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      US House members ask for more security amid fears they're targets

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      Pervasive fear among some members of Congress that they will be the targets of further politically motivated violence following the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol has led more than 30 of them write a letter to House leaders.The group sent the letter to the House of Representatives speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Republican minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, asking for more support over security concerns.As the less senior politicians do not have personal protection services provided by the government around the clock, they are asking if they may use their personal allowances for additional security costs in their home districts, such as for hiring local law enforcement or other security personnel.The letter, first obtained by CBS News, reveals an enduring anxiety and sense of unease among lawmakers. It was sent by the Democratic representatives Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Dean Phillips of Minnesota.And it was signed by 29 other Democrats who represent states all across the country, including Texas, Rhode Island, Washington, Georgia, Illinois, Alabama and Kansas, and one Republican, the Michigan representative Fred Upton.“Today, with the expansion of the web and social media sites, so much information about members is accessible in the public sphere, making them easier targets, including home addresses, photos, personal details about members’ families, and real-time information on member attendance at events,” they wrote.Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterFears are heightened in the wake of the Capitol riot on 6 January by supporters of the then president, Donald Trump, after he exhorted them at a rally near the White House beforehand to march on Congress and overturn his election defeat.White supremacists, rightwing extremists and conspiracy theory followers were among the mob of several thousand that broke into the halls of Congress while the House and Senate were meeting officially to certify Joe Biden’s presidential victory.The representatives, who spend most of their time in their home districts, wrote that the attack “reminds us of the grim reality that Members of Congress are high-profile public officials, and therefore, face ongoing security threats from the same domestic terror groups that attacked the Capitol”.The signatories pointed to a “surge of threats and attacks” on members of Congress, including the 2017 shooting that severely wounded the Republican whip, Steve Scalise, at a baseball game practice.The letter called current rules governing how their personal allowances can be spent as “constrictive and anachronistic” and have not kept up with current threat levels.The letter was sent as the homeland security department issued a bulletin on Wednesday that the domestic extremists behind the Capitol attack “could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence”.“We’re all totally freaked out about this,” one House member told the online outlet Politico.While lawmakers are afforded Capitol police protection while in Washington DC, they do not have the kind of permanent security details that party leadership is assigned.“Protecting members in their district is much harder because local law enforcement agencies are stretched and limited, and often don’t have sufficient staffing or money to provide regular protection to members,” the letter said.They added that “current legal statutes make it extremely difficult to prosecute most threats” made against them.Under current House rules, lawmakers are permitted to use their $1.4m office allowances, known as MRAs, to reimburse themselves for security equipment such as bulletproof vests, as well as funds for security at local public events.But given raised political tensions, they requested that their allowances should also cover security upgrades at their district offices, local law enforcement or other security personnel, and other security measures to protect them in their homes.According to the letter, there has been a nearly fivefold increase in threats against members in recent years.In 2016, there were 902 investigated threats against members; by 2018, the Capitol police chief, Steven Sund, had testified that there were 4,894 threats against members, a number that was on track to rise the following year.Soon after the riot this month, police officers based at the Capitol briefed lawmakers about plots by armed militias against Democratic party members.“The idea that everyone is untouchable? No, we’re all touchable now. If there’s a nuclear bomb, we accept we’re probably the first to go. But we never though that a mob would be able to get into the Capitol,” a House staff member told CBS.Later on Thursday, Pelosi said lawmakers would probably need more funding for security as “the enemy is within”.Asked what she meant when referring to the “enemy within”, Pelosi said: “It means we have members of Congress who want to bring guns on the floor and who have threatened violence against other members of Congress.” More

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      Republicans will try to create an 'ethics' trap for Democrats. Don't fall for it | David Litt

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      A press secretary who tells the truth. An independent justice department that respects the rule of law. A president who doesn’t tweet conspiracy theories in the wee hours of the morning. After four dispiriting years and one near-death experience for American democracy, it would be comforting to conclude that nature is healing. Our political guardrails held. The Trump Era was nothing more than a temporary blip.But such complacency would be a terrible mistake. What we’re seeing at the dawn of the Biden presidency is not the reestablishment of norms, but the establishment of double standards.Yes, it’s commendable that the incoming Democratic administration pledges to behave responsibly, but it’s far from guaranteed that future Republican administrations will do the same. In fact, as things currently stand, it’s practically guaranteed that they won’t.Just look at a brief history of the White House ethics pledge. In 2000, when George W Bush took office, Republicans went all in on “The K Street Project,” formally integrating lobbyists into conservative policymaking and vice versa. Industries who donated to Republican candidates and hired Republican staff were given access to party leaders. Those that did not were not.The Bush Administration’s pay-to-play approach to government – and the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal which ensued – eroded public trust in government. In response, President Obama put in place the strictest ethics pledge in history. He banned lobbyists from serving in his administration, banned members of his administration from becoming lobbyists, and generally tried to block the revolving door between public service and influence peddling.This was clearly the right thing to do. Yet President Obama rarely got credit for doing the right thing. Instead, the pledge’s ambition was soon taken for granted by the Washington press corps, while its imperfections – the waivers granted to lobbyists deemed too essential to exclude from the administration – became news. Donald Trump was able to run for office on a promise to drain the swamp. After winning, he watered down the requirements he inherited. On his final day in office, he shredded his own ethics pledge, freeing former members of the Trump administration to lobby however and whomever they pleased.In between, President Trump – who served half as long as President Obama – hired more than four times as many lobbyists to serve in his administration. Yet Trump’s low standards didn’t remain newsworthy. Like Obama’s high standards, they were soon taken for granted by the press.Now the tables have turned once again. The Biden Administration has unveiled the strictest ethics pledge in history, building on President Obama’s lobbying bans by covering not just registered lobbying but also the so-called “shadow lobbying” that long served as an ethics loophole. It’s another big step forward. But it’s also a reminder that Democrats and Republicans are on two entirely different trajectories. If past is prologue, Biden will face more criticism if he fails to perfectly implement his high standards than Trump faced for having practically no standards at all. And rather than feel any political or moral obligation to follow Biden’s example, the next Republican administration will pick up right where the last president of their party left off.In other words, Democrats and Republicans are playing by different set of rules. And not just when it comes to ethics pledges and lobbying bans. We now know that many of the principles we once imagined were pillars of our democratic society – a respect for truth; a belief in the importance of a free press; the rejection of nepotism; a commitment to honor the results of elections not just in victory but in defeat – are propped up almost entirely by the good faith of politicians. And as we learned over the last four years, in American politics, bad faith is hardly in short supply.That’s why it’s not enough to usher in an administration that models good behavior. We must ensure that we create high standards that apply to everyone.That starts with changing political incentives that currently punish leaders who try to act responsibly and reward those who don’t. Some members of the press will surely be tempted to return to their own version of normalcy – one where Obama’s tan suit is a scandal, Joe Biden’s Peloton is a political liability, and it’s generally assumed that Republicans will behave like arsonists while Democrats behave like adults. Yes, the press should hold the Biden Administration accountable. But it would do the American public a disservice to pretend the last four years didn’t happen, or to take it for granted that most Republican politicians will behave like arsonists and most Democratic politicians will try to behave like adults.Nor is it just the press – and other, similarly nonpartisan institutions – who should do more to prevent the emergence of double standards. Democrats currently control both houses of Congress. They should use that control to codify norms into laws. In past Congresses, for example, Senator Elizabeth Warren has put forward a bill that contains and expands on the provisions in the Obama and Biden ethics pledges. Similar bills could make it harder to oppose the certification of a fair and free election, use the justice department as a political weapon, or rely on corrupt dark money to finance campaigns. Most important, legislation can accomplish what relying on politicians’ good faith cannot – constraining the behavior not only of Democrats, but of Republicans as well.If we don’t take this opportunity to restore the norms that allow our political system to function, we may not get another chance. Perhaps the Republican Party, emboldened by Trumpism and empowered by gerrymandering and voter suppression, will develop a more strategic and successful model of authoritarianism. Or perhaps a new generation of Democrats, convinced that our institutions won’t act to protect their own bedrock principles, will decide that abandoning those principles is the only way to ensure Trumpism doesn’t reemerge.If such a race to the bottom comes to define American politics, the entire country will lose. But that’s ultimately why the beginning of the Biden Era is a moment of a relief. We haven’t turned the page on an awful chapter of American history. But finally, together, we can. For the first time in four years, America’s most powerful institutions are run almost entirely by people who care about our democracy and want to see it survive. They must make the most of this moment, not just to clear the low bar set by the previous administration, but to raise the bar for future ones before it’s too late. More

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      Schumer promises quick but fair trial as Trump impeachment heads to Senate

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      Ex-president forms legal team before February hearingsBiden focuses on nominations and legislative prioritiesTrump plots revenge on Republicans who betrayed himThe single article of impeachment against Donald Trump will on Monday evening be delivered to the Senate, where Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer is promising a quick but fair trial. Related: Trump’s second impeachment trial: the key players Continue reading… More

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      Biden wants unity and democracy. But in the US these have always been in conflict | David Runciman

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      The three words that stood out in Joe Biden’s powerful inaugural address, if only for the number of times he used them, were “democracy”, “unity” and “truth”. But it was democracy that took centre stage. “This is democracy’s day,” he said, in his first statement after taking the oath of office. “The will of the people has been heard … Democracy has prevailed.”Is this apparent vindication of democracy enough for unity and truth to prevail as well? The founding fathers of the American republic, whose history and institutions Biden also repeatedly invoked, might have been surprised to hear him run the three together. They believed they were founding a state that was designed to keep democracy at arm’s length. James Madison, one of the authors of The Federalist Papers and a future president, stated that the American constitution he helped to write would mean “the total exclusion of the people, in their collective capacity, from any share [in the government]”.The founders were as keen on unity and truth as Biden. But they thought too much democracy would put them at risk. They viewed the voting public as notoriously fractious and prone to believe all sorts of nonsense. The point of establishing a republic rather than a democracy was to ensure there were safeguards against populism in all its forms.Biden clearly meant something different by democracy than the people gone wild. He was invoking a different, and much later tradition, that sees democracy as defined by the peaceful transfer of power. In academic circles this is sometimes called the minimalist theory of democracy. It says that it is sufficient for democracy if incumbents, who control the armed forces, hand over that control to the people who defeat them at the ballot box. The guns change hands when the voters change sides.The trouble with this view is that it is so minimal, unity and truth are optional extras. There are many places around the world where democracy has failed even this test and defeated incumbents have refused to leave, leading to dictatorship or civil war. But when the test is passed it leaves unresolved most of the questions about how to do politics better.Coming just two weeks after an attempt to storm the Capitol and prevent the certification of the election result, Biden’s inauguration took place in the shadow of the most serious threat to this minimal definition of democracy in recent American history. The country had come dangerously close to failing the test. What Biden could also have said, but didn’t, was that the founders were in part to blame.The anger of Trump’s supporters was stoked by the institutions designed to keep the people away from the most important decisions. In strict majoritarian terms Biden won the election comfortably, by a national margin of more than 7 million votes. But the electoral college made it seem much closer, and allowed the defeated president to look for a few thousand votes here or there that might have made the difference. Millions of voters are much harder to conjure out of thin air.Trump’s resistance to democratic realities also rested its hopes on the other institutions of the republic that were meant to keep the people out. He believed that the supreme court, with three of his appointees on it, should save him. He looked to the Senate, which gives a disproportionate influence to sparsely populated rural states, to have his back. The fact that these hopes were misplaced – and the Senate may yet convict him in an impeachment trial – doesn’t mean that democracy was vindicated. The institutions that quelled popular resistance to the election result were the same ones that inflamed it.This suggests it is not enough for Biden to fall back on the long history of American democracy in making his case for what should come next. The peaceful transfer of power obscures the ways in which American democracy is at odds with the institutions that achieved it.There is a choice to be made here. Democracy could be enhanced – and institutions such as the electoral college and the Senate reformed to reflect current demography rather than ancient history. But that is likely to come at the cost of unity. Republicans would resist fiercely. Truth would probably suffer too, if only because we have learned that these days resistance tends to come as an assault on the facts. Any attempt to change the constitution would be challenged not just as unpatriotic, but probably as a foreign plot.The alternative is to stick with the status quo and hope it is enough to paper over the cracks. In that case, unity will have been prioritised over democracy. It is probably the easier path, and Biden may think he has better things to do than pick a fight on democratic institutional reform. Any bipartisan consensus is unlikely to survive changes that leave one party worse off in electoral terms. Enacting the people’s will can be a deeply divisive enterprise.One temptation – and Biden would hardly be the first president to succumb to it – is to use the word democracy as a catch-all while avoiding these difficult choices. In the short term, it might enable him to concentrate on tackling the immediate challenges the country faces, from the pandemic to the economy. But it also means that frustration with political elites will continue to build.Invoking the will of the people while relying on institutions that are designed to stifle it is not a recipe for long-term stability. Yet doing anything about it risks the unity for which Biden stands. He is treating democracy as though it were a panacea, when in truth it is always a fight.On the day of Biden’s inauguration the people were indeed excluded, but not in the way the founders had intended. Instead, because of the threat from extremists, the crowds were kept away and replaced by military personnel around the podium and flags down the Mall. It was in keeping with an occasion that paid lip service to an idea whose reality is much more contentious.The peaceful transfer of power, particularly achieved at such a high price, is only the bare minimum of what needs to be done for democracy to prevail. The rest is much less certain and comes with many risks.It was the riskiness of democracy that made the founders nervous, but that is its point: the dynamism of people’s politics has always gone with a dangerous unpredictability. But there are other risks too. Keeping democracy at bay for the sake of unity does not guarantee a peaceful life. The danger is that it comes to seem less like democracy fulfilled, and more like democracy endlessly deferred.• David Runciman is professor of politics at Cambridge University More

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      Senate Republican threatens impeachments of past Democratic presidents

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      The Texas Republican senator John Cornyn warned on Saturday that Donald Trump’s second impeachment could lead to the prosecution of former Democratic presidents if Republicans retake Congress in two years’ time.Trump this month became the first US president to be impeached twice, after the Democratic-controlled House, with the support of 10 Republicans, voted to charge him with incitement of insurrection over the assault on the Capitol by his supporters on 6 January which left five people dead.Trump failed to overturn his election defeat and Joe Biden was sworn in as president this week.After a brief moment of bipartisan sentiment in which members from both parties condemned the unprecedented attack on Congress as it met to formalize Biden’s victory, a number of Senate Republicans are opposing Trump’s trial, which could lead to a vote blocking him from future office.“If it is a good idea to impeach and try former presidents, what about former Democratic presidents when Republicans get the majority in 2022?” Cornyn, a 19-year veteran of the Senate who last year tried to distance himself from Trump when it seemed his seat was at risk, tweeted at majority leader Chuck Schumer. “Think about it and let’s do what is best for the country.”Democrats hold narrow majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate but it is common for a president’s party to lose seats in elections two years after a presidential contest. Impeachment begins in the House. The Senate stages any trial.Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has said the mob in the Capitol putsch was “provoked” by Trump – who told supporters to march on Congress and “fight like hell”. Other Senate Republicans claim trying Trump after he has left office would be unconstitutional and further divide the country.There are also concerns on both sides of the aisle that the trial could distract from Biden’s legislative agenda. Schumer, who became majority leader this week, tweeted on Friday that the Senate would confirm Biden’s cabinet, enact a new Covid-19 relief package and conduct Trump’s impeachment trial.The trial is due to be held in the second week of February. More

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      Trump impeachment article to be sent to Senate on Monday, setting up trial

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      Democratic leaders announced on Friday that the article of impeachment against Donald Trump for incitement of insurrection would be transferred from the House to the Senate on Monday, setting up a trial of the former president.“The Senate will conduct a trial on the impeachment of Donald Trump,” the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said. “It will be a fair trial. But make no mistake, there will be a trial.”The move was a stunning rebuke of a proposal a day earlier by the Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to delay transfer of the article and push the trial into February, to make “additional time for both sides to assemble their arguments”.Trump is the only president in history to be impeached twice. Conviction in the Senate, which would require a two-thirds majority vote, could prevent him from ever again holding public office.But in rejecting McConnell’s offer, Democrats did more than press the case against Trump. They also staked out a tough stance in an internal Senate power struggle, as the newly installed Joe Biden administration prepares to ask Republicans for support on initiatives including pandemic policy, economic relief and immigration reform.McConnell and Republicans lost control of the Senate with a double loss in runoff elections in Georgia earlier this month. But McConnell has been fighting for advantage, refusing to approve a basic power-sharing agreement in a body now split 50-50, unless Schumer promised to retain a Senate filibuster rule that enables the minority party to block legislation with only 41 votes.Schumer rejected that pitch by McConnell on Friday, too, demanding that Republicans approve the organizing agreement, which would for example grant the parties an equal number of members on each committee, with no strings attached.“Leader McConnell’s proposal is unacceptable – and it won’t be accepted,” Schumer said.The pair of forceful moves by the Democratic leadership signaled an intention to deliver on a mandate they feel they won last November and displayed an unaccustomed assertiveness after four years of Trump and McConnell.But the power plays also called more deeply into question whether Biden would benefit from any measure of Republican support as he attempts to answer multiple national crises.The most fierce Trump supporters in the Senate have threatened to hold hostage every ounce of Biden’s agenda, including cabinet appointments, unless Democrats called off the impeachment trial.“Democrats can’t have it both ways: an unconstitutional impeachment trial & Senate confirmation of the Biden administration’s national security team,” tweeted the Republican senator Ron Johnson, who until this week was chair of the homeland security committee. “They need to choose between being vindictive or staffing the administration to keep the nation safe. What will it be: revenge or security?”Johnson’s explicit threat to hold national security hostage to a political agenda was not echoed by most colleagues, and the Senate proceeded with key Biden confirmations on Friday. The body overwhelmingly confirmed Lloyd Austin as the first African American defense secretary in history by a bipartisan vote of 93-2, and the Senate finance committee unanimously advanced the nomination of Janet Yellen to be treasury secretary.While McConnell and others have expressed an openness to the charges facing Trump in his second impeachment trial, expectations are low that Democrats will find the 17 Republican votes they probably need to convict him.While the transmission of the article triggers the launching of trial proceedings, the schedule ahead remains uncertain, and is subject to negotiations. After the article of impeachment is transmitted, lawyers for Trump would be called on to submit a response from the president, and prosecutors from the House, known as impeachment managers, would submit pre-trial briefs.“I’ve been speaking to the Republican leader about the time and the duration of the trial,” Schumer said.Lawyers defending Trump will include Butch Bowers, a former justice department official recommended by Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator announced on Thursday. No lawyers from Trump’s impeachment trial last year were expected to return to his defense team.When Trump was first impeached in December 2019, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, delayed the transfer of the case to the Senate in an effort to prolong Trump’s political pain and to win concessions on how Trump’s trial would be conducted.But this time Pelosi moved quickly, her decision linked to an unusual number of moving parts with deep significance for the Biden administration and the future of the country.Democrats might have concluded that it would be a mistake to bargain for Republican support for Biden’s agenda, the top item of which is a $1.9tn Covid relief and economic recovery package.The Republican senator Susan Collins of Maine, a potential swing vote for Democrats, told reporters on Thursday that Biden’s plan was “premature”.The government watchdog group Fix Our Senate on Friday blasted McConnell for linking support for an organizing agreement in the Senate to the filibuster.“By threatening to filibuster a routine resolution that simply affirms that Democrats won the majority and can now lead committees,” said group spokesman Eli Zupnick, “Senator McConnell has made it crystal clear, to anyone with any remaining doubts, that his only goal is to undermine, delay and block the Biden agenda that the American people just voted for.” More

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      Joe Biden has only one shot to stop Trumpism returning in 2024 | Jonathan Freedland

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      If this were a horror flick – and, Lord knows, these past four years have felt like one – we know what would come next. We’d be at that stage of the movie where the monster has apparently been slain, when the hero stands amid the rubble and the ruin consoling those who have survived, calm seemingly restored – only for the audience to gasp as the demon stirs back to life, rising from the dead to inflict one last blow.Joe Biden is certainly well cast as the steadying presence come to clean up the mess. But the fear persists that the villain who created it will return. Donald Trump threatened as much in his last public statement as president, uttering the chilling words: “We will be back in some form.”Given that Trump left the White House with his support among Republicans still at 82%, there is only one surefire way to ensure that never happens. Sixty-seven US senators – including 17 Republicans – will have to vote to convict Trump in his upcoming impeachment trial for inciting an insurrection on Capitol Hill on 6 January. If they do that, then Senate Democrats can vote by simple majority to ban Trump from ever holding public office again. (Think of it as Anne Archer shooting a resurrected Glenn Close at the end of Fatal Attraction.)That remains a possible denouement of the Trump saga, especially given the hints from Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, that he might vote to rid his party once and for all of Trump: this week he said that the former president – and what a pleasure it is to use those words – “provoked” the Capitol Hill mob. And yet, you wouldn’t bank on it. McConnell is now calling for the trial to be delayed, to allow Trump time to prepare. Given McConnell’s willingness to bend the Senate rulebook to his purposes, it’d be wise to start counting the spoons.Still, this might be to take the threat too narrowly, too literally even. What were Trump’s words? “In some form.” The monster might resurface in a new guise in 2024. In traditional Hollywood style, that would mean a sequel starring Son of Trump – or even Daughter – or it could mean someone from outside that desperate clan. This is, surely, the greater fear. That US nativist populism will find a new messenger, one free of the personal defects and grossness of Trump, one who has the quality that Trump lacked: the self-discipline to be a competent authoritarian. So often Trump’s autocratic impulses were thwarted not by the system but by his own ineptitude and the ineffectiveness of his fifth-rate team. What if next time the US – and the world – is not so lucky?To repel that as-yet-faceless threat will require deeper work than a simple vote in the Senate. And it will demand more than a mere return to the relative tranquillity of the Obama era. It will mean turning over the soil in which Trumpism grew, making it inhospitable to a new variety of that same, poisonous plant. This is the central challenge that now confronts President Biden.A first task is to dispel the question of legitimacy that hangs over his presidency in the minds of the one in three Americans who believe Trump’s big lie that he, not Biden, won the 2020 election. After the deadlocked election of 2000, a quarter of Americans did not accept George W Bush as the legitimate president, but that question mark faded in the smoke and dust of 9/11. In the absence of external attack, how can Biden persuade at least some of those recalcitrant voters to accept him as the country’s leader?Happily, the answer coincides with what is the most urgent problem facing him and the US. If Biden can make good on his promise to vaccinate 100 million Americans in 100 days, that in itself will be transformative. People’s lives will have changed in a direct and profound way, thanks in part to having Biden at the helm. In the process, he would have gone a long way to restoring Americans’ faith in the ability of government to do good. That is critical given that Trumpism was predicated on an insistence that democratic government is always feeble and useless, that it takes a strongman to get things done.The debate has been long and acrimonious over whether Trump supporters were drawn to him by “economic anxiety” or plain old racism, spiced with misogyny. But what if the answer contains elements of both? What if bigotry flourishes in unwatered earth? Biden’s $1.9tn rescue plan and an agenda of economic renewal may not win back the left-behind and eradicate Trumpism at a stroke – but it can’t hurt.Time, though, is desperately short. There is a curious cycle in US politics. In 1992, 2008 and 2020, Democratic presidents were elected alongside Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, granting them the muscle to implement their programmes. But for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama landslide reverses came within two years, depriving them of either one or both chambers of Congress thereafter. In other words, over a 12- or 16-year period Democrats usually get a squeezed two years to get things done. Biden’s majorities are much thinner than his predecessors’, and the clock is already ticking.The new president cannot allow himself to get bogged down in delay, tripped up by McConnell’s familiar tricks in the Senate. But that will take more than guile. The system that gives a rural, white Republican minority de facto veto power over the rest of the country – and note that the Democrats’ 50 senators represent a total of 41 million more voters than the Republican 50 – itself has to change. The wish list is long, from tackling voter suppression and gerrymandered districts to campaign-finance reform and abolition of a filibuster rule that demands 60 votes to get something through a 100-member body.Tackling all that will go against Joe Biden’s instincts. He is a creature of the Senate, faithful to its traditions. But as the columnist Ezra Klein puts it, for too long Democrats have “preferred the false peace of decorum to the true progress of democracy”. History suggests Biden will only get one shot. He must not throw it away – lest he revive the very spectre that gave him his chance. More