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      Andrew Yang launches New York mayoral run and calls for universal basic income

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      The former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang formally announced his run as New York City mayor on Thursday morning, promising to rebuild a city that has been devastated by the Covid-19 pandemic.The formal announcement came after Yang released his first campaign video, directed by the film director and producer Darren Aronofsky, on Wednesday night. The video showed Yang, sporting a mask that read “Forward New York”, going around the city talking to and elbow-bumping residents.“The fears for our future that caused me to run for president have accelerated since this pandemic started,” Yang told a small crowd of supporters in Manhattan on Thursday morning. “We need to make New York City the Covid comeback city, but also the anti-poverty city.”Yang is entering a crowded field of about a dozen mayoral candidates that includes current and former city officials, a member of Barack Obama’s White House cabinet and an ex-Wall Street executive. The bulk of the action in the race will be around the Democratic primary, which is set to take place on 22 June before the general election in November.Before his presidential campaign, Yang, who has not held office before, had a low profile as the founder of Venture for America, a not-for-profit group that aimed to help create jobs in cities hurt by the Great Recession. The launch of his internet-friendly presidential campaign helped him gain something of a cult following, with supporters nicknaming themselves the “Yang Gang”.On Thursday, Yang dived into the specifics of his platform, at the top of which is a plan to implement universal basic income – what was the hallmark of his presidential campaign before it ended in February of last year. Yang promised to institute “the largest basic income program in the history of the country”.“Two years ago, no one would have fathomed Congress would ever send tens of millions of Americans around the country money with no strings attached,” Yang said, referring to the stimulus checks that were included in Congress’s two coronavirus relief bills.Though he has not yet publicly outlined what the program would look like, sources have said the plan could entail 500,000 of the city’s residents receiving between $2,000 and $5,000 and will cost an estimated $1bn a year, according to Gothamist.Yang said he also aims to fix the city’s “mass transmit mess”, saying that he would push for municipal control of the city’s subways and buses – which are currently under state-level control – and promised to have a fully electric bus system by 2030.“As mayor, I will get around the city by subway, bus or bike because that’s how most New Yorkers get around,” Yang said, a subtle dig at the current mayor, Bill de Blasio, who has notoriously taken a black car around the city instead of using public transportation.De Blasio’s popularity has significantly declined during his two terms, after winning on a progressive agenda promising economic and social change in 2013.The new mayor faces long-existing issues of inequality, particularly around housing and policing, that have been exacerbated by the pandemic and new ones Covid-19 created.After shutdown orders and travel restrictions decimated the number of tourists and commuters coming into the city, New York now faces an unemployment rate that is almost double the national rate and a potential $13bn budget shortfall. The pandemic has shuttered thousands of small businesses in the city. More

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      Second impeachment puts Trump in first place among lords of misrule

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      [embedded content]
      Donald Trump, Donald Trump (so good they impeached him twice).
      It was always going to end this way. A presidency centered on fear, rage and division is climaxing in a Grand Guignol of three acts at the US Capitol in Washington: last Wednesday’s insurrection, this Wednesday’s impeachment, next Wednesday’s inauguration.
      As Barack Obama noted after act one, “we’d be kidding ourselves if we treated it as a total surprise”.
      What remains uncertain is whether this is the moment that the fever breaks and the nation gets back on track or merely a harbinger of further polarisation, violence and decline.
      Liz Cheney and nine other Republicans who joined Democrats in a 232-197 bipartisan vote to impeach Trump did not provide a comprehensive answer to that question. Yes, it was 10 more than the first impeachment just over a year ago and, yes, there are cracks in the dam. But it has not yet burst.
      And certainly on this Wednesday, with its besieged capital being prised from the grasp of a would-be autocrat, America resembled the sort of fragile state that it used to think it was in the business of rescuing and rebuilding.
      Barriers, checkpoints and a ring of steel had been erected on Capitol Hill. Members of the national guard, with masks, guns and military garb, could be seen sleeping on hard floors in the hallways of the Capitol. The last time troops were quartered here was during the American civil war; there were more of them than in Afghanistan or Iraq today.
      Inside the chamber, where members wore masks under strict new coronavirus rules, the historic day began with a prayer from R Adm Margaret Grun Kibben, the House chaplain. She noted that last week “we found ourselves seizing the scales of justice from the jaws of mobocracy”.
      But it did not take long for partisanship to bare its teeth. Although this process has been much speedier than Impeachment One, which sanctioned Trump for pressuring Ukraine for political favours, there were again angry speeches from both sides. More

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      Donald Trump impeached a second time over mob attack on US Capitol

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      The House of Representatives on Wednesday impeached Donald Trump for inciting a violent insurrection against the government of the United States a week after he encouraged a mob of his supporters to storm the US Capitol, a historic condemnation that makes him the only American president to be charged twice with committing high crimes and misdemeanors.
      After an emotional day-long debate in the chamber where lawmakers cowered last week as rioters vandalized the Capitol, 10 House Republicans joined Democrats to embrace the constitution’s gravest remedy after vowing to hold Trump to account before he leaves office next week.
      The sole article of impeachment charges the defeated president with “inciting an insurrection” that led to what the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said would be immortalized as a “day of fire” on Capitol Hill.
      The president, Pelosi said, represented a “clear and present danger to the nation we all love”.
      The final count was 232 to 197, with 10 members of the president’s party supporting his unprecedented second impeachment, making it the most bipartisan impeachment vote in US history. Among them was Liz Cheney, the No 3 House Republican and daughter of Dick Cheney, George W Bush’s vice-president. Though she did not rise to speak on Wednesday, she issued a blistering statement announcing her decision, in which she said that there had “never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States” than Trump’s conduct on 6 January.

      “The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” said Cheney in a statement.
      Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, attempted to carve a middle path for his caucus. He said Trump “bears responsibility” for Wednesday’s attack, while warning that impeachment would “further fan the flames of partisan division”. As an alternative, he proposed a censure. More

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      ‘He is a clear and present danger’: the remarks that led to impeachment

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      As Democrats impeached Donald Trump for the second time by accusing him of inciting a violent mob to attack the United States capitol last week, a day of drama played out in Washington DC.
      It was a day of emotional speeches, appeals for peace, warnings of danger and remorse over how the country has found itself caught up in times of chaos amid a real fear of civil unrest, triggered by a president who has refused to accept he lost an election.
      The historic day – no president has ever been impeached twice – saw a fair share of remarkable speeches and statements that incapsulated these extraordinary times.
      Here are some key quotes.
      What is at stake
      “He must go. He is a clear and present danger to the nation that we all love,” said House speaker Nancy Pelosi as she opened arguments for the impeachment of Trump and pulled no punches in spelling out what she believed was at risk.
      Stop posing as victims
      Congressman Jaime Raskin of Maryland, the lead impeachment manager for the Democrats, laid the blame for the riot squarely with the pro-Trump mob, memorably dismissing their complaints of being victims, rather than just the losing side in a democratic process.
      “It’s a bit much to be hearing that these people would not be trying to destroy our government and kill us if we just weren’t so mean to them,” he said.
      Context and a moment of hope
      Congressman Adam Schiff of California was a favorite target of Trump during the first impeachment. In his speech, the Democrat placed America’s current travails firmly in the context of history – and added a rare moment of hope that this, too, shall pass.
      “America has been through a civil war, world wars, a Great Depression, pandemics, McCarthyism, and now a Trumpist and white nationalist insurrection. And yet our democracy endures,” he said.
      Telling it like it is
      Freshman Missouri congresswoman Cori Bush told it like it was.
      “The 117th Congress must understand that we have a mandate to legislate in defense of Black lives. The first step in that process is to root out white supremacy, starting with impeaching the white supremacist-in-chief,” Bush said.
      Breaking point
      Bush was backed up by congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota who clearly felt enough was finally enough.
      “For years we have been asked to turn a blind eye to the criminality, corruption and blatant disregard to the rule of law by the tyrant president we have in the White House. We as a nation can no longer look away,” she said.
      Appealing to Republicans
      There was some hope that Republicans could be persuaded to join the impeachment effort. Democratic congressman Gerry Connolly of Virginia gave it his best shot.
      “The American people are asking is there any depravity too low? Is there any outrage too far? Is there any blood and violence too much to turn hearts and minds in this body? Instead of the usual justification, rationalization and enabling and false equivalence we have to hear?” Connolly asked, looking at Republican members. “This is a moment of truth my friends. Are you on the side of chaos and the mob? Or on the side of Constitutional democracy and our freedom?”
      A Republican turns on his president
      Dan Newhouse, a Republican congressman from Washington, was one of the few in his party to vote against Trump and for his impeachment.
      “A vote against this impeachment is a vote to validate the unacceptable violence we witnessed in our nation’s capital. It is also a vote to condone President Trump’s inaction. He did not strongly condemn the attack nor did he call in reinforcements when our officers were overwhelmed. Our country needed a leader, and President Trump failed to fulfill his oath of office,” he said.
      Distraction, distraction, distraction
      Many Republicans have chosen to defend Trump by largely ignoring the attack on the Capitol in favor of slamming Democrats and positing that the real issue is the fact that Trump and some other rightwingers have been banned from some social media websites in an act of “cancel culture”.
      Trump’s favorite attack dog, congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, led the pack.
      “We should be focused on bringing the nation together. Instead Democrats are going to impeach the president for a second time one week before he leaves office. Why? Why? Politics. And the fact they want to cancel the president,” he said.
      QAnon congresswoman blames BLM and the Democrats
      Marjorie Taylor Greene, who once espoused the racist QAnon conspiracy theory, gave a short and impassioned speech saying that the real problem the country faced was Democratic support for the Black Lives Matter protests over the summer.
      “President Trump has held over 600 rallies in the last 4 years. None of them included assaulting police, destroying businesses or burning down cities. Democrats have spent all this time endorsing and enabling violent riots that left billions in property damage and 47 dead,” Greene said, wearing a face mask that said “censored” on it.
      Greene did not seem to pick up on the irony that she was claiming to be censored while delivering a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, which was broadcast on national television and around the world.
      The last word
      For many watching, New York congressman Hakeem Jeffries summed things up the best.
      “Donald Trump is a living, breathing impeachable offense. It is what it is,” he said. More

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      House poised to impeach Trump for a second time, following deadly Capitol riot

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      The US House of Representatives was poised on Wednesday officially to charge Donald Trump with inciting violence against the government of the United States one week after he rallied a mob of loyalists to storm the US Capitol, a historic measure that would make him the only American president to be impeached twice.The unprecedented effort gained momentum overnight as senior Republican leaders in the House joined Democrats in support of removing Trump from office.The single article of impeachment charges the defeated president with “inciting an insurrection” that led to what the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said would be immortalized as a “day of fire” on Capitol Hill.The president, Pelosi said, arguing in favor of invoking the constitution’s gravest remedy, represented a “clear and present danger to the nation we all love”.She was joined by six Republican members of the House, including Liz Cheney, the No 3 House Republican and daughter of Dick Cheney, George W Bush’s vice-president.Cheney said in a statement that there had “never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States” than Trump’s conduct on 6 January.The deadly assault on 6 January came as both the House and Senate were in session to certify Joe Biden’s victory in November’s presidential election, a result Trump refused to accept. Five people died during the siege, including a police officer.“We are debating this historic measure at an actual crime scene, and we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the president of the United States,” said the congressman Jim McGovern, a Democrat of Massachusetts and chair of the rules committee, opening Wednesday’s session.The emotionally charged debate took place against a constant reminder of the death and destruction that had transpired just one week ago. The building lawmakers call the People’s House, poorly defended last Wednesday, by this Wednesday had been turned into a fortress, protected by thousands of national guard troops and with metal detectors stationed outside the chamber doors. Some Republicans rebelled against the new safety protocols, evading the security check.A remorseless Trump on Tuesday called his inflammatory language at a rally immediately before the mob marched on the Capitol “totally appropriate”. Efforts to hold him accountable were nothing more than a “continuation of the greatest witch-hunt in the history of politics”, he said.Few Republicans were willing to defend Trump’s incendiary behavior. But those who opposed impeachment objected to the rushed nature of the proceedings and argued that there was little chance the president would be removed from office before the end of his term.“I can think of no action the House can take that is more likely to further divide the American people,” said Tom Cole, a Republican of Oklahoma, who was among the more than 120 House Republicans who voted last week to reject the electoral votes of key swing states that Biden won, despite officials at every level calling November’s vote the most secure election in US history.Democrats were incensed by calls for bipartisanship, particularly from Republicans who refused to recognize Biden’s election victory and voted to overturn the results of a democratic election even after the assault on the Capitol.“It’s a bit much to be hearing that these people would not be trying to destroy our government and kill us if we just weren’t so mean to them,” said Jamie Raskin, a Democratic Maryland congressman who will serve as the lead impeachment manager.The House proceeded with impeachment on Wednesday after Mike Pence formally rejected calls to strip Trump of power by invoking the 25th amendment to the US constitution, which allows for the removal of a sitting president deemed unfit to perform his job.Pence’s signal came just hours before the House passed a resolution calling on him to take the unprecedented action.Trump’s day of reckoning on Capitol Hill comes less than a year after he was acquitted in a Senate impeachment trial for pressuring Ukraine to open investigations into Biden and his son. But with just days left in his presidency, the political landscape had shifted dramatically.As fear turned to fury in the days since the siege, senior Republican leaders signaled both tacitly and explicitly a desire to purge the party of Trump. But their break with president came only after months of tolerating and indulging his campaign of lies about a stolen election, long after it was undeniably clear he had lost.No House Republicans voted in support when Trump was impeached in 2019 over his attempts to persuade the leader of Ukraine to investigate the family of Joe Biden, then his election rival.The swift second impeachment vote comes just one week after the riot in Washington DC – the first occupation of the US Capitol since British troops burned the building during the war of 1812 – and one week before Trump is due to leave office. The formal charge, a single article of impeachment, was drafted as lawmakers were ducking under chairs and praying for safety during the attack. It charges Trump with “inciting violence against the government of the United States’’ by encouraging his supporters to march on the Capitol in a last stand to keep him in office by overturning the will of 81 million Americans who voted against him.“If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more,” he told the raucous crowd at last Wednesday morning’s gathering near the White House.Rallying behind what they believed was a battle cry from an American president, thousands of loyalists stormed the Capitol in a violent rampage that threatened the lives of lawmakers, congressional staff, journalists and Trump’s own vice-president, who was there to fulfill his constitutional duty to count and certify the electoral college votes.“In all this, President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of government,” the article states. “He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of government.”Two Senate Republicans have already called on Trump to resign, and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, reportedly believes the president committed impeachable offenses.The House was prepared to immediately transmit the article of impeachment to the Senate after Wednesday’s expected vote to impeach. On Wednesday, McConnell’s office said he would not reconvene the Senate before 19 January, meaning Trump’s impeachment trial would begin during the inaugural days of Biden’s presidency.Though consequences for Trump will not include premature removal from office, the Senate trial would not be entirely symbolic.Two-thirds of the 100-member body are required to convict a president, meaning 17 Republicans would have to join Democrats to find Trump guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors.If convicted, it would then only require a simple majority to disqualify him from ever again holding public office. More

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      Nancy Pelosi: Trump is a clear and present danger to the nation – video

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      The Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives has opened the debate on the article of impeachment against Donald Trump, arguing the president must be removed from office. Describing the storming of the Capitol as a ‘day of fire’, Nancy Pelosi said Trump had incited insurrection
      Trump impeachment – live
      House poised to impeach Trump for a second time following deadly Capitol riot
      Trump impeachment: what you need to know as House moves to a vote More

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      Jamie Raskin: grieving congressman leads push to impeach Trump

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      For Jamie Raskin, the Democratic congressman and constitutional law professor who is leading the push to impeach Donald Trump for a second time, the last fortnight has been tumultuous.He lost his son 25-year-old son, Tommy, who had struggled with depression, on New Year’s Eve.Seeing it as his duty, Raskin attended last week’s certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory in Congress with members of his family, from whom he was separated as a mob of pro-Trump extremists stormed the Capitol building.Despite these profound emotional shocks, Raskin has spent the last week drafting the article of impeachment against Trump over his role in inciting the storming of Congress, which is likely to be voted on by the House of Representatives later on Wednesday.The day before the storming of the Capitol, Raskin had buried his son, who died after leaving his family a note. “Please forgive me,” he had written. “My illness won today. Please look after each other, the animals, and the global poor for me. All my love, Tommy.”As he stood to speak in the debate on the certification less than 24 hours later, Raskin – who had pinned a piece of black cloth to his lapel – received a standing ovation from fellow members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, who were aware of his recent loss and that he had still come to vote.Not long afterwards, the Trumpist mob broke in.Since then, Raskin has authored the House resolution that called on the vice-president, Mike Pence, to invoke the 25th amendment and declare Trump unable to complete his term, which expires next week. Pence ruled out doing that Tuesday night.The chamber quickly moved to the article of impeachment, which Raskin also helped draft. He has been clear about why he has needed to push through the difficult emotions he and his family have been confronting to hold Trump to account.“The president is a lethal danger to the American republic and the American people,” Raskin told the Atlantic magazine last week as he began drawing up the article of impeachment. “There has been nothing like this since the civil war.”And as Raskin told the Washington Post, he felt his son’s presence throughout the recent events. “I felt him in my heart and in my chest,” he said. “All the way through the counting of the electoral college votes and through the nightmare of the armed attack on the Capitol.”His son, a law student, as Raskin explained to the paper, had once asked him a question that had focused his mind.For a class about the first amendment issue of freedom of speech, Tommy Raskin had asked his father about “incitement to imminent lawless action”, and whether a government official who had sworn an oath to uphold the constitution should be held to a higher standard.“That ironically is going to be the critical issue for us talking about Donald Trump,” said Raskin. “Some people are saying: ‘Well, Donald Trump was just exercising his free speech.’ As president of the United States, he cannot be encouraging, counselling and inciting mobs that go and attack the Capitol of the United States.”Raskin is clear about what the US is confronting in the aftermath of the assault on Congress.“The president didn’t want to let go, and the fruit of his obsession with his big lie that he had actually won the election was this nightmarish assault on Congress,” Raskin said. “The president has become a clear and present danger to the republic.”“That is the groundwork for fascism, when you add racism, antisemitism, conspiracy theory and magical thinking. That is an absolute powder keg in terms of an assault on democracy,” Raskin said of the riot in an interview. “So we have to be very tough, and very strong right now in defending the constitution and democracy.”During the storming of Congress, Raskin’s thoughts were mostly on his 23-year-old daughter, Tabitha, and his son-in-law, who had accompanied him to the Capitol and were separated in the mayhem.When they were eventually reunited, Raskin assured his daughter that the next time she went to the Capitol, it would be calmer. “Dad, I don’t think there’s gonna be a next time,” she replied.Associated Press contributed to this reportIn the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or by emailing jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org. More