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      Biden ‘doing just fine’ after testing positive for Covid, White House says

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      Biden ‘doing just fine’ after testing positive for Covid, White House saysAshish Jha, coronavirus response coordinator, and physician Kevin O’Connor say president contracted BA.5 variant Joe Biden is “feeling well” and “doing just fine” after testing positive for Covid, the White House coronavirus response coordinator said.Joe Biden’s mild Covid symptoms are improving, doctor saysRead moreAppearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, Ashish Jha said: “So it is the BA.5 variant, which is about 80% of infections. But thank goodness, our vaccines and therapeutics work well against it, which is why I think the president’s doing well.“I checked in with his team late last night. He was feeling well. He had a good day yesterday. He’s got a viral syndrome, an upper respiratory infection … and he’s doing just fine.”The White House later released a letter in which Biden’s physician, Kevin O’Connor, said the president’s “predominant symptom now is a sore throat”.O’Connor also said Biden had completed a third full day of treatment with Paxlovid, which would continue and was “experiencing no shortness of breath at all”.Biden’s positive test was announced on Thursday. At 79, the president is the oldest ever inaugurated. He is also, as he said, double-vaccinated and double-boosted and has access to the best possible care.On Sunday the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, told CNN’s State of the Union he knew Biden was still working “because on Thursday I got a call from the White House about something on transportation that he had asked me to follow up on”.Buttigieg also wished Biden “a speedy path back to 100%”.Jha was asked if the White House “will continue to make disclosures if [Biden] has long-term symptoms from this infection”.“Absolutely,” he said. “You know, we think it’s really important for the American people to know how well the president’s doing, which is why we have been so transparent, giving updates several times a day, having people hear from me directly, hear directly from his physician.“And obviously if he has persistent symptoms, if any of them interfere with his ability to carry out his duties, we will disclose that early and often.“But I suspect this is going to be a course of Covid that we’ve seen in many Americans who have been fully vaccinated, double-boosted, getting treated with those tools in hand. You know, the president has been doing well, and we’re gonna expect that he’s going to continue to do so.”Jha also suggested cities seeing high case rates, including New York, Phoenix and Miami, might consider re-instituting indoor mask mandates.“Masks work, right? They clearly slow down transmission. So in areas of high transmission, I think it’s very prudent for people to be wearing masks indoors, especially if they’re in crowded, poorly ventilated spaces. That’s what the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] recommends. And I think that’s a very important and effective way of reducing transmission, protecting yourself as well.“You know, in terms of mandates, that’s something that we’ve always felt strongly should be done by local officials, mayors, governors, local health officials, and we’re seeing different officials take different tactics. And I think that’s actually appropriate given that we have a very diverse country with different transmission patterns and and willingness to kind of engage in-in wearing masks.”Jha was also asked about monkeypox, which on Saturday the World Health Organization declared a “public health emergency of international concern”. Would the Biden administration declare a pandemic?“Pandemics are declared by the World Health Organization,” Jha said, “and I actually applaud the World Health Organization for declaring that public health emergency of international concern. We are seeing outbreaks that are out of control in many, many parts of the world. It’s very important that we get our arms around this thing.“In the US right now, we’re looking at public health emergency as something that [the health department] might … invoke but it really depends on what does that allow us to do. Right now we have over 2,000 cases, but we have ramped up vaccinations, ramped up treatments, ramped up testing, and we’re going to continue to look at all sort of policy options. Right now, we think we can get our arms around this thing but obviously if we need further tools we will invoke them as we need them.”Jha said he thought monkeypox could be contained.Monkeypox declared global health emergency by WHO as cases surgeRead more“The way we contain monkeypox is we have a very simple, straightforward strategy on this, which is: make testing widely available. We have done that. And now testing is far more frequent and common.Answering the charge that the US was caught flat-footed by monkeypox, Jha said: “What I would acknowledge is that when we started two months ago, we had a limited supply of vaccines. We have obtained more than any other country, probably more than every other country combined. We have acted swiftly.”Asked if people should be concerned about another infectious disease, polio, which has been detected in New York, Jha said: “There is a lot of surveillance that we do for polio, there’s wastewater surveillance that goes on, we are not seeing outbreaks of polio elsewhere.“This one case has heightened everybody’s surveillance. But … CDC and the Department of Health of New York are doing an investigation to try to understand more, but I do not expect polio to become more widespread in the country, again, because so many Americans are vaccinated against this.”TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsOmicron variantCoronavirusBiden administrationDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘US democracy will not survive for long’: how January 6 hearings plot a roadmap to autocracy

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      ‘US democracy will not survive for long’: how January 6 hearings plot a roadmap to autocracyTrump’s efforts to subvert the elections laid bare the system’s weaknesses, exposing it to greater exploitation They promised the January 6 hearings would “blow the roof off the house”, presenting America with the truth about Donald Trump’s attack on democracy culminating in the US Capitol insurrection. In the end, the roof of the House, where the summer season of hearings reached their finale on Thursday night, remained intact, though mightily shaken.January 6 panel: shining a light on American democracy’s nose diveRead moreIt will take time for historians to assess whether the eight public sessions were comparable to the 1973 Watergate hearings, as Jamie Raskin, a Democratic member of the January 6 committee, predicted. Yet it’s already clear that after 19 hours and 11 minutes of testimony, filmed depositions, documentary evidence and raw footage of the Capitol attack the hearings have generated a mountain of words and images that will linger long in the collective memory.We know now that on the day that the United States suffered the worst assault on the Capitol since the British ravaged it in 1814, Trump tried to grab the steering wheel from a secret service agent to turn his presidential SUV in the direction of the violent mob so he could join them. We know that when he exhorted his followers to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell” he was aware that many of them were armed with guns and wearing body armor.We know from Thursday night that when his close aides pleaded with him to call off the attack, he refused, spending 187 minutes watching events unfold on TV in the White House dining room while swatting away increasingly desperate pleas for him to act until it was clear that his hopes of violently overthrowing the election had faded.To those who track anti-democratic movements there is a chilling familiarity to this rich evocation of a president descending into an abyss of fantasy, fury and possible illegality. “The picture that the hearings depict is of a coup leader,” said the Harvard political scientist Steven Levitsky. “This is a guy who was unwilling to accept defeat and was prepared to use virtually any means to try to stay illegally in power.”Levitsky is co-author of the influential book How Democracies Die which traces the collapse of once-proud democratic nations – in some cases through wrenching upheavals, but more often in modern times through a tip-toeing into authoritarianism. Levitsky is also an authority on Latin America, a region from which he draws a compelling parallel.Levitsky told the Guardian that the Trump who emerges from the hearings was a coup leader, “but not a very sophisticated one. Not a very experienced one. A petty autocrat. A type of leader more familiar to someone like me, a student of Latin American politics.”If Trump’s Latin American-style authoritarianism rang out from the hearings for scholars like Levitsky, a more vexed question is whether it similarly pierced the consciences of the wider American people. It is in their hands that the fate of the January 6 committee’s prime objective now rests: ensuring that a head-on assault on US democracy never happens again.The committee, led by its Democratic chair Bennie Thompson and rebel Republican vice-chair Liz Cheney, went to great lengths to make the hearings as digestible as possible for the TV, streaming and social media era. They employed the British journalist and former president of ABC News, James Goldston, to produce the events as tightly as a Netflix cliffhanger, which seems broadly, like a success.The opening primetime hearing on 9 June attracted at least 20m viewers, equivalent to the TV audience for a large sporting event. The following daytime sessions dipped to around 10m people, though ratings shot back up to almost 14m on 28 June when the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson gave explosive testimony.It is one thing to preach to the millions of Americans who are already horrified by Trump’s efforts to subvert democracy, but what about those who went along with it and internalized his lies about the stolen election?Here the evidence is less comforting. When you enter the right-wing media bubble, the vision of a South American coup leader suddenly vanishes.Over on Fox News, the opening hearing was passed over in favor of the channel’s controversial star Tucker Carlson who used his show to ridicule the proceedings as “deranged propaganda” and to shrink the insurrection into “a forgettably minor outbreak”. On Thursday night, Carlson again supplanted live coverage of the closing hearing, going on a rant instead about Biden and Covid.The further into the right-wing media jungle you venture, the more the narrative becomes distorted. NewsGuard, a non-partisan firm that monitors misinformation, reviewed output during the period of the hearings from Newsmax, the hard-right TV channel that is still carried by most major cable and satellite providers.The monitors found Newsmax aired at least 40 false and misleading claims about the 2020 election and 6 January. Several of the falsehoods were pumped out even as the live hearings were proceeding.“If you were watching only Newsmax to get information about the January 6 hearings, you would likely be living in an entirely alternate universe,” said Jack Brewster, NewsGuard’s senior analyst.The media bubble is not the only barrier standing between the January 6 committee and a major repair of the country’s damaged democratic infrastructure. While the hearings focused heavily on the figure of Trump, Levitsky argues that an arguably even greater threat is now posed by the Republican party which enabled him.“In a two-party system, if one political party is not committed to democratic rules of the game, democracy is not likely to survive for very long,” Levitsky said. “The party has revealed itself, from top to bottom, to be a majority anti-democratic party.”Levitsky cites an analysis by the Republican Accountability Project, a group of anti-Trump conservatives, of the public statements made by all 261 Republicans in the US House and Senate in the wake of the 2020 election. It found that 224 of them – a staggering 86% of all Republicans in Congress – cast doubt on the legitimacy of Biden’s win in what amounted to a mass “attack on a cornerstone of our democracy”.Levitsky warns that the hearings have illuminated two great dangers for America, both relating to Republicans. The first is that the party’s strategists have acquired through Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, a roadmap to the vulnerabilities of the electoral system.“They discovered that there is a plethora of opportunities for subverting an election, from blocking certification to sending alternate slates of electors to Congress. Armed with that knowledge, they may well do it much better next time.”The second lesson for Levitsky relates to accountability, or the lack of it. The Republicans who played with fire, openly backing the anti-democratic movement, found that they were largely immune to the consequences.“They learned that if you try to overturn the election you will not be punished by Republican voters, activists or donors. For the most part, you’ll be rewarded for it. And to me, that is terrifying.”Even now, at national level, the Republican leadership continues to stoke the flames. The minority leader of the House, Kevin McCarthy, and his top team have relentlessly striven to hinder and belittle the January 6 committee.But it is at state and local levels that the rot is most advanced. The watchdog States United Democracy Center calculates that at least 33 states are considering 229 bills that would give state legislatures the power to politicize, criminalize or otherwise tamper with elections. The group also notes that disciples of Trump’s stolen election lie are bidding for secretary of state positions in November in 17 states, which would give them, were they to win, control over election administration in a large swathe of the country.Several have already prevailed in Republican primaries, putting them one step away from being able to wreak havoc over the machinery of democracy. They include Jim Marchant in Nevada and Mark Finchem in Arizona, while in Pennsylvania a Stop the Steal peddler, Doug Mastriano, is vying to become governor which would similarly put him in the electoral driving seat.Then there is Kristina Karamo from the battleground state of Michigan who won the Republican nomination for secretary of state in April. Karamo has flirted with the baseless conspiracy theory QAnon and has accused singers Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish of putting children “under a satanic delusion”. She continues to be a fervent critic of Biden as an illegitimate president.Michigan’s current Democratic secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, who nursed the state through the traumatic contested count in 2020, is up for re-election and will go head-to-head with Karamo in the mid-terms. Benson told the Guardian that she sees the race as a test of the future for America, “between those who want to protect and defend democracy and those openly willing to deny it”.Benson’s plea is all the more urgent given signs that the willingness to embrace violence displayed on January 6 is also worming its way into the political fabric. A mega poll from UC Davis this week found that one in five adults in the US – which extrapolates to about 50 million people – believe that it can be justified to achieve your political aims through violence.Extremist groups have also stepped up their activities since the insurrection. Last month, the national chairman of the far-right Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, and several other top leaders were charged with seditious conspiracy. Yet the indictments do not appear to have discouraged the group from audaciously moving to infiltrate the Republicans – more than 10 current or former Proud Boys, for instance, now sit on the Republican party’s executive committee in Miami-Dade, Florida.So what does accountability look like in the wake of the hearings? How do you shore up democracy when even prosecutions appear to wield little power of persuasion?There was a lot of talk about accountability on Thursday night at the final hearing of this summer season. In his opening remarks Bennie Thompson, speaking by video link from Covid quarantine, said there had to be “stiff consequences for those responsible”.It required scant translation to see that as a direct invitation to Merrick Garland, the country’s top law enforcement official, to prosecute Trump. To pile pressure on the Department of Justice, Thompson announced that the committee was still receiving new intelligence and that there will be further public hearings in September.“There’s no doubt that the justice department has followed the hearings really closely,” said Daniel Zelenko, a partner at Crowell & Moring and a former federal prosecutor. “There’s going to be a lot of scrutiny and debate about a prosecution. But if you were ever going to indict a former president, it’s hard to imagine a more compelling fact pattern.”There is also the accountability of the ballot box. Cheney picked up that theme.“Donald Trump made a purposeful choice to violate his oath of office,” she said in her closing remarks on Thursday. “Every American must consider this: can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDemocratsRepublicansDonald TrumpUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More

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      Any Given Tuesday: Lis Smith on Cuomo, Spitzer and a political life

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      Any Given Tuesday: Lis Smith on Cuomo, Spitzer and a political life The Democratic operative delivers a memoir and coming-of-age tale that lands punches – and sometimes pulls themWith Any Given Tuesday, Lis Smith delivers 300 pages of smack, snark and vulnerability. A veteran Democratic campaign hand, she shares up-close takes of those who appear in the news and dishes autobiographical vignettes. The book, her first, is a political memoir and coming-of-age tale. It is breezy and informative.Thank You For Your Servitude review – disappointing tale of Trump’s townRead moreFor two decades, Smith worked in the trenches. She witnessed plenty and bears the resulting scars. Most recently, she was a senior media adviser to Pete Buttigieg, now transportation secretary in the Biden administration, and counseled Andrew Cuomo, now a disgraced ex-governor of New York.According to Smith, Buttigieg made politics ennobling and fun. More important, he offered a road to redemption.“He saw me for who I actually was and, for the first time in my adult life, I did too,” Smith writes. According to exit polls in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Buttigieg brought meaning to middle-aged white college graduates. These days, he is seen by Democrats as a possible alternative to Joe Biden in 2024.Smith dated Eliot Spitzer, another governor of New York who fell from grace.“We were like a lit match and dynamite,” she writes. Smith also gushes about Spitzer’s “deep set, cerulean blue eyes”, the “most gorgeous” such pair she had ever seen. A 24-year age gap provided additional fuel but Spitzer, once known as the Sheriff of Wall Street, spent less than 15 months in office. His administration ended abruptly in 2009, over his trysts with prostitutes.Smith can be blunt and brutal. She savages Cuomo and flattens Bill de Blasio, the former mayor of New York City, like a pancake.Smith recounts in detail Cuomo’s mishandling of Covid, the allegations of sexual harassment and his obfuscation. He “died as he lived”, she writes, damningly, “with zero regard for the people around him and the impact his actions would have on them”.As for De Blasio: “This guy can’t handle a 9/11.” He also came up short, we are told, in the personal hygiene department: a “gross unshowered guy”. De Blasio retracted an employment offer to Smith, after her relationship with Spitzer became tabloid fodder. He also coveted an endorsement from Spitzer that never materialized.“Both of us had tried to get in bed with Eliot but only one of us had been successful,” Smith brags.On Tuesday, De Blasio dropped out of a congressional primary after gaining a bare 3% support in a recent poll.Smith is very much a New Yorker. She grew up in a leafy Westchester suburb, north of the city. Her parents were loving and politically conscious. Her father led a major white-shoe law firm. He introduced his daughter to football and the star-crossed New York Jets.Smith went to Dartmouth. Not surprisingly, her politics are establishment liberal. She worked on campaigns for Jon Corzine, for New Jersey governor; Terry McAuliffe, for governor of Virginia; and Claire McCaskill, for senator in Missouri. In 2012 she earned a credit from Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.Smith has kind words for McAuliffe and McCaskill but portrays Corzine, a former Goldman Sachs chief executive, as aloof, never warming to the reality that elections are about retail politics and people. Despite this, Smith omits mention of the markets-moving failure of MF Global, a Corzine-run commodities brokerage that left a wake of ruin.“I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date,” Corzine testified before a congressional committee. “I do not know which accounts are unreconciled or whether the unreconciled accounts were or were not subject to the segregation rules.”Corzine holds an MBA from the University of Chicago.Smith is candid about the corrosive effects of the Democrats’ lurch left.“If someone doesn’t support every policy on their progressive wish list … they’re branded an enemy or a Republican in disguise. If these ideological purists think a West Virginia Democrat is bad, wait till they get a load of the Republican alternative.”But Smith also falls victim to ideological myopia. Discussing the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 and its considerable political consequences, she appears to solely blame the Ferguson police for the death of the African American teen, who she says was “shot to death in broad daylight”. Like Hillary Clinton, Smith neglects to mention that police fired after Brown lunged for an officer’s gun. She also does not mention that Brown tussled with a convenience store owner before his confrontation with the law.Inadvertently, Smith highlights the volatility of the Democrats’ multicultural, upstairs-downstairs coalition. Worship at the twin altars of identity politics and political correctness exacts a steep price in votes and can negatively impact human life. See New York City’s current crime wave for proof.Newt and the Never Trumpers: Gingrich, Tim Miller and the fate of the Republican partyRead moreSmith reserves some of her sharpest digs for Roger Stone, convicted and then-pardoned confidante of Donald Trump, pen-pal of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. She calls him a “stone-cold sociopath”. But she skates over animus that existed between Stone and Spitzer, her ex. In 2007, Stone allegedly left a threatening telephone message for Spitzer’s father, a real estate magnate. Months later, Stone told the FBI Spitzer “used the service of high-priced call girls” while staying in Florida.In the end, Smith is an idealist.“I believe in the power of politics to improve people’s lives,” she writes. “I still believe there is hope for the future.”
      Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story is published in the US by Harper
      TopicsBooksPolitics booksDemocratsUS politicsAndrew CuomoEliot SpitzerPete ButtigiegreviewsReuse this content More

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      January 6 panel says Bannon conviction is a ‘victory for the rule of law’ – live

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      A Washington jury has found Steve Bannon guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress after the former adviser to Donald Trump refused to cooperate with a subpoena from the January 6 committee.BREAKING: Steve Bannon GUILTY on both counts. https://t.co/apLhOX2dia— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) July 22, 2022
      In its latest attempt to stop gun violence, California’s Democratic leadership has taken inspiration from anti-abortion legislation first crafted in conservative Texas, the Associated Press reports:California punched back Friday against two recent landmark US supreme court decisions as the state’s governor signed a controversial, first-in-the-nation gun control law patterned after a Texas anti-abortion law.The action by Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, comes one month after conservative justices overturned women’s constitutional right to abortions and undermined gun control laws in states including California.Newsom stitched the two hot-button topics together in approving a law allowing people to sue anyone who distributes illegal assault weapons, parts that can be used to build weapons, guns without serial numbers, or .50 caliber rifles. They would be awarded at least $10,000 in civil damages for each weapon, plus attorneys fees.California signs gun control law modeled after Texas anti-abortion measureRead moreExpect to hear more from Steven Bannon about his contempt of Congress conviction, including in an interview with conservative Fox News host Tucker Carlson this evening, The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports: Hearing that Steve Bannon will return to hosting War Room podcast tonight at 5p ET and then appear on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News at 8p ET to discuss his conviction for contempt of Congress.— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) July 22, 2022
      Speaking to reporters after his conviction, Steve Bannon declared, “We may have lost a battle today, but we’re not going to lose this war.” He added, “I stand with Trump, and the constitution.”He also attacked the House panel investigating the January 6 attack as “gutless members of that show-trial committee” who “didn’t have the guts to testify in open court”.You can watch video of his remarks below:Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, was convicted on Friday of contempt charges for defying a congressional subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. https://t.co/ehJpCqr64t pic.twitter.com/W1L4uFcu3r— The Associated Press (@AP) July 22, 2022
      Bennie Thomspon, the Democratic chair of the January 6 committee, and Liz Cheney, the Republican vice chair, have released a statement applauding the conviction this afternoon of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon for defying the committee’s subpoenas.“The conviction of Steve Bannon is a victory for the rule of law and an important affirmation of the Select Committee’s work,” Thompson and Cheney said.“As the prosecutor stated, Steve Bannon ‘chose allegiance to Donald Trump over compliance with the law’. Just as there must be accountability for all those responsible for the events of January 6th, anyone who obstructs our investigation into these matters should face consequences. No one is above the law.”Steve Bannon convicted of contempt of Congress for defying Capitol attack subpoenaRead moreThe Secret Service has just put out a statement reaffirming its willingness to cooperate with the January 6 committee, amid an ongoing investigation over its deletion of text messages from around the time of the insurrection.“As an American and director of this incredible agency, I found the events at the Capitol on January 6th to be abhorrent. What happened on that day in January 2021 is anathema to democracy and the processes our constitution guarantees,” Secret Service director James Murray said. “Since day one, I have directed our personnel to cooperate fully and completely with the committee and we are currently finalizing dates and times for our personnel to make themselves available to the committee for follow up inquiries.”Separately, CNN reports that Adam Kinzinger, a Republican lawmaker serving on the committee, said that Donald Trump’s former deputy chief of staff and the former head of his Secret Service detail have stopped cooperating with the inquiry.I asked @RepKinzinger if he believes Trump’s fmr Dep Chief of Staff Tony Ornato and fmr Secret Service lead agent Robert Engel are still cooperating with the Jan 6 Cmte. His answer was a hard “No.”— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) July 22, 2022
      Secret Service told to begin an inquiry into erased January 6 text messagesRead moreJean-Pierre didn’t have much to say about Steve Bannon’s conviction earlier this afternoon on contempt of Congress charges for defying subpoenas from the January 6 committee.“I’m not going to comment specifically on that case, but obviously, everyone should cooperate with the January 6 committee,” she told reporters.The White House has identified 17 close contacts of President Joe Biden, who tested positive for Covid-19 yesterday.Speaking at a briefing to reporters, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the group members have all been informed, but none has tested positive.“The White House medical unit has identified and informed 17 people determined to be close contacts of the president, including members of his senior staff. None of the staff members have tested positive to date, and all of them are wearing masks around other people,” Jean-Pierre said.President Joe Biden has appeared at a White House event – virtually, due to his Covid-19 infection.“I feel much better than I sound,” he said, flashing a thumbs-up and smiling on-screen.He didn’t have much more to say about that, but the event is focusing on gas prices, which are declining nationally from their record high levels hit last month, according to GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan:37 days in a row: #gasprices keep falling, the national average ⬇️ 2.2c to $4.419/gal. We’re likely to fall to $4.399/gal by late today. 8 states under $4: TX, SC, GA, MS, LA, AL, TN, & AR. 35k stations More

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      January 6 hearings: Trump ‘chose not to act’ during Capitol attack, Kinzinger says – live

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      Today, the Republican party remains by and large the domain of Donald Trump. He still leads in polls of potential candidates in the next election, and House Republican leadership routinely criticizes the January 6 committee.Last night’s hearing was however full of reminders that top Republicans appeared ready to break with Trump during and immediately after the insurrection – or at least were terrified by it. Case in point: the much-mocked video footage of rightwing senator Josh Hawley fleeing through the halls of the Capitol as the protesters he greeted as he walked in overwhelmed police.Then there was Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the party in the House of Representatives who could be the chamber’s next speaker, should Republicans gain seats in November’s midterms. The committee last night showed that he pleaded with Trump as the insurrection was ongoing to call off the mob – which the president refused to do. Viewers also saw a repeat of his floor speech seven days after the attack, where he pinned the blame squarely on Trump.Days later, McCarthy went to Florida, where he met with the former president and appeared in a picture beside him that is now seen as having been key to reviving Trump’s standing among the party.“The mob was accomplishing president Trump’s purpose. So of course he didn’t intervene.”That was how Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the January 6 committee, summed up what the panel uncovered last night. His statement near the start of the hearing was followed by testimony from two former White House officials present in the room and video clips from the lawmakers’ interviews with former White House officials, including attorney Pat Cipollone.“What explains President Trump’s behavior. Why did he not take immediate action in a time of crisis?” Kinzinger asked. “Because president Trump’s plan for January 6 was to halt or delay Congress’s official proceeding to count the votes. The mob… attacking the Capitol quickly caused the evacuation of both the House and the Senate. The count ground to an absolute halt and was ultimately delayed for hours.”The committee won’t host another hearing until sometime in September, and plans to use the coming weeks to continue their investigation. As the committee vice-chair Liz Cheney put it last night: “Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued and the dam has begun to break.”As the January 6 committee was airing evidence, Andrew Lawrence entered an alternate universe, just by watching Fox News:On Thursday night as the Congressional hearings into the January 6 Capitol riot drew to a close, Tucker Carlson directed his outrage at a president he felt had lied and was not being held accountable for falsehoods that shook popular faith in the American democratic system. But he wasn’t talking about Donald Trump inciting rioters to storm the Capitol. He was talking about Joe Biden getting Covid.Whilemillions of people last night tuned into America’s other TV news channels and heard testimony about what Trump did, or rather did not do, during the hours when the rioters stormed the Capitol, Fox News viewers saw the network’s primetime stars Carlson and Sean Hannity chide the “twice jabbed, double-boosted” president for contracting the virus they say he alleged couldn’t be caught with a vaccine.As the US watched the January 6 hearing, Fox News showed outrage – at Biden getting CovidRead moreSteve Bannon is one of the many Trump associates whose comments were shown by the January 6 committee last night, but he may be the only one currently embroiled in active criminal trial.In fact, the charges he’s facing center around his defiance of a subpoena from the committee, and both sides are today expected to finish making their cases before a jury. Politico reports that Bannon’s legal team wants to question the jury about whether they watched last night’s hearing.HAPPENING SOON: Bannon returns to court just hours after the Jan. 6 select committee featured him prominently at the close of their hearing. The case is expected to go to the jury today but I’m anticipating some discussion about whether jurors may have watched.— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) July 22, 2022
      As expected, BANNON team raises his mention in last night’s hearing as a potential problem for the jury. Here’s a filing that just arrived: pic.twitter.com/5WdvxXPzM1— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) July 22, 2022
      BANNON wants judge to question jury:”The Defendant respectfully requests…that there should be some inquiry, while assuring the jurors of the importance of candor and that they will not suffer negative consequences if they acknowledge exposure to the broadcast or its subject.”— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) July 22, 2022
      Closing arguments in the case are now underway:UPDATE: Closing arguments are now underway. Judge Nichols has already instructed the jurors, so they’ll begin deliberating as soon as this is over. Expect they’ll be deliberating by 11-11:30 a.m.— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) July 22, 2022
      Steve Bannon appears in court as contempt-of-Congress trial beginsRead moreThe Guardian’s David Smith was in the room last night as the January 6 committee conducted what some are calling its “season finale”:They did it. They pulled it off. Anyone who feared that the January 6 committee’s season finale would turn into an anti-climax – more Game of Thrones than M*A*S*H – need not have worried. There were shocks, horrors and even laughs.The eight “episodes” have exceeded all expectations with their crisp narrative and sharp editing, a far cry from the usual dry proceedings on Capitol Hill. Each has recapped what came before, teased what is to come and compellingly joined the dots against Donald Trump.Much of the credit must go to James Goldston, the former president of ABC News, who was brought in to help produce the hearings like a true crime series. Give that man an Emmy (if only to infuriate Trump, a TV obsessive).Hearing delivers gripping ‘finale’ full of damning details about TrumpRead moreToday, the Republican party remains by and large the domain of Donald Trump. He still leads in polls of potential candidates in the next election, and House Republican leadership routinely criticizes the January 6 committee.Last night’s hearing was however full of reminders that top Republicans appeared ready to break with Trump during and immediately after the insurrection – or at least were terrified by it. Case in point: the much-mocked video footage of rightwing senator Josh Hawley fleeing through the halls of the Capitol as the protesters he greeted as he walked in overwhelmed police.Then there was Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the party in the House of Representatives who could be the chamber’s next speaker, should Republicans gain seats in November’s midterms. The committee last night showed that he pleaded with Trump as the insurrection was ongoing to call off the mob – which the president refused to do. Viewers also saw a repeat of his floor speech seven days after the attack, where he pinned the blame squarely on Trump.Days later, McCarthy went to Florida, where he met with the former president and appeared in a picture beside him that is now seen as having been key to reviving Trump’s standing among the party.Good morning, US politics blog readers. Last night, the January 6 committee wrapped up its first weeks of hearings by airing evidence that showed Donald Trump resisted efforts to forcefully condemn the rioters who broke into the Capitol that day, despite the pleas of top White House officials and his own family members to do so. As Congressman Adam Kinzinger put it: “President Trump did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home. He chose not to act.” Expect the aftershocks from those revelations to wash through Washington today.Here’s what else is happening today:
      Trump speaks at an Arizona rally for candidates in the state he has endorsed, which kicks off at 4 pm eastern time.
      The trial of Steve Bannon, a former top advisor to Trump who featured in last night’s hearing, continues over contempt of Congress charges.
      Congress is still negotiating over a bunch of legislation, including measures to boost American competitiveness, codify same-sex marriage rights and lower prescription drug and health care costs. More

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      Trump, modern Nero, watched the Capitol sacked from a White House dining room | Lloyd Green

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      Trump, modern Nero, watched the Capitol sacked from a White House dining roomLloyd GreenTrump never reached out to the FBI or the national guard to protect Congress. He rebuffed entreaties from his aides – including his own daughter – to end the crisis. That’s because he liked what he saw Thursday night’s congressional hearing on the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol lived up to its billing as a season finale. A modern-day Nero, Trump watched reports of the invasion of the Capitol on Fox News from the comfort of his private White House dining room. The commander-in-chief ignored repeated calls to end the mayhem.“The mob was his people.” Trump never reached out to the military, the FBI, the defense department or the national guard to intervene. He rebuffed entreaties from Ivanka Trump, Mark Meadows and Pat Cipollone to end the downwardly spiraling situation.Trump never walked to the press briefing room to say “enough”. He liked what he saw. His minions had taken matters into their own hands and brought Congress to a halt.Trump struggled to record a message to disperse to his fans. He “loved” them; they were “special.” We heard this before. There were “good people on both sides” in Charlottesville.Chillingly, the security detail assigned to the vice-president began to say “good-bye” to their families. If Mike Pence came to hang from makeshift gallows that was his problem. Trump thought he deserved it. Pence was his vice-president, he believed – with loyalty to him, not the US constitution. He was expendable.The vice-president “folded,” he “screwed us,” according to the rioters. Trump’s tweet at 2.24pm blamed no one but his hapless running mate.Sarah Matthews, Trump’s deputy press secretary, testified that her boss had given the rioters a “green light”. He “poured gasoline on a fire,” to use her words. “Rioters heard the president’s message”, to quote Rep Adam Kinzinger. In turn, they acted accordingly.Senator Josh Hawley fled the Senate that day after earlier riling up the crowd with his outstretched arm and clenched fist. Cosplay can be dangerous to your health. Hawley reportedly harbors ambition for 2024.The tumult of 6 January was not spontaneous. Trump knew that that the crowd was armed, but sought to accompany them to the Capitol. He wanted to obstruct the certification of the election with a phalanx behind him.Carnage and destruction were OK. The ends justified all means.Here, past was prelude. In 2016, Trump signaled that he might not accept the election’s results if they did not meet his expectations. As Covid descended in the spring of 2020, he began to refer to November’s upcoming ballot as rigged, months before a single vote had been cast. The events of 6 January horrify and shock, but they cannot be characterized as a surprise.A recording of Steve Bannon evidenced that Trump’s reaction was premeditated. The prosecution has rested in his criminal case; he will not be taking the stand.Trump’s standing slowly erodes, even as Trumpism retains its firm grip on Republicans. Hours before the committee’s eighth public hearing, Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Texas Republican, announced that it would “suck” to nominate a presidential candidate who labored under criminal indictment. A poll of Michigan Republicans released earlier this week places Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, in a foot-race with the 45th president.Still, the Republicans are no longer the party of Abraham Lincoln. On Tuesday, Maryland Republicans selected a novitiate of QAnon to be their gubernatorial candidate and a neo-confederate secessionist as their pick for state attorney general. Even as Trump loses altitude, the “Big Lie” – the false claim that he actually won the last presidential election – retains its vitality.Also on Tuesday, Arizona Republicans censured Rusty Bowers, a Republican and leader in the state’s legislature, after he had testified last month before the committee and denied that Trump won Arizona. Fealty to “Dear Leader” remains a tribal litmus test.Trump’s dream remains alive. That nightmare is now woven into America’s political tapestry. Our “very stable genius” continues to demand that state legislators undo the results of 2020 – as if they possess that power. This month, Robin Vos, speaker of Wisconsin’s state assembly, told of Trump recently asking him to do just that.Beyond boosting DeSantis’s ambitions, the latest hearing won’t do anything to improve Republican chances of retaking the Senate. Despite inflation, rising crime and Joe Biden’s record-shattering unpopularity, Democrats are mild favorites to retain the upper chamber.Trump’s antics exact a price. This was not the committee’s final hearing. After Labor Day, broadcasts will resume. The midterms will be less than two months away. By then, the justice department will likely be immersed in weighing whether to prosecute Donald J Trump.
      Lloyd Green is a regular contributor and served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionJanuary 6 hearingsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackRepublicansDemocratscommentReuse this content More

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      Trump as tyrant and Cheney’s cliffhangers: key moments from the January 6 hearings

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      Trump as tyrant and Cheney’s cliffhangers: key moments from the January 6 hearingsFrom Trump’s lack of concern about armed rioters to possible witness tampering, the revelations have been startling The hearings of the House January 6 committee have presented some extraordinary testimony about Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election and his supporters’ deadly assault on the US Capitol. Ahead of the primetime TV hearing on Thursday night, here are some of those pivotal moments so far.Hutchinson’s bombshellsSome said that in Cassidy Hutchinson the committee had found its John Dean, the White House counsel who turned on Richard Nixon during Watergate.01:42Hutchinson, a former aide to Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s chief of staff, delivered her dramatic testimony with notable calm. She made headlines by describing how Trump struggled physically with a Secret Service agent who would not let him march to the Capitol himself, and how the president, furious, hurled his dinner at the White House wall.More importantly, Hutchinson described how Trump knew some in the crowd who heard him speak on January 6 were armed – and told them to march on the Capitol anyway. Many observers said such testimony could be crucial to establishing criminal intent, and therefore central to any criminal charges against Trump.Van Tatenhove’s warningJason van Tatenhove, a former spokesperson for the far-right group the Oath Keepers, testified about links between Trump and the far right. Van Tatenhove said the president attempted to mount “armed revolution”. He also said the Oath Keepers leader once asked him to create a deck of cards showing key targets, among them Hillary Clinton.01:10“People died [on 6 January 2021],” Van Tatenhove said. “Law enforcement officers died, there was a gallows set up in front of the Capitol.“This could have been the spark that started a new civil war, and no one would have won there. That would have been good for no one.”Cheney’s cliffhangersLiz Cheney has been the star of the hearings. A hardline Wyoming Republican nonetheless at odds with her party, she has offered successive cliffhangers, each setting up the next session. One was about Trump advisers and allies in Congress seeking pardons. But what she said about possible witness tampering made, perhaps, the biggest impact. In the Hutchinson hearing, Cheney revealed that Trump associates had contacted a witness to say the former president would be watching the hearings and reading transcripts. The witness turned out to be Hutchinson. After the hearing on far-right links to Trump, Cheney said Trump himself had attempted to call another witness, not yet seen.Trump’s enablersThe committee’s reconstruction of an 18 December 2020 meeting at the White House between Trump’s official and unofficial advisers was for the ages. Witnesses including Trump’s White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, described shouts and threats from members of so-called “Team Crazy”, which included Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn.Giuliani remembered calling the White House advisers “pussies”. Powell said it was the official aides who were crazy, for not backing a scheme to seize voting machines. She also drank a lot of Dr Pepper.Eric Herschmann, a former Trump Organization lawyer who testified by video in front of a baseball bat with “justice” written on it, said Flynn, a retired general, “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 fucking ass back down.’” More

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      Meet the key players who have defined the January 6 hearings

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      Meet the key players who have defined the January 6 hearingsAs the eighth public hearing begins, know the people who helped understand Trump’s efforts to overturn the election The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol has introduced Americans to a cast of characters critical to understanding then president Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn a free and fair democratic election. Arizona Republican censured by party over testimony on resisting TrumpRead moreThe committee interviewed hundreds of witnesses during its yearlong investigation into the 2021 insurrection and the events that led to it. Some appeared in person, others taped depositions that were played during the hearings. Some pled the fifth or refused to cooperate.Here are the major players who have defined the January 6 hearings.Bennie ThompsonMississippi Democratic congressman Bennie Thompson, 74, was chosen by House speaker Nancy Pelosi to lead the panel, the capstone of a career devoted to protecting voting rights. He grew up in the racially-segregated south, an experience he has cited as a reminder that antidemocratic forces are as old as the nation itself.With his solemn, reverent tone, the chairman has essentially acted as narrator of the story of a democracy in peril. Thompson will chair Thursday’s hearing remotely due to a Covid-19 diagnosis. Liz CheneyWyoming Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney has led the charge against erstwhile colleague Donald Trump, acting as the panel’s top prosecutor. Unsparring and matter-of-fact, the committee vice-chair has provided some of the hearing’s most shocking revelations, among them that Trump appeared to endorse his supporters’ chants to “hang Mike Pence” for the then vice-president’s refusal to try to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory, and that the former president had sought to contact a committee witness.Cheney, the 55-year-old daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney, is one of the few in her party willing to criticize the former president, though her dogged efforts to hold Trump accountable for the insurrection could cost her a seat in Congress as she faces a Trump-backed primary challenge. Cassidy HutchinsonA former aide to Trump’s last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, Cassidy Hutchinson provided the committee – and the country – with damning testimony.Hutchinson described a president spiraling out of control as he clung to power. She recalled Meadows, who refused to cooperate with the committee, warning that “things might get real bad” on 6 January.Hutchinson described violent outbursts by Trump and testified under oath that he knew some of his supporters were armed when he directed them to march to the Capitol.Hutchinson has been likened to John Dean, a key witness in the Watergate hearings. But her turn from junior White House staffer to star witness has drawn harsh scrutiny from those she once worked alongside, including Trump. She has stood by her testimony.Pat CipollonePat Cipollone, Trump’s second and final White House counsel recently appeared before the January 6 committee, after it subpoenaed him following Hutchinson’s testimony. Cipollone resisted Trump’s schemes to reverse the election and believed he should concede.Cipollone attended meetings at which Trump’s efforts to subvert the election were discussed, including a December 2020 confrontation just before Trump sent a tweet the committee described as a “call to arms” to extremist supporters. Cipollone said he asked informal advisors pushing wild claims of voter fraud: “where is the evidence?” They never provided it.Rudy Giuliani and Sidney PowellRudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, and Sidney Powell, a lawyer for Trump’s 2020 campaign, led the unsuccessful legal campaign to overturn the 2020 election based on spurious claims of voter fraud. Called “Team crazy” by White House officials, Giuliani, Powell and a group of others promoted outlandish conspiracy theories and tactics, including citing far-fetched plots involving hacked thermostats, a deceased former leader of Venezuela and a push to seize voting machines.As a result of their efforts to subvert the election, Giuliani had his law license in New York suspended and is ensnared in a Georgia investigation. Powell is facing disbarment in Texas. John EastmanJohn Eastman was a conservative law professor in California before he became a key figure in Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Eastman devised a brazen plan that vice-president Mike Pence could unilaterally block or delay Congress’ certification of the electoral college results, which finalized Biden’s victory.In a legal memo, Eastman mapped out the actions Pence could take to thwart Congress from counting the electoral votes, an unprecedented deviation from the vice-president’s ceremonial role in the process. A June hearing revealed that Eastman warned Trump that the plan was illegal.A federal judge determined that he and Trump “more likely than not” attempted to illegally obstruct Congress.Jeff ClarkA former mid-level justice department official, Jeff Clark worked closely with Trump to undo the 2020 election. He proposed sending a letter to Georgia and other closely-contested states that falsely claimed the justice department had “identified significant concerns” with the results.In a June hearing, his superiors at the department testified that any assertion the department had substantiated claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election were brazenly false. Clark sought, ultimately unsuccessfully, to persuade Trump to install him as the acting attorney general. Last month, Clark said federal agents searched his home as part of the separate Department of Justice investigation into the 6 January 2021 attack and election subversion efforts.Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss and Ruby FreemanShaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, poll workers in Fulton county, Georgia, had their lives upended when Giuliani placed them at the center of an election-rigging conspiracy. Though the claims were baseless, the women’s testimony described in wrenching detail the very real consequences of Trump’s lie that he had won the 2020 election.Freeman, known as Lady Ruby, told the committee she had lost her sense of security. Her daughter, who testified publicly, said she received a torrent of racist and “hateful” messages on social media. Election-result deniers even showed up at her grandmother’s house claiming they could make a “citizen’s arrest” of the poll workers.Moss was awarded the John F Kennedy profile in courage award for her “hard and unseen work to run our democracy”.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansDonald TrumpRudy GiulianifeaturesReuse this content More