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David Smith in Washington
Donald Trump
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Paul Begala on Trump: ‘Nothing unites the people of Earth like a threat from Mars’
David Smith in Washington
The former White House adviser and Democratic strategist thinks the Republicans need a heavy defeat – and may get one More
Raúl Grijalva condemns colleagues for failing to take crisis seriously as they ‘strut around the Capitol with no mask’A Democratic congressman diagnosed as positive for the coronavirus has condemned Republican politicians for their carelessness around Congress and blamed them for spreading the virus.The Arizona Democrat Raúl Grijalva tested positive for the coronavirus, it was revealed on Saturday, and has immediately quarantined, though he is asymptomatic and feeling well, his office said. But Grijalva issued a fiery condemnation of Republicans and their behavior around the halls of Congress. Continue reading… More
In usually deep-red Kansas, Democrats have the luxury of a sleepy primary contest for US Senate. Republicans do not.That’s because in the Democratic primary the Kansas state senator Barbara Bollier is the heavy favorite to win her party’s nomination and then run a competitive general election campaign fueled by a large war chest of cash.That prospect is sharpened because Republicans are having to go through a bloody primary between the Kansas congressman Roger Marshall and former Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach, the immigration hardliner and former Republican nominee for governor whose unpopularity – should he win the nod – could hand the Democrats a vital Senate seat they would never normally hope to win.Kobach’s candidacy is notable for its support from the billionaire Peter Thiel, the libertarian venture capitalist who has at times expressed the same type of hardline immigration stances as Kobach. More
Election day in the US is officially 3 November, but amid the coronavirus pandemic, Americans are being encouraged to take advantage of early voting initiatives that open as soon as September to decrease the risks to themselves and others.From voter suppression to polling and debates, here are some of the key areas and figures the Guardian’s politics team will be watching as the race enters its final stretch.Donald TrumpThe Trump campaign has less than 100 days to change the dominant narratives of the year: that the president failed the leadership test during the coronavirus pandemic and missed the profound shift in public mood following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May.With his attempts to distract having largely failed, Trump has finally worn a face mask and promised a coronavirus “strategy” but provided few details so far. He may be pinning his hopes on an “October surprise”, such as the discovery of a vaccine, and a better than expected economic recovery, which has experienced the sharpest contraction since the second world war according to data released this week.He has shown even less willingness to engage with the cause of Black Lives Matter, inverting it to a racist campaign theme, stoking fear of violence in cities and portraying it as an existential threat to suburbs. “Law and order” may resonate with parts of his base but, polls suggest, it may be too little too late to rescue Trump from a one-term presidency. David SmithJoe BidenLess than 100 days out, the Biden campaign is currently well positioned to defeat Trump in November. The former vice-president leads Trump by double digits in a slate of new national polls, as the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic weighs on his approval rating.Biden has narrower but consistent margins in several battleground states as his campaign eyes an expansion in traditionally Republican states such as Arizona and Georgia, which could pave the way for Democrats to take back the Senate. And with the party largely united behind him, Biden has started to lay out an ambitious recovery plan as Trump’s edge on the economy slips.But there are risks, too. Though Biden is less unpopular than Hillary Clinton was in 2016, Democrats worry about his favorability ratings, which have slipped amid an advertising assault by the Trump campaign.Biden’s supporters are far less enthusiastic about his candidacy than Trump’s supporters are about his re-election. And polling suggests Biden has more work to do to mobilize young and minority voters, who were a key part of the coalition that twice elected Barack Obama. Lauren GambinoBiden’s pick for vice-presidentA presidential candidate’s running mate is usually one of the bigger lodestars in any campaign cycle. But Biden’s pick is particularly momentous, and he has said it will be announced in the first week of August. He has vowed to choose a woman, and if he wins, would usher into the White House the first female vice-president in American history.He has also said four of the candidate he is considering are African American. There has never been an African American female nominee on either the Republican or Democratic presidential tickets. More
US elections 2020
Kamala Harris? Val Demings? Democrats speculate but no single candidate will be able to satisfy all the interest groups and sectors of the party More
Faced with a disgruntled climate voter during the primary season who wanted him to be tougher on the oil and gas industry, Joe Biden shot him one of his infamous “why don’t you go vote for someone else” responses.But that was six months ago.Now, as the presumptive Democratic nominee, Biden’s environmental credentials are on the upswing, and not just because his presidential opponent is a risk to the global climate fight.Major environmental groups were delighted by Biden’s recent announcement of pledges, unimaginable in US politics just a few years ago, including to clean up electricity by 2035 and spend $2tn on clean energy as quickly as possible within four years.Some campaigners remain unconvinced that he could be as aggressive as necessary with the fossil fuel industry, but his campaign believes they are on the winning path by connecting the environment with jobs.“We really do see these as interlinked,” Biden’s campaign policy director, Stef Feldman, told the Guardian. “The climate plan is a jobs plan. Our jobs plan is, in part, a climate plan.”As the coronavirus pandemic has devastated the US economy and forced millions into unemployment, it has also cleared the way for the next president to rebuild greener.The Biden message: vote to put Americans back to work installing millions of solar panels and tens of thousands of wind turbines, making the steel for those projects, manufacturing electric vehicles for the world and shipping them from US ports.But Biden’s plan, while significant and historic, would be just the beginning of a brutal slog to transform the way the nation operates. That’s even without calling for an end to fossil fuels, which science demands but Biden has been careful to avoid overtly doing.Climate plans need Democrats to win bigDemocrats would need to gain control of the Senate and put more progressives into Congress if they expect to pass Biden’s climate measures. In a nod to the party’s left flank, and as a salve to the pandemic’s crushing economic blows, Biden has revised his proposal in order to spend more money, faster. He wants to essentially eliminate US climate emissions by 2050.“What’s going to be possible for President Biden is going to be partially determined by what happens in the other races,” said Tom Steyer, the Democrat philanthropist who ran against Biden in the primary and is now on his climate advisory council. “We’re working as hard as possible to push climate champions up and down the ballot.”Andrew Light, an Obama climate negotiator and fellow at the World Resources Institute, said the world will be closely observing Biden’s congressional support, including how Republicans react if he wins. “Is it like Obama in 2009, where the Republicans were just absolutely uniformly saying no to the new president? Or is it something where people kind of look at what Trump has done to the Republican party and then go, ‘right, well, we’ve now got to really take this seriously,’” Light said.Trump’s exit from the Paris climate agreement will happen automatically on 4 November, the day after the election. It will be the second time the US has led the way on negotiations and then pulled out or declined to join. The US also pushed for the Kyoto protocol, an international treaty in 1997, but it never ratified its commitments. To believe the US for a third time, the world will need evidence that Congress is engaged, Light said.The Biden campaign says that’s where he will excel. More
Democrat says president has failed in his duty to care for entire country
Attorney general bemoans the ‘demonization of police’ after Floyd’s killing at House committee hearing
Twitter restricts Donald Trump Jr’s account over Covid misinformation
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Democrats clashed angrily with Donald Trump’s attorney general on Tuesday, over the aggressive deployment of federal agents to US cities three months before a presidential election.William Barr faced a difficult grilling during a hearing in Congress that proved combative, contentious and indicative of Washington’s bitter divide.Democrats on the House judiciary committee pointed to the use of federal law enforcement to clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square, Washington, last month so Trump could stage a photo op, and a harsh crackdown on protests in Portland, Oregon.“The president wants footage for his campaign ads, and you appear to be serving it up to him as ordered,” Jerry Nadler, the committee chairman, told Barr.“You use pepper spray and truncheons on American citizens. You did it here in Washington. You did it in Lafayette Square. You expanded to Portland. Now you are projecting fear and violence nationwide in pursuit of obvious political objectives. Shame on you, Mr Barr. Shame on you.”The attorney general denied the interventions were motivated by Trump’s re-election.“I just reject the idea that the department has flooded anywhere and attempted to suppress demonstrators,” he said. “The fact of the matter is, if you take Portland, the courthouse is under attack.“The federal resources are inside the perimeter, around the courthouse defending it from almost two months of daily attacks where people march to the court, try to gain entrance and have set fires, thrown things, used explosives and injured police, including just this past weekend, perhaps permanently blinding three federal officers with lasers.”Barr added: “We are on the defence. We’re not out looking for trouble.”Like so many other hearings of the Trump era, the session highlighted America’s debilitating polarisation. Barr sat expressionless as Nadler delivered a scathing opening statement.“Your tenure is marked by a persistent war against the department’s professional core in an apparent effort to secure favours for the president,” the Democrat said. “In your time at the department, you have aided and abetted the worst failings of this president.”Barr’s justice department, Nadler continued, has violated constitutional rights, downplayed the effects of systemic racism, expressed open hostility to Black Lives Matter, spread disinformation about voter fraud and failed to enforce voting rights laws, amplified the president’s conspiracy theories about the special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and interfered with criminal investigations to protect the president and his allies.“The message these actions send is clear: in this justice department, the president’s enemies will be punished and his friends will be protected, no matter the cost,” said Nadler, whose involvement in a minor car accident had caused a delay.Jim Jordan, a close Trump ally and the top Republican on the committee, gave a radically different account.“Spying. That one word. That’s why they’re after you, Mr Attorney General.”Jordan said Barr has spoken “the truth” that Barack Obama’s administration spied on the Trump campaign, a claim that has repeatedly been debunked.He then proceeded to play a selectively edited video for nearly eight minutes which showed TV hosts and Obama saying the words “peaceful protests”, then cut to the grieving family of David Dorn, an African American retired police captain killed last month in St Louis, Missouri, then to undated, unlocated footage of people jumping on cars, buildings ablaze, an injured officer, a looted shop and people yanking and chainsawing a fence.The clips echoed talking points by Trump and conservative media.In his own opening statement, Barr acknowledged that “the horrible killing” of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by police in Minneapolis “jarred the whole country” but insisted police forces were more diverse than ever before.“According to statistics compiled by the Washington Post, the number of unarmed black men killed by police so far this year is eight. The number of unarmed white men killed by police over the same time period is 11 … And the overall number of police shootings has been decreasing.”Trump has quoted similar statistics, which fail to acknowledge that black people, who make up about 13% of the US population, are disproportionately affected by deadly police violence.Barr added: “Unfortunately, some have chosen to respond to George Floyd’s death in a far less productive way – by demonising the police … and making grossly irresponsible proposals to defund the police … Violent rioters and anarchists have hijacked legitimate protests to wreak senseless havoc and destruction on innocent victims.”Pressed by Nadler, Barr acknowledged that Trump’s re-election comes up at cabinet meetings but denied he had discussed it in connection with operations in Portland, Chicago and elsewhere.“I would like to pick the cities based on law and enforcement need,” he argued.Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas questioned Barr on whether he considered the killing of Floyd to be indicative of a systemic problem in policing. He said: “I don’t agree there is systemic racism in police departments generally in this country.”The attorney general faced hard-hitting questions for pushing for a more lenient prison sentence for Trump’s ally Roger Stone, convicted of witness tampering and making false statements, a move which prompted the entire trial team’s departure. Trump eventually commuted Stone’s sentence, sparing him prison.Barr said: “Stone was prosecuted under me. I said all along I thought that was a righteous prosecution. I thought he should go to jail.”But prosecutors were advocating for a sentence twice as long as justice department policy would recommend, he contended.“I agree that the president’s friends don’t deserve special breaks but they also don’t deserve to be treated more harshly than other people and sometimes that’s a difficult decision to make, especially when you know you’re going to be castigated for it.”Jordan’s video stunt provoked widespread criticism. Richard Painter, a former chief ethics lawyer in George W Bush’s White House, tweeted: “When do we get to the part where they set fire to the Reichstag and Bill Barr comes to the rescue?” More
