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      Trump attacks wife of New York judge after gag order reinstated by court

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      Donald Trump renewed attacks on the wife of the judge in the New York civil fraud trial of his business empire, before and almost immediately after an appellate court on Thursday reinstated a gag order against him in the case.The New York appellate court decided to reapply the gag order that barred the former US president and his lawyers from making public statements about court staff in his civil fraud trial, court records showed.Trump on Wednesday attacked Dawn Engoron, the wife of the judge, Arthur Engoron, and the judge’s clerk, on his social media platform Truth Social.He called Dawn Engoron a “Trump hating wife” and said that she and Arthur Engoron’s law clerk had “taken over control of the New York State Witch Hunt Trial aimed at me, my family, and the Republican Party”.On Thursday, the gag order against him, which had been paused two weeks ago, was reinstated, but it did not stop Trump lashing out further. The order only specifies comments about members of Judge Engoron’s staff, not his family.Trump posted screenshots of vulgar and profane anti-Trump messages on X, formerly known as Twitter, purported to have been made by Dawn Engoron – prompting her swiftly to assert that she does not have an account.“I do not have a Twitter account. This is not me. I have not posted any anti-Trump messages,” Dawn Engoron told Newsweek.One meme shows Trump digitally altered into wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and mopping floors. The caption read: “He’ll never be in the WHITE HOUSE again. He’s headed for the BIG HOUSE.”Trump then added captions to his posts, such as one that read: “This is the Judge’s Wife and Family that are putting these things out. I am not entitled to a Jury under this Statute. Can this be happening in America?”The court last month had sought to prohibit him from commenting about court staff at his trial in New York, then paused the gag order.Barely an hour after that, Trump, who is running for president again, unleashed a barrage of social media outrage at a clerk who has become the lightning rod for his rage in the case.Engoron had imposed the gag order on Trump and his lawyers in October after they repeatedly went after his court staff including his principal law clerk, Allison Greenfield, on social media, although Engoron said they were free to criticize him.The $250m case against Trump and his two adults sons over illegally inflating the value of assets of the family business empire, the Trump Organization, in a case brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, remains under way and is expected to wrap up next month. The court has found them liable but the trial, taking place without a jury, is to establish more details about the offenses committed and what the consequences should be.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump is accused of inflating his net worth by billions of dollars to dupe lenders and insurers. He has denied wrongdoing and said James is politically biased against him.Trump in October accused Engoron’s top clerk of political bias in a post on his Truth Social platform. The post left the court “inundated with hundreds of harassing and threatening phone calls, voicemails, emails, letters, and packages” from Trump supporters, Engoron said in a court filing, leading to a limited gag order.The order was paused while Trump’s lawyers appealed, arguing it infringed on his right to free speech under the US constitution.A representative of the attorney general’s office declined to comment on the order being reinstated, and Trump’s lawyers did not immediately respond to inquiries.Engoron has already fined Trump $15,000 for twice violating the order and warned that future breaches would be met with steeper penalties, including imprisonment.
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      America’s undying empire: why the decline of US power has been greatly exaggerated

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      In recent years, the idea that the United States is an empire in decline has gained considerable support, some of it from quarters that until very recently would have denied it was ever an empire at all. The New York Times, for instance, has run columns that describe a “remarkably benign” American empire that is “in retreat”, or even at risk of decline and fall.Yet the shadow American power still casts over the rest of the world is unmistakable. The US has military superiority over all other countries, control of the world’s oceans via critical sea lanes, garrisons on every continent, a network of alliances that covers much of the industrial world, the ability to render individuals to secret prisons in countries from Cuba to Thailand, preponderant influence over the global financial system, about 30% of the world’s wealth and a continental economy not dependent on international trade.To call this an empire is, if anything, to understate its range. Within the American security establishment, what it amounted to was never in doubt. US power was to be exercised around the world using the “conduits of national power”: economic centrality, military scale, sole possession of a global navy, nuclear superiority and global surveillance architecture that makes use of the dominant American share of the Earth’s orbital infrastructure.If proponents of the end of the US global order do not assert a decrease in the potency of the instruments of American power, that is because there has been no such decrease. The share of global transactions conducted in dollars has been increasing, not declining. No other state can affect political outcomes in other countries the way the US still does. The reach of the contemporary US is so great that it tends to blend into the background of daily events. In January 2019, the US demanded that Germany ban the Iranian airline Mahan Air from landing on its territory. In September 2020, it sanctioned the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court for refusing to drop investigations into American citizens. In February 2022, at US request, Japan agreed to redirect liquefied fossil gas, which is critical to Japanese industry, to Europe in the event of a conflict with Russia over Ukraine. At the height of that conflict, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, found the time to visit Algiers to negotiate the reopening of a gas pipeline to Spain via Morocco. These were all quotidian events, unremarkable daily instances of humdrum imperial activity. The practical operation of the empire remains poorly understood, not despite its ubiquity, but because of it.From this perspective, the menial adherence of Britain to the US global project is at least intelligible. Historically, American planners divided their approach to the rest of the world by region. In western Europe and Japan, American interests were usually pursued by cautious political management. In Latin America and the Middle East, constant interventions, coups and invasions were needed. In east Asia and south-east Asia there was military exertion at scale. As long as it lasted, the Soviet Union was cordoned off and contained, against the wishes of the generals in the US Strategic Air Command, who would have preferred to destroy it in a nuclear holocaust. The major US allies were on the right side of this calculus and had less reason to begrudge it.When dealing with the US, elites in countries on the periphery of the global economy still often behave as though they are dealing with the imperial centre. The US permits a variety of political systems in its subordinates. US client states include medieval monarchies in the Arab Gulf, military juntas like Abdel Fatah al-Sisi’s Egypt, personal presidential autocracies in the Philippines and Thailand, apartheid parliamentary systems like Israel and reasonably democratic systems with greater social equity and conditions than the US itself. What is required is not democracy, but reasonably close allegiance to American foreign policy goals.In Britain’s case, accordance with US foreign policy has been so consistent, over time and between political factions, that one must wonder whether Britain retains an independent foreign policy at all. The stance of Boris Johnson’s government – “stay close to the Americans” – continued uninterrupted through the collapse of the Truss government and the troubled ascent of Rishi Sunak. In Ukraine, the vision was straightforwardly that of Britain as airbase, provider of troops to the Baltic frontier, and advanced anti-tank weapons when needed. As prime minister, Sunak may have discovered the promises made by his two forebears to increase military spending to 2.5% or 3% of GDP were beyond the capacity of the Treasury, but the decision to back away from those pledges was based on finances, not a different political programme. British leaders may talk of a shifting world system, but the subordinate style in British foreign policy persists.To its credit, the contemporary US foreign policy establishment has shown some candour about its world-ordering ambitions. Much of the discussion takes place in public between a nexus of thinktank and academic institutions, such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Kennedy School at Harvard, the Wilson Center, the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Foundation. Respectable pillars of the establishment such as Michael Mandelbaum at Johns Hopkins University (formerly of the CFR) have talked of the US acting as “the world’s government”. By 2011, John Ikenberry – the central intellectual figure behind the idea that the US builds and upholds a “liberal international order” – was willing to entertain the idea of “imperial tendencies” in US actions deriving from its overwhelmingly powerful global position. Some discussion has begun about the kinds of imperial activity in which the US should engage. In 2014, Barry Posen, the director of the security studies programme at MIT, began to advocate for US “restraint” in the use of force in global affairs, if only for the ultimate goal of the empire’s reinvigoration. But whatever the merits of these contributions, hegemonists who seek American primacy and neo-cold warriors fixed on the likelihood of a confrontation with China have retained a plurality.For more than a decade, commentators on international affairs have obsessed over the supposed transition from a unipolar order, in which the US is the sole global superpower, to a multipolar or polycentric world in which the distribution of power is less lopsided. But this is easy to overstate. International affairs scholars have long predicted a return to a balance of power among the great states, as a correction to the enormous imbalance represented by the US since the late cold war, if not since the end of the second world war. One question is why it seems to have taken so long. Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth, two scholars at Dartmouth College, persuasively argued that the extent of American power had to be reckoned with in a different way: the US had attained power preponderance – a degree of global power so great that its very extent served to disincentivise other states from challenging it.To many observers, the election of Donald Trump in 2016 was another omen of American decline. Most of the US national security establishment did not welcome Trump’s rise, and four years later would cheer his departure. In parts of the Holy Roman empire, a new prince was obliged not just to attend the funeral of his predecessor but to bury the body. After Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, many Trump opponents appeared to desire the finality of interment.It was clear why Biden’s victory was seen as a form of deliverance by many in the US. But a similar view was not uncommon among the elites in the core American allies. When the election results came through, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung carried the news under the headline “Demonstrativ Staatsmännisch” (Demonstratively Statesmanly), reflecting a belief that a Biden victory represents a return to dignity and rectitude. In the Washington Post, one columnist wrote that Biden held the promise of salvation from the Trump days: “A return to a bipartisan, internationalist foreign policy that moderate Republicans and Democrats have long championed.” For the New York Times, the moment would be accompanied by “sighs of relief overseas”. In Britain there was more ambiguity: Rishi Sunak’s future adviser James Forsyth wrote that the end of Trump was a “mixed blessing”: Biden would “take the drama out of Anglo-American relations” but might punish Britain over Brexit.The Trump administration’s foreign policy was more orthodox than is generally admitted. While derided as an isolationist by the US bureaucracy, for whom the term is a stock insult, Trump was committed to the US’s “unquestioned military dominance”. Many of his appointees were old regime hands: his trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, was a Reagan-era official; the director of the CIA, Gina Haspel, ran a torture site under George W Bush; Trump’s fifth secretary of defence, Mark Esper, was formerly an adviser to Barack Obama’s defence secretary Chuck Hagel.Having pledged to “get out of foreign wars”, Trump did nothing of the sort. He pursued the global assassination programme established under Obama and prosecuted the US-backed war in Yemen. Trump did not get along with the diplomats at the state department, but his administration did very little that was out of the usual line of business.Trump was disdainful of international cooperation on terms other than those of the US, but this was nothing new, and disputes with the foreign policy intelligentsia were for the most part matters of style, not principle. In Latin America, Trump made clear through his adminstration’s “western hemisphere strategic framework” that the western hemisphere is “our neighbourhood”. In the Middle East, Trump overturned the minor accommodation the Obama administration had reached with Tehran and in doing so reverted to the traditional American strategy of strangling Iran while prevailing on the Gulf monarchies to recognise Israel. Trump criticised the costs of the US military’s presence in the Middle East, but US troop levels in the region increased during his time in office, as did military spending overall. His eccentricities were those of the modern Republican party, a reflection of the polity’s rightwing shift rather than of a barbarian anomaly. Dismantling American hegemony would have been a historic act, but Trump never considered it.The US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, which necessitated the simultaneous withdrawal of the forces of any remaining western allies, was yet another death for American empire. The clamour of the final exit partly drowned out the tawdry record of every US president in Afghanistan from Bush to Biden. That 20 years of occupation and state-building crumbled in weeks confirmed only that the Afghan government had been an artificial and corrupt dependent. Under Trump and Biden, US planners had concluded that the US could no longer afford to keep up pretences with a fragile and exposed government in Kabul.Enough of the US global order survived the withdrawal from Afghanistan that it could die again in February 2022 with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Contrary to unserious predictions before its outbreak, this was no “hybrid war” or “cyberwar”, but a traditional ground operation that proved far more difficult than the Russian leadership imagined. In the event, expectations of a dash for Kyiv causing the quick capitulation of the Ukrainian government were frustrated. The US strategy of building up Ukrainian armed forces as a specific counter to Russian armoured invasion proved effective in staving off the initial assault. The US, Britain, Poland and other allies supplied key weapons and detailed intelligence, including satellite targeting, while seeking to inflict some economic damage on Russia with sanctions. That US intelligence appeared to have had a source in the Kremlin with access to the war plans – the US told Ukraine that Russia would invade before it did, and then made that assessment public, and CIA director Bill Burns has said clearly that the war planning was conducted by Putin and a small number of advisers – also ran counter to the narrative of the empire’s demise.That Ukraine, with heavy US support has, so far at least, held the line against Russia even at the extremity of eastern Ukraine reinforces the reality of current American power on global affairs. Russia’s general strategy has, since 2008, been to reassert influence in the former Soviet states around its borders. Yet between 1999 and 2009, Nato expanded into Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania and Croatia. Perceiving this as a defeat, Russia had sought to bring it to a stop through machinations on its immediate borders. Yet in Georgia, the Caucasus, Crimea, Belarus and Kazakhstan, recent Russian operations were comparatively small-scale. Why a completely different and far more hubristic strategy was adopted for Ukraine remains poorly understood. Part of the story must lie in the two strategic agreements signed between the US and Ukraine between September and November 2021. Yet the US, Britain and Nato itself had studiously kept to ambiguous ground about future Ukrainian accession. Putin’s decision to invade may have been taken after the failure of diplomatic talks between the US and Russia in January 2022. In any case, the invasion itself was a terrible crime and a grave gamble. It has been mirrored in the strategy of the US and its allies, which since April 2022 has shifted from a simple frustration of the initial invasion to the grander ambition of using the war to achieve strategic attrition of Russia.In the Middle East, Israel’s brutal retributive attack on Gaza, the mirror of the orgiastic violence carried out by Hamas fighters on 7 October, only reinforces this picture. Over the past two months, the influence of US global power has been plain to see. Thanks to US protection, Israel has been free to carry out what in all likelihood amount to large-scale war crimes while largely disregarding any threat from regional states that might otherwise have sought to limit its attacks on Gaza. The US has supplied Israel (probably with some help from Britain’s military base at Akrotiri in Cyprus) throughout the campaign and has moved aircraft carrier groups and nuclear armed submarines to the region to make the point abundantly clear. Britain has followed in lockstep with its more modest capabilities. The US and its allies have effectively rendered action at the UN impossible. American imperial power is all too evident in the ruins of Gaza city.In large part, talk of the end of American dominance was a reaction to the global financial crisis and China’s industrial rise. For prominent western strategic planners like Elbridge Colby, one of the authors of the 2018 US National Defense Strategy, conflicts in Afghanistan, the Middle East and even Ukraine had come to be seen as distractions from the China threat, which represents the only plausible challenge to American global dominance. In its 2022 National Security Strategy, the Biden administration declared that the 2020s were to be a decisive decade. Past military adventures in the Middle East were criticised as extravagances and distractions in the era of competition with China. “We do not seek conflict or a new cold war,” the NSS said, but “we must proactively shape the international order in line with our interests and values”. In order to prevail in competition with China, the US had to enhance its industrial capacity by “investing in our people”. The present moment was said to represent “a consequential new period of American foreign policy that will demand more of the US in the Indo-Pacific than has been asked of us since the second world war.”What should be made of the fact that it is Biden, not Trump, who has overseen a major escalation of tension with Russia and an escalation in the trade war with China? At the time, the one ostensibly distinct part of the Trump programme appeared to be the trade war. Trump was seen as standing for an insular protectionist turn, but the same basic policies have been continued under Biden through export controls on advanced microchips. Still, Biden has proved to be just as uninterested in limiting capital flows from surplus countries like Germany and China into US treasuries, which arguably have negative effects on industrial workers in the US, but certainly inflate the prices of assets owned by the rich and underpin US power over the international financial system.The US political system as a whole appears, at present, to be opting for China containment. President Biden said on the campaign trail that under him US strategy would be to “pressure, isolate and punish” China. Encouraged by the US, Japan, like Britain, is engaged in a major arms buildup. American politicians make showy visits to Taipei. The US has threatened China with nuclear weapons in the past on the basis that it does not have a comparable nuclear arsenal. There is some debate over whether China’s current nuclear-armed submarines are able to avoid tracking by the US. China is also working to make its intercontinental ballistic missiles more secure. It is possible that soon they will together constitute a completely reliable second-strike capability against the US. The most dangerous moment of the cold war was in the early 1960s, when an aggressive and overwhelmingly dominant nuclear power saw itself in competition with an adversary that didn’t yet have equivalent nuclear forces. The US and China may be approaching a similar point.Earlier this month, Biden and Xi Jinping met in San Francisco in an attempt to smooth over relations that had become dangerously unstable. In November 2022, when Biden met Xi at the G20 in Indonesia, both had appeared to strike a conciliatory tone. Biden said the two had “a responsibility to show that China and the US can manage our differences” and “prevent competition from becoming conflict”. But the 2022 decision to ban Chinese access to the semiconductor trade was a straightforward escalation. Trump and Biden responded to their respective moments according to a general strategy that is longer-lived than either of them. US foreign policy has been quite stable for 30 years: a mode best characterised as reactive management of the world empire, with the aim of pre-empting the emergence of any potential challengers to its primacy.For all the talk of multipolar worlds, other poles of world power have been hard to find. Russia has hardly proved itself a global power in its botched invasion of Ukraine. Fantasies of European strategic autonomy have shown themselves insubstantial. India’s economic growth has been notable but it projects very little influence away from the subcontinent. The resurgent nationalisms in Turkey and Iran hardly qualify them as poles of global power, and the former still serves as a staging ground for American nuclear weapons. As the former Tsinghua professor Sun Zhe observed, developing countries are not cooperatively “rising together” to “challenge the current order” – the likes of Brazil and South Africa have, if anything, been declining in terms of economic heft. So where is the multiplicity in world politics?Much of the predicted systemic change consists of the emergence of Sino-American competition. But “multipolarity” is a poor description for this development. The strategic balance so far remains hugely in favour of the US. China does not militarily threaten the US. Chinese naval power is routinely exaggerated; its navy is not predicted to rival the US Pacific fleet for another generation, and it still lacks “quiet” nuclear-powered submarines that resist sonar detection. It is not clear that China is capable of mounting an invasion even of Taiwan, and there are good reasons to think China’s leadership knows this. For its part, China has not even made a serious effort to escape the dominance of the dollar in its trade with the rest of the world. It is the US that asserts a policy of isolation and punishment of China, not vice versa. So long as the US is maintaining a “defense perimeter” in the East and South China Seas that extends to a few kilometres from mainland China, it is not dealing with a peer, it is threatening a recalcitrant.Assertions of the inevitability of American imperial decline over the long term are fair enough; in their most abstract form, and on a long enough timescale, they must eventually turn out to be true. And the US position does look shakier than it has for decades. But what is striking is how seldom this system that is said to be in decline is given even a cursory description, especially in the subordinate parts of the Anglosphere.Why the reticence to explain the nature of American power? And why ignore that so much of contemporary US grand strategy is oriented precisely to prevent its dissolution? As the 2022 National Security Strategy said, “prophecies of American decline have repeatedly been disproven in the past”. This time the effort may be in vain. The risks of a Sino-American confrontation and the Russo-American nuclear standoff implied in the war in Ukraine are considerable. Whatever is to come, the fact remains that global power at present remains unipolar. The task for those not committed to its continuation is to understand it and, wherever possible, to challenge its assumptions.Adapted from Someone Else’s Empire: British Illusions and American Hegemony by Tom Stevenson, published by Verso and available at guardianbookshop.com The best stories take time. The Guardian Long Read magazine compiles the finest longform journalism the Guardian has to offer: from politics to technology, food to cosmology, literature to sex, there is something for everyone. Beautifully bound, this 100-page special edition is available to order from the Guardian bookshop and is on sale at selected WH Smith Travel stores. More

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      Change is coming. The question is: what kind of change will it be? | Bernie Sanders

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      We are living in the most difficult moment in modern history. If you feel anxious and overwhelmed about what’s going on, you’re not alone. The extraordinarily challenges we face are very real, but we can never let them become excuses for checking out of the political struggles that address these crises and will define our future.Our nation and, indeed our planet, are at a critical juncture. It is imperative that we recognize what we are up against, and what we must do to move our politics toward justice and human decency. And we can start by acknowledging that the American people have been through a lot, and that their confidence in politics and in government has been shaken.The Covid pandemic, the worst public health crisis in 100 years, took over a million lives in our country, and millions more became ill. The pandemic created the most painful economic downturn since the Great Depression, disrupted the education of our young people, increased isolation, anxiety and mental illness.The climate crisis is ravaging the planet. The last eight years have been the hottest on record and floods, droughts, forest fires and extreme weather disturbances have brought death and destruction to almost every part of the globe. Scientists tell us that unless there is a major reduction in carbon emissions over the next several decades, the planet will become increasingly uninhabitable.Amid unprecedented income and wealth inequality, with three people owning more wealth than the bottom half of American society, a handful of oligarchs control the economic and political life of our nation for their own greedy ends.With a dysfunctional government, and growing economic anxiety for millions of Americans, 60% of whom live paycheck to paycheck, faith that our flawed democracy can respond to the needs of working families is ebbing, and more and more Americans believe that authoritarianism might be the best way forward.Artificial intelligence is exploding. There are deep concerns not only that this new technology will displace millions of workers but about the real possibility that human beings could actually lose control over the future of society.The US healthcare system is broken beyond repair. Despite spending twice as much per capita as any other country, 85 million are uninsured or underinsured, our life expectancy is declining and we have nowhere enough doctors, nurses, dentists or mental health practitioners.Our educational system is in crisis. Childcare is too often unaffordable and unavailable, many of our public schools are unable to attract the quality teachers they need, and 45 million Americans struggle with student debt. In 1990, the US led the world in the percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds who had college degrees. Today, in a competitive global economy, we are in 15th place.And, oh yes, Donald Trump, who is becoming more rightwing and extremist every day, is leading many of the presidential polls. In a recent speech, using language that echoes Adolf Hitler, Trump stated: “We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” He also had strong praise for Hungary’s authoritarian leader, Viktor Orbán. In an interview, Trump said migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country”, promising in another speech that he would round up undocumented people on a vast scale, detain them in sprawling camps, and deport millions of people per year.Frighteningly, the growth of rightwing extremism is not just growing in the United States.As the Washington Post reports, “far-right parties have taken power in Italy, extended their rule in Hungary, earned a coalition role in Finland, become de facto government partners in Sweden, entered parliament in Greece and made striking gains in regional elections in Austria and Germany”. Within the past few weeks, a far-right candidate was elected president of Argentina and a rightwing extremist party won the most seats in the election in Holland.That’s the bad news. The very bad news. But there’s also good news.The good news is that all across the country workers and their unions are fighting back against corporate greed. We are seeing more union organizing and successful strikes than we have seen in decades. Whether it’s the Teamsters at UPS, the UAW at the big three automakers, the Screen Actors Guild (Sag) at the large media production companies, Starbucks workers, graduate students on college campuses, or nurses and doctors at hospitals, working people are making it clear that they are sick and tired of being ripped off and exploited. They are no longer sitting back and allowing large corporations to make record breaking profits while they fall further and further behind. They will no longer accept CEOs making nearly 350 times more than the average worker.The good news is that more and more Americans are making the connections between the reality of their lives and the corrupt and destructive nature of our uber-capitalist system which prizes greed and profiteering above any other human value.Whether they are Democrats, Republicans or independents, Americans want change – real change.They are disgusted by a political system which allows the wealthiest people in this country, through their Super Pacs, to buy elections. They want structural campaign finance reform based on the principle of one person, one vote.They are outraged by billionaires paying a lower effective tax rate than they do because of massive tax loopholes. They want real tax reform which demands that the wealthy and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes.They are frightened for the future of this planet when they see oil companies make record-breaking profits as the carbon emissions they produce destroy the planet.They are offended to see ten giant pharmaceutical companies making over $110bn in profits last year, while they cannot afford the outrageous price of prescription drugs they need to stay alive.They are shocked as they see Wall Street investment firms buy up affordable housing, gentrify neighborhoods, while they are unable afford to afford the outrageous rents being charged by their unaccountable Wall Street landlords.They are humiliated by having to stay on the phone for an hour, arguing with an airline company machine about a plane reservation, while the industry makes huge profits.The American people today are angry. They are anxious about their present reality and worried about the future that awaits their kids. They know that the status quo is not working and that, in many respects, the system in breaking down.Change is coming. The question is: what kind of change will it be? Will it be a Trumpian, authoritarian type change that exploits that anger and turns it against minorities and immigrants, blaming them for the crises we are experiencing? Or will it be a change that revitalizes American democracy, unites and empowers working people of all backgrounds and has the courage to take on a corrupt ruling class whose greed is causing irreparable destruction in our country and around the world?There is no question but that the challenges we face today are enormous – economic, political and environmental. There is no easy path forward when we take on the oligarchs and the most powerful entities in the world.But, in the midst of all that, here is the simple truth. If we stand together in our common humanity – Black, white, Latino, Asian American, Native American, gay and straight, people of all religions, there are enormous opportunities in front of us to create a better life for all. We can guarantee healthcare to every man, woman and child as a human right. We can create millions of good paying jobs transforming our energy system. We can create the best educational system in the world. We can use artificial intelligence to shorten our work-week and improve our lives. We can create a society free of bigotry.But here is the other simple truth. None of that happens if we are not prepared to stand up and fight together against the forces that work so hard to divide and conquer us. This is a moment in history that cannot be ignored. This is a struggle that cannot be sat out. The future of the planet is at stake, democracy is at stake, human decency is at stake.Let’s go forward together and win.
      Bernie Sanders is a US senator, and chairman of the Senate health, education, labor and pensions committee. He represents the state of Vermont, and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress More

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      Biden hails job creation and mocks Lauren Boebert for dismissing investment as ‘massive failure’ – US politics live

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      Joe Biden just took the stage in Pueblo, Colorado, where he’s speaking about how his administration has helped businesses like CS Wind, a turbine manufacturer, shift jobs back to the United States.“People seeing this on television may not be certain they used to make all their wind towers abroad,” the president said. “Then they decided to make them here in America as well. Today the CS Wing factory in Colorado is the largest wind turbine manufacturer in the entire world … has over 170 employees. As I said for a long time when I think climate, I mean this sincerely, I think jobs, jobs.”Hello, US politics live blog readers, it’s been a lively day – and week so far – for news and there will be more action on Thursday as the House is due to vote on whether to expel New York Republican congressman George Santos. Do join us again then but, for now, this blog is closing. The Guardian’s global live blog on the war between Israel and Hamas continues, meanwhile, and you can follow it here.How the day went:
      Joe Biden attacked rightwing Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert as one of the “leaders of this extreme Maga movement”, upon visiting her district in Colorado to promote a factory there building equipment for offshore wind energy plants.
      The president spoke in Pueblo about how his administration has helped businesses like CS Wind, a turbine manufacturer, shift jobs back to the United States.
      Marjorie Taylor Greene, a leader of the far-right GOP bloc in the House, proposed once again that Congress should impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, homeland security secretary, for his handling of the US-Mexico border and migration.
      Republican House speaker Mike Johnson said the chamber will vote on whether to expel George Santos on Thursday, and he is leaving it up to lawmakers to decide whether the New York congressman should be removed from office for embellishing his résumé and allegedly breaking federal law.
      George Santos struck a defiant tone after House Democrats introduced a motion on Tuesday to expel him from Congress, insisting in a speech that he would not resign and saying to reporters “I don’t care” about the campaign against him.
      Joe Biden said that raising $440bn over 10 years through his billionaire’s tax policy would strengthen programs such as social security and Medicare.“Just by paying 25% instead of 8%. Imagine what we could do if we made billionaires pay their taxes like everyone else,” he said, during his speech in Colorado moments ago.“We could strengthen the social security and Medicare systems, instead of cutting them like … Trump and Boebert want to do,” he said.He said the extra revenue would help with government subsidies for childcare and senior care costs.“This is not about help for poor folks, this is about smart economics,” he said. And such assistance allowed more carers to go out to work, generating economic growth, he said.The president closed out his speech without any further digs at his Republican thorns, and has now departed the stage.Joe Biden is touting his billionaire’s minimum tax policy and decrying that rightwing congresswoman Lauren Boebert, whose district he’s visiting in Colorado, and her ilk only want to cut taxes for the richest.He said that prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, there were 750 billionaires in the US and “now there are 1,000” and typically, the president said, they pay income tax at 8%.“Raise your hands if you pay more than 8%” Biden told the crowd, as a sea of hands were raised.“That’s less than firefighters and teachers pay,” he said.Biden said he wants a 25% tax for billionaires, projecting that would raise $440bn in revenue for the US over a decade.He also complained about giant corporations paying no taxes on huge profits. “If anyone thinks the tax code is fair, raise your hand,” he said.As he promoted the Inflation Reduction Act and other policies he said are helping communities across the country, Joe Biden singled out for criticsm Lauren Boebert, the rightwing congresswoman who represents the district containing Pueblo, Colorado, where he’s speaking.“The historic investments we’re celebrating today is in Congresswoman Boebert’s district,” the president said.“She’s one of the leaders of this extreme Maga movement. She, along with every single Republican colleague, voted against the law that made these investments in jobs possible. That’s not hyperbole. It’s a fact. And then she voted to repeal key parts of this loan. And she called this law, ‘a massive failure’. You all know you’re part of a massive failure?”He then took credit for companies in Colorado hiring thanks to his administration, and asked the audience: “None of that sounds like a massive failure to me. How about you?”Joe Biden just took the stage in Pueblo, Colorado, where he’s speaking about how his administration has helped businesses like CS Wind, a turbine manufacturer, shift jobs back to the United States.“People seeing this on television may not be certain they used to make all their wind towers abroad,” the president said. “Then they decided to make them here in America as well. Today the CS Wing factory in Colorado is the largest wind turbine manufacturer in the entire world … has over 170 employees. As I said for a long time when I think climate, I mean this sincerely, I think jobs, jobs.”Speaking of international engagements, US prosecutors have accused an agent of India’s government of directing an attempted assassination of a Sikh activist on US soil. A similar accusation by Canada has led to a diplomatic spat with New Delhi, and the indictment from US prosecutors could complicate the Biden administration’s resolve to work with Narendra Modi’s government to build alliances against China. The Guardian’s Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Leyland Cecco are on the story:US prosecutors have accused an agent of the Indian government of directing the attempted assassination of an American citizen on US soil, according to a superseding indictment released by the Department of Justice, which revealed new details about India’s alleged targeting of Sikh activists around the world.The indictment made public on Wednesday also provided new evidence that the Indian agent – who is not named – ordered the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a prominent Sikh activist who was shot dead outside a Sikh temple in British Columbia in June.The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, announced in September that there were “credible allegations” that agents of the Indian government had carried out the assassination of Nijjar. The allegations were denied by India, which called the claim “absurd” and politically motivated.The US indictment now appears to confirm, however, evidence of a global plot allegedly orchestrated in India to silence and kill vocal critics of the Indian government who support the creation of an independent Sikh state.Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the target of the alleged assassination plot, told the Guardian that the indictment revealed a “blatant case of India’s transnational terrorism” – adding that the attempt on his life had only galvanized his efforts to pursue a symbolic referendum on an independent Sikh homeland, known as Khalistan.“If death is the cost for running the Khalistan referendum, I am willing to pay that price,” he said in a statement. “First by assassinating Nijjar in Canada and then attempting to assassinate me on US soil, India under [prime minister Narendra Modi] has extended to the foreign soils its policy of violently crushing the Sikhs movement for right to self-determination.”The White House has meanwhile confirmed that Kamala Harris will travel to Dubai on 1 and 2 December to represent the United States at the Cop28 conference on fighting climate change.“Throughout her engagements, the vice-president will underscore the Biden-Harris Administration’s success in delivering on the most ambitious climate agenda in history, both at home and abroad. The vice-president will be joined by dozens of senior US officials representing more than 20 US departments and agencies,” Harris’s press secretary Kirsten Allen said in a statement.Biden was expected to go, but canceled his travel plans earlier this week:The man who nearly booted Lauren Boebert from office last year – and could succeed next year – is Adam Frisch, a Democrat and former council member in resort town Aspen. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly spoke to him last October about why he thinks voters in his western Colorado district are ready for change:Adam Frisch is in his second congressional campaign, crossing and re-crossing Colorado’s third US House district, a space bigger than Pennsylvania. Thirteen months out from election day, time is one thing he does not lack. But Frisch has a unique way of counting it anyway: before and after Beetlejuice.“Before Beetlejuice,” the Democrat says, of polling in his Republican-leaning district, “we were up by two points, Trump was up five.”After Beetlejuice, the thinking goes, Frisch’s position may well improve further.Frisch, 56 and a former banker who now lives in Aspen, is the Democratic candidate to challenge Lauren Boebert next year. Boebert, a former restaurant owner and proud grandmother at 36, is the far-right Republican who won the seat in 2020 and has proven relentlessly controversial since – so much so that last year, even in a conservative district, she survived Frisch’s first challenge by the skin of her teeth.Boebert won after a recount, by just 546 votes, then went back to Washington DC to stoke the usual fires.But last month a bigger blaze flared up, when the congresswoman was shown to have behaved outrageously during a performance of the musical Beetlejuice in Denver.On security footage, Boebert sang and danced, took selfies, vaped and even appeared to grope her date as he fondled her in return. Both were ejected. For once, Boebert voiced something close to contrition. But to Frisch, the episode was just further proof that Boebert is there to be beaten.“We’re resonating with a lot of people,” he said, by phone, during another day of meeting and greeting.“In February of 22, when I first launched, there were two themes I started to work on. The Republicans laughed at me, the Democrats laughed at me, the media and the donor class laughed. But the themes are the people want the circus to stop, and they want someone to focus on the district.“And every day since then, [Boebert] has just been one of the national leaders of the circus. And obviously, it’s just gotten worse and worse … it’s just a mess and people are sick and tired.”Joe Biden arrived in Colorado yesterday, and spoke at a campaign reception where he made a point to criticize Lauren Boebert, the far-right Republican whose district he is visiting today.The president’s itinerary will bring him to a wind turbine factory and see him tout his administration’s renewable energy investments, but its also a direct confrontation to Boebert, who barely won re-election in her district last year despite its Republican tilt, and is expected to face a tough race next year.“With the progress we’ve made, we haven’t gotten a whole lot of help from the other side. Tomorrow, we’re going to be in … Congresswoman Lauren Boebert’s district … one of the leaders of the extreme right, the Maga movement,” Biden told guests at the fundraiser.He continued:
      We’re going to a wind energy company that plans to invest an additional $200m to expand the facility in Colorado, double its production, add 850 new jobs – good-paying jobs, the governor will tell you. But the congresswoman, along with every single one of her Republican colleagues, voted against the law I signed that made these investments possible. And then she vowed to repeal it. And she voted to repeal it, and she called it a massive failure. It’s in her district. She called it a massive failure.
      And she went on and voted against the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. She called it garbage. It’s building bridges, roads, Internet, et cetera. And she called it a scam. I find it pretty unbelievable.
      Joe Biden will promote his economic and clean energy policies this afternoon in Colorado, while taking on rightwing Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert, a close ally of former president Donald Trump, Reuters reports.Biden, who blamed Trump at a fundraising event in Denver on Tuesday for taking away US women’s right to an abortion, will visit a wind tower manufacturer in Pueblo, part of Boebert’s congressional district.Biden has presided over a stronger-than-expected US economy and big federal investments in infrastructure and clean energy, but the clean energy industry is now struggling with high costs.Facing weak opinion polls, Biden has turned in his re-election campaign to more directly taking on Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, as unfit for the presidency and a threat to American democracy.Boebert, whom the White House calls a “self-described Maga Republican”, referencing Trump’s Make America Great Again agenda, is expected to become a default target for those attacks today.Boebert faces a tough re-election battle herself against Democrat Adam Frisch, who has out-raised her in donations.During his visit, Biden will speak about clean energy investments and “highlight how self-described Maga Republicans like Representative Lauren Boebert are threatening those investments, jobs, and opportunities,” the White House said.Biden set a goal of deploying 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind along US coastlines this decade to fight climate change.That may be unattainable due to soaring costs and supply chain delays, Reuters reported in September.Former president Donald Trump’s lawyers have suggested their strategy in his election interference case in Washington involves distancing him from the horde of US Capitol rioters, whom he has embraced on the campaign trail, the Associated Press reports.Special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal investigation team has signaled it will make the case Trump is responsible for the chaos that unfolded on January 6, 2021, and point to the Republican ex-president’s continued support of the rioters, in order to help establish his criminal intent.The competing arguments highlight the extent to which the insurrection will inevitably form the backdrop in a landmark trial set to begin March 4 in a courthouse just blocks from the Capitol.Trump’s defense attorneys failed in an effort to strike references to that day’s violence from the indictment but have made clear their strategy involves distancing the former president from the horde of rioters, whom they describe as “independent actors at the Capitol”.While Trump’s glorification of January 6 defendants, who have been arrested and charged by the hundreds, may boost him politically as he vies to retake the White House in 2024, his lawyers’ approach lays bare a concern that arguments linking him to the rioters could harm him in front of a jury.Much may depend as well on the evidence permitted by federal judge Tanya Chutkan.It’s impeachment season among House Republicans. Their leadership is pressing forward with their campaign to impeach Joe Biden for alleged corruption, while rightwing lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene has proposed a resolution to impeach homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, though the chamber turned down a similar attempt just a few weeks ago. The clock is also ticking down for George Santos, the New York congressman and admitted fabulist. House speaker Mike Johnson said the chamber will vote tomorrow on expelling him, and reports indicate the support is there to kick him out of office.Here’s what else is going on today:
      House Democrats say the GOP is doing Donald Trump’s bidding with its impeachment inquiry into Biden.
      Mourners gathered in Plains, Georgia for the funeral of former first Rosalynn Carter. Her husband Jimmy Carter was in attendance.
      Mike Pence’s son played a role in convincing his father to stand up to Trump on January 6, according to a report.
      In Georgia, mourners are attending the funeral of former first lady Rosalynn Carter, including her husband Jimmy Carter:Joe and Jill Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Melania Trump and Michelle Obama were among the dignitaries who traveled to Atlanta yesterday for a tribute to Carter, a noted advocate for mental health and the eradication of diseases worldwide:On the House floor, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a leader of the far-right GOP bloc, again proposed impeaching Alejandro Mayorkas for his handling of security at the southern border and the inflow of migrants into the United States:Republicans have made Mayorkas into the public face of what they call the “Biden Border Crisis”, and earlier this year were mulling impeaching the secretary. However, impeachments of cabinet secretaries are exceedingly rare – the last time one happened was 1876 – and party leaders appear to be focusing instead on their slow-moving impeachment inquiry of Biden for alleged and thus far unproved corruption.Last month, a small group of Republicans joined with Democrats to halt an earlier attempt by Greene to impeach Mayorkas, who would likely be acquitted in the Democratic-controlled Senate anyway. Tom McClintock, one of the eight GOP lawmakers who opposed the attempt, said he did so because it could backfire on the party:
      If Greene is successful in redefining impeachment, then the next time Democrats have the majority, we can expect this new definition to be turned against the conservatives on the Supreme Court and any future Republican administration. And there will be nobody to stop them, because Republicans will have signed off on this new and unconstitutional abuse of power.
      One of the reasons Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election failed was because of the resistance of Mike Pence, his vice-president who recently abandoned his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. As the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports, Pence’s son played a role in convincing his father to say no to Trump:Mike Pence reportedly decided to skip the congressional certification process for Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, because to preside over it as required by the constitution would be “too hurtful” to his “friend”, Donald Trump. He was then shamed into standing up to Trump by his son, a US marine.“Dad, you took the same oath I took,” the then vice-president’s son Michael Pence said, according to ABC News, adding that it was “an oath to support and defend the constitution”.Ultimately, Pence did supervise certification, even as it was delayed by the deadly January 6 attack on Congress.Trump incited the attack by telling supporters to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell” in his cause – the lie that Biden’s win was the result of electoral fraud.Some chanted for Pence to be hanged. Nine deaths have been linked to the riot, more than a thousand arrests made and hundreds of convictions secured.Throughout the investigation of January 6 by a House committee, Pence was praised for standing up to Trump and fulfilling his constitutional duty. He later released a memoir, So Help Me God, about his time as Trump’s No 2.But according to ABC, which on Tuesday cited sources familiar with Pence’s testimony to the special counsel Jack Smith, investigating Trump’s election subversion, Pence offered details not included in his book, including how he had to be prodded into doing his duty.Before he was House speaker, Mike Johnson was the architect of a brief signed by dozens of Republican lawmakers that supported Donald Trump’s failed attempt to convince the courts to disrupt Joe Biden’s election win. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports that in her new book, Liz Cheney, the Wyoming congresswoman who lost her seat last year in large part due to opposing the former president, accuses Johnson of duping his allies about the effort:In a new book, the anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney accuses the US House speaker, Mike Johnson, of dishonesty over both the authorship of a supreme court brief in support of Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 election and the document’s contents, saying Johnson duped his party with a “bait and switch”.“As I read the amicus brief – which was poorly written – it became clear Mike was being less than honest,” Cheney writes. “He was playing bait and switch, assuring members that the brief made no claims about specific allegations of [electoral] fraud when, in fact, it was full of such claims.”Cheney also says Johnson was neither the author of the brief nor a “constitutional law expert”, as he was “telling colleagues he was”. Pro-Trump lawyers actually wrote the document, Cheney writes.As Trump’s attempts to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden progressed towards the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, Cheney was a House Republican leader. Turning against Trump, she sat on the House January 6 committee and was ostracised by her party, losing her Wyoming seat last year. More

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      Pence’s son reportedly convinced him to stand up to Trump over January 6

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      Mike Pence reportedly decided to skip the congressional certification process for Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, because to preside over it as required by the constitution would be “too hurtful” to his “friend”, Donald Trump. He was then shamed into standing up to Trump by his son, a US marine.“Dad, you took the same oath I took,” the then vice-president’s son Michael Pence said, according to ABC News, adding that it was “an oath to support and defend the constitution”.Ultimately, Pence did supervise certification, even as it was delayed by the deadly January 6 attack on Congress.Trump incited the attack by telling supporters to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell” in his cause – the lie that Biden’s win was the result of electoral fraud.Some chanted for Pence to be hanged. Nine deaths have been linked to the riot, more than a thousand arrests made and hundreds of convictions secured.Throughout the investigation of January 6 by a House committee, Pence was praised for standing up to Trump and fulfilling his constitutional duty. He later released a memoir, So Help Me God, about his time as Trump’s No 2.But according to ABC, which on Tuesday cited sources familiar with Pence’s testimony to the special counsel Jack Smith, investigating Trump’s election subversion, Pence offered details not included in his book, including how he had to be prodded into doing his duty.“Not feeling like I should attend electoral count,” Pence reportedly wrote in contemporaneous notes in late December 2020, as Trump pressured him to help overturn Biden’s win.“Too many questions, too many doubts, too hurtful to my friend. Therefore I’m not going to participate in certification of election.”ABC reported that Pence told investigators, “Then, sitting across the table from his son, a [US] marine, while on vacation in Colorado, his son said to him, ‘Dad, you took the same oath I took’ – it was ‘an oath to support and defend the constitution’.“That’s when Pence decided he would be at the Capitol on 6 January after all.”Trump now faces four federal criminal counts regarding election subversion. He also faces 13 counts relating to election subversion in Georgia, 40 from Smith regarding his retention of classified information, and 34 in New York regarding hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels. He also faces civil threats, including a defamation suit arising from a rape allegation a judge said was “substantially true”.Nonetheless, Trump is the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination next year.Pence also described to investigators an Oval Office meeting on 21 December 2020, “as the campaign’s legal challenges across the country were failing but Trump was continuing to claim the election was stolen and had begun urging supporters to gather in Washington DC for a ‘big protest’ on 6 January”, per ABC.Trump reportedly asked what he should do. Pence, according to ABC, said he “should simply accept the result … should take a bow”, should “travel the country to thank supporters … and then run again if you want”.“And I’ll never forget, he pointed at me … as if to say, ‘That’s worth thinking about.’ And he walked” away.Nearly three years on, Trump has not walked away. But Pence has. Last month, long before the first vote of a primary in which he and others grappled with how to oppose Trump without alienating his supporters, Pence dropped out of the Republican race. More

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      Students for Trump founder arrested, accused of striking girlfriend with gun

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      The co-founder of Students for Trump, a supporters group formed ahead of the 2016 election, was arrested last week on domestic violence charges in North Carolina, court documents show.Ryan Fournier, 27, was detained last Tuesday and accused of assaulting a woman, later identified as his girlfriend, by “grabbing her right arm and striking her in the forehead” with a handgun, according to an order issued by a magistrate in Johnston county.Fournier – who still leads the Trump supporters’ group – also runs Radical Alert, which says it “exposes” radicals’ hate that has “taken over American college campuses”, according to its Twitter bio, and counts 1 million followers.Ahead of the 2016 election, Fournier led a national effort to get out the vote for Donald Trump while still a student at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina.He had co-founded the group via a Twitter account in 2015 before being asked by the Trump campaign to create a larger coalition, at which point he asked a friend, John Lambert, to help.In 2021, Lambert was arrested and later sentenced to 13 months in prison for posing as a lawyer in a fraud scheme.At one point, the group had more than 250 chapters and 5,000 volunteers nationwide, according to a count on a now-archived website.“People are just so motivated. We’ve motivated a lot of students to get out there and be a part of this election, this campaign cycle, since it’s so historic,” Fournier told the Raleigh News & Observer two months before Trump’s election win.He said he had spoken directly to Trump on “three or maybe four occasions”, describing him as a “great guy, very humble”.Fournier was charged with domestic assault on a female and assault with a deadly weapon. The unidentified victim suffered a minor injury, according to police. Fournier was released on a $2,500 bond and is scheduled to appear in court on 18 December. More

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      ‘Bait and switch’: Liz Cheney book tears into Mike Johnson over pro-Trump January 6 brief

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      In a new book, the anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney accuses the US House speaker, Mike Johnson, of dishonesty over both the authorship of a supreme court brief in support of Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 election and the document’s contents, saying Johnson duped his party with a “bait and switch”.“As I read the amicus brief – which was poorly written – it became clear Mike was being less than honest,” Cheney writes. “He was playing bait and switch, assuring members that the brief made no claims about specific allegations of [electoral] fraud when, in fact, it was full of such claims.”Cheney also says Johnson was neither the author of the brief nor a “constitutional law expert”, as he was “telling colleagues he was”. Pro-Trump lawyers actually wrote the document, Cheney writes.As Trump’s attempts to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden progressed towards the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, Cheney was a House Republican leader. Turning against Trump, she sat on the House January 6 committee and was ostracised by her party, losing her Wyoming seat last year.Her book, Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Johnson became speaker last month, after McCarthy was ejected by the Trumpist far right, the first House speaker ever removed by his own party.On Tuesday, CNN ran excerpts from Cheney’s book, quoting her view that Johnson “appeared especially susceptible to flattery from Trump and aspired to being anywhere in Trump’s orbit”.CNN also reported that Cheney writes: “When I confronted him with the flaws in his legal arguments, Johnson would often concede, or say something to the effect of, ‘We just need to do this one last thing for Trump.’”But Cheney’s portrait of Johnson’s manoeuvres is more comprehensive and arguably considerably more damning.The case in which the amicus brief was filed saw Republican states led by Texas attempt to persuade the supreme court to side with Trump over his electoral fraud lies.It did not. As Cheney points out, even the two most rightwing justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who wanted to hear the case, said they would not have sided with the complainants.Cheney describes how Johnson, then Republican study committee chair, emailed GOP members on 9 December 2020 to say Trump had “specifically” asked him to request all Republicans in Congress “join on to our brief”.Johnson, Cheney says, insisted he was not trying to pressure people and simply wanted to show support for Trump, by “affirm[ing] for the court (and our constituents back home) our serious concerns with the integrity of our electoral system” and seeking “careful, timely review”.“Mike was seriously misleading our members,” Cheney writes. “The brief did assert as facts known to the amici many allegations of fraud and serious wrongdoing by officials in multiple states.”Johnson, she says, then told Republicans that 105 House members had expressed interest. “Not one of them had seen the brief,” Cheney writes. She also says he added “a new inaccurate claim”, that state officials had been “clearly shown” to have violated the constitution.“But virtually all those claims had already been heard by the courts and decided against Trump.”Calling the brief “poorly written”, Cheney says she doubted Johnson’s honesty and asked him who wrote it, as “to assert facts in a federal court without personal knowledge” would “present ethical questions for anyone who is a member of the bar”.The general counsel to McCarthy, then Republican minority leader, told Cheney that McCarthy would not sign the brief, while McCarthy’s chief of staff also called it “a bait and switch”. McCarthy told her he would not sign on. When the brief was filed, McCarthy had not signed it. But “less than 24 hours later, a revised version … bore the names of 20 additional members. Among them was Kevin McCarthy.“Mike Johnson blamed a ‘clerical error’ … [which] was also the rationale given to the supreme court for the revised filing. In fact, McCarthy had first chosen not to be on the brief, then changed his mind, likely because of pressure from Trump.”It took the court a few hours to reject the Texas suit. But the saga was not over. Trump continued to seek to overturn his defeat, culminating in the deadly attack on Congress on 6 January 2021 by supporters whom he told to “fight like hell”.Cheney takes other shots at Johnson. But in picking apart his role in the amicus brief, she strikes close to claims made for his legal abilities as he grasped the speaker’s gavel last month. Johnson “was telling our colleagues he was a constitutional law expert, while advocating positions that were constitutionally infirm”, Cheney writes.Citing conversations with other Republicans about Johnson’s “lawsuit gimmick” (as she says James Comer of Kentucky, now House oversight chair, called it), Cheney says she “ultimately learned” that Johnson did not write the brief.“A team of lawyers who were also apparently advising Trump had in fact drafted [it],” she writes. “Mike Johnson had left the impression that he was responsible for the brief, but he was just carrying Trump’s water.”The Guardian contacted Johnson for comment. Earlier, responding to CNN, a Trump spokesperson said Cheney’s book belonged “in the fiction section of the bookstore”.Cheney also considers the run-up to January 6 and the historic day itself. Before it, she writes, she and Johnson discussed mounting danger of serious unrest. He agreed, she says, but cited support for Trump among Republican voters as a reason not to abandon the president. Such support from Johnson and other senior Republicans, Cheney writes, allowed Trump to create a full-blown crisis.Two and a half years on, notwithstanding 91 criminal charges, 17 for election subversion, Trump is the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. He polls close to or ahead of Biden.In certain circumstances, close elections can be thrown to the House – which Mike Johnson now controls. More

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      Rosalynn Carter memorial service: Jimmy Carter joins mourners at Atlanta church – as it happened

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      Former president Jimmy Carter was in attendance at the tribute service for his wife, Rosalynn Carter:Carter turned 99 in October, and has been in hospice in his home town of Plains, Georgia, since February.Here’s the moment he arrived at the church for the ceremony:Mourners including Joe and Jill Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Melania Trump and Georgia’s two Democratic senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock paid tribute to former first lady Rosalynn Carter at a ceremony in Atlanta. Back in Washington DC, House Democrats called up a resolution to expel fraudster George Santos from the chamber that must be voted on within two days, while the chamber’s Republican leaders are reportedly considering holding a vote on a separate resolution Thursday.Here’s what else has been happening today:
      Jimmy Carter was in attendance at the memorial service in Atlanta. The 99-year-old former president has been receiving hospice care since February.
      Amy Carter spoke about her parents’ love for each other, and read from a letter her father wrote to Rosalynn while he was serving in the navy.
      Nikki Haley received the endorsement of Koch-affiliated Super Pac Americans for Prosperity Action, in a potential boost for her quest to overtake Donald Trump in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
      Santos insists he will not resign, while the House resolution to expel him needs two-thirds majority support to pass.
      Trump and Santos aren’t so different, a biographer of the New York congressman says.
      Back in Congress, Punchbowl News reports that the House’s Republican leadership is considering taking up GOP lawmaker Michael Guest’s resolution to expel George Santos on Thursday:Passing Guest’s resolution would make the separate motion proposed by Democrat Robert Garcia moot. It remains to be seen if either proposal has the two-thirds majority support necessary to pass.Here are a few photos as the tribute to Rosalynn Carter wrapped up in Atlanta:Pallbearers have loaded Rosalynn Carter’s casket into a hearse, which is now departing the tribute ceremony.Her funeral is scheduled for tomorrow in Plains, Georgia, the Carters’s hometown. That ceremony and her burial at the family residence are restricted to family and friends, according to the Carter Center.The tribute to Rosalynn Carter is nearing its conclusion in Atlanta.The closing benediction was given by Tony Lowden, a pastor at the church the Carters attended in Plains, Georgia, who made a point to acknowledge the work of the Secret Service agents who guarded the former president and his family during his time in office, and in the decades since:
      Oftentimes, Mr. President, we don’t acknowledge those who keep us safe. Rosalynn Carter is in heaven, and she did the work of the Lord and the kingdom all around the world. And Don and all the directors for 46 years got her and her family home safe. And I say thank each and every one of you, those that are standing post and those that are listening on the radios right now. Thank you and she loves you and a nothing you can do about it.
      Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter’s grandson Jason, a former Georgia state senator, spoke about his grandmother’s work fighting Guinea worm disease, as well as advocating for better mental health care.“Her advocacy for mental health was a 50-year climb that is as remarkable as any other and has been mentioned already. But if you imagine just how far our society has come in the last five years on issues of mental health, and you think that she decided in 1970 to tackle the anxious and stigma associated with mental illness, it is remarkable how far she could see and how far she was willing to walk,” Carter said. “And that effort changed lives and it saved lives, including in my own family. She was made for these long journeys.”Jason Carter continued:
      John Lewis once said that in all of his marches, he only really learned one thing: Don’t let them turn you around. That was my grandmother to a tee. One of my last memories of her was in a hospital. We were there for my grandfather, but she had her own physical limitations that made it hard for her to walk. She had to practice. She was ready to go for one of these walks and she picked up this cane and I looked at the cane. She looked at me and she said, ‘you know it’s not a cane … it’s a trekking pole’ She said, ‘the exact same kind that those women use when they go to the South Pole.’
      I watched her walk down that hall with that trekking pole. I followed her and I just pray that we never lose sight of that path.
      Back in Georgia, Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter’s daughter Amy Carter spoke about the importance of love in their relationship:“My mom spent most of her life in love with my dad,” she said. “Their partnership and love story was a defining feature of her life. Because he is unable to speak to you today, I’m going to share some of his words about loving and missing. This is from a letter he wrote 75 years ago while he was serving in the navy”:
      My darling, every time I have ever been away from you, I had been thrilled when I returned to discover just how wonderful you are. While I’m away I tried to convince myself that you really are not could not be as sweet and beautiful as I remember. But when I see you I fall in love with you all over again. Does that seem strange to you? It doesn’t to me. Goodbye darling. Until tomorrow, Jimmy.
      Two House Democratic lawmakers have moved to force a vote within 48 hours on a resolution to expel Republican congressman and admitted fabulist George Santos from the chamber.California’s Robert Garcia introduced the resolution earlier this year, and together with New York’s Dan Goldman have called it up as a privileged resolution, meaning it must be voted on within the next two days. While it will need a two-thirds majority vote of the chamber to pass, momentum to oust Santos has increased in the past weeks following the release of an ethics committee report that found “grave and pervasive campaign finance violations and fraudulent activity” by the New York Republican.“The time has finally come to remove George Santos from Congress. If we’re going to restore faith in government, we must start with restoring integrity in the U.S. House of Representatives,” Garcia said in a statement.Added Goldman: “George Santos is an admitted liar, fraud, and cheat, and the recent Ethics Committee report confirms what we’ve long known: George Santos is wholly unfit for public office.”Former president Jimmy Carter was in attendance at the tribute service for his wife, Rosalynn Carter:Carter turned 99 in October, and has been in hospice in his home town of Plains, Georgia, since February.Here’s the moment he arrived at the church for the ceremony:Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s son, James “Chip” Carter is speaking now at his mother’s memorial service.He called Rosalynn the glue that held the family together “through the ups and downs and thicks and thins” of family life and politics.Chip Carter, 73, recalled that when he was 14 he used to get beaten up for wearing a sticker supporting Lyndon Johnson for president.But he said his mother would mend his shirt torn in the fight and replace the sticker for him, as he supported the Democratic Party cause.He also said that Rosalynn Carter “was influential in getting me into rehab for drug and alcohol addiction. She saved my life.”He called Jimmy Carter’s loss in the 1980 election to the Republican ticket of Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush “devastating to us all.”Chip Carter just mentioned that his mother was “racked with dementia” prior to her death last month.The memorial service for first lady Rosalynn Carter is now under way, with the call to worship and invocation.The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus just gave the patient congregation a stirring rendition of America the Beautiful, as Carter’s casket entered the church.The setting is the Glenn Memorial United Methodist church on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.The sunlight is streaming through the windows and illuminating many on the left-hand side of the congregation.The front row in the church is now occupied with the leadership names of the day.Jimmy Carter, 99, has just entered, semi-recumbent on a sort of wheeled chair-bed. He is at one end of the row. Joe Biden is close by with, to the president’s right, Jill Biden, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, Michelle Obama and Melania Trump.The choir is now singing America the Beautiful, as Rosalynn Carter’s casket has been brought in and placed at the front of the church.The hearse has pulled up to the steps of the church and the military guard is marching forward to lift the coffin and take it in to the service.Rosalynn Carter’s flower-decorated coffin is now being carried. The political leaders past and present are now in the church. More details shortly.Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, a Republican, has just entered the church and taken a pew.Georgia’s Democratic US Senators, Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff have also entered and found a seat.We await the biggest names of the day. It’s a brilliantly sunny day with a cloudless, bright blue sky above the church on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta.Things are clearly running a little behind schedule before the start of the memorial service for Rosalynn Carter.It’s due to start at 1pm ET but there are still at least five rows at the front of the church in Atlanta empty and clearly waiting for their VIP occupants.The congregation that’s there so far was just treated to some Elgar from the orchestra and now something of a hush has descended upon the church, apart from a bit of hold music. We await the arrival of the courtege.Guests are filing in to the Glenn Memorial church in Atlanta for the tribute service to former first lady Rosalynn Carter. Her husband Jimmy Carter will attend, as will Joe and Jill Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Melania Trump and Georgia’s two Democratic senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. None of the group is scheduled to speak at the event, which will instead feature eulogies from Carter family members and people who knew the former first lady. Back in Washington DC, House Democrats are expected to propose a resolution to expel fraudster George Santos from the chamber that must be brought up for consideration within two days. We’ll be watching for signs of if the resolution has the support to pass.Here’s what else has been happening today:
      Nikki Haley received the endorsement of Koch-affiliated Super Pac Americans for Prosperity Action, in a potential boost for her quest to overtake Donald Trump in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
      Santos insists he will not resign, while the House resolution to expel him needs two-thirds majority support to pass.
      Trump and Santos aren’t so different, a biographer of the New York congressman says.
      Reporters traveling with Joe Biden say the president and first lady have arrived at Glenn Memorial church in Atlanta ahead of the tribute service for Rosalynn Carter.Traveling with them are a number of current and former elected officials, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Georgia’s two Democratic senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. Jimmy Carter is also expected to attend, though is not reported to be traveling with the president, as is former first lady Melania Trump.As guests are filing in, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is running through some of Rosalynn Carter’s favorite songs, including compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach.In Atlanta, guests are arriving for this afternoon’s tribute service to former first lady Rosalynn Carter. Here are some photos ahead of the event, which begins at 1pm: More