excluded from a 12th amendment ballot because he was disqualified under the 14th amendment, section 3. No one not on the ballot for president could be substituted. Which means that Joe Biden would be re-elected in any case.All along, throughout the entire campaign year, that would mean that Trump has never been qualified. And it would also mean that only the supreme court decision against Colorado made it seem that he was.In the hearing of the Colorado case earlier this month, Chief Justice John Roberts cast aside the pretense of the conservative doctrines of originalism and textualism on which the supreme court has eviscerated voting rights, gun control and abortion rights. He retreated into a political hypothetical that if the court ruled in Colorado’s favor Biden might be subject to attempts to remove him from the ballot as an insurrectionist.Roberts prattled, “… maybe they’ve got a stack of papers saying here’s why I think this person is guilty of insurrection, it’s not a big insurrection, something that, you know, happened down – down the street, but they say this is still an insurrection … I don’t know what the standard is for when it arises to that.”Led by Roberts, the justices refused to define an insurrection, which was the heart of the Colorado supreme court’s ruling. Roberts’ hypothetical, besides tossing overboard originalism, was more than supercilious punditry. Perhaps his scenario was based on his familiarity with the tactics of the right wing.But Roberts also inadvertently revealed an implicit contempt for the federal system of justice. If a ludicrous suit were ever to be filed against Biden claiming he was an insurrectionist, it would enter into the process of that state’s courts. Roberts apparently had scant confidence in the state courts, up to their supreme courts, to render a sensible decision to throw out transparently mischievous cases. And if a silly case somehow made it to the supreme court, Roberts himself could lead it to deny certiorari. But in his eagerness to find some cause to rule against Colorado, Roberts may have suffered a memory lapse about the fundamental workings of the judicial system.With a supreme court ruling against Colorado, Trump would hail it as a major political victory, brandishing it as proof that all of the charges against him were motivated by partisanship.Now, imagine that in the 2024 election Biden wins the popular vote for the presidency by millions. That is not such a difficulty. Only one Democrat since 1992 has lost the popular vote in a presidential election.But consider that Biden’s overall vote and vote in swing states might be hurt by a lingering ill wind from the special counsel’s report, blowing in suspicion that, despite his command of foreign policy, military affairs and congressional negotiations, he is too damn old, unlike his unsympathetic, malicious, despised and also elderly opponent.If that report imprinted the notion that Biden’s age reflected disability, then wavering voters could fail to grant Biden the credit for his accomplishments, instead giving more weight to the image of him as incapacitated, leaving the record of his presidency unexplained. Trump’s malignant rants, meanwhile, would be, as they are often now, either accepted or dismissed.Cognitive dissonance, rather than cognitive function, in the election could prove to be the critical factor. The president who lifted the country out of Trump’s massive economic and social fiasco in the Covid crisis, and steered it through the resulting inflation to a fabled soft landing, would be perceived as having little to do with his own purpose and therefore weak. On the economy, it’s the stupidity, stupid.The cognitive disconnect in failing to attribute results to Biden’s actions would have enormous political consequences. The more Biden would try to explain the benefits of his policies, the more the Maga base and suggestible voters would disbelieve him because they have already decided he was too old to do anything, a perception reinforced not only by Fox News but also by the drumbeat of mainstream and social media.The election would then disclose the tenacity of the primitive mind. Trump’s bluster would be equated with strength and his threats with energy. The more bellicose he behaves, the more he would be seen as strong; the more incoherently he babbles, the more his supporters believe he knows what he was talking about. While Biden’s irrelevant gaffes have so far been held against him, Trump’s stream of semiconsciousness has been credited as a sign of vigor. The primitive mind that instinctively associates ape-like bellowing with power will not be swayed.Special counsel Robert Hur’s report on the storage of documents at the Penn Biden Center and Biden’s home, published earlier this month, underscored the negative campaign attack. The report’s first line was that “no criminal charges are warranted”. This was followed by contradictory assertions that Biden “willfully retained” documents and that “reasonable jurors” would conclude “that he did not retain them willfully”, and that “he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully – that is, with intent to break the law – as the statute requires”.Having exonerated Biden, the special counsel added this snark: “We have also considered that, at trial, Mr Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”The press attention to the latter part of the sentence has almost always left out the first part – the conjecture of a trial. Yet, as Hur made clear in the opening of his report, he had already decided that he would not bring charges because he lacked evidence, much less a single witness he could bring before a grand jury. When Hur wrote the line he knew there could be no trial.In Biden, Hur had a president “willfully” dedicated to cooperation. He appeared for a deposition at the White House for more than five crucial hours on 8 and 9 October, immediately after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, in which he was immersed in urgent national security meetings and conversations with world leaders. There was no appearance of obstruction of justice or perjury, as there was in the documents case against Trump. Instead, Biden was willing to elevate the legal process over affairs of state.Biden’s quoted statements that appeared muddled are completely familiar to anyone who has ever had a discussion with him. I have personally had long conversations with Biden since I met him nearly 40 years ago. He has a habit of ruminating, wandering and voicing fragments of thought aloud, but always returns to his subject with considerable knowledge, experience and clear views. (I know of many people who have had conversations with Biden very recently, who report that he is focused, sharp and has a cogent grasp of the many crises he is handling at once.)Hur’s elaborately cute description of a doddering Biden was not gratuitous; it was carefully crafted. Hur knowingly lent the imprimatur of a Department of Justice report to character assassination. Then, Attorney General Merrick Garland naively released it unredacted to the public – red meat for the jackal pack.What was Robert Hur’s state of mind? The most generous interpretation of the special counsel’s innuendo may have been that he was innocent of any experience with a charming Irish American politician. The irony was surely lost on the hardwired conservative that his description of Biden fit Ronald Reagan to a T. But Hur instrumentally deployed his summary of his encounter with Biden as an excuse for his lack of evidence.Hur is a cold-blooded Javert as rightwing careerist. He is a representative man of the first generation bred entirely within the hothouse of the Federalist Society from his start to his smear. Beginning as a summer intern in 2000 at Kirkland & Ellis, where he had the model of partner Brett Kavanaugh, he clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist in the period when he was issuing opinions blocking abortion clinics from using Rico to sue anti-abortion protesters for damages, in Scheidler v National Organization for Women, and striking down affirmative action to increase racial diversity in college admissions, in Grutter v Bollinger and Gratz v Bollinger.Hur was an associate to then deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who defended then attorney general William Barr’s misrepresentation of a redacted version of the Mueller report on Russian interference in the presidential election of 2016 to assist Trump. Trump appointed Hur the US attorney for Maryland, which certainly met with the approval of the Federalist Society chair, Leonard Leo. Hur has been a featured speaker at Federalist Society events since 2007.Hur’s report was not obsessional or fanatical, but professional. It was in effect his job application for the next Republican administration.Now, imagine, if the scenario of the Ginsberg brief is a catastrophe foretold, that all these events tumble unpredictably to 6 January 2025 and beyond. One of the analytic tools of historical understanding is to speculate on what might have happened if events took unexpected twists and turns. The proverb “for want of a nail” suggests that the absence of a minor factor produced a major outcome. In chaos theory, the butterfly effect describes the impact of seemingly random occurrences that set in motion a chain reaction leading to enormous change – the flapping of a butterfly’s wings that results in a distant tornado. A supreme court ruling and a special counsel’s report are more than a nail and a butterfly’s wings.So, consider the possible effects in a not-so-distant future:Disqualified by the Congress, an enraged Trump files a suit before the supreme court. But that is just a gesture. After the 2020 election, he incited a mob to attack the Capitol. Suppose that now he calls on the Texas governor – and other Republican governors – to send national guard units to enforce his “election”. Biden federalizes them, but the Republican governors proclaim that he has usurped power to keep himself in office illegitimately and that Trump is the truly elected president.Self-installed as the president of the de facto Second Confederacy, Trump’s first act is to pardon himself of all federal crimes. He has called Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán and Benjamin Netanyahu to request that they recognize him as the true president. Putin offers him asylum.As armies prepare to clash on a darkling plain, Trump’s last-ditch appeal in the Manhattan election fraud case for paying hush money to a porn star goes against him. The New York appellate court announces it has upheld his prison sentence and fine. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida responds that while Trump might be the president he will honor the extradition clause of the constitution to deliver him from Mar-a-Lago as a fugitive from justice. Trump flees to Texas, where Governor Abbott refuses the extradition order. Trump proclaims he is president wherever he is.The case for remanding Trump to jail in New York then goes to the supreme court. Having decided that the 14th amendment, section 3, is not self-executing, that a state cannot enforce it, the justices must now decide whether to uphold a district attorney under a state law to seize a convicted criminal under the extradition clause, which has always been pro forma. The court puts the case on its calendar several months in the future in the spring of 2025. Its conservative members are at the moment on an extended Federalist Society retreat at a private luxury lodge in Wyoming paid for by Harlan Crow.Or we click the heels of the ruby slippers. “There’s no place like home.” We awake from a phantasmagorical dream in a bed surrounded by Aunt Em and Uncle Henry.
      Sidney Blumenthal is a Guardian US columnist. He is a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More

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      US House votes to impeach homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in historic vote – video

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      The US House of Representatives has voted to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, Joe Biden’s secretary of homeland security, on explicitly political charges related to conditions at the southern border as Republicans attempt to capitalise on the issue in an election year. Mayorkas becomes the first cabinet secretary facing charges in nearly 150 years, and the first in modern history to be impeached. More

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      Biden condemns Trump’s Nato comments as ‘dumb, shameful, dangerous and un-American’ – as it happened

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      Here’s a fuller account of what Joe Biden just said about Donald Trump’s role in Republicans opposing the national security package approved today by the US Senate but set for an uncertain future in the US House, where the far right enjoys a modicum of control through the speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana.“The stakes were already high for American security before this bill was passed in the Senate last night,” Biden said. “But in recent days, those stakes have risen.“That’s because the former president has set a dangerous and shockingly, frankly, un-American signal to the world. Just a few days ago, Trump gave an invitation to Putin to invade some of our allies, Nato allies. He said if an ally didn’t spend enough money on defence, he would encourage Russia to quote, ‘Do whatever the hell they want’.“Can you imagine a former president of the United States saying that? The whole world heard it.“The worst thing is, he means it. No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator. Let me say this as clearly as I can: I never will. “For god’s sake it’s dumb, it’s shameful, it’s dangerous. It’s un-American. When America gives its word it means something, so when we make a commitment, we keep it. And Nato is a sacred commitment.“Donald Trump looks at this as if it’s a burden. When he looks at Nato, he doesn’t see the alliance that protects America and the world. He sees a protection racket. He doesn’t understand that Nato is built on a fundamental principles of freedom, security and national sovereignty. Because for Trump, principles never matter. Everything is transactional.“He doesn’t understand that the sacred commitment we’ve given works for us as well. In fact, I would remind Trump and all those who would walk away from Nato that Article Five” – which assures mutual defence if one alliance member is attacked – “has only been invoked once. Just once in Nato history. And it was done to stand with America after we were attacked on 9/11. We should never forget it.”That’s a wrap for us on the politics liveblog today. Here’s a recap of what happened:
      Joe Biden ripped into Trump for saying over the weekend that he would let Russia “do whatever the hell they want” and attack Nato countries. “No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator,” Biden said during remarks at the White House. “It’s dumb, it’s shameful, it’s dangerous, it’s un-American.” Biden also said: “No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator. Let me say this as clearly as I can: I never will.”
      The US Senate passed a $95bn national security bill early this morning. The bill includes $60bn in aid for Ukraine, $14bn for Israel, and around $5bn for Indo-Pacific allies.
      Biden urged the US House to “move with urgency” to pass the national security bill, but Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, has downplayed the bill’s chances in Congress’s lower chamber.
      Voting is under way in a special election on Long Island to replace George Santos, the disgraced former congressman and prolific fabulist. Democrat Tom Suozzi is trying to beat Republican Mazi Pilip. A Democratic win would be significant because it would narrow the already slim margin Republicans hold in the US House. Polls close at 9pm EST.
      Donald Trump will attend a preliminary court in New York in the criminal case related to hush-money payments he made to Stormy Daniels. Trump is choosing to attend that hearing over a different high-stakes hearing in Atlanta on Thursday over whether Fani Willis should be disqualified from handling the wide-ranging election interference against him there because of her relationship with another prosecutor on the case.
      Nikki Haley said Donald Trump’s efforts to install his daughter-in-law and other allies in leadership at the Republican National Committee was part of Trump’s effort to cement the nomination. “Think about what’s happening right now. Is that how you’re going to try and take an election?,” she said in remarks in Bamberg, South Carolina, her home town.
      That’s all for today. I’ll be back on the liveblog tomorrow morning with a new day of updates. See you then!Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, is back at the capitol after receiving treatment for multiple myeloma, a blood cancer.Scalise’s return to the capitol is significant because House Republicans are planning another impeachment vote of Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, according to the Hill. An impeachment vote last week failed by just one vote. Three Republicans voted against the measure.If Scalise supports impeachment, and no other votes change, it would narrowly pass the US House.Before I hand the controls to the great Sam Levine, a short summary of Joe Biden’s remarks from the White House just now about the $95bn national security package passed by the Senate, its uncertain future in the House and what that says about the hold Donald Trump continues to place on the American right.
      Johnson has said he doesn’t like the bill because it does not include anything to tackle the crisis at the southern border. Biden didn’t mention it, but Republicans will be hoping voters don’t remember what happened last week, when the Senate GOP tanked the border part of the package their own negotiators had worked hard to agree, because Trump (essentially) told them to do it.
      Biden did say that if Johnson allowed the border-free deal a free vote in the House, it would pass. Would it? Maybe. There are plenty of House Republicans who would back the national security package, sure – but there are plenty of House Democrats who, like three senators on their side, for sure do not like the parts of the bill which funds continuing Israeli strikes in the Palestinian territories. Biden emphasised provisions in the spending package for more aid to the besieged Palestinian people.
      Unsurprisingly, Biden therefore focused his remarks on what the Senate package would do for Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion. “We’ve all seen the terrible stories of recent weeks,” Biden said, citing “Ukrainian soldiers out of artillery shells, Ukrainian units rationing rounds of ammunition to defend themselves, Ukrainian families worried that the next Russian strike will permanently plunge them into darkness, or worse.”
      Providing such aid to Ukraine – and to Israel and allies in the Pacific including Taiwan, threatened by China – would Biden said mean work for Americans, in generating new materials to replenish Pentagon stockpiles.
      Biden also focused on what support for Ukraine would say to the world as Trump homes in on the Republican presidential nomination: “This bipartisan bill sends a clear message to the Ukrainians and to our partners, and to our allies around the world: America can be trusted, America can be relied upon, and America stands up for freedom. We stand strong for our allies. We never bow down to anyone and certainly not to Vladimir Putin.”
      Biden aimed squarely at Trump on that front, accusing him of “bowing down to a Russian dictator” and excoriating him for threatening to encourage Russia to attack Nato allies he considers financially delinquent.
      A response from Trump, one suspects, will be along sooner rather than later.In his brief remarks at the White House just now, Joe Biden continued to target Donald Trump over the former president’s marshaling of House Republicans to oppose the $95bn national security package passed by the Senate today, a bill including money for Israel and Taiwan as well as Ukraine, in its fight against the Russian invasion.“Our adversaries have long sought to create cracks” in Nato, Biden said. “The greatest hope of all those who wish Americans harm is for Nato to fall apart. You can be sure that they all cheered when they heard Donald Trump and heard what he said” last week, about encouraging Russia to attack Nato allies who he thinks do not pay enough into the pot.“I will not walk away,” Biden said. “I can’t imagine any other president walking away. As long as I’m president, if [Vladimir] Putin attacks a Nato ally, the United States will defend every inch of Nato territory.”In remarks notably heavy on Russia-Ukraine and light on Israel-Gaza – a divisive issue among Democrats – Biden then pivoted towards his re-election message, regarding the almost certain rematch with Trump this November.“Let me close with this. You heard me say this before. Our nation stands at an inflection point, an inflection point in history, where the decisions we make now are gonna determine the course of our future for decades to come. This is one of those moments.“And I say to House Republicans: you got to decide. Are you going to stand up for freedom? Or are you going to side with tyranny? Are you going to stand with Ukraine? Are you gonna stand with Putin? Are you going to stand with America or Trump?“Republicans and Democrats in the Senate came together to send a message of unity to the world [by passing the national security package]. It’s time for the House Republicans do the same thing. Pass this bill immediately. Stand for decency, stand for democracy, stand up to a so-called leader hell-bent on weakening American security.“And I mean this sincerely: history is watching. History is watching. In moments like this, we have to remember who we are. The United States of America. The world is looking to us. Nothing is beyond our capacity when we act together. In this case, acting together includes acting with our Nato allies.“God bless you all … and I promise I’ll come back and answer questions later.”While reporters shouted questions, Biden left the room.Here’s a fuller account of what Joe Biden just said about Donald Trump’s role in Republicans opposing the national security package approved today by the US Senate but set for an uncertain future in the US House, where the far right enjoys a modicum of control through the speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana.“The stakes were already high for American security before this bill was passed in the Senate last night,” Biden said. “But in recent days, those stakes have risen.“That’s because the former president has set a dangerous and shockingly, frankly, un-American signal to the world. Just a few days ago, Trump gave an invitation to Putin to invade some of our allies, Nato allies. He said if an ally didn’t spend enough money on defence, he would encourage Russia to quote, ‘Do whatever the hell they want’.“Can you imagine a former president of the United States saying that? The whole world heard it.“The worst thing is, he means it. No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator. Let me say this as clearly as I can: I never will. “For god’s sake it’s dumb, it’s shameful, it’s dangerous. It’s un-American. When America gives its word it means something, so when we make a commitment, we keep it. And Nato is a sacred commitment.“Donald Trump looks at this as if it’s a burden. When he looks at Nato, he doesn’t see the alliance that protects America and the world. He sees a protection racket. He doesn’t understand that Nato is built on a fundamental principles of freedom, security and national sovereignty. Because for Trump, principles never matter. Everything is transactional.“He doesn’t understand that the sacred commitment we’ve given works for us as well. In fact, I would remind Trump and all those who would walk away from Nato that Article Five” – which assures mutual defence if one alliance member is attacked – “has only been invoked once. Just once in Nato history. And it was done to stand with America after we were attacked on 9/11. We should never forget it.”“Supporting this bill is standing up to Putin,” Biden says. “Opposing it is playing into Putin’s hands.”He’s casting, of course, the House Republicans who oppose the national security package, as allies of the Russian president in his invasion of Ukraine.Biden also stresses, as aides did earlier, that this bill worth $95bn of foreign aid means work for American workers, who will produce the materials to replenish American stockpiles.The argument: in an election year, this is good for the American worker.Biden also hits a note hit by aides earlier, stressing the part of the package passed by the Senate that “provides Israel with what it needs to protect his people against the terrorist group like Hamas and Hezbollah and others, and it will provide life-saving humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people desperately need food, water and shelter. They need help.”That’s a message to his own party: three senators voted no, citing support for Israel’s military strikes in the Palestinian territories.Moving onto Trump, Biden excoriates the former president for his recent remarks about encouraging Russia to attack Nato allies who did not pay what Trump would call their fair share.“No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator,” Biden says, his voice rising.“It’s dumb, it’s shameful, it’s dangerous, it’s un-American.”Biden accuses Trump of seeing Nato as “a protection racket” rather than an alliance and accuses his rival of “bowing down” to the Russian president.No questions taken.Here’s Joe.“I urge Speaker Johnson to bring it to the floor immediately,” Biden says, adding that the package will pass the House if it is put on the floor.“I call on the speaker to let the full House speak its mind and not allow a minority of the most extreme voices in the House to block this bill even from being voted on. Even from being voted on. This is a critical act, for the House to move this bill.”And the wait for Joe Biden to speak goes on.Wondering what’s in the national security package the Senate passed around dawn and everyone has been talking about since, particularly regarding the vanishingly small chances of it getting past the Trump-aligned Republicans who control the House?If yes, read this:While we wait and wait for Joe Biden to speak at the White House, here’s what Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the US House, has to say about the national security bill’s prospects therein, in a “Dear Colleague” letter to his caucus.Jeffries, from New York, has strong words directed at those in his party who are unhappy about military aid for Israel in its war with Hamas – three Democratic or Democratic-aligned senators voted no to the bill earlier – as well as for “pro-Putin extremist” Republicans in the House who he says “apparently want Russia to win” its war in Ukraine.“The Senate bill addresses America’s national security interests in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the Indo-Pacific region and its advancement represents a critically important step forward,” Jeffries writes.“The House must now work on a bipartisan basis to advance legislation that supports our democratic ally Israel as it fights an existential war against Hamas and seeks to free the remaining hostages. A just and lasting peace for Israel and the Palestinian people is only possible if Hamas is decisively defeated.“At the same time, we must surge humanitarian assistance like food, water and shelter to Palestinian civilians in Gaza and in other theaters of war throughout the world who are in harm’s way through no fault of their own. This imperative is met in the bipartisan national security bill passed in the Senate.“It is critical that we continue our support for the Ukrainian people who have courageously fought for democracy, the free world and America’s national security interests. If Vladimir Putin is allowed to win in Ukraine and proceeds to attack any of our Nato allies in Eastern Europe, the logical consequence is a brutal war between the US and Russia. Inaction by House Republicans who remain beholden to Maga extremists threatens the lives of American service women and men. The stakes are high and failure in Ukraine is not an option.“Traditional Republicans must now put America first, and stand up to Pro-Putin extremists in the House who apparently want Russia to win. The American people deserve an up or down vote, and we will use every available legislative tool to get comprehensive national security legislation over the finish line. The US Senate has done its job. It is time for the House of Representatives to do the same.”We’re still waiting on Joe Biden, who is due to speak at the White House on the national security package that passed the Senate today but which seems sure not to pass the Republican-held House.While we wait, here’s Lauren Gambino’s report:We’re still waiting for Joe Biden to speak at the White House, so while we do, here’s Adam Gabbatt on today’s special election in New York, where the successor to George Santos will be selected …The replacement for George Santos, the disgraced, indicted Republican and fabulist who was expelled from Congress last year, is set to be decided today, as New Yorkers head to the polls in a closely watched election.Voters in Long Island, east of New York City, face a choice between Tom Suozzi, a Democrat who previously spent six years in Congress, and Mazi Pilip, a relatively unknown local politician, in an election that will affect Republicans’ narrow majority in the House of Representatives.But more than that, the Suozzi-Pilip race has become a test for what the US can expect in the run-up to November’s elections.Immigration, the economy, abortion and aid to Israel have proved key issues, and politicians around the country will be looking to see whether Suozzi, a moderate Democrat, is able to navigate his attachment to an unpopular president dealing with a much-politicized situation at the US-Mexico border.Pilip, who was relatively unknown before the local Republican party selected her to run, has repeatedly attacked Suozzi over immigration – a tactic likely to be repeated in nationwide elections later this year. Suozzi has sought to tie Pilip to Donald Trump – who remains unpopular – and the anti-abortion movement.The seat is seen as a key indicator of voter sentiment before the expected Biden-Trump election in the fall. The demographic of New York’s third congressional district is seen as a political bellwether: largely suburban, it was one of 18 districts Biden won in 2020 but which voted for a Republican House representative in 2022.Biden won the district in 2020, but the area swung Republican in the 2022 midterm elections, when Santos was elected.Read the full story here:Joe Biden is due to deliver “remarks on the Senate passage of the bipartisan supplemental agreement”, AKA the $95bn national security spending bill that the upper chamber passed earlier today, but which the Trump-aligned Republicans who control the House … do not like.The White House stream for Biden’s remarks, which were announced for 1.15pm ET (but which could well start later than that, given precedent) is here.It’s been a lively day in US politics so far and we’ll continue to bring you the news as it happens. Here’s where things stand:
      The national security bill that passed the US Senate early this morning, by 70 votes to 29, is valued at $95bn. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, has already rejected it. Nonetheless, here’s some of what’s in it: $60bn in aid for Ukraine, in its fight against the Russian invasion; $14bn for Israel, as it prosecutes its war against Hamas; $5bn (or close to) for allies in the Indo-Pacific prominently including Taiwan, which is widely held to be in danger of attack from China.
      Joe Biden urged the House to “move with urgency” on the $95bn foreign aid bill that passed the Senate first thing this morning, with more funding for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and other overseas assistance, after an overnight marathon session in the upper chamber.
      Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, saluted the passage of the national security bill with a “robust majority”, and in remarks to reporters on Capitol Hill said: “Now, it’s up to the House to meet this moment, to do the right thing and save democracy as we know it.”
      Out on the campaign trail, Nikki Haley said Donald Trump’s move to have his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, named co-chair of the Republican National Committee was simply another attempt to have himself confirmed asap as the winner of the presidential primary – in which Haley is still running.
      A new feature: Non-Apology of the Day.Here’s Lauren Hitt, a Biden campaign spokesperson, saying sorry-not-sorry to Margaret Hoover, via Politico, after she said Joe Biden comparing Donald Trump to her great-grandad, Herbert Hoover, was a “cheap shot” at the much-maligned, very reasonably arguably misunderstood 31st president:
      We apologize for any undue pain we caused Herbert Hoover by lumping him in with Donald Trump. While they do share the worst jobs record in American history, Hoover never said he wanted the economy to crash to improve his own political fortune – an important distinction.”
      Hoover was the president who had to deal with the Great Depression. Trump’s presidency had an adverse effect on many Americans’ mental health. And so forth.Here’s more on the subject of Biden, Trump and Herbert Hoover:In South Carolina earlier, Nikki Haley said Donald Trump’s move to have his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, named co-chair of the Republican National Committee was simply another attempt to have himself confirmed as the winner of the presidential primary in which Haley is still running.Speaking in her hometown, Bamberg, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador (under Trump) said: “He tried to get the RNC to name him the presumptive nominee. We don’t do coronations. South Carolinians deserves the right to vote on this. So does Michigan, so do all the states on Super Tuesday [5 March]. And so that backfired and he pulled back from it.“What we saw yesterday was, he took a different approach. Now he has decided he has fired the RNC chair [Ronna McDaniel], he’s named who’s going to be the new RNC chair [Michael Whatley, the North Carolina Republican chair and a Trump loyalist], his daughter-in-law [married to Eric Trump, his second son] will be the co-chair, and he is making his campaign manager [Chris LaCivita] the [chief operations] officer that runs the party.“Think about what’s happening right now. Is that how you’re going to try and take an election?”Unfortunately for Haley, the Republican election of a nominee to face Joe Biden in November has so far proceeded entirely in the direction of Trump.The former president won in Iowa, then won in New Hampshire, then won in Nevada. South Carolina is next up. Haley’s home state it may be, but Trump leads polling there by vast margins.Haley also bemoaned Trump’s many legal problems, saying he “talked about being a victim” and had spent “$50m of campaign contributions on his personal court cases”.Accusing Trump of not caring about issues facing everyday Americans, Haley said they included “wasteful spending, the $34tn in debt”, poor reading among eighth graders, “lawlessness on the border … law and order in our cities [and] the wars around the world that make us less safe” .“All he did was talk about himself,” she said, “and that’s the problem.”White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates continues his memo on the national security bill by breaking down areas of US interest boosted by passage through the Senate but, he says, at risk in a House controlled by Republicans loyal to Donald Trump.Such areas include “Ukraine and Nato”, the latter a subject of special concern in Washington (and in European capitals) this week, after Trump told supporters he would encourage Russia to attack Nato members he did not think paid enough for the privilege of US support.Bates says: “Unhinged, irresponsible voices on the right are even encouraging Russia to attack our closest allies and agitating to unravel Nato – an alliance which is bigger and stronger than ever, thanks in no small part to President Biden’s leadership. Those irresponsible voices are erratic and dangerous.”He also points to a consideration common across the national security package – what it means for Americans who make things like planes and weapons.“Our support for Ukraine is revitalising the American defense industrial base across the country,” Bates says.He also seeks to highlight Iranian support for Vladimir Putin’s Russia in its war in Ukraine and, on the Israel part of the bill, says “a House vote against American national security is a vote against crucial military support for Israel as they defend themselves from the Hamas murderers who committed the worst terrorist massacre in that country’s history and whose leaders have pledged to repeat the attacks of October 7 over and over again until Israel is annihilated”.Bates highlights humanitarian assistance to Palestinians, too.Turning to Taiwan, the Bates memo says Biden is “committed” to the island’s “self-defense capabilities” in the face of “a more assertive Peoples Republic of China”.Bates concludes: “A House vote against American national security would undermine these goals.”Andrew Bates, the deputy White House press secretary, sends the press a memo …“Months ago, President Biden submitted a request for critical national security funding to Congress – every aspect of which has strong bipartisan support. President Biden has called for action ever since, working in good faith with Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate, in order to keep the American people safe.“But a subset of congressional Republicans delayed that urgently-needed action, choosing politics over national security.“Today, the Senate just voted to move forward on many of the most pressing needs of the American people. The onus is now on the House to do the same. This is a high stakes moment for American families. It’s also a high stakes moment for House Republicans, because the choice is stark.“Will House Republicans side with President Biden and senators on both sides of the aisle in supporting American national security? Or will House Republicans, in the name of politics, side with Vladimir Putin and the regime in Tehran?“The House GOP cannot lose sight of this binary choice. It would be devastating to undercut American national security by voting against our interests and values.” More

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      US House to vote again on impeaching Biden’s homeland security secretary

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      The US House of Representatives could vote on Tuesday on whether to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, Joe Biden’s secretary of homeland security, on explicitly political charges related to deteriorating conditions at the southern border and Republican attempts to capitalise on the issue in an election year.Tuesday’s vote has been threatened by winter weather conditions, forcing Republicans to first hold a lower-stakes vote on a different issue to find out if they have enough members present to impeach Mayorkas. The impeachment vote would follow an embarrassing failure for the House speaker, Mike Johnson, last week, when Republican absences and defections contributed to defeat in a first vote.If Republicans are successful, the effort to remove Mayorkas – for allegedly refusing to enforce immigration law – would move to the Senate, where it has next to no chance of producing a conviction.Last weekend, Mayorkas told NBC that Republicans’ allegations against him were “baseless … and that’s why I’m really not distracted by them.“I’m focused on the work of the Department of Homeland Security. I’m inspired every single day by the remarkable work that 216,000 men and women in our department perform on behalf of the American public.”Conditions at the border with Mexico, where numbers of undocumented migrants remain high, “certainly” represented “a crisis”, Mayorkas said.But he said the Biden administration did not “bear responsibility for a broken system. And we’re doing a tremendous amount within that broken system. But fundamentally, Congress is the only one who can fix it.”Last week, Republicans in the Senate abandoned and sank an immigration and border deal, reached after extensive negotiations with Democrats, after Donald Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee, made his opposition clear.After the failure of the first Mayorkas impeachment vote, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, a Republican who voted no and was subjected to intense pressure to change his mind, said he would not seek re-election in November.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGallagher, until now a rising star in the party, said: “The proponents of impeachment [of Mayorkas] failed to make the argument as to how his stunning incompetence meets the impeachment threshold.”Such a purely political impeachment, he added, would “set a dangerous new precedent that will be weaponized against future Republican administrations”.Another Republican who opposed the first vote, Tom McClintock of California, said his party was seeking to “stretch and distort the constitution in order to hold the administration accountable for stretching and distorting the law”. More

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      US Senate moves forward $95bn Ukraine and Israel aid package

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      After many setbacks and much suspense, the Senate appeared on track this week to approve a long-awaited package of wartime funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as Republican opponents staged a filibuster to register their disapproval over a measure they could not block.The Senate voted 66-33, exceeding a 60-vote margin, to sweep aside the last procedural hurdle and limit debate on the measure to a final 30 hours before a vote on passage that could come on Wednesday.Senators had worked through the weekend on the roughly $95bn emergency spending package, which cleared a series of procedural hurdles as it moved toward final passage. The chamber voted on the legislation on Monday night following hours of debate and a talking filibuster led by Republican senator Rand Paul and joined by a coterie of Donald Trump’s allies in the chamber.On Monday, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said the weekend votes demonstrated “beyond doubt that there’s strong support” for advancing the foreign aid package.Schumer said: “These are the enormously high stakes of the supplemental package: our security, our values, our democracy. It is a down payment for the survival of western democracy and the survival of American values.”He continued: “The entire world is going to remember what the Senate does in the next few days. Nothing – nothing – would make Putin happier right now than to see Congress waver in its support for Ukraine; nothing would help him more on the battlefield.”If the bill passes the Senate as expected, the bill would next go to the Republican-led House, where next steps are uncertain. Though a bipartisan majority still supports sending assistance to Ukraine, there is a growing contingent of Republican skeptics who echo Trump’s disdain for the US-backed war effort.“House Republicans were crystal clear from the very beginning of discussions that any so-called national security supplemental legislation must recognize that national security begins at our own border,” read a statement from House speaker Mike Johnson.The Republican speaker said the package lacked border security provisions, calling it “silent on the most pressing issue facing our country”. It was the latest – and potentially most consequential – sign of opposition to the Ukraine aid from conservatives who have for months demanded that border security policy be included in the package, only to last week reject a bipartisan proposal intended to curb the number of illegal crossings at the US-Mexico border.“Now, in the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters,” Johnson said. “America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo.”The measure includes $60bn in funding for Ukraine, where soldiers are running out of ammunition as the country seeks to repel Russian troops nearly two years after the invasion. Much of that money would go toward supporting Ukraine’s military operations and to replenishing the US supply of weapons and equipment that have been sent to the frontlines. Another $14bn would go to support Israel and US military operations in the region. More than $8bn would go to support US partners in the Indo-Pacific region, including Taiwan, as part of its effort to deter aggression by China.It also allots nearly $10bn for humanitarian efforts in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza, where nearly a quarter of residents are starving and large swaths of the territory have been ravaged.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNot included in the package is a bipartisan border clampdown demanded by Republicans in exchange for their support for the foreign aid package. But after months of fraught negotiations, Republicans abandoned the deal following Trump’s vocal opposition to the border-security measure.Though its Republican defenders argued that it was the most conservative immigration reform proposal put forward in decades, Trump loyalists on Capitol Hill deemed it inadequate amid record levels of migration at the US southern border. Others were more explicit, warning that bipartisan action to address the situation could help Joe Biden’s electoral prospects in the November elections.Border security is top of mind for many Americans, the overwhelming majority of whom disapprove of the president’s handling of the issue.After the Senate failed to advance the border security measure, Schumer stripped it out and moved ahead with a narrowly-tailored foreign aid package. In floor speeches on Monday, several Republican senators lamented the absence of border enforcement policies, though all had voted to reject the bipartisan immigration deal last week.“Open the champagne, pop the cork! The Senate Democrat leader and the Republican leader are on their way to Kyiv,” Paul said, launching the filibuster. He continued: “They’re taking your money to Kyiv. They didn’t have much time – really no time and no money – to do anything about our border.” More

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      How to steal a US election: Harvard’s Lawrence Lessig on Trump’s new threat

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      Lawrence Lessig has a message for America: Donald Trump’s assault on democracy in 2020, with his stolen-election lie and refusal to concede the White House, may have been shocking, but wait till you see what’s coming next.“We are in a profoundly dangerous moment,” the Harvard law professor says. “This is a catastrophic year, and the odds are not in our favor.”Such a blunt warning carries the gravitas of its source. Lessig is a leading thinker on how public institutions can be corrupted, and has probed deeply into vulnerabilities that leave US democracy undefended against authoritarian attack.Lessig has teamed up with Matthew Seligman of the constitutional law center at Stanford. Their new book, How to Steal a Presidential Election, asks whether a second Trump attempt to subvert democracy could succeed. Their answer makes for uncomfortable reading.“We are convinced,” they write, “that an informed and intelligent effort to undermine the results of a close, free and fair election could work in America – if the rules governing our presidential elections are not changed.”It is a sign of troubled times that prominent scholars are wargaming the next election. A country that has long prided itself as an exemplar of constitutional democracy finds itself under surgical lights.Nor is this Lessig’s first such thought experiment. Four years ago, months before Trump launched his stolen-election conspiracy, Lessig and Seligman devised a class at Harvard law school: Wargaming 2020. They looked at whether it would be possible to hack the presidential election and send the losing candidate to the White House. Their conclusion was that American democracy had dodged a bullet.“We discovered that Trump didn’t really understand what he could have done,” Lessig says. “There were obvious moves he and his team could have made, but they didn’t take them.”The insurrection on 6 January 2021 was tragic in its loss of life, but as a method of overturning the election it was the “dumbest thing they could have possibly done. No court would ever allow the election to be decided by force of bayonets.”Having repeated the wargaming exercise for the new book, Lessig is far less confident that another assault on democracy would end so positively. With the former president almost certain to secure the Republican nomination, having won in Iowa and New Hampshire, Lessig has no doubt about how far Trump is prepared to go.“We’ve seen that he’s willing to do much, more more than we expected back in 2020,” he says.Another reason for people to be “very anxious” is that Trump and his inner circle have had four years to conduct their own wargames and are likely to be far more sophisticated: “Trump didn’t understand how to undo the structures of government. Now he’s well-trained, he knows exactly what he needs to do.”For their 2024 wargame, Lessig and Seligman assume the November election will be nail-bitingly close, both nationally and in at least one battleground state. That is not an outlandish precondition – you only have to think about the 537 votes that gifted Florida and the presidency to George W Bush in 2000.Given a close election, there are factors that could help stave off disaster. With the vice-presidency in the hands of Kamala Harris, there is no chance of Trump or his supporters unleashing the kind of pressure to which they subjected Mike Pence in 2020, trying to get him to block certification of Joe Biden’s victory.In the wake of January 6, Congress also moved to close several loopholes by clarifying some of the most ambiguous wording of the 1887 Electoral Count Act. The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act makes it harder for Congress to object to the counting of votes under the electoral college, and gives the courts a greater role in adjudicating the proper slate of electors to be returned from individual states should disputes arise.But in the Lessig-Seligman analysis, inevitable congressional compromises have left some loopholes in place, opening up opportunities for an unscrupulous, now battle-hardened candidate.Three scenarios stand out. The first relates to so-called “faithless electors”: delegates chosen by parties to represent the winning candidate in each state under the arcane terms of the electoral college who decide to go against their pledge and back the loser.During Trump’s first presidential run in 2016, 10 electors switched their votes. The ruse was a creative, albeit vain attempt to stave off a Trump presidency.Lessig argued on behalf of the 2016 faithless electors before the US supreme court, in a case known as Chiafolo v Washington. The court ruled against the faithless electors, ordering that states have the right to compel them to back the winners of the popular vote.The authors’ concern is that the supreme court left it up to each state to decide whether or not to take up that power. Several states have yet to spell out in law that electors must abide by their pledge to vote for the victor. That leaves the door open to electors coming under massive, even violent pressure from Trump’s army of Make America Great Again warriors.“Imagine an elector had Maga Republicans surrounding their house carrying torches and demanding they vote for Donald Trump. Who knows what the electors would do in those circumstances,” Lessig says.The second scenario involves what Lessig and Seligman call a “rogue governor”: the governor of a state who decides to flip the results of the presidential election. This route poses the greatest long-term threat of US democracy imploding, Lessig believes.Paradoxically, post-January 6 reforms in the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act heightened the danger by increasing the powers of governors to certify slates of electors sent to Congress. Both houses of Congress can vote to overrule a rogue governor, and count the correct slate representing the winner of the popular vote, but only if the House and Senate agree.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGiven a divided Congress, a rogue governor and rogue House working together could steal the state’s electoral votes, and with it potentially the presidency.The risk of this scenario in this election cycle is minimal, Lessig concedes. Many of the highly sensitive battleground states – Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin – have Democratic governors.That leaves Georgia, which Biden won by just 11,779 votes. It has a Republican governor, Brian Kemp, but he resisted Trump’s efforts to overturn the result in 2020 and so is arguably less likely to go rogue this year.View image in fullscreenThe third wargaming scenario is the one that really keeps Lessig up at night: what if an entire state legislature decided to go rogue?Again, the idea is not fanciful. Several legislatures in the most hotly contested states have Republican majorities firmly under Trump’s sway – Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, to name just three – and conspiracy theories about rampant electoral fraud continue to circulate within them.Lessig worries that the supreme court ruling in Chiafolo, by giving state legislatures the power to tell electors how to cast their electoral votes, heightens the risk of a Maga-dominated legislature going rogue. He envisages state lawmakers claiming massive fraud in a close race and using that to justify switching its result to Trump.“That’s a kind of opened hole that is going to be very hard to close in time,” he says.The Harvard professor has emerged from this journey into the dark arts of election subversion in a bleak mood. The book finishes with a raft of proposed changes to federal and state laws that the authors argue would close the loopholes they uncovered in their travels. Will those changes happen in time to prevent a second Trump blitzkrieg?“I’m not optimistic,” Lessig says. “I’m not optimistic that Congress will be able to do anything in time, so the most we can hope for is that the infrastructure resists as it did last time.”When he was researching the book, Lessig says he had the voice of his 13-year-old daughter ringing in his head: “Just chill,” as she would say. But in the event of an extremely close result, he feels he can’t just chill.He stresses that none of this is partisan. He began life as a Republican and had the distinction in 1980, aged 19, of being the youngest delegate from Pennsylvania to Ronald Reagan’s nominating convention.“Neither of us have anything against the conservative movement in the United States, as expressed in the traditional Republican party,” he says.But he looks at how the party has become “disengaged from the basic premise of democratic politics – if you win, you win, if you lose, you go home”. And he sees that the number of Americans who still believe the 2020 election was stolen, against all evidence, remains steady. That scares him.“Many Trump supporters have the sense that anything is justified, and that’s terrifying,” he says. “Trump is denying every single core democratic norm, and yet his support continues to grow. That too is astonishing and terrifying.”
      How to Steal a Presidential Election is published in the US by Yale University Press More