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      January 6 hearings: Trump tried to contact witness, Cheney says – live

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      Hi there, it’s Maanvi Singh – taking over the blog for the next few hours. John Bolton, the former national security advisor, had an interesting reaction to today’s revelations. In response to CNN anchor Jake Tapper’s reflection that “one doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup”, Bolton responded that he disagrees, “as somebody who has helped plan” coups. Jake Tapper: “One doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup.”John Bolton: “I disagree with that. As somebody who has helped plan coup d’etat, not here, but other places, it takes a lot of work.” pic.twitter.com/REyqh3KtHi— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) July 12, 2022
      After the hearing concluded, Capitol insurrectionist Stephen Ayres approached some of the law enforcement officers who defended the building on January 6 and were present for today’s proceedings.Ayres was seen shaking hands with Aquilino Gonell, a US Capitol Police sergeant who was beaten during the insurrection and can no longer work in law enforcement because of his injuries.But one of the law enforcement officers who spoke to Ayres, former Metropolitan police department officer Michael Fanone, said he was unmoved by the man’s remorse.“That apology doesn’t do shit for me. I hope it does shit for him,” Fanone told the AP.I asked MPD office Fanone if he accepts Ayers apology and he said: “That apology doesn’t do shit for me, I hope it does shit for him.” https://t.co/iEvjkYotDa— Farnoush Amiri (@FarnoushAmiri) July 12, 2022
      In a bizarre, angry and “unhinged” White House meeting on 18 December 2020, outside advisers to Donald Trump screamed insults at presidential aides who were resisting their plan to seize voting machines and name a special counsel in pursuit of Trump’s attempt to overturn the election.The meeting – which the House January 6 committee in its public hearing on Tuesday described as a “heated and profane clash” – was held between those who believed the president should admit he lost the election to Joe Biden, and a group of outsiders referred to by some Trump advisers as “Team Crazy”.They included Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani; the retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser; and a lawyer for his campaign team, Sidney Powell.In testimony to the House January 6 committee played at the hearing, Giuliani said that at the meeting he had called the White House lawyers and aides who disagreed with that plan “a bunch of pussies”.Eric Herschmann, a White House lawyer, said that Flynn “screamed at me that I was a quitter and kept standing up and turning around and screaming at me. I’d sort of had it with him so I yelled back, ‘Either come over or sit your effing ass back down.’”Trump allies ‘screamed’ at aides who resisted seizing voting machines, January 6 panel hearsRead moreCommittee member Jamie Raskin, who co-led today’s hearing with Stephanie Murphy, condemned Donald Trump’s actions on January 6 in his closing statement.“American carnage: that’s Donald Trump’s true legacy. His desire to overthrow the people’s election and seize the presidency, interrupting the counting of electoral college votes for the first time in American history, nearly toppled the constitutional order and brutalized hundreds and hundreds of people,” Raskin said.“The Watergate break-in was like a cub scout meeting compared to this assault on our people and our institutions.”Raskin argued that the most important element of the January 6 hearings is determining what actions can be taken now to prevent similar violence in the future.“The crucial thing is the next step — what this committee, what all of us will do to fortify our democracy against coups, political violence and campaigns to steal elections away from the people,” Raskin said.“We need to defend both our democracy and our freedom with everything we have to declare that this American carnage ends here and now.”In her closing statement, Liz Cheney also shared additional footage from Pat Cipollone’s interview with the committee behind closed doors on Friday.In the clip, Cipollone said that he and a number of other senior White House officials were urging Donald Trump to call off the insurrection on January 6.“I felt it was my obligation to continue to push for that. And others felt it was their obligation as well,” Cipollone said.Asked whether it would have been possible for Trump to make some kind of public statement shortly after the insurrection started to call off the violence, Cipollone said yes, it would have been possible. Trump refused to do so for hours.Cheney noted that Cipollone’s testimony will feature prominently in the committee’s hearing next week, which is expected to focus on Trump’s actions and words as the insurrection unfolded.Liz Cheney, the Republican vice-chair of the January 6 committee, said that Donald Trump himself tried to contact one of the witnesses in the investigation.According to Cheney, the witness, who has not yet been publicly revealed as a participant in the committee’s investigation, declined the call.Instead, the witness informed their lawyer about Trump’s attempted call. The lawyer then informed the January 6 committee, who passed the information along to the justice department.“Let me say one more time: we will take any efforts to influence witness testimony very seriously,” Cheney said.Cheney warned at the last hearing that at least two witnesses had been contacted by Trump allies urging them to stay loyal to the former president in their testimony to the committee.Those efforts raise questions about potential witness tampering, which could open Trump and his allies up to criminal charges.Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesperson for the far-right extremist group Oath Keepers, said the Capitol insurrectionists had planned “an armed revolution” on January 6.He noted that the insurrectionists set up a gallows for Mike Pence, as the vice-president oversaw the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.“I mean, people died that day,” Van Tatenhove said. “This could have been the spark that started a new civil war, and no one would have won there.”Capitol insurrectionist Stephen Ayres said his life has changed significantly since January 6. He lost his job and had to sell his house, in addition to pleading guilty to a federal charge.“It changed my life — not for the good. Definitely not for the better,” Ayres said. Asked how he feels when he sees Donald Trump continuing to peddle lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 election, Ayres said, “It makes me mad because I was hanging on every word.”Stephen Ayres, who participated in the Capitol insurrection and has pleaded guilty to one federal charge of disorderly conduct inside a restricted building, said he closely followed Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election over social media.Liz Cheney, the Republican vice-chair of the January 6 committee, asked Ayres whether it would have made a difference to him if he knew that Trump had no evidence of widespread fraud in the election.“Oh, definitely,” Ayres said. “Who knows? I may not have come down here then.” Ayres said Trump had gotten “everybody riled up” by telling his supporters to come to Washington on January 6, as Congress certified Joe Biden’s victory in the election.“We basically just followed what he said,” Ayres said.Asked when he decided to leave the Capitol on January 6, Ayres said he departed after seeing Trump’s tweet asking his supporters to leave the building. “Basically, when President Trump put his tweet out, we literally left right after that come out,” Ayres said. He added that he might have left before then if Trump had sent his tweet earlier.Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesperson for the far-right extremist group Oath Keepers, said he decided to leave the organization after he heard members suggest that the Holocaust wasn’t real. (That is, of course, a baseless lie.)“I can tell you that they may not like to call themselves a militia, but they are. They’re a violent militia,” Van Tatenhove told the January 6 committee.The Oath Keepers were one of several violent militia groups that helped orchestrate the violence on January 6, alongside the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters.Brad Parscale, a former senior campaign adviser to Donald Trump, said he felt “guilty” about helping him win election in the days after the Capitol insurrection.Parscale described Trump as “a sitting president asking for civil war,” in reference to his efforts to disrupt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory.Responding to Parscale’s text message, fellow Trump adviser Katrina Pierson said, “You did what you felt right at the time and therefore it was right.”Parscale responded, “Yeah, but a woman is dead.” He later added, “If I was Trump and I knew my rhetoric killed someone.”Pierson replied, “It wasn’t the rhetoric.”“Katrina,” Parscale said. “Yes it was.”The committee identified 10 Republican House members who attended a White House meeting on December 21 to discuss options for overturning the results of the 2020 election.According to the committee, those members were:
      Brian Babin
      Andy Biggs
      Matt Gaetz
      Louie Gohmert
      Paul Gosar
      Andy Harris
      Jody Hice
      Jim Jordan
      Scott Perry
      Marjorie Taylor Greene (then a congresswoman-elect)
      In his closed-door testimony before the January 6 committee, Pat Cipollone, Donald Trump’s former White House counsel, applauded the actions of Vice-President Mike Pence on that violent day.Despite intense pressure from Trump and some of his allies, Pence refused to go along with the then-president’s plans to interfere with the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory.After the Capitol attack, Pence returned to the Senate chamber on January 6 to finish the certification process, clearing the way for Biden to take the oath of office.“I think the vice-president did the right thing. I think he did the courageous thing,” Cipollone told investigators on Friday.“I think he did a great service to this country. And I think I suggested to somebody that he should be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his actions.”Committee member Stephanie Murphy shared a draft tweet written by Donald Trump encouraging his supporters to march to the Capitol on January 6.“I will be making a Big Speech at 10AM on January 6th at the Ellipse (South of the White House),” the draft tweet says. “Please arrive early, massive crowds expected. March to the Capitol after. Stop the Steal!!”The draft tweet, obtained by the committee from the National Archives, was undated, but it was stamped with the words “president has seen”.”PRESIDENT HAS SEEN”@January6thCmte obtained drafted, unsent tweet. pic.twitter.com/yYg3sKFv96— CSPAN (@cspan) July 12, 2022
      Murphy said, “The evidence confirms that this was not a spontaneous call to action, but rather a deliberate strategy decided upon in advance by the president.”The committee also showed messages from some of the January 6 rally organizers indicating that they knew of the plans to march to the Capitol but kept them quiet.Rally organizer Kylie Kremer said in one message that Trump was just going to call for the march to the Capitol “unexpectedly”. The January 6 hearing resumed after a short break, and committee member Jamie Raskin shared additional information about collaboration between far-right extremist groups in the weeks leading up to the Capitol attack.Raskin displayed a Facebook post written by Oath Keepers leader Kelly Meggs on 19 December, the same day that Donald Trump sent a tweet encouraging his supporters to come to Washington on January 6 for a “wild” event.In the post, Meggs said he had organized an “alliance” between the Oath Keepers and two other far-right militia groups, the Three Percenters and the Proud Boys.“We have decided to work together and shut this shit down,” Meggs said in the post.Raskin said the committee had obtained phone records showing that Meggs spoke with Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio for several minutes later that afternoon.“The very next day, the Proud Boys got to work,” Raskin said. More

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      January 6 panel to examine Trump’s ties to extremist groups in latest hearing – live

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      The January 6 committee was originally expected to hold another hearing on Thursday detailing Donald Trump’s response to the insurrection as it unfolded.But a committee aide said yesterday that the panel would hold only one hearing this week, and members are instead expected to reconvene next week.The aide said the delay was meant to give committee members an opportunity to review “new and important information” that has been received “on a daily basis” as the hearings unfold.But the committee has not provided any further details about the next hearing, which could be the panel’s last hearing for the time being.Donald Trump’s former top strategist, Steve Bannon, suffered heavy setbacks in his contempt of Congress case on Monday after a federal judge dismissed his motion to delay his trial, scheduled for next week, and ruled he could not make two of his principal defences to a jury.The flurry of adverse rulings from District of Columbia district judge Carl Nichols – a Trump appointee – marked a significant knock back for Bannon, who was charged with criminal contempt after he ignored a subpoena last year from the House January 6 select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol by extremist Trump supporters in 2021.Nichols refused in federal court in Washington DC, to delay Bannon’s trial date set for next Monday, saying that he saw no reason to push back proceedings after he severely limited the defences that the former Trump aide’s lawyers could present to a jury.The defeats for Bannon stunned his lead lawyer, David Schoen, who asked, aghast: “What’s the point of going to trial if we don’t have any defences?”Read the Guardian’s full report:Bannon suffers setback as judge rejects delaying contempt of Congress trialRead moreToday’s January 6 hearing is expected to feature clips from the select committee’s interview last week with Pat Cipollone, who served as Donald Trump’s White House counsel.Cipollone met with investigators behind closed doors for more than eight hours on Friday, after he was subpoenaed by the committee last month.Jamie Raskin, who will co-lead today’s hearing with Stephanie Murphy, said Cipollone corroborated key elements of the testimony already heard by the committee. That includes the testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.“Cipollone has corroborated almost everything that we’ve learned from the prior hearings,” Raskin told NBC News today. “I certainly did not hear him contradict Cassidy Hutchinson. … He had the opportunity to say whatever he wanted to say, so I didn’t see any contradiction there.”Hutchinson’s explosive testimony at a committee hearing last month included detailed descriptions of Trump’s outrage on January 6 and in the weeks leading up to the Capitol attack, as he peddled lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 election.According to Hutchinson, Trump was informed that some of his supporters were carrying weapons on January 6 and still told them to march to the Capitol, as lawmakers met to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the election. Hutchinson said that Trump planned to go to the Capitol with his supporters and tried to grab for the steering wheel of his car when his team told him that he would instead return to the White House after his speech on January 6.Ex-White House aide delivers explosive public testimony to January 6 panelRead moreAn aide to the January 6 committee said the members would focus on a meeting held on 18 December 2020, with Donald Trump and members of his legal team, including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.At that point, there was a growing schism within Trump’s inner circle between those who believed it was time for the president to accept his electoral defeat and those who pushed even more radical actions such as seizing voting machines or appointing a special counsel to investigate the election.Hours after the meeting, Trump sent a tweet that Murphy perceived as a “siren call” to militia groups that 6 January 2021 would be the “last stand” in a sprawling effort to overturn the results of an election he lost.“Big protest in DC on January 6th,” Trump wrote in that December tweet. “Be there, will be wild!”The tweet was a “pivotal moment that spurred a change of events including a pre-planning by the Proud Boys”, the aide said.Capitol attack panel to examine role of far-right groups in January 6 violenceRead moreGreetings from Washington, live blog readers.The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol will hold its next public hearing this afternoon.The panel will examine Donald Trump’s links to far-right extremist groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, whose members participated in the January 6 insurrection.Committee members have said the hearing will particularly focus on Trump’s 19 December tweet urging his supporters to come to Washington for a “wild” event on 6 January, the day that Congress was scheduled to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.Committee member Stephanie Murphy, who will lead today’s hearing alongside Jamie Raskin, said Sunday that Trump’s tweet served as a “siren call” to far-right extremists.“People will hear the story of that tweet and then the explosive effects it had in Trump world and specifically among the domestic violence extremist groups, the most dangerous political extremists in the country at that point,” Raskin said on Sunday.The hearing will get under way at 1pm ET, so stay tuned.Here’s what else is happening today:
      The Senate judiciary committee is holding a hearing on the end of Roe. The lieutenant governor of Illinois, Juliana Stratton, will testify alongside four other witnesses.
      Biden is meeting with the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The two leaders will discuss “their visions for North America and their efforts to address global challenges such as food security, continued cooperation on migration, and joint development efforts”, per the White House.
      The White House will host the Congressional Picnic this afternoon. After the picnic, Biden will fly from Washington to Jerusalem.
      The blog will have more updates and analysis coming up. More

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      Democrats are certain to lose seats in the midterms. But how many – and why? | Musa al-Gharbi

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      Democrats are certain to lose seats in the midterms. But how many – and why?Musa al-GharbiThe outcome seems certain. How we get there is the question In the Abrahamic religions, there is a profound mystery in how to reconcile belief in free will with faith in divine providence. Similar mysteries lie at the heart of political science.For instance, over the past 45 years, every time there has been a change of party in the White House, the opposing party won the governorship of Virginia a year later.Over the past 45 years, the governorship of Virginia has moved countercyclically to the White House. pic.twitter.com/n5YMJCRzXE— Musa al-Gharbi (@Musa_alGharbi) July 11, 2022
      2021 was no exception. Democrat Joe Biden took the White House, Republican Glenn Youngkin became governor of Virginia. In media circles this outcome was widely described as a ‘shock.’ Given the electoral pattern over the past several decades, it shouldn’t have been.How Elise Stefanik rose from moderate Republican to Maga starRead moreThe outcome of that race was chalked up to debates over “critical race theory” in K-12 schools, among other things. While those narratives may not be wrong exactly, the historical pattern over nearly the last half-century suggests that even if these specific issues had not been salient, some other controversy would have risen to the fore, and the outcome for Democrats would have been roughly the same.Similar patterns hold at the national level. For instance, every time there is a change of party in the White House, the new incumbent party loses seats in the House of Representatives during the subsequent midterm elections. Here, we can go all the way back to the creation of the Democratic and Republican two-party system, and there are only two exceptions to the rule:From the foundation of the @TheDemocrats v. @GOP two-party rivalry, whenever there has been a change of party in the White House, the incumbent party virtually always loses seats in the House of Representatives during their inaugural midterms. pic.twitter.com/H8myMjWcDS— Musa al-Gharbi (@Musa_alGharbi) July 11, 2022
      Following the outbreak of the Great Depression, which FDR had been elected to fix, his party actually gained seats in the House and Senate. Likewise, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, with its unprecedented ‘rally around the flag’ effect in full bloom, George W Bush’s party gained seats in the House and held their ground in the Senate.In every other instance, the newly-elected party lost seats. It didn’t matter which party was in the White House. It didn’t matter if the economy was up or down or if there was war or peace. It didn’t matter if the president was popular or unpopular or what the big topics of contention were. All of that was immaterial to the basic outcome: the incumbent party experienced a net loss in the House regardless.The magnitude of those losses varied. At the low end, three seats changed hands. At the high end, 125.The pathways to those losses varied too: different demographics shifted in different cycles, apparently for different reasons. Different seats changed hands, driven by a wide range of factors. Yet, the net losses occurred like clockwork. The mean loss was 41 seats. The median loss was 26. The modal loss was between 10 and 20 seats.A majority in the House of Representatives requires 218 seats. Democrats currently have 220. Assuming all seats get filled by the end of this cycle, should Democrats lose more than 2 seats net in the upcoming elections, they will lose their majority in the House. Put another way, Democrats would have to outperform the Lincoln and Kennedy administrations in retaining their seats if they want to keep the chamber.It seems highly unlikely that they will be able to pull off such a feat. Joe Biden’s net favorability rating is lower than any president on record. Even most Democrats want Biden to retire when his term is over rather than seeking reelection. But it’s not just the president. In the generic ballot, the Democratic Party is also underwater. Democrats saw a slight boost after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, but the gains seem to have levelled off, and it’s unclear whether the small bump will sustain over the next four months. But even if it did, again, Democrats would still be net-negative going into the midterms.It is no wonder that both formal modeling and prediction markets put Republicans as the likely winners of the House by a ratio of nearly 9:1. The Senate is more of a toss-up. There’s a real chance for Democrats to hold that chamber, although it seems like that will be a steep climb too.If and when Democrats see significant losses in 2022, critics will certainly chalk them up to rising inflation, growing concerns about crime, Biden’s failure to pass most of his Build Back Better proposal, his lack of action on gun control or abortion, his reneging on campaign promises to broadly erase student loan debt, missteps related to Covid or foreign policy, his administration (and the Democrats more broadly) leaning too heavily into “identity politics”, a failure to appropriately leverage the January 6 committee findings against the Republicans, and more.While these narratives may not be exactly wrong, again, it is likely that the party would have seen losses even if Biden had passed Build Back Better, waived student debt, abstained from ‘woke’ identity politics, and so on. Something else would have worked against the party instead – including, perhaps, their own accomplishments.Although perceptions of being ineffective can lead to disillusionment, it can also be a liability if an administration is perceived as too effective. If a party rapidly passes a bunch of major legislation or otherwise implements dramatic changes, this often leads to even bigger blowback at the ballot box as Americans try to pump the brakes.There seems to be a sweet spot of tangible accomplishments that an administration can point to, promises fulfilled on issues that voters prioritize most – where the change is not perceived as too dramatic, or as too many changes happening too fast. Hitting that sweet spot while avoiding self-sabotage can help minimize losses. But it’s generally difficult to discern exactly where that sweet spot is. And again, even for administrations that really seem to get it right, they still see net losses in the House during their inaugural midterms, just smaller losses.As far as how the likely losses will come about in 2022:Independent and moderate voters aligned themselves with the Democrats to an unprecedented degree in 2020, playing a pivotal role in Biden’s victory. These voters have shifted dramatically towards Republicans since.Democrats have been seeing consistent attrition of non-white voters over the past decade. Polling and surveys suggest that these trends are likely to continue among Black, Hispanic and Asian voters.Democrats also saw significant declines in vote share among younger voters (18-29) in 2020 as compared to 2018. This alienation among young voters seems like it may persist or grow through the midterms as well – although recent supreme court rulings may blunt this a little.Democratic losses with working-class voters seem likely to continue apace.In the aftermath of the race, there will be all sorts of stories told about why these voters shifted to the right. Some of those stories may have a lot of truth to them. Many others will be nonsense. But even compelling narratives about the election should be taken with a grain of salt. Again, if these particular groups didn’t shift towards the GOP, other voters would likely have shifted instead. That is, even if they’d retained these voters, the outcome of the midterms may not have changed much.Losses are pretty much a guarantee for a party’s inaugural midterms. It doesn’t matter who is in charge or what they do, they will still lose seats in the House. How big the losses are, among whom, and why – which specific seats change hands, in which districts – these all remain to be determined by the specifics of the cycle. The broad outcome seems fixed, how we get there is not. In this, political science and theology seem to converge.
      Musa al-Gharbi is a Paul F Lazarsfeld fellow in sociology at Columbia University. His book We Have Never Been Woke: Social Justice Discourse, Inequality and the Rise of a New Elite is forthcoming with Princeton University Press. He is a Guardian US columnist
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      The Republican party is terrible.. So why may Democrats lose to them this year? | Robert Reicb

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      The Republican party is terrible. So why may Democrats lose to them this year?Robert ReichSome commentators think Democrats have moved too far to the left – too far from the so-called ‘center’. This is utter rubbish Much of today’s Republican party is treacherous and treasonous. So why are Democrats facing midterm elections that, according to most political observers, they’re likely to lose?Having been a loyal Democrat for some 70 years, including a stint as a cabinet secretary, it pains me to say this: the Democratic party has lost its way.Some commentators think Democrats have moved too far to the left – too far from the so-called “center.” This is utter rubbish. Where’s the center between democracy and authoritarianism, and why would Democrats want to be there?Others think Biden hasn’t been sufficiently angry or outraged. But what good would that do? After four years of Trump, why would anyone want more anger and outrage?It’s time for Democrats to fear their own voters | David SirotaRead moreThe real failure of the Democratic party is its loss of the American working class.As Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg concluded after the 2016 election: “Democrats don’t have a ‘white working-class’ problem. They have a ‘working-class problem’, which progressives have been reluctant to address honestly or boldly. The fact is that Democrats have lost support with all working-class voters across the electorate.”The working class used to be the bedrock of the Democratic party. What happened?During the first two years of the Clinton, Obama, and Biden administrations, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, they scored some important victories for working families: the Affordable Care Act, an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Family and Medical Leave Act, for example.But they also allowed the middle class to hollow out and the working class to sink.Clinton passed free trade agreements without providing millions of blue-collar workers who consequently lost their jobs a means of getting new ones that paid at least as well.His North American Free Trade Agreement and plan for China to join the World Trade Organization undermined the wages and economic security of manufacturing workers across America, hollowing out vast swaths of the Rust Belt.Clinton also deregulated Wall Street. This led to the financial crisis of 2008 – in which Obama bailed out the biggest banks and bankers but did nothing for homeowners, many of whom owed more on their homes than their homes were worth.Obama didn’t demand as a condition for the bailout that banks refrain from foreclosing on underwater homeowners. Nor did Obama demand an overhaul of the banking system. Instead, he allowed Wall Street to water down attempts at re-regulation.Both Clinton and Obama stood by as corporations hammered trade unions. They failed to reform labor laws to allow workers to form unions with a simple up-or-down majority vote, or even to impose meaningful penalties on companies that violated labor protections.Biden has supported labor law reform but hasn’t fought for it, leaving the Protecting the Right to Organize (Pro) Act to die inside his ill-fated Build Back Better Act.Clinton and Obama allowed antitrust enforcement to ossify, enabling large corporations to grow far larger and major industries to become more concentrated. Biden is trying to revive antitrust enforcement but hasn’t made it a centerpiece of his administration.Both Clinton and Obama depended on big money from corporations and the wealthy. Both turned their backs on campaign finance reform.Obama was the first presidential nominee since Richard Nixon to reject public financing in his primary and general election campaigns, and he never followed up on his re-election promise to pursue a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United vs FEC, the 2010 supreme court opinion opening the floodgates to big money in politics.Joe Biden has tried to regain the trust of the working class, but Democratic lawmakers (most obviously and conspicuously, Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema) have blocked measures that would have lowered the costs of childcare, eldercare, prescription drugs, healthcare, and education. They’ve blocked a higher minimum wage and paid family leave.Yet neither Manchin nor Sinema nor any other Democrat who has failed to support Biden’s agenda has suffered any consequences.Why hasn’t Biden done more to rally the working class and build a coalition to grab back power from the emerging oligarchy? Presumably for the same reasons Clinton and Obama didn’t: the Democratic party continues to prioritize the votes of “suburban swing voters” who supposedly determine electoral outcomes, and it still depends on money from big corporations and the wealthy.The most powerful force in American politics today is anti-establishment fury at a rigged system. There is no longer a left or right. There is no longer a moderate “center”. The real choice is either Republican authoritarian populism or Democratic progressive populism.Democrats cannot defeat authoritarian populism without an agenda of radical democratic reform – a pro-democracy, anti-establishment movement. Democrats must stand squarely on the side of working people against oligarchy. They must form a unified coalition of people of all races, genders, and classes to unrig the system.Trumpism is not the cause of our divided nation. It is the symptom of a rigged system that was already dividing us.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
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      Biden’s executive order on abortion is better than nothing. But not much better | Moira Donegan

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      Biden’s executive order on abortion is better than nothing. But not much betterMoira DoneganThe president boasted his administration would use ‘every tool available’ to secure abortion access. So why is his order so lacking? Probably the most enthusiastic assessment that an abortion rights advocate can make for President Biden’s executive order that aims to “protect access to reproductive health services” is that it’s better than nothing. That’s because the order, signed by Biden in a brief ceremony at the White House on Friday as vice-president Harris and secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra looked on, has been spoken of by the White House in only the vaguest terms. The order consists of a series of directives aimed at HHS and the justice department, but these directives are imprecisely worded. They create few obligations for these agencies; they appear designed not to ruffle any feathers. It’s unclear what, precisely, the order will mean for abortion access, and specifically what actions those agencies will now be required to take.Joe Biden signs executive order protecting access to abortionRead moreThe executive order calls for expanded access to abortion medication in states where abortion has not been outlawed; it doesn’t say whether this will include eliminating the current, medically unnecessary restrictions on the drugs or making them available over the counter, as abortion rights advocates have called for. It asks HHS to make “updates to current guidelines”, for emergency medical care, in an effort to reduce deaths in pregnant women whose doctors refuse to intervene in medical crises for fear of harming a fetus and incurring liability; it does not call for HHS to solidify these guidelines into a rule that would more forcefully protect women’s lives.It asks the Department of Justice to convene volunteer lawyers to represent people trying to get or provide legal abortions and gestures vaguely at providing women defense for things like crossing state lines or obtaining care in one state that is illegal in the one where they live. But it doesn’t say whether the administration will work to support the attorneys already doing this work, like those at the Texas-based Jane’s Due Process or the legal non-profit If/When/How, and it does not say how it will make sure that this supply of volunteer, pro bono legal assistance doesn’t dry up. The order talks about protecting privacy and combatting disinformation, but it makes no mention of crisis pregnancy centers, the fake clinics that deceive patients, disseminate false information about abortions, and suck up large amount of information about the women they lure through their doors. The order calls for HHS to expand access to contraception, but doesn’t say how.The short version seems to be, that the Biden administration will make no effort to reverse the sadistic and draconian attacks on women’s rights in red states. But it will make some kind of vague, still-undefined effort to stop them from spreading to blue ones.It’s not much of a payoff, considering the massive amount of pressure from abortion rights advocates that it took to elicit this response from the Biden administration. Despite having a six-week heads-up on the coming overturn of Roe after a draft of the majority opinion was leaked in early May, and in spite of having more than a year since the case, whose outcome was never in doubt, was granted cert by the US supreme court, the Biden administration seemed flat-footed and caught off guard by the end of national abortion rights.Reporting from CNN claims that the White House was unique among court watchers in being surprised when the Dobbs decision was released on 24 June. In a sign of how seriously the administration is taking women’s rights, an aide assigned to respond to the Dobbs decision was out getting coffee when she heard about the opinion’s release from a push notification on her phone. For his part, Biden himself is so enthusiastic about abortion rights that he was planning to nominate an anti-choice Republican judge to a lifetime appointment on a federal district court in Kentucky that very same day.Overall, the administration has seemed unwilling to move towards a more robust defense of women’s freedoms, and unwilling to treat the reversal of Roe as the disaster for equal rights and civil liberties that their base sees it as. They issue capacious statements – and, now, a capacious executive order – that are light on specifics, and tend to conspicuously avoid the word “abortion.” When Joe Biden began his signing ceremony for his executive order, he did not immediately turn to the reason why he was there – the rollback of a fundamental civil and human right for half of his constituents. Instead, he took a moment to boast about some promising jobs numbers. When the signing ceremony concluded, the first question the president took was from a male reporter, who asked about the assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe.Perhaps what’s most noticeable about Biden’s executive order is what it doesn’t say. It does not say that the administration will make federal lands in red states available for abortion services, as some legal experts have urged. It does not say that the DoJ will bring lawsuits against states that ban abortion medication, on the theory that such bans violate the FDA’s supremacy. It does not pledge a repeal of the Hyde amendment.The somewhat lukewarm reception of Biden’s EO from the reproductive rights community may have been tempered by reporting from Bloomberg on Friday that the administration had dismissed the idea of declaring a national health emergency in response to the supreme court ruling, a move that would have empowered the administration to respond proportionately to the massive and ongoing threat to women’s safety and liberty. According to Bloomberg, Biden and his advisers ditched the idea because they didn’t want to get sued over it. In his statements before signing the executive order, Biden said that his administration would “use every tool available” to secure abortion access. Well, apparently not every tool.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsRoe v WadeOpinionUS politicsAbortionJoe BidenDemocratscommentReuse this content More

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      ‘If I’d not got help, I’d probably be dead’: Jason Kander on PTSD, politics and advice from Obama

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      Interview‘If I’d not got help, I’d probably be dead’: Jason Kander on PTSD, politics and advice from ObamaDavid Smith, Washington bureau chief He was a rising star in the Democratic party and ‘sorta ran for president’ but, as he recounts in his new book, haunted by his experiences in AfghanistanAs luck had it, Jason Kander’s book tour in New York coincided with a family wedding. The star turn was his 95-year-old great-uncle, composer John Kander, who performed Married from Cabaret, the revered musical he wrote with lyricist Fred Ebb.“It was very cool,” smiles Kander, a day after breakfasting with his famous relative. “He’s still writing: he’s got a musical coming out next year. He is my life goal. People who meet him probably figure he’s in his late 70s. He always says if you just keep doing what you love, it will keep you young. There’s something to that.”Twenty years on from 9/11, is US democracy working?Read moreJason Kander is only 41 but already well into his third act. His new, unflinchingly honest memoir tracks his journey from soldiering in Afghanistan to politicking in his native Missouri, from sitting in the Oval Office with Barack Obama to being put on suicide watch in a windowless cell.Invisible Storm: A Soldier’s Memoir of Politics and PTSD tells how Kander endured post-traumatic stress disorder for 11 years – and kept it secret from everyone. The more his political star shone, the darker his hinterland became. He tried to outrun his demons by seeking elected office, including the presidency, until an epiphany led him to finally confront his mental illness.“I went to get help because, if I didn’t go get help, I was probably going to kill myself,” says Kander, wearing a grey “army” T-shirt and speaking via Zoom from a functional New York hotel room.“It’s not like, ‘Oh, man, if I’d hung around, maybe I’d be president!’ If I’d hung around and not got help, I’d probably be dead. Instead I’m really enjoying my life and I wasn’t before. It’s not to say I’ll never run. It’s just to say, I’m glad I didn’t then and, if I ever do choose to run, I’ll be doing it as a person who has dealt with their shit. And maybe we need more of that.”Kander trained as a lawyer but, after the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, felt the compulsion to serve and be tested like his grandfather and other relatives. To his surprise, he loved the military with its sense of order and mission.He spent four months in Afghanistan in 2006-07 and was not involved in firefights or direct combat (later a source of constant guilt that he somehow wasn’t worthy of PTSD). His work as an intelligence officer involved going with an interpreter to meetings in remote locations with people who might be “bad guys” linked to the Taliban, terrorism or corruption. The prospect of being kidnapped and killed was real.“I was 25 years old and it was an exhilarating experience and that’s why they don’t send 41-year-old fathers of two to war,” he reflects. “If I went into those meetings now, I’d be very aware of everything I had to lose but also probably very aware of how much danger I was in.”When he got home to Kansas City, Kander turned to politics in search of the same sense of purpose and belonging to something bigger than himself. Knocking on thousands of doors, he outworked and outcampaigned rivals to win election to the Missouri state house of representatives and, later, as secretary of state.In 2016 he ran for the US Senate against the Republican incumbent, Roy Blunt, and caught national attention with a campaign ad in which he assembled an AR-15 rifle while blindfolded and advocating for background checks on gun buyers. Kander still lost but by a much narrower margin than Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump in the same state.PTSD trailed him like a shadow, however.There was insomnia and night terrors: bad dreams in which he was back in Afghanistan with someone rushing into a room, taking him captive and lining him up for a beheading video on YouTube. Over time these evolved into fears about home invaders threatening his family.There were nights when Kander patrolled the house with a loaded gun. He had symptoms such as back pain, a twitch in his left eyelid and an aversion to sitting in restaurants with his back to the door. “It’s exhausting to be on alert all the time and then, when you combine that with about 10 years without a good night’s sleep, you just get worn out. When you get worn out enough and have all these other feelings of shame and guilt and then you’re having these symptoms, eventually you get depressed. When you’re depressed long enough, eventually you have suicidal thoughts.”His political career, he assesses now, was a quest for redemption. “I had this idea that I hadn’t done enough for my country, I was an irredeemable piece of shit personally and, while I was achieving all these things politically, people didn’t really know that I was completely undeserving of this praise or adulation.”The Hollywood version of redemption for Kander would have had him winning the presidency and casting PTSD aside on inauguration day. And for a while it seemed possible. When, in his final Oval Office interview, Obama was asked who gave him hope for the future of the country, Kander’s was the first name on his lips. The pair had a private meeting in which Obama gave “mentorship-type advice”.Kander was exalted as the Democrats’ new hope, a veteran from the heartland who could provide the antidote to forces that put Trump in the White House. He made frequent visits to early presidential nominating states; his Twitter bio says he “sorta ran for president”.But after a major speech in New Hampshire, things unravelled.“Like any other addict who is not dealing with their own trauma, their own underlying stuff, I was addicted to the adulation, to the crowds, to performing and to the adrenaline that came with it. The only time I felt truly present was when I was in front of a crowd or doing an interview that really mattered.“Those endorphin highs generally for a long time worked in the sense that they would hold me over until the next one. So when I had this moment that was the zenith of my career as a political performer and it lasted about 12 hours, I realised that was a real problem. This wasn’t working any more.”When someone suggested that he lower his sights and run for mayor of Kansas City instead, Kander grabbed the chance to ease the pressure. He was comfortably ahead in the polls and in fundraising when, on 1 October 2018, he walked into the Kansas City Veterans Affairs medical center and acknowledged suicidal thoughts going back 10 years.He was duly put in a windowless cell with pale-green walls and dressed in dark-green scrubs that were about five sizes too big. “So this was suicide watch,” he writes.Most of the staff instantly recognised him but a young resident psychiatrist did not. For half an hour, Kander bared his soul about the night terrors and his consuming fear of someone hurting himself and his family. Then the psychiatrist asked: “Do you have a particularly stressful job or something?”Kander said he was in politics and explained: “I almost ran for president, but then decided to run for mayor instead, and tomorrow I’m planning on calling that off.”Confused, the psychiatrist said: “You were going to run for president? Of what?”Kander told him: “Of the United States.”The psychiatrist asked: “Who told you that you could run for president?”Now irritated, Kander said: “I don’t know what to tell you, man. I mean, I spent an hour and a half talking it over one on one with Obama in his office, and he seemed to think it was a pretty good idea.”The psychiatrist sat back in his chair and remarked: “Barack Obama told you that you could run for president? So how often would you say you hear voices?”Kander can laugh about the exchange now and includes it in his book.The therapy has worked wonders – “It’s getting a master’s in yourself,” is how his great-uncle John described it – and allowed him to rediscover the joys of marriage (his Ukrainian-born wife, Diana, contributes moving passages in the book), fatherhood (their children are eight and one) and baseball (he coaches a little league team).“The difference is now I will frequently choose to sit facing the door but I can sit with my back to the door usually without fidgeting a great deal. I generally don’t get the twitch in my eye. I generally don’t have, most of the time, nightmares.“PTSD treatment is not about getting cured. It’s about getting to the point where the symptoms of PTSD don’t disrupt your life and that’s what I was able to achieve in therapy.”Kander is also better equipped to deal with difficult ruptures such as last year’s chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan. He admits: “At first it was quite triggering and then I got very involved in evacuating people I care about from the country. That experience was newly traumatic and I had to go back and see my therapist again but I’m glad I did. It’s not simple but now I have the tools to navigate that.”Kander is the president of national expansion at Veterans Community Project, a non-profit organisation to which he will donate all the book’s royalties, and host of Majority 54, a political podcast. Kander has little time for the perennial moderates v progressives narrative dividing the Democratic party. “Everybody is engaged in this debate about whether the party needs to go further to the left or stay closer to the middle and they’re all completely missing the point. That’s not what’s going on in the part of the country I live in. You don’t get points for being less liberal; you get points for caring about what people are going through.”Kander says he wrote Invisible Storm because it was the book he would have wanted to read 14 years ago. He hopes it will encourage people to confront their own problems and understand that recovery and post-PTSD growth are possible.But given the bottomless cynicism in politics today, there will doubtless be somebody somewhere who theorises that the book is a calculated move towards resurrecting Kander’s career, perhaps even his White House ambitions.He finds that idea absurd.“I wrote this book understanding that if I ever get the desire to run for president again, people are going to say we can’t have a president who could end up stalking the White House at night because he’s worried about intruders,” he says. “If I ever run, it will be on me to be like, ‘I don’t have to do that any more because I got therapy.’“Yeah, that’s probably not the ideal debate to have in a presidential campaign. But I made the decision that if this book turns out to be something that precludes me from ever being able to to run for president but, if it helps a lot of people and saves a lot of lives, that is absolutely a trade I’m willing to make.”TopicsBooksUS politicsDemocratsMental healthinterviewsReuse this content More

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      Biden in crisis mode as specter of one-term Carter haunts White House

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      Biden in crisis mode as specter of one-term Carter haunts White House President urged to act more forcefully to deal with rising inflation, gun violence and dire supreme court rulingsAt an Independence Day barbecue, crises cascading around him, Joe Biden declared that he had “never been more optimistic about America than I am today”.Of course there were challenges, grave ones, the US president told the military families assembled on the south lawn of the White House. And the nation had a troubling history of taking “giant steps forward” and then a “few steps backwards”, he acknowledged.But Biden gave a hopeful speech that reflected his often unshakable faith in the American experiment on the 246th anniversary of its founding.Yet many Americans, even his own supporters, no longer share the president’s confidence. To many observers Biden appears to be at a moment of profound crisis in his presidency: and one he is struggling to address. The specter of Jimmy Carter – a one-term Democrat whose failure to win the 1980 election ushered in the Ronald Reagan era – is starting to haunt the Biden White House.Joe Biden signs executive order protecting access to abortionRead moreWith decades-high inflation, near-weekly mass shootings, a drumbeat of alarming disclosures about Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn his election defeat, and successive supreme court rulings that shifted the country’s political landscape sharply rightward, Biden’s rosy speech-making struck even his fellow Democrats as ill-suited for what they view as a moment of existential peril for the country.A new Monmouth poll captured the depth of America’s pessimism: at present just 10% of Americans believe the country is on the right track, compared with 88% who say it is on the wrong track. Confidence in the country’s institutions fell to record lows this year, according to the latest Gallup survey. The presidency and the supreme court suffered the most precipitous declines, while Congress drew the lowest levels of confidence of any institution at just 7%.“If that sunny optimism were paired with actual steps to secure the future that the president claims to be excited about, it would ring less hollow,” said Tré Easton, a progressive Democratic strategist. “But right now it seems disconnected from the reality that many people, especially people who worked very hard to get President Biden and Vice-President [Kamala] Harris elected, are experiencing.”Last month, a conservative super-majority on the supreme court ended the constitutional right to abortion, paving the way for new restrictions and bans in Republican-controlled states across the country. Meanwhile, democracy experts are sounding the alarm as Republican candidates who embraced conspiracy theories about the 2020 election win primary elections for key positions of power.With control of Congress, governorships and statehouses at stake this November, many supporters and allies are pleading with Biden to lead with the urgency and force they believe this moment demands.Under mounting pressure from supporters and allies to deliver a more assertive response, Biden on Friday signed an executive order that the White House said would protect women seeking an abortion. In his most impassioned remarks to date, Biden said the supreme court’s decision was “an exercise in raw political power” and warned that Republicans would seek a national ban on abortion in they win control of Congress in November.Democrats broadly welcomed the order and the passion. Still others hoped it was just a “first step,” noting that the action did not include some of the more novel actions Democrats have called for, such as opening abortion clinics on federal lands in states where the procedure is banned or declaring a national emergency.Before the signing ceremony on Friday, Bloomberg reported that the White House considered declaring a national public health emergency as a number of Democratic lawmakers and activists have urged him to do, but ultimately decided against it.That caution, a hallmark of Biden’s decades-long political career, has frustrated many Democrats who fear democracy itself is under an assault.“Everything’s on the line right now. It’s truly existential,” Easton said. “It just doesn’t seem like he understands that.”New reports of a White House struggling to respond to mounting challenges have even fueled a discussion among Democrats over whether Biden should seek re-election in 2024.In recent weeks, speculation has mounted over potential alternatives. Among them are California governor, Gavin Newsom, has positioned himself as a pugnacious leader in the fight to protect abortion rights and Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, offered a guttural response to the Independence Day shooting in his state that drew contrast with Biden’s more restrained approach.“If you are angry today, I’m here to tell you to be angry,” Pritzker said. In a statement, Biden condemned the attack as yet another “senseless act of violence” and held a moment of silence for the victims at the White House.The White House has rejected that criticism, arguing that Biden has responded – quickly and forcefully – to the mounting crises facing the nation. Asked about Democrats’ criticism of Biden, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president has been quick to tackle the nation’s crises.“The president showed urgency. He showed fury. He showed frustration,” she said of Biden’s response to the recent mass shootings, and that his leadership paved the way for a bipartisan gun safety compromise, breaking decades of gridlock in Washington over how to address gun violence.Democrats fears’ come as the party faces a historically challenging electoral landscape, with prognosticators anticipating a Republican takeover of Congress in November.Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, the president and executive director of NextGen America, a youth-vote mobilization organization in the country, said the supreme court’s ruling on Roe clarified the stakes for many young people. But she said they’re looking for bold leadership in Washington.Democrats must put “everything on the table” to keep an “ultra-rightwing and extremist minority from overtaking every major institution in our country,” she said. “That’s what’s on the ballot in 2022.”Biden on Friday said his executive powers were limited and Democrats lacked the numbers in Congress to protect abortion rights at the nation level.“Vote, vote, vote vote,” he implored Americans angry over the ruling. “We need two additional pro-choice senators and a pro-choice House to codify Roe. Your vote can make that a reality.”For months, the White House has careened from crisis to crisis. Inflation, war in Europe, record gas prices, an irrepressible pandemic and a baby formula shortage have all contributed to the national malaise and Biden’s low approval rating.Sarah Longwell, a moderate Republican strategist who holds focus groups with suburban women, said voters constantly tell her that they wish they heard from Biden more.Facing a difficult political landscape, she said voters want to see that Biden is willing to take on the “most extreme elements of the Republican party”.“Even if he can’t do anything about it, the bully pulpit is a powerful thing,” she said adding: “People think this is madness. They want to be able to take their kids to a July Fourth parade and not worry about somebody getting shot. And they want their leader to reflect that back to them.”On Friday, Biden sought to do just that. He hammered Republicans for pursuing bans on abortion without exceptions for rape or incest and highlighted the case of a 10-year-old rape victim who was forced to travel out of state for an abortion.He previously endorsed an exception to the Senate filibuster rule in order to pass abortion protections, but he’s so far declined to embrace calls for court reform like term limits or court expansion. And in response to the extraordinary revelations about the 6 January attack on the Capitol, Biden has mostly declined to comment, deferring to the congressional committee investigating the attack and the justice department, which is weighing whether to prosecute Donald Trump for his role in the violent assault on American democracy.“In this hour, if you want to commit to democracy, the thing to do is to not laud the institutions that we have as they’re currently constituted, but to set to work on amending these institutions to meet present exigencies,” said William Howell, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and the author of Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy.He said Biden’s commitments to democratic norms and traditions are critical, particularly after the Trump years, but that should not impede him from addressing the “acute need for us to revisit our institutions”.‘The ante-status quo was dysfunctional – it was unacceptable in the face of the pressing challenges that our country faces,” he said. “While there’s a need for a reset, there is a greater need for leadership in terms of institutional reform.”TopicsJoe BidenJimmy CarterDemocratsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      US gunmakers summoned to Congress to justify soaring profits from gun violence – as it happened

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      Democrats in Congress are summoning the CEOs of firearm manufacturers to testify at a hearing later this month on gun violence.“I am deeply troubled that gun manufacturers continue to profit from the sale of weapons of war, including AR-15-style assault rifles that were used by a white supremacist to murder ten people in Buffalo, New York, and in the massacre of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas,” Carolyn Maloney, the Democratic chair of the House Oversight Committee, wrote in letters to the leaders of Daniel Defense, Smith & Wesson, and Ruger, which make AR-15 style rifles. “Products sold by your company have been used for decades to carry out homicides and even mass murders, yet your company has continued to market assault weapons to civilians.”Under her leadership, the committee began investigating gun manufacturers last May. The following month, it held a hearing featuring gut-wrenching testimony from survivors of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.The latest hearing is set for July 20.President Joe Biden honored notable Americans with the country’s highest civilian honor, while details emerged of the January 6 committee’s plans for its next – and potentially last – hearings.Here’s what else happened today:
      American women’s basketball star Brittney Griner pleaded guilty to drug charges in Russia, the latest development in a case that has captured the attention of the Biden administration.
      Another Democratic senator said she would support creating an exemption to the filibuster for abortion rights legislation. Meanwhile, lawmakers in South Carolina began debate on a bill to almost completely ban abortion.
      Details are trickling out about a new effort by Democrats to pass a big spending bill in what could be their final months controlling both houses of Congress.
      The CEOs of firearms manufacturers have been summoned by a congressional committee investigating the gun industry.
      Illinois police will investigate the father of the man who opened fire at an Independence Day parade on Monday for his involvement in his son’s purchase of a firearm.
      Sacha Baron Cohen, the comedian best known for portraying Borat, fended off a lawsuit from a former Republican Senate candidate in Alabama.
      California’s Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein has come out in support of creating an exception to the Senate’s filibuster rules in order to pass legislation protecting abortion rights nationwide.Let me be clear: If it comes down to protecting the filibuster or protecting a woman’s right to choose, there should be no question that I will vote to protect a woman’s right to choose. pic.twitter.com/rpHANTjyqn— Senator Dianne Feinstein (@SenFeinstein) July 7, 2022
      Reproductive rights activists are pressuring Democrats to pass a law protecting access to abortion nationwide after the supreme court last month overturned Roe v. Wade. But the filibuster, which allows the Republican minority to stop legislation in the Senate that does not win at least 10 of their party’s votes, has stood in the way of that, and until now, Feinstein hasn’t said if she would support modifying it to get an abortion law passed.Biden backs exception to Senate filibuster to protect abortion accessRead morePresident Joe Biden has handed out the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’s highest civilian honor, to 17 people, including Olympic gymnast Simone Biles.Here’s more from when Biles received the award:.@Simone_Biles receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom. pic.twitter.com/5MPnIzDWTW— CSPAN (@cspan) July 7, 2022
      Former congresswoman and gun control advocate Gabrielle Giffords was also honored:.@GabbyGiffords receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom. pic.twitter.com/vzE1IdrhdD— CSPAN (@cspan) July 7, 2022
      As was soccer star Megan Rapinoe:Megan Rapinoe (@mpinoe) receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom pic.twitter.com/GGc4JGwJxg— CSPAN (@cspan) July 7, 2022
      Three people were given the award posthumously: Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, president of the AFL-CIO trade union federation Richard Trumka and senator John McCain. His wife Cindy McCain accepted on his behalf:”John McCain was a giant among Americans from a family of patriots.” @cindymccain accepts the Presidetial Medal of Freedom on behalf of her late husband, Sen. John McCain. pic.twitter.com/7ejuKszzWe— CSPAN (@cspan) July 7, 2022
      Biden, a longtime Democratic senator, remarked on his relationship with McCain, a Republican.President Biden on John McCain: “I never stopped admiring John. I never said a negative thing about him in my life because I knew his honor, his courage and his commitment. That was John McCain.” pic.twitter.com/DSJD9scTAv— CSPAN (@cspan) July 7, 2022
      Actor Denzel Washington was also due to get the award, but could not attend the White House ceremony due to a positive Covid-19 test, according to a White House official:President Biden on Denzel Washington: “He’s couldn’t be with us here today. I’ll be giving him this award at a later date when he’s able to get here.” pic.twitter.com/N15bEG3gxv— CSPAN (@cspan) July 7, 2022
      South Carolina lawmakers have begun considering a bill to ban nearly all abortions in the state, Reuters reports.The proposal would “ban all abortions from conception, except to save the life of the mother, and would make performing an abortion a felony punishable by up to 25 years in prison,” according to the report. The measure would be more stringent than a law that a federal judge allowed to go into effect last month which outlaws the procedure after about six weeks of pregnancy. The court ruling followed the supreme court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade and allowing states to ban abortions.The January 6 committee has for the past month held carefully choreographed hearings that are meant to be attention-grabbing to a degree rarely seen in Congress, but a poll released today found they aren’t doing much to sway Americans’ beliefs about what happened that day.The survey from Monmouth University found only six percent of Americans say the hearings have changed their mind about January 6, in part due to the relatively few Republicans who are following the testimony. Only 10 percent of GOP supporters are turning in, versus 45 percent of Democrats and 16 percent of independents. For Republicans who did watch the hearings, only five percent said it changed their minds, with some telling Monmouth, “they learned about the pressure Trump was exerting or that election fraud claims were spurious.” The poll said that other respondents “claim they have ‘learned’ that ‘police officers were not killed in that protest,’ or that ‘the Democrats were highly involved as well as the F.B.I.’”The poll also documents a decline in Americans’ faith in their government. Only 36 percent of respondents told Monmouth that the American system of government is basically sound, a decline from February 2020, when it was 55 percent.In the words of Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} There’s more than just partisanship at work in declining faith in the institutional framework of American democracy. Yes, electoral outcomes play a role. Yes, the current economic crisis plays a role. But attacks on our fundamental democratic processes – and the lack of universal condemnation of those attacks by political leaders from both sides of the aisle – have taken a toll.The head of the IRS has asked for an investigation into a report that former FBI director James Comey and his deputy Andrew McCabe, both of whom clashed with ex-president Donald Trump, were subject to rare, intrusive audits, the Associated Press reports:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The IRS commissioner has asked the Treasury Department’s inspector general to immediately review the circumstances surrounding intensive tax audits that targeted ex-FBI Director James Comey and ex-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, both frequent targets of President Donald Trump’s anger.
      IRS spokesperson Jodie Reynolds said Thursday that IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig had personally reached out to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. Reynolds said the agency has officially referred the matter to the inspector general.
      But Reynolds insisted it is “ludicrous and untrue to suggest that senior IRS officials somehow targeted specific individuals for National Research Program audits.”Here’s the original New York Times article that led to the investigation.The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has more detail about what we can expect from next week’s two January 6 committee meetings – one of which will shine more light on what was happening inside the White House as the Capitol was being attacked:NEW: Jan. 6 committee members Jamie Raskin and Stephanie Murphy will lead Tuesday hearing on Trump sending extremist groups to DC and pinpointing the 6th, and Elaine Luria and Adam Kinzinger will lead expected Thursday primetime hearing on inside the WH during the Capitol attack.— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) July 7, 2022
      Tentative schedule is tentative, per sources familiar with the tentative schedule. But the Thursday prime time hearing is expected to be the final one held by the Jan. 6 committee — for now.— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) July 7, 2022
      President Joe Biden has weighed in on the resignation of British prime minister Boris Johnson, though the White House statement makes no mention of his name:JUST IN: @POTUS Biden statement on @BorisJohnson’s resignation: “the special relationship between our people remains strong and enduring. I look forward to continuing our close cooperation with the government of the United Kingdom, as well as our Allies and partners…” pic.twitter.com/sk4X6vWOxb— Ed O’Keefe (@edokeefe) July 7, 2022
      For the latest developments in the political upheaval across the pond, The Guardian is here for you:Boris Johnson resigns and says no new policies until next prime minister announced – liveRead morePresident Joe Biden will soon hold a ceremony at the White House to give the medal of freedom to a group of recipients, including some of the country’s best known politicians, actors and athletes.Perhaps the biggest names are two-time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington and Simone Biles, the most decorated American gymnast ever. Women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe will also be honored, as well as former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was badly injured during a mass shooting in 2010. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Republican senator John McCain will receive the award posthumously in the event vice-president Kamala Harris and her husband will also attend.The White House has a full rundown here. Simone Biles and nurse who received first Covid vaccine to get top US honorRead moreDeSantis appoints elections police chiefFlorida governor Ron DeSantis caused shock when he announced the creation of the Office of Election Crimes and Security in the state, to keep an eye on election fraud: a crime for which there is usually very little evidence that it exists.Now, a CBS station in Orlando reports, we know the identity of the man who will head up that unit: Pete Antonacci, a former prosecutor and onetime supervisor of elections.CBS reports: “Antonacci, 73, has a long history of being called upon by state leaders as a fix-it man of sorts. His career includes stints as executive director of the South Florida Water Management District, president of the state business-recruitment agency Enterprise Florida and state attorney in Palm Beach County.”But in a sign that may ease – a few – fears about voter suppression in the state, it seems some Democrats welcome the appointment.CBS added: “This elections police thing is terrible. However, Antonacci is a pretty no-nonsense administrator. Even us Dems praised his work in Broward. He is by far the best that could be hoped for. So much so I could see DeSantis growing to hate him if he doesn’t go on witch hunts,” Matt Isbell, a Tallahassee-based consultant for Democrats, tweeted Wednesday.”The January 6 committee will hold a hearing on Thursday of next week that will be broadcast at the prime-time TV hour, Punchbowl News reports.The Jan. 6 committee is scheduled to hold hearings Tuesday AND Thursday next week, sources tell me.— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) July 7, 2022
      Thursday night is slated to be another primetime hearing, sources tell me https://t.co/WWlpehZj9P— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) July 7, 2022
      The House committee investigating the insurrection had earlier this week announced it will hold its next hearing on Tuesday, 12 July, which is expected to focus on the links between Donald Trump and extremist groups.Trump’s possible ties to far-right militias examined by January 6 committeeRead moreCongress is on recess, but details are slowly emerging about Democrats’ plans for a spending bill to be revealed perhaps in the coming weeks, while the party has announced a hearing to take firearms manufacturers to task over gun violence.Here’s what has happened today:
      American women’s basketball star Brittney Griner pleaded guilty to drug charges in Russia, the latest development in a case that has captured the attention of the Biden administration.
      Illinois police will investigate the father of the man who opened fire at an Independence Day parade on Monday for his involvement in his son’s purchase of a firearm.
      Sacha Baron Cohen, the comedian best known for portraying Borat, fended off a lawsuit from a former Republican Senate candidate in Alabama.
      A winner has been declared in the showdown between comedian Sacha Baron Cohen and former judge and failed Senate candidate Roy Moore, at least for now.Reuters reports that Cohen, who is perhaps best known for portraying the Borat character, has fended off a defamation lawsuit by Moore over an interview broadcast on his show, “Who Is America?”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} In a 3-0 vote, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the interview was constitutionally protected speech, agreeing with a lower court judge that it was “clearly comedy and that no reasonable viewer would conclude otherwise.”
      The court also said Moore waived his right to pursue his $95 million lawsuit by signing a standard consent agreement before the interview, which he knew would be televised. It also dismissed related claims by Moore’s wife Kayla.
      Larry Klayman, the Moores’ lawyer, called the decision a “travesty,” saying the consent agreement was ambiguous because Judge Moore crossed out a provision waiving claims related to alleged sexually oriented behavior and questioning.
      “This should not have been taken away from the jury,” Klayman said in an interview. The Moores will ask the entire 2nd Circuit to review the case.Accusation of sexual misconduct swirled around Moore when he stood as a Republican to represent Alabama in the US Senate in 2017, a race he lost to Democrat Doug Jones despite the state being among the most conservative in the country.Alabama election: Democrats triumph over Roy Moore in major blow to TrumpRead more More