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      Donald Trump did not sign Illinois pledge not to overthrow government

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      Joe Biden’s 2024 election campaign has lambasted former president and most likely Republican opponent Donald Trump for failing to sign a loyalty oath in the state of Illinois, in which candidates pledge against advocating an overthrow of the government.The Biden campaign was responding to an investigation by Illinois news outlets WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times, which reported that Trump sidestepped signing the McCarthy era voluntary pledge that is part of the midwestern state’s package of ballot-access paperwork submitted by 2024 electoral candidates last week.That omission came days before the third anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, for which Trump has been indicted for his alleged role in efforts to overturn Biden’s 2020 election victory. It’s a departure from 2016 and 2020, when Trump signed the voluntary oath.In a statement, Biden campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler, said: “For the entirety of our nation’s history, presidents have put their hand on the Bible and sworn to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States – and Donald Trump can’t bring himself to sign a piece of paper saying he won’t attempt a coup to overthrow our government … We know he’s deadly serious because three years ago today he tried and failed to do exactly that.”In response, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung did not clarify why the Republican candidate had not signed the oath, but said: “President Trump will once again take the oath of office on January 20th, 2025, and will swear ‘to faithfully execute the office of president of the United States and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”The WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times analysis of state election records found that Biden and Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis both signed the oath. But some of Trump’s Republican opponents also did not sign, including Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, and Chris Christie, former New Jersey governor.Under Illinois law, presidential candidates wanting to be on the state’s 19 March primary ballot were required to submit nominating petitions to the state board of elections on Thursday or Friday.The so-called loyalty oath, which is part of the ballot-access process, is a remnant of the 1950s communist-bashing era of former US senator Joseph McCarthy. The tradition has been preserved by Illinois lawmakers despite being ruled unconstitutional by federal courts on free speech grounds.In the first part of the oath, candidates swear they are not communists nor affiliated with communist groups. Candidates also confirm that they “do not directly or indirectly teach or advocate the overthrow of the government of the United States or of this state or any unlawful change in the form of the governments thereof by force or any unlawful means”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt’s not clear why Trump did not sign the oath this time round, given that his eligibility to run is already being challenged on the rounds that he is allegedly disqualified by the 14th amendment of the constitution – which bars insurrectionists from seeking public office.On Thursday – the same day Trump submitted his ballot paperwork – five Illinois voters filed a petition to remove him from the state’s Republican primary ballot, the Washington Post reported. More

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      Trump avoids mention of US Capitol attack on 6 January anniversary

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      Donald Trump largely ducked speaking about the January 6 attack on the US Capitol during a campaign speech Saturday, which he delivered on the third anniversary of the insurrection, reflecting the degree to which Republican voters have absolved the former president of responsibility for that day’s deadly consequences.Trump’s remarks came a day after Joe Biden appeared in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, and spoke about how his presidential predecessor had urged his supporters to “fight like hell” shortly before they staged the Capitol attack.Trump brought up January 6 only once as he addressed hundreds of supporters in the town of Newton, Iowa, nine days before that state’s Republican caucuses are scheduled to kick off the 2024 presidential campaign. He repeated previous claims that the Democrat Biden, whom he is likely to face in a general election rematch in November, is the true threat to democracy.“You know this guy [Biden] goes around and says I’m a threat to democracy,” Trump said. “No, he’s a threat because he’s incompetent. He’s a threat to democracy.”“Nobody thought J6 was even a possibility,” Trump said later, without elaborating.Trump also attacked the former Republican representative Liz Cheney, who has been sharply critical of Trump since the January 6 attack, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol as legislators were certifying Biden’s 2020 election victory.On the other hand, Biden has repeatedly called Trump a threat to democracy on the trail, and that messaging has emerged as a central theme of his campaign so far.“We saw with our own eyes the violent mob storm the United States Capitol,” Biden said Friday. Referring to Trump, Biden continued: “He told the crowd to ‘fight like hell,’ and all hell was unleashed. He promised he would right them. Everything they did, he would be side by side with them. Then, as usual, he left the dirty work to others. He retreated to the White House.”Biden’s remarks were a clear attempt to balance out the approach at recent campaign events in Iowa by Trump’s – and those backing other Republican presidential hopefuls – who have downplayed the significance of January 6. Many of them have also embraced conspiracy theories regarding the events of that day.Trump himself has suggested during previous campaign stops that undercover FBI agents played a significant role in instigating the attack, an account not supported by official investigations.More than 1,200 people have been charged with taking part in the riot, and more than 900 have either pleaded guilty or been convicted following a trial.Nine deaths have been linked to the attack, including law enforcement suicides.Yet on Saturday, Hale Wilson, a Trump supporter from Des Moines who was at the Newton event, said of the attack: “It wasn’t really an insurrection. There were bad actors involved that got the crowd going.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump has been in Iowa to curry support before the state’s Republican caucus on 15 January, which is the first contest of the Republican presidential nominating contest. He currently leads all competitors by more than 30 percentage points in the state, according to most polls.Polls have also shown that a rematch with Biden later this year could be close and competitive despite 91 criminal charges pending against Trump, who was twice impeached during his time in the Oval Office.The criminal charges against Trump are for trying to subvert his defeat to Biden in the 2020 race, illegally retaining government secrets after he left the White House and giving hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, who has reported having a sexual encounter with the former president during an earlier time in his marriage to Melania Trump.Trump additionally has grappled with civil litigation over his business practices and a rape allegation which a judge deemed to be “substantially true”.Biden on Friday said Trump’s January 6 denial betrayed an attempt “to steal history the same way he tried to steal the election”.“There’s no confusion about who Trump is or what he intends to do,” Biden remarked.
      Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Sherrilyn Ifill on a Trump win: ‘We will cease to be a democracy’

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      The timing is right for a 14th amendment renaissance, says Sherrilyn Ifill.The 14th amendment, created during the Reconstruction era, carries the promise of equality for Black people and accountability for people engaged in insurrection and white supremacy, though its provisions have never been enforced fully.Pro-democracy advocacy groups are using the amendment’s third section to keep Donald Trump off the presidential ballot for engaging in insurrection, a high-profile and novel approach for a presidential candidate. So far, a court in Colorado and a Maine elections official have used these arguments to say Trump can’t appear on the ballot in those states. The cases, which Trump has appealed, are expected to go to the US supreme court.Ifill, a longtime civil rights lawyer, wants a generation of attorneys to be trained on the amendment and for it to enter into Americans’ understanding of their rights. In Washington DC in 2024, she will launch a center focused on the 14th amendment at the Howard University law school, a historically Black university.As a former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Ifill has sued Trump before, alleging that his presidential campaign disfranchised Black voters in 2020. Since she left the NAACP in 2022, she has repeatedly sounded the alarm about US democracy in peril, saying the country is in a “moment of existential crisis”.If Trump returns to the White House in 2024, “we will cease to be a democracy”, she said.The Guardian spoke to Ifill about the stakes of this year’s election, and how to protect civil rights at a critical time. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.Are we in a crisis point for democracy, unlike we’ve seen in our lifetimes?Absolutely. No question about it. We are in a crisis. Any time members of Congress say, as many apparently told Senator Mitt Romney, that they’re afraid to cast the vote they believe they should cast on impeachment because they worry about their children and their wives, we have a problem. We are in an authoritarian moment. Unfortunately, it’s a global authoritarian moment, which makes it even more challenging.What can we do about it?All the things that we’re doing. When litigating, we’re trying to hold people accountable to the rule of law, which is critical. We have to be educated ourselves about the tools that are available for us. We can stop telling fairy stories about this country. That’s what I find so beautiful about the architecture of the 14th amendment is that recognition, even amid the soaring promises, that the stubbornness of white supremacy and insurrection will remain and that we will need to confront it with power.Tell me about the idea behind the 14th Amendment Center. Why the 14th amendment?The first constitution obviously left a lot of things unsolved, kicked the can down the road on slavery and is deeply flawed without question. The second constitution, which is the one created after the civil war, is really bound up first and foremost in the civil war amendments: the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. Those amendments reimagined a new America precipitated by, of course, the civil war and the need to finally fulfill the promise of equality, of Black people becoming full citizens of this country.It’s a powerful, powerful amendment. And yet, most of us, even as lawyers in law school, study only a fraction of it. Most citizens in our country don’t even know about it. I always say that if you walk up to a guy who’s got an AR-15 on his back in a McDonald’s, and you ask him, why do you have that long gun on your back just to get a quarter-pounder? He’s gonna say, because it’s my second amendment right. We’re having a conversation right now about what people can say on college campuses, and people feel very comfortable articulating their first amendment rights. We don’t talk about “my 14th amendment rights”, even those of us who are civil rights lawyers and litigate predominantly under the 14th amendment or statutes that come from the 14th amendment.As a result, we tend to talk about discrimination in terms of feelings or morality or the goodness of a person or whether they have a racist bone in their body or whether they see race, not that equality is a constitutional imperative. We talk about it as though it is optional, depending on how good the person is. That is not the spirit of the 14th amendment. I think it has been, I’ll go as far as to say, hijacked. At this time in our country, I think we need to re-engage it, particularly because the 14th amendment was created by a group of legislators and those who influenced them who had stared into the face of insurrection and into the face of violent white supremacy. Both of those very dangerous elements are elements that we are confronting today.Do you believe that the US has ever really met the full promise and strength of the 14th amendment?I don’t. That’s not even my opinion, it’s objectively true. The supreme court set about cutting back the promise of the 14th amendment pretty early on in the 19th century, in US v Cruikshank, in the civil rights cases and in Plessy v Ferguson. Even though the 14th amendment, section 5 gives Congress the power to enforce the guarantees, Congress is silent for the first half of the 20th century until forced to begin legislating by a grassroots activist wave that we call the civil rights movement.What kind of work do you envision the center will do? Training other lawyers on the 14th amendment, scholarly work, taking on cases?skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionI see the goal of the center, first and foremost, to train a generation of lawyers who are fully conversant with and equipped to utilize the 14th amendment as advocates – whether they are legislative advocates, whether they are litigators, whether they are educators, whatever they choose to do with their law degree.We’re seeing it right now with the section 3 challenges to Trump appearing on the ballot, which I find very exciting. The finest lawyers in our country did not learn about section 3 of the 14th amendment in law school. One of the reasons you’re seeing the controversies between different law scholars about whether Trump can be on the ballot is because it’s not been tried before. Fortunately for us, we have not faced an insurrection at the national level of this sort.You mentioned the section 3 cases. Why do you think there is this reluctance on the part of judges to intervene on this specific section in some instances?It hasn’t been done at this level, certainly at the presidential level. I think that judges are afraid. They’re afraid because of the political consequences, but I think given the particular nature of this candidate, it would not surprise me if judges were not at least pausing to consider personal consequences for them and their families. That is a sure sign that we are a democracy in peril. Mostly, it is fear.You hear people say all the time, let the voters decide. You don’t just ignore sections of the constitution because the voters can decide. That isn’t how it works. It isn’t that we could have state-sanctioned racial segregation in our schools because we put it to a vote. That’s not how it works. It’s trying to offload what was clearly an obligation that the framers of the 14th amendment believed had to be undertaken.What happens if Trump returns to the presidency?In very short order, we will cease to be a democracy. Trump has made clear what his plans are – a country in which the Department of Justice is weaponized against the perceived enemies of the president, a country in which the guarantees of civil service are destroyed, a country in which favors of governmental largesse and support are handed out based on personal allegiance to the president, the hijacking of the courts, and the encouragement of random political violence. It’s not a recipe for democracy.If he does win, then how do you and others who are engaged in all of this work try to rein him in, keep him accountable?You fight. It’s not even a question at that point of me and other people who do this work; it’s a question of every American who wants to live in a free democracy. What do you do? Do you acquiesce? Or do you resist? You show up, and you resist. Just as it’s happened in countries around the world, some of whom we admire tremendously. We are not immune and we have allowed too many guardrails to be breached. If we all ultimately end up having to pay that price, then we go back to the drawing board and we keep pushing to make this country a democracy again.What are you most concerned about in 2024?People checking out, deciding they don’t want to vote. It’s just not the time for that. People need to be all in and need to understand what the stakes are and need to get comfortable with what it means to vote for president, which is not that you’re necessarily voting for the perfect candidate or the candidate that you love. You’re voting for a candidate who is responsible, mature, who is sane, who is not merely using the government for their own ends, who understands government and who is prepared to actually govern and implement policies that are in the best interests of the people in this country, who is prepared to use the levers of power in ways that are democratic, open, transparent, that allow for dissent without retaliation.Those choices seem very clear to me. More

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      ‘It’s a live audition’: Trump surrogates swarm Iowa before caucuses

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      Outside, traders were braving the bitter cold to sell Trump hats, T-shirts and other merchandise. Inside, hundreds of Trump supporters were proudly sporting “Make America great again” (Maga) regalia. They were surrounded by big screens, loudspeakers, TV cameras, patriotic flags and “Team Trump” logos.It had all the trappings of a Donald Trump campaign rally but one thing was missing: Donald Trump.The former US president was content to let South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem, speak on his behalf at the convention centre in Sioux City, Iowa, on Wednesday night. “We would never have the situation going on like we see in the Middle East right now,” Noem said. “If he had been in the White House, we would never see what was going on with Russia and Ukraine.”It was not the first time that Trump has delegated his campaign to a proxy ahead of the Iowa caucuses on 15 January, the first of the state-by-state contests in which Republicans choose a presidential nominee to take on Democrat Joe Biden in November’s election.While rivals Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley have crisscrossed Iowa in search of votes, the frontrunner has been content to stay at home and let allies do much of the legwork for him. For these campaign surrogates, it is a very public opportunity to stake their claim to a job in a future Trump cabinet – or even as his vice-president.This week’s lineup included Ben Carson, a former housing secretary seeking to rally Iowa’s Christian evangelical voters; Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right firebrand and prominent ally of Trump in Congress; and Eric Trump, a son of the former president who followed him into business.On Monday two “Team Trump Iowa Faith Events” will feature ex-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, now governor of Arkansas, and her father, Mike Huckabee, a former governor of the same state.Other prominent proxies include Florida congressmen Byron Donalds and Matt Gaetz; Kari Lake, a former candidate for Arizona governor who has roots in Iowa; Iowa’s attorney general, Brenna Bird, whose endorsement of Trump put her at odds with the state’s governor, Kim Reynolds, a backer of DeSantis; and actor Roseanne Barr, who five years ago was fired from her sitcom, Roseanne, after posting a racist tweet.For the Trump campaign, these events are useful to scoop up personal information that allows for follow-up calls and texts to remind supporters to show up at the caucuses. For the surrogates, they represent a chance to enhance political careers or boost their profile in the “Maga universe”, which might lead to work as a host or pundit in rightwing media.Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “It’s a live audition, using the campaign trail as a substitute for the boardroom set that he had on The Apprentice. All of these people are jockeying and trying to curry favour with Trump so that they are considered to be on the shortlist for some of the high-visibility positions that might become available if he were to win.”Since 2016, Trump campaigns have also been a family affair. His eldest son, Don Jr, attended the first Republican primary debate in Milwaukee along his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, but they were denied access to the official “spin room” so talked to reporters on the sidelines. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, a former senior adviser at the White House, is sitting this one out.Eric Trump, who turns 40 on Saturday , has long been mocked by comedians and satirists as the poor relation but seems to be working doubly hard to impress his dad. He told an audience in Ankeny, Iowa, on Thursday: “The greatest fighter in the world is my father. In fact, it’s kind of sometimes what he’s actually criticised for.”Bardella, a former senior adviser for Republicans on the House oversight committee, added: “It’s ‘I’m trying to win your approval’, whether it’s politically in terms of someone like Kristi Noem particularly or the lifelong pursuit of Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr to live up to the last name, to the outsized shadow that their father cast over their lives.”Such ostentatious displays of fealty could prove valuable to Trump in a year in which he faces the distraction of four criminal cases that threaten to strand him in a courtroom instead of the campaign trail. He is expected to appear at a federal appeals court hearing next week regarding the scope of his presidential immunity while in office.He must also choose a running mate. It is safe to assume that it will not be Mike Pence, his former vice-president, who alienated Trump by certifying the 2020 election results and ran an abortive campaign against him last year. Potential contenders include Haley, Lake and Noem as well as Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, entrepreneur and 2024 candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNoem’s event on Wednesday was far bigger than two DeSantis events in western Iowa on Wednesday, one of which was right down the road. Asked by CBS News what she would do if offered the vice-presidential slot, the South Dakota governor said: “I think anybody in this country, if they were offered it, needs to consider it.”Rick Wilson, a cofounder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, commented: “Noem is auditioning for vice-president, absolutely, which is why I think you’ll also see Elise Stefanik out there in the next couple of weeks also, because she is definitely trying to be vice-president. She’s not being shy about it at all; she’s telling people: ‘I want this gig.’”Wilson added: “Trump responds to people who are not just loyal. It’s subservience and a willingness to do whatever Trump wants you to do and so they’re checking a box. This is probably the minimum they can do to stay in his good graces. We’ll see more ‘respectable’ Republicans in the coming months also out there checking the box.”The former president’s absence from the campaign trail also reflects his dominance. Last month a Fox News poll put him at 52% among likely Republican caucus goers in Iowa, far ahead of DeSantis, at 18%, and Haley, at 16%. DeSantis has visited all 99 counties in the state but has made little headway.Trump is scheduled to host eight events in person before the caucuses, a small number compared with other candidates. He will skip a Republican primary debate hosted by CNN in Des Moines on Wednesday in favour of a town hall hosted by Fox News in the same city at the same time. He will hold his final rally in Cherokee on the eve of the caucuses and remain in the state on caucus night.His opponents have struggled to attract surrogates with star power. Haley’s backers include Will Hurd, a former congressman who dropped out of the race, and Chris Sununu, an ex-governor of New Hampshire, which holds the second nominating contest later this month. DeSantis has the support of Reynolds and Bob Vander Plaats, an influential Republican operative in Iowa and the chief executive of the Family Leader, a social conservative organisation.None is able to fire up the Republican base like Trump allies such as Greene, who was greeted by cheers in Keokuk, Iowa, on Thursday and proudly declared: “I’m a Maga extremist.”Sam Nunberg, a DeSantis supporter who was an adviser to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, acknowledged her influence: “Marjorie Taylor Greene, whatever the majority of Americans think of her, is very strong within the Republican primary so she’s a good surrogate to have, specifically for the people that [Trump] needs.“The strongest, most enthusiastic voters … would like the message of a Marjorie Taylor Greene and are on the same page as him, particularly about the 2020 election and issues with Biden. But in general a surrogate operation can only do so much. I’m not saying that he’s going to lose the caucus; I hope he does.” More

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      Trump tells Iowans to ‘get over’ school shooting at campaign event

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      Donald Trump told an audience at a campaign event on Friday in Iowa to “get over” a deadly shooting at a high school in the state a day earlier.After offering sympathy and emotional support for the victims of the shooting in Perry, Iowa, and their families, Trump said at the event in Sioux Center: “It’s just horrible – so surprising to see it here. But we have to get over it. We have to move forward.”Trump’s comments on the shooting that occurred about 36 hours earlier were the first he had made addressing the violence.Friday’s remarks were not the first time in the last year that Trump has apparently tried to deflect from having a substantial conversation about gun violence in the US. During a speech in April 2023 to the National Rifle Association, Trump argued that the long history of deadly school shootings in the US is “not a gun problem”. He instead blamed the issue on Democrats, mental health issues, marijuana and the transgender community.Trump’s recent comment on the Perry shooting was criticized by the Democratic Super Pac American Bridge.“We knew Trump lacked empathy for others, but no one thought he could go this low and tell Iowans to simply ‘get over it’ as they grieve from a situation communities across the country know all too well,” American Bridge presidential campaigns communication director Brandon Weathersby said in a statement on Trump’s comments. “This is beyond the pale, even for Trump.”Trump has made several campaign stops in Iowa ahead of the Republican presidential primary caucuses on 15 January. He is seeking a second presidency despite facing 91 criminal charges for trying to subvert his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election, illegally retaining government secrets after he left the Oval Office and illicit hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, who has reported having a sexual encounter with Trump during an earlier time in his marriage to Melania Trump.The former president has also grappled with civil litigation over his business practices and a rape allegation deemed “substantially true” by a judge.Nonetheless, Trump dominates polling for the Republican presidential nomination this year.The shooting in Perry killed one sixth grader and wounded seven others. Police identified the shooter as a 17-year-old student who attended high school at the targeted campus. The teen attacker died from a self-inflicted bullet wound, police said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPolice said they found an improvised explosive device during a search of the school while responding to the shooting.Four of the wounded were students, two were faculty and one was the principal, who was reported to be in critical condition but – like the remaining victims – did not appear to be facing life-threatening injuries.The shooting occurred shortly before classes started on the first day of school after the students’ holiday break. More

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      Sarah Huckabee Sanders makes a splash in Arkansas – can she climb higher?

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      Shortly after taking office in January, Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders launched a powerful salvo in the so-called war on woke being waged by Republicans.Sanders, 41, signed an executive order targeting critical race theory, an academic field that probes how racism affects US society and laws. The move aligned with countrywide Republican opposition to the discipline.“Our job is to protect the students, and we’re going to take steps every single day to make sure we do exactly that,” Sanders said in a statement. “And that’s the reason I signed the executive order. I’m proud of the fact that we’re taking those steps and we’re going to continue to do it every single day that I’m in office.”Sanders also barred the use in state of documents of “Latinx”, which an expert described as a “gender-neutral term to describe US residents of Latin American descent”.Days after this slew of executive orders, Sanders also delivered the Republican address responding to Joe Biden’s State of the Union, during which she evoked immigrants, liberals and others held up as boogeymen by her former boss Donald Trump during his presidency.“From out-of-control inflation and violent crime to the dangerous border crisis and threat from China, Biden and the Democrats have failed you,” Sanders proclaimed, later warning: “The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left. The choice is between normal or crazy.”Sanders’s fight, however, didn’t end during her first weeks in office. Far from it, in an October executive order meant “to eliminate woke, anti-women words from state government and respect women”, Sanders prohibited phrases such as “pregnant people” and “chestfeeding” from being used in “official state government business”.That Sanders was even in a position to mount such a comprehensive assault on certain progressive initiative might have come as a shock to some political observers. Sanders had worked as Trump’s press secretary, and other acolytes of the former president fared poorly after he left the White House.But to those familiar with Arkansas politics, and to Sanders herself, her ascent did not come as a surprise. Nor did she simply luck out on account of her father, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. Rather, they say that Sanders is an immensely skilled communicator and politician with a deep understanding of speaking to voters’ wants and needs.“Mike Huckabee had been governor for much of the 1990s and early 2000s, and had been very successful,” said Andrew Dowdle, a professor of political science at the University of Arkansas. “She had spent some time working with his campaign and so, to some degree, that kind of ends up giving her roots here that other candidates might not have had.”While other states didn’t immediately jump to elect Trump associates, Sanders’s bona fides with the former president seemed to play well with the Arkansas electorate. “Statewide, Donald Trump was very popular as well, so that ended up giving her a little bit of a political boost,” Dowdle said.And though Arkansas didn’t have much in the way of far-right leanings, Sanders has been able to appeal to a wide range of Republicans. Sanders “bridges those two camps – but at the same time, she does end up really being viewed by the more populist wing as one of theirs”.Hal Bass, a professor emeritus of political science who taught Sanders’ at her alma mater, Ouachita Baptist University, said: “She was a natural – I think kind of born and bred in the sense.”Bass added that Sanders “very much grew up in the political area”. He also said she showed great promise as a student and campus leader. A double-major in political science and communications, Sanders took several classes with Bass and worked in his office.He also sponsored the student government organization in which she was active.“Ouachita is a small college, small campus, so you would see her out and about over the course of her time here,” Bass said. “She was intelligent, she was articulate, she was fun – she was very much a popular student.”When Sanders worked in his office, peers would just drop by to visit and speak with her. Her organizational skills were clear in how she ran student meetings.When it came time for class, she was a key player in class discussions and wrote excellent exams. “I wasn’t at all surprised to see her pursue a career in politics out of college,” Bass said.As for Sanders’s success despite other Trump-linked candidates’ struggles, Bass said: “I certainly think she has an identity in Arkansas that is more than simply an extension of Donald Trump.” He pointed to her father’s popularity as governor as fomenting that identity.“It gave her name identification, [and] it also gave her goodwill,” Bass said. “I think it is certainly more difficult now to … distinguish her from the Trump era than it was at the beginning of her political rise.“But in terms of developing a political identity, a political persona, I think those foundations were laid before” the 2016 presidential election won by Trump.Margaret Scranton, a political science professor at University of Arkansas at Little Rock, also pointed to how Sanders’s father taught her lots about governance.“She grew up in a governor’s mansion, and so she saw firsthand how a lot of things work – whether it’s having state troopers and security, or managing the press,” Scranton said. “Having a family who understands state and national politics gives you a set of sounding boards that the average person who did not grow up in a governor’s mansion wouldn’t have.”Scranton, whose academic interest in executive leadership focuses on communications, said: “She really is a phenomenal communicator.” Scranton pointed to Sanders’s response to Biden’s State of the Union.“If I just read the transcript, I would see a very Trumpian set of themes that look like ‘American carnage’ – whether it’s the border or immigration or fentanyl, unemployment, a landscape of disaster after disaster,” Scranton said.“Watching her deliver, her tone is more gentle. Her rhetoric is not as stark. She’s saying similar things but in a much more approachable kind of language.”The professor said: “She draws you in, her body language, her face. Occasionally she’ll kind of smile, and there will be a twinkle in her eyes.”Asked if Sanders might have higher political ambitions, Scranton said “absolutely”.Yet whether Sanders can one day be a credible candidate for the Oval Office once occupied by her ex-boss will depend on her performance in office.She endured several first-year foibles, among them outcry over her efforts to restrict public records access and a lectern that cost $19,000. It remains to be seen whether those can hurt her governorship overall.Still, Sanders’s youth and success make her a viable option for those conservatives who say they are ready for new Republican party standard bearers.“One of her themes is, ‘It’s time for a new generation of leaders in the Republican party,’” Scranton said. “There’s a huge opportunity there.” More

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      Five truths about what happened three years ago that Trump wants you to forget | Robert Reich

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      Three years ago this week, the United States Capitol was attacked by thousands of armed loyalists of Donald Trump, some intent on killing members of Congress.Roughly 140 police officers were injured in the attack. Four people died. Capitol police officer Brian D Sicknick, who participated in the response, passed away the following day. Another Capitol police officer and a Washington DC police officer who also responded to the attack have since died by suicide.January 6, 2021, will be remembered as one of the most shameful days in US history. Yet three years later, Americans remain confused and divided about the significance of what occurred.Let me offer five basic truths:The events of January 6 capped two months during which Donald Trump sought to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election.In the wake of the election, Trump repeatedly asserted that he had won and Biden had lost, without any basis in fact or law. Sixty federal courts as well as Trump’s own Departments of Justice and Homeland Security concluded that there was no evidence of substantial fraud.Trump summoned to the White House Republican lawmakers from Pennsylvania and Michigan to inquire about how they might alter the election results.He called two local canvassing board officials in Wayne county, Michigan, that state’s most populous county and one that overwhelmingly favored Biden.He phoned Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes”, according to a recording of that conversation, adding that “the people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”He alluded that Georgia’s secretary of state would face criminal prosecution if he did not do as Trump told him: “You know what they did and you’re not reporting it. You know, that’s a criminal – that’s a criminal offense. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”He pressed the acting US attorney general and deputy attorney general to declare the election fraudulent.When the deputy said the department had found no evidence of widespread fraud and warned that it had no power to change the outcome of the election, Trump replied: “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me.”Trump and his allies continued to harangue the attorney general and top justice department officials nearly every day until January 6.Trump plotted with an assistant attorney general to oust the acting attorney general and pressure lawmakers in Georgia to overturn the state’s election results. Trump ultimately decided against it after top department leaders pledged to resign en masse.Trump then incited the attack on the Capitol.For weeks before the attack, Trump urged his supporters to come to Washington for a Save America protest on January 6, when Congress was scheduled to ceremonially count the electoral votes of Joe Biden’s win.He tweeted on December 19: “Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” On December 26: “See you in Washington, DC, on January 6th. Don’t miss it. Information to follow.”On December 30: “JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!” On January 1: “The BIG Protest Rally in Washington, DC will take place at 11:00 A.M. on January 6th. Locational details to follow. StopTheSteal!”At a rally he held just before the violence began, Trump repeated his lies about how the election had been stolen. “We will never give up,” he said. “We will never concede. It will never happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it any more.”He told the crowd that Republicans were fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back, overly respectful of “bad people”.Instead, he said, Republicans are “going to have to fight much harder … We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong … We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.”He then told the crowd that “different rules” applied to them.“When you catch somebody in a fraud, you are allowed to go by very different rules. So I hope Mike [Pence] has the courage to do what he has to do, and I hope he doesn’t listen to the Rinos [Republicans in name only] and the stupid people that he’s listening to.”Then – knowing that members of the crowd were armed – he dispatched them to the Capitol as the electoral count was about to start. The attack on the Capitol came immediately after.He watched the attack on television from the White House. For three hours, he made no attempt to stop it or ask his supporters to refrain from violence.Trump’s attempted coup continues to this day.Trump still refuses to concede the 2020 election. He continues to assert it was stolen.He has presided over a network of loyalists and allies who sought to overturn the election and erode public confidence in it by mounting partisan state “audits” and escalating attacks on state election officials.A year later, on 6 January 2022, Trump hosted a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. “Remember,” he said, “the insurrection took place on November 3rd. It was the completely unarmed protest of the rigged election that took place on January 6th.” (Reminder: some were, in fact, armed.)Trump then referred to the House investigation of the attack on the Capitol: “Why isn’t the Unselect Committee of highly partisan political hacks investigating the CAUSE of the January 6th protest, which was the rigged Presidential Election of 2020?”He went on to castigate “Rinos”, presumably referring to his opponents within the party, such as Republican representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who sat on the January 6 committee. “In many ways a Rino is worse than a Radical Left Democrat,” Trump said, “because you don’t know where they are coming from and you have no idea how bad they really are for our Country.” He added: “the good news is there are fewer and fewer Rinos left as we elect strong Patriots who love America.”Trump then led a purge of congressional Republicans who had failed to support him. He endorsed a primary challenger to Cheney, who lost her re-election bid in Wyoming. Kinzinger left Congress.Trump is now running for president again, with a wide lead over other Republican candidates for the nomination.During his campaign, he has called January 6, 2021, “a beautiful day” and described those imprisoned for the insurrection as “great, great patriots” and “hostages”. At his campaign rallies he has played a recording of The Star-Spangled Banner sung by jailed rioters, accompanied by his recitation of the pledge of allegiance.On Saturday, Trump will spend the third anniversary of the January 6 attack at two rallies in Iowa.Trump has still not been held accountable.Trump’s post-riot impeachment was rejected by Republican senators, including the Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, who claimed there were better ways to hold him accountable than impeaching him.Although the House January 6 committee had no direct power to hold Trump accountable, its revelations did affect the 2022 midterms, where many Republican candidates who had supported Trump’s lies were defeated. It also laid a foundation for the justice department to indict Trump.The Republican presidential primaries have not held Trump accountable. To the contrary, the justice department’s indictment and a similar indictment in Georgia have apparently strengthened Trump’s grip on the nomination, as he uses them as evidence that he’s being persecuted.The Colorado supreme court and Maine’s secretary of state have determined that Trump should not be on their state ballots because of section 3 of the 14th amendment to the constitution, which bars someone who has previously sworn allegiance to the constitution but then engaged in an insurrection from holding public office. Trump has appealed the decisions.Trump maintains a demagogic hold over the Republican partyA belligerent and narcissistic authoritarian has gained a powerful hold over a large portion of the US, including the Republican party.According to recent polls, 70% of Republican voters believe his lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Thirty-four per cent of Republicans believe the FBI organized and encouraged the insurrection (compared with 30% of independents and 13% of Democrats).The Republican party is close to becoming a cult whose central animating idea is that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.Trump has had help, of course. Fox News hosts and social media groups have promoted and amplified his ravings for their own purposes. The vast majority of Republicans in Congress and in the states have played along.The 2024 election will be the final and probably last opportunity to hold Trump accountable for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including his attempted coup three years ago today.The 2024 election may therefore be the last chance for American democracy to function.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      ‘January 6 never ended’: alarm at Trump pardon pledge for Capitol insurrectionists

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      In the three years to the day since the insurrection at the US Capitol, great strides have been made in shoring up American democracy: hundreds of rioters have been prosecuted, legislation has been passed to bolster electoral safeguards and Donald Trump has been charged over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election.But as the country marks the third anniversary of one of its darkest days in modern times, a pall hangs in the air. It comes from Trump himself and his promise, growing steadily louder as the 2024 presidential election approaches, that if he wins he will pardon those convicted of acts of violence, obstructing Congress and seditious conspiracy on 6 January 2021.The scope of Trump’s pardon pledge is astonishing both for its quantity and quality. The former president has made clear that – should he be confirmed as the Republican presidential candidate and go on to triumph in the November election – he would contemplate pardoning every one of those prosecuted for their participation in the insurrection.Last May he reposted on his Truth Social platform the slogan: “Free all J-6 political prisoners”. A few months earlier he told a rightwing website that “we’ll be looking very, very seriously at full pardons”.A total or near-total pardon would encompass hundreds of cases. The US Department of Justice has conducted what it describes as the largest investigation in its history following the storming of the Capitol building and has so far secured almost 900 convictions either at trial or through guilty pleas.About 350 cases are still ongoing.Then there is the quality. Trump has specifically threatened to pardon Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the extremist group the Proud Boys who with 22 years in prison has received the longest sentence yet handed down for the insurrection.Tarrio was found guilty of seditious conspiracy. Though he was not present in the Capitol compound on 6 January 2021, prosecutors presented evidence that he had helped coordinate the storming of the building and on the day itself had sent encouraging messages on social media.The judge at his sentencing, Timothy Kelly, said he was sending a strong message: “It can’t happen again,” he said.In September Trump told NBC News that he would “certainly look at” pardoning Tarrio. “He and other people have been treated horribly … They’ve been persecuted.”Jamie Raskin, the Democratic congressman from Maryland, said that Trump’s pledge to pardon rioters showed that “January 6 never ended. Today is January 6.”Speaking at an event on Friday organised by End Citizens United and Let America Vote in advance of the third anniversary, Raskin, who was present at the Capitol as the riot unfolded and who went on to lead the second impeachment of Trump following the upheaval, lamented how the former president wanted to set convicted criminals free. “Trump is out there saying he’s going to pardon people who engaged in political violence, who bloodied and wounded and hospitalized 150 of our officers.”Raskin added that Trump’s threat should be taken seriously. “We better believe him. I mean, he pardoned Roger Stone, a political criminal; he pardoned Michael Flynn, his disgraced former national security adviser,” he said. “Now he wants to pardon the shock troops of January 6, so he will have this roving band of people willing to commit political violence and insurrection for him – how dangerous is that?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs NPR has noted, anyone pardoned by Trump for felonies arising from 6 January 2021 would be entitled to legally own guns once more.Trump’s statements on possible pardons are in keeping with the general stance towards the insurrection he has expressed over the past three years. He has repeatedly described the attack as a “beautiful day” and those who took part in it as “great, great patriots” who since their arrests have become “hostages”.At his rallies, he has boomed through loudspeakers a recording of jailed January 6 rioters singing The Star-Spangled Banner.There are alarming indications that for a sizable portion of the US electorate, his whitewashing of that fateful day appears to be working. A poll from the Washington Post and the University of Maryland this week found that a quarter of all Americans think the FBI was probably or definitely behind the US Capitol assault – a figure rising to more than a third of Republicans.Biden has indicated that he will make January 6, and Trump’s response to it over the past three years, a key aspect of his re-election bid. The president put the threat posed to democracy by Trump at the centre of his first major speech of the 2024 election year.Biden’s address was delivered on Friday afternoon pointedly in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. That is where George Washington and the continental army were headquartered during the American revolution.A new advert released by the Biden campaign this week replays video footage of the storming of the Capitol three years ago. Biden is heard saying: “There is something dangerous happening in America. There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy.” More