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      Weapons of Mass Delusion review: Robert Draper dissects the Trumpian nightmare

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      Weapons of Mass Delusion review: Robert Draper dissects the Trumpian nightmare The New York Times reporter shows Kevin McCarthy to be the enabler of all Republican enablersNot so long ago, fake news stories were routinely smothered, simply by being ignored by the biggest newspapers and the major TV networks, their storylines safely confined to the National Enquirer and its tabloid competitors.‘A nutso proposition’: Robert Draper on Trump, Republicans and January 6 Read moreRogue legislators with histories of racism or addiction to conspiracy theories usually suffered the same fate for the same reason – nobody gave them ink or air time. Their leaders in the House and Senate could complete their marginalization.These gatekeepers did not have perfect judgement, but in our time it has become obvious that they provided essential protections for democracy. The internet and its infernal algorithms are the main reasons no institution or congressional leader retains the power to protect the public from outright insanity.Robert Draper’s new book about Washington in the 18 months after January 6 is all about the fatal consequences of the brave new world the internet created, in which Republican outliers the like the Arizona congressman Paul Gosar and his mentee, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, are much more likely to be rewarded for “outrageous, fact-free behavior” than to be penalized for it.The author, a New York Times magazine contributor, begins with a confession: all his previous books and articles about the Republican party “tended to bear the telltale influence of my father, a lifelong Republican”.Since his focus is “the tension between the party’s reality-based wing and the lost-its mind wing”, this confession reinforces the idea that all the book’s harsh judgements are coming from a dispassionate observer.But later on in the book this feels less like a confession and more like a mea culpa, when Draper describes three common notions about Donald Trump’s successful putsch: the idea it was accomplished through “force and surprise”; the notion “that the party was fully functioning and purposeful” before Trump took it over; and the contention “that the GOP bore no responsibility for the crime committed against it”.As Draper writes, “Each of these notions is false.”Unlike Mark Leibovich’s recent book, Thank You for Your Servitude, which covers much of the same territory but does not manage to tell us anything new, Draper provides pungent new anecdotes about and original analysis of the most outrageous actors, like Gosar and Greene, and their main enabler, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy.Gosar spent a decade in Congress “building a portfolio of outrageous conduct even before social media’s ‘attention economy’ was fully capable of rewarding him for it”. One Gosar staffer was “advised by a top Republican operative, ‘You need to get out of there, that man is insane”. Another GOP aide called the congressman “my nominee to be that guy who comes in with a sawed-off shotgun one day”.But what Draper finds most astonishing is that Greene, who attributed forest fires to (possibly-Jewish connected) space lasers and openly promoted QAnon conspiracies, would only need a year in Congress before becoming “the party’s loudest and most memorable messenger outside of Trump himself”.Draper provides an excellent description of how Greene’s personal wealth and determination made it possible for her to move to an adjoining district and win the primary after the incumbent retired. She loaned her own campaign $500,000 and by March 2020 the extreme House Freedom Caucus had contributed nearly $200,000 more.After she won the first round in her primary, before the run-off, Politico ran this pithy summary of her greatest hits: Greene “suggested that Muslims do not belong in government; thinks black people ‘are held slaves to the Democratic party’; called George Soros … a Nazi, and said she would feel ‘proud’ to see a Confederate monument if she were Black because it symbolizes progress made since the civil war”.McCarthy and the rest of the House leadership denounced her. But then a funny thing happened – “or rather did not happen – back in Georgia. The attack on Greene by “fake news” and “the equally fake Republicans” delighted her new constituents and she won the run-off by 14 points. At her victory party, she said of Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House speaker: “We’re going to kick that bitch out of Congress.”The intellectual bankruptcy Draper chronicles pivots around McCarthy, whose blind ambition to become the next speaker leads to a series of despicable choices. First, he decides he must push Liz Cheney out of Republican leadership, because she refuses to pretend Trump lost the election because of fraud. Then he goes out of his way to mend his friendship with Trump and turn a blind eye to Greene’s outrages, because he is convinced he cannot win a House majority without Trump’s craziest supporters.Draper makes a couple of small mistakes, describing an amendment McCarthy opposed that would have removed “language that could enable discrimination against LGBTQ+ members of the military”. The amendment actually would have banned military contractors from discriminating against LGBTQ+ employees, and it was debated five years after Congress finally ended discrimination against gay and lesbian sailors and soldiers. He also describes the New Jersey Democratic congressman Tom Malinowski as Jewish. He is not.‘Devoid of shame’: January 6 cop Michael Fanone on Trump’s Republican partyRead moreThe exact moment the Republican party lost its soul probably came after the January 6 rioters tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to the duly elected new president by storming the Capitol – and a few hours later seven Republican senators and 138 representatives still voted to sustain spurious objections to the electoral votes of Pennsylvania.McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, were not among those election deniers – although McCarthy earlier voted to object to results from Arizona. But their refusal to convict Trump in his subsequent impeachment trial, or to stand up to any allies of the insurrection, guaranteed their party’s addiction to the lie that the presidential election was stolen.Draper has performed an essential service by documenting the details of this singularly destructive cowardice.
      Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind is published in the US by Penguin Press
      TopicsBooksRepublicansDonald TrumpUS politicsUS CongressUS SenateHouse of RepresentativesreviewsReuse this content More

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      The Three Blunders of Joe Biden

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      If the Democrats end up losing both the House and the Senate, an outcome that looks more likely than it did a month ago, there will be nothing particularly shocking about the result. The incumbent president’s party almost always suffers losses in the midterms, the Democrats entered 2022 with thin majorities and a not-that-favorable Senate map, and the Western world is dealing with a war-driven energy crunch that’s generally rough on incumbent parties, both liberal and conservative. (Just ask poor Liz Truss.)But as an exculpating narrative for the Biden administration, this goes only so far. Some races will inevitably be settled on the margins, control of the Senate may be as well, and on the margins there’s always something a president could have done differently to yield a better political result.President Biden’s case is no exception: The burdens of the midterms have been heavier for Democrats than they needed to be because of three notable failures, three specific courses that his White House set.The first fateful course began, as Matthew Continetti noted recently in The Washington Free Beacon, in the initial days of the administration, when Biden made critical decisions on energy and immigration that his party’s activists demanded: for environmentalists, a moratorium on new oil-and-gas leases on public lands and, for immigration advocates, a partial rollback of key Trump administration border policies.What followed, in both arenas, was a crisis: first a surge of migration to the southern border, then the surge in gas prices driven by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.There is endless debate about how much the initial Biden policy shifts contributed to the twin crises; a reasonable bet is that his immigration moves did help inspire the migration surge, while his oil-lease policy will affect the price of gas in 2024 but didn’t change much in the current crunch.But crucially, both policy shifts framed these crises, however unintentionally, as things the Biden administration sought — more illegal immigration and higher gas prices, just what liberals always want! And then instead of a dramatic attempt at reframing, prioritizing domestic energy and border enforcement, the Biden White House fiddled with optics and looked for temporary fixes: handing Kamala Harris the border portfolio, turning the dials on the strategic petroleum reserve and generally confirming the public’s existing bias that if you want a party to take immigration enforcement and oil production seriously, you should vote Republican.The second key failure also belongs to the administration’s early days. In February 2021, when congressional Democrats were preparing a $1.9 trillion stimulus, a group of Republican senators counteroffered with a roughly $600 billion proposal. Flush with overconfidence, the White House spurned the offer and pushed three times as much money into the economy on a party-line vote.What followed was what a few dissenting center-left economists, led by Larry Summers, had predicted: the worst acceleration of inflation in decades, almost certainly exacerbated by the sheer scale of the relief bill. Whereas had Biden taken the Republicans up on their proposal or even simply counteroffered and begun negotiations, he could have started his administration off on the bipartisan footing his campaign had promised while‌ hedging against the inflationary dangers that ultimately arrived.The third failure is likewise a failure to hedge and triangulate, but this time on culture rather than economic policy. Part of Biden’s appeal as a candidate was his longstanding record as a social moderate — an old-school, center-left Catholic rather than a zealous progressive.His presidency has offered multiple opportunities to actually inhabit the moderate persona. On transgender issues, for instance, the increasing qualms of European countries about puberty blockers offered potential cover for Biden to call for greater caution around the use of medical interventions for gender-dysphoric teenagers. Instead, his White House has chosen to effectively deny that any real debate exists, positioning the administration to the left of Sweden.Then there is the Dobbs decision, whose unpopularity turned abortion into a likely political winner for Democrats — provided, that is, that they could cast themselves as moderates and Republicans as zealots.Biden could have led that effort, presenting positions he himself held in the past — support for Roe v. Wade but also for late-term restrictions and the Hyde Amendment — as the natural national consensus, against the pro-life absolutism of first-trimester bans. Instead, he’s receded and left Democratic candidates carrying the activist line that absolutely no restrictions are permissible, an unpopular position perfectly designed to squander the party’s post-Roe advantage.The question in the last case, and to some extent with all these issues, is whether a more moderate or triangulating Biden could have held his coalition together.But this question too often becomes an excuse for taking polarization and 50-50 politics for granted. A strong president, by definition, should be able to pull his party toward the center when politics demands it. So if Biden feels he can’t do that, it suggests that he’s internalized his own weakness and accepted in advance what probably awaits the Democrats next month: defeat.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      ‘A nutso proposition’: Robert Draper on Trump, Republicans and January 6

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      ‘A nutso proposition’: Robert Draper on Trump, Republicans and January 6 The New York Times reporter’s new book considers the Capitol attack and after: the fall of Liz Cheney, the rise of MTG and moreIn mid-December 2020, Robert Draper signed to write a book about the Republican party under Donald Trump, who spent four wild years in the White House but had just been beaten by Joe Biden.‘Devoid of shame’: January 6 cop Michael Fanone on Trump’s Republican partyRead more“Trump hadn’t conceded,” Draper says, from Washington, where he writes for the New York Times. “But the expectation was that he would. The notion of the ‘Be there, will be wild’ January 6 insurrection had not yet taken root. And so I thought that the book would be about a factionalised Republican party, more or less in keeping with When the Tea Party Came to Town, the book I did about the class of 2010.”“All that changed on my first day of reporting the job, which happened to be January 6, when I was inside the Capitol.”The book became Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind. It is a detailed account of Republican dynamics since 2020, but it opens with visceral reportage from the scene of what Draper calls the “seismic travesty” of the Capitol attack.Draper says: “I still get chills, thinking about that day. It’s a Rashomon kind of experience, right? There were a lot of people in the Capitol and they all have different viewpoints that are equally valid.“Mine was that of someone who just showed up figuring I would cover this routine ceremony of certification, ended up not being able to get into the press gallery, wandered around to the west side of the building and suddenly saw all of these police officers under siege, getting maced and beaten. After being there for a while, I escaped through the tunnels and went to the east side of the Capitol, and watched people push their way in.”In their book The Steal, Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague observe that those who attacked the Capitol had no more chance of overturning the election than the hippies of 1967 had of seeing the Pentagon levitate. Draper’s term “seismic travesty” points in the same direction. But he does not diminish the enormity of the attempt, of Trump’s rejection of democracy and the threat posed by those who support him.His book joins a flock on January 6. One point of difference is that each chapter starts with an image by the Canadian photographer Louie Palu, of January 6 and the days after it. Rioters surge. Politicians stalk the corridors of power.Draper says: “There’s a reason why the subtitle isn’t how the Republican party lost its mind, but instead when the Republican party did. It is about a snapshot in time. I happen to think it is an incredibly momentous snapshot, but this is not a dry historical recitation of how the Republican party over decades moved from one mode of thought to another.”“It’s important for me to impress upon readers that this is a discrete moment worth considering, a moment when the Republican party … rather than decide, ‘Wow, we’ve been co-conspirators, intended or not, to a horrific event, and we’ve got to do better,’ instead went in a different direction.“And that to me is a moment when democracy is now shuttered and therefore has to be contemplated.”Draper interviewed most major players, among them Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader with his eye on the speaker’s gavel after next month’s midterms. Asked if the man who courted Trump with red and pink Starbursts and genuflections at Mar-a-Lago is the leader Republicans deserve, Draper answers carefully.“So two operative words there are ‘leader’ and ‘deserves’. It depends on how you define either. He would be the leader in the sense of that they’ll probably vote for him for speaker … but it’s an open question as to whether he really will lead or whether he really has ever led.“The important word is ‘deserves’. And obviously, that requires a judgment on my part. But I do think that what Kevin McCarthy embodies to me is the human refutation to the argument that Donald Trump hijacked the Republican party, because to imagine that metaphor, you imagine the Republican party as an airplane seized by force, without any complicity, and that the plane was a perfectly well-functioning plane before then. McCarthy is here to disprove all of that.“McCarthy has been an absolute enabler of Donald Trump. He has never refuted the kinds of lies his party has embraced. He has winked and nodded along. People have told me that he’s offered to create for Marjorie Taylor Greene a new leadership position. At minimum, she’s likely to get plum committee assignments.”Greene, a far-right, conspiracy-spouting congresswoman from Georgia, was elected as Draper began work.“I thought she would be just kind of marginalised, sitting at the Star Wars bar of Republican politics, kind of a member of Congress who would be ousted after one term. But in a lot of ways, tracing her trajectory was a way of tracing the trajectory of the post– Trump presidency Republican party after January 6. Now, Trump is without question the dominant party leader, and more to the point, Trumpism is the straw that stirs the drink.”Some in the media say Greene should not be covered. Some say strenuously otherwise. Draper spent time with her.“This is the advantage of doing a book as opposed to daily journalism. It took me a year to get my first interview with her. You have to understand, to her, the mainstream media is, as Trump has delicately put it, the enemy of the American people. She thinks we habitually lie. We merit nothing but disgust, minimum, and contempt, maximum.“And so to get her to kind of cross that psychological Rubicon and be willing to talk to me was a real process. But I do find in journalism and anthropology that people generally speaking want to let the rest of the world know why they are the way they are. They want to reveal themselves. And if you place them in a comfortable zone, where they feel like they can do that, and trust that they will not be made to pay for it immediately, then they often will, if only in increments, begin to reveal themselves. And that’s what happened with Greene and me.”Democracy on the vergeLiz Cheney is in some ways Greene’s opposite. The daughter of Dick Cheney, vice-president under George W Bush, she is an establishment figure who broke from Trump only over the Capitol attack. Ejected from party leadership, she is one of two Republicans on the House January 6 committee but lost her seat in Wyoming to a Trump-backed challenger.To Draper, it is “remarkable that we’re talking about those two female Republicans in the same breath, implicitly recognising these improbable opposite trajectories.“In December 2020, if you and I were talking about Liz Cheney and saying, ‘What’s going to happen to her next,’ we wouldn’t say she’s going to be exiled from the party. And if we said, ‘What’s going to happen to Marjorie Taylor Greene next,’ we wouldn’t say she would basically be a more influential figure in the Republican party than Liz Cheney. It would seem a nutso proposition and yet that’s exactly what happened.“Cheney stood almost alone in her view that not only did the party need to move on from Trump, but that it needed to see to it that Trump would no longer be a powerful force within the GOP. That put her on an island along with Adam Kinzinger and precious few others. She’s paid a heavy political price.”Draper’s previous book, To Start a War, showed how Cheney’s father and his boss sold the Iraq war, citing weapons of mass destruction which did not exist. How did Cheney feel about that?“She said, ‘You and I probably disagree on whether or not it was the right thing to do to go into Iraq.’ I remember saying to her, ‘You mean, I’m not a warmonger like you are?’ And she laughed, but she happens still to believe that was a viable proposition. And I think my book reaches the inexorable conclusion that [it] was a very foolish proposition.“But it’s worth bringing that up, because … the subject at hand was not just Donald Trump, but also the Republican party and its tenuous grip on the truth. And it has been an eye-opener, I think, for a lot of us that Liz Cheney … stands for other things beyond ideology, and among them are the preservation of democracy.”Before the Capitol was attacked, Cheney read Lincoln on the Verge, Ted Widmer’s account of Abraham Lincoln’s perilous rail journey to Washington in 1861.Draper writes: “As the nation teetered on the brink of civil war, Lincoln avoided two assassination attempts on the journey, while the counting of electoral college votes in the Capitol was preceded by fears that someone might seize the mahogany box containing the ballots and thereby undo Abe Lincoln’s presidency before its inception.“Cheney had shuddered to think what would have happened had the mob gotten their hands on the mahogany boxes on January 6, 2021.”Unchecked review: how Trump dodged two impeachments … and the January 6 committee?Read moreWidmer is a historian but plenty of books have suggested that with America deeply polarised and Trumpism rampant, we could be close to a second civil war. To Draper, “tragically it is not out of the question”.“It’s certainly clear to me that when you’ve got a third of the voting public in America that believes that the election was stolen … [that’s] not something that you take with a grain of salt.“America really is beset by fractures that could metastasize into something violent. I hope to hell that’s not the case. But but I’m not gonna look at you and say there’s no way it’ll happen.”
      Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind is published in the US by Penguin Press
      TopicsBooksRepublicansUS politicsThe far rightDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS CongressfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Steve Bannon vows ‘very vigorous appeal’ to four-month prison sentence – as it happened

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      Steve Bannon has been sentenced to four months in prison for contempt of Congress.Donald Trump’s former chief strategist was sentenced to serve four months on each of the two contempt counts for defying a congressional subpoena issued by the January 6 House panel investigating the former president’s efforts to reverse his defeat by Joe Biden.The prison terms will be served concurrently, district court judge Carl Nichols ruled. But the judge said he would stay the sentence pending an appeal by Bannon, as long as the legal paperwork is filed promptly.The statutory minimum was one month in prison on each count.BREAKING: Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon sentenced to four months of prison on each count of contempt of Congress concurrently and $6,500 in fines — and will stay the sentence pending appeal if that is filed in timely fashion— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) October 21, 2022
      We’ll have more details shortly…We’re closing our live blog now at the end of another tumultuous day, and week, in US politics. Thanks for joining us.
      The House panel investigating Donald Trump’s January 6 insurrection issued a subpoena to the former president for documents and testimony.
      Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, was sentenced to four months in prison for contempt of Congress, and fined, for defying his own subpoena. But he was allowed to remain free pending his appeal.
      The White House dismissed claims by Russia’s ambassador to the US that it had shut down communication with Moscow as the war in Ukraine continues. US defense secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoygu earlier.
      The Washington Post reported that documents seized by the FBI at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida contained secrets about Iran’s missile program, and China.
      Joe Biden touted a “record” reduction of the federal deficit, $1.4tn since last year and the largest one year drop in American history, the president said.
      A Miami judge dismissed one of the 19 voter fraud prosecutions loudly trumpeted by Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis. Former felon Robert Lee Wood, 56, voted after being sent a registration card by the state.
      Joe Biden is appealing to younger voters in a speech Friday afternoon touting his student debt relief program. The president is addressing students at the historically black Delaware state university in Dover.Ahead of his address, the supreme court gave Biden a lift on Thursday by refusing a request by a taxpayers’ group in Wisconsin to block the program, which cancels up to $20,000 in student debt for millions of borrowers.Biden addressed an enthusiastic crowd:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}You are an example of why I’m so optimistic about the future. You are the most involved, the most educated, the most engaged, least prejudiced generation in American history.Biden says the debt relief program is changing lives, and urged those qualified to sign up online:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}This is a game changer. We’re hearing from people all over the country. Over 10,000 students have written me letters so far. It’s as easy to sign up as hanging out with your friends or watching a movie.
      My commitment when I ran for president was if I was elected I’d make the government work and deliver for the people.And he attacked congressional Republicans for attempting to block the aid “to their own constituents”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}As soon as I announced my administration’s plan on student debt they started attacking it and saying all kinds of things. Their outrage is wrong and it’s hypocritical.
      But we’re not letting them get away with it. They’ve been fighting us in the courts. But just yesterday, state courts and the supreme court said no, we’re on Biden’s side.Read more:Supreme court declines to stop Biden’s $400bn student debt relief planRead moreThe Biden administration’s strategic communications coordinator has dismissed claims by Russia’s ambassador to the US that Washington is blocking conversations with Moscow over the Ukraine war.Newsweek reported on Thursday the belief of Anatoly Antonov that no direct open lines of communication existed between the countries similar to the Kremlin-White House hotline credited with preventing nuclear war during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.“The attempts of Russian diplomats in Washington to re-establish such contacts have been futile,” he said. “The administration is unwilling to talk with us as equals.”But in an interview on CNN Friday, John Kirby, the national security council coordinator for strategic communications, said that was not true.He pointed to defense secretary Lloyd Austin’s conversation with his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoygu earlier today, their first known contact for more than four months, as evidence:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}There’s many channels open with Russia even down to the fairly low operational level. We still have a deconfliction line set up in Europe so that we can properly deconflict operations with respect to Nato’s eastern flank.
      You saw today the secretary of defense spoke with with his counterpart. The secretary of state has an open line of communication with foreign minister [Sergey] Lavrov if needed. There are many channels at various levels throughout our government to continue to communicate with Russia.
      That’s important, particularly now when when bellicose rhetoric by [Russian president Vladimir] Putin about the potential use of nuclear weapons only could lead to confusion and miscalculation.Maya Yang reports…The rightwing TV network Newsmax has said it had no plans to interview Lara Logan again, after the award-winning war correspondent turned rightwing pundit launched a QAnon-tinged tirade on air.Speaking to host Eric Bolling, Logan said “the open border is Satan’s way of taking control of the world” and claimed world leaders drank children’s blood.QAnon is a pro-Trump conspiracy theory which holds that leading liberal figures in US and world politics are, among other things, secretly murderous pedophiles.Logan told Bolling: “God believes in sovereignty and national identity and the sanctity of family, and all the things that we’ve lived with from the beginning of time.“And he knows that the open [southern US] border is Satan’s way of taking control of the world through all of these people who are his stooges and his servants.“And they may think that they’re going to become gods. That’s what they tell us … You know, the ones who want us eating insects, cockroaches and that while they dine on the blood of children? Those are the people, right? They’re not going to win. They’re not going to win.”Newsmax said in a statement it “condemns in the strongest terms the reprehensible statements made by Lara Logan” and had “no plans to interview her again”.Full story:Newsmax bans Lara Logan after QAnon-tinged on-air tiradeRead moreThe White House won’t comment specifically on the subpoena issued to Donald Trump by the January 6 House panel this afternoon. But it has thoughts on the direction of the inquiry.Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is addressing reporters aboard Air Force One as the Joe Biden makes his way to Delaware to speak on his student loan forgiveness program.Asked if she believed Trump would comply, Jean-Pierre said:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I’m going to speak broadly, as we do not comment on any ongoing investigation, the department of justice is independent, but the president has spoken to this many times, it is important to get to the bottom of January 6.
      January 6 was one of the darkest days in our nation, and it’s important for the American people to know exactly what happened, so that it doesn’t happen again, so we don’t repeat that very dark day in our nation.The subpoena issued by the January 6 House panel this afternoon demands that Donald Trump provide documents and testimony under oath.It requires documents to be submitted to the committee by 4 November, and for Trump to appear for deposition testimony beginning on or about 14 November.“As demonstrated in our hearings, we have assembled overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of your former appointees and staff, that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-part effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power”, a four-page letter accompanying the subpoena said.It was signed by panel chair Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, and vice-chair Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican.In a tweet, the panel says the vote to issue the subpoena was approved by a unanimous vote. The nine-member committee includes two Republican House members, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Cheney.In a letter to Mr. Trump, Chair @BennieGThompson and Vice Chair @RepLizCheney underscored Trump’s central role in a deliberate, orchestrated effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and block the transfer of presidential power. pic.twitter.com/rg7R37YE11— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) October 21, 2022
      Shortly before news broke that Donald Trump has been issued a subpoena by the House panel investigating his 6 January insurrection, the former president was lashing out over another episode.The Washington Post drew Trump’s ire for its story that classified papers seized by the FBI at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida allegedly included documents containing secrets about Iran and China.Predictably, in a statement, Trump claims it’s a hoax:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The FBI and the department of ‘justice,’ which paid a man $200,000 to spy on me, and offered a $1 million ‘bounty’ to try and prove a totally made up and fake ‘dossier’ about me (they went down in flames!), are now leaking nonstop on the Document Hoax to the Fake News.
      Who could ever trust corrupt, weaponized agencies, and that includes Nara [the US national archives and records administration] who disrespects our constitution and Bill of Rights, to keep and safeguard any records, especially since they’ve lost millions and millions of pages of information from previous Presidents.
      Also, who knows what NARA and the FBI plant into documents, or subtract from documents – we will never know, will we?It’s safe to say Trump will have other things on his mind as the afternoon wears on.The House January 6 select committee has issued a subpoena to Donald Trump, compelling the former president to provide an accounting under oath about his potential foreknowledge of the Capitol attack and his broader efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The subpoena of constitutional and investigative consequence made sweeping requests for testimony about some of the most key moments before January 6, as well as documents and communications about his role in multi-pronged schemes to return himself to office.BREAKING: Jan. 6 committee formally issues subpoena to Donald Trump — https://t.co/OzljsNT0oF— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) October 21, 2022
      It comes on the same day as Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, was sentenced to four months in prison for refusing to comply with his own subpoena.We’ll have more details soon …Our Washington bureau chief, David Smith, has filed a terrific interview with Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, the crack reporter and “Trump whisperer” whose new book seeks to explain the rise and fall and rise (and rise and fall and rise, ad infinitum) of the 45th president. It’s certainly worth your time this lunchtime. Here’s a taster, with a link at the bottom to follow:“He’s become something of a Charles Foster Kane-like character down in Mar-a-Lago these days,” observes Maggie Haberman, a Pulitzer-winning reporter for the New York Times, political analyst for CNN and author of Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, which has a black-and-white photo of Trump on its cover.Her analogy raises the question: what is Trump’s Rosebud, the childhood sled that symbolised Kane’s lost innocence? “His father is Rosebud, and I don’t think it’s one particular moment,” Haberman replies. “There’s no single childhood memory that is the key. It’s a series of moments that interlock and they point back to his father.”Fred Trump was a property mogul who had been disappointed by his eldest son Fred Jr’s lack of commitment to the family business. Donald Trump, by contrast, impressed his father by cultivating a brash “killer” persona and became heir apparent. Decades later, in the first weeks of his presidency, Trump had one photo on the credenza behind him in the Oval Office: his father, still watching.Speaking by phone from her car in midtown Manhattan, Haberman reflects: “His father basically created this endless competition between Trump and his older brother Freddie, and pitted them against each other. Donald Trump spent a lot of time seeking his father’s approval and that became a style of dealing with people, which was certainly better suited for a business than for a household.”“But it became one that Trump recreated in all aspects of his life. It became how he dealt with his own children. It became how he dealt with people who worked for him and then, in the White House, you read a number of stories about these battles that his aides would have. A lot of it was predetermined by lessons from his father.”But if Trump is Kane, who is Haberman?Maggie Haberman on Trump: ‘He’s become a Charles Foster Kane character’Read moreThe Biden administration is taking steps to protect residents of nursing homes, promising what it calls “aggressive action… to keep American seniors safe”.A White House fact sheet released Friday lays out measures including financial penalties for failing nursing homes, improved safety standards and more and better technical support for homes in need.The labor department is providing $80m in grants for nursing training and development, while the department of health and human services providing a further $13m for education and training initiatives.“Covid-19 laid bare the challenges in America’s nursing homes,” Biden’s domestic policy adviser Susan Rice said in a tweet.“Today, we’re announcing new steps to improve nursing home quality and accountability”.COVID-19 has laid bare the challenges in America’s nursing homes. In his State of the Union, @POTUS laid out an action plan to address these challenges—and, today, we’re announcing new steps to improve nursing home quality and accountability. https://t.co/yNG6rLn757— Susan Rice (@AmbRice46) October 21, 2022
      Joe Biden may have coined a phrase earlier, or tried to coin one at this late stage in the midterms race, when he said Republican economic policy amounted to “Maga-mega trickle down”.Trickle down economics is the idea that slashed taxes on the wealthy mean benefits for all those below them. Liz Truss was a devotee. She was also British prime minister for all of 45 days before announcing her resignation yesterday, after crashing the markets and cratering the UK economy.Biden may have been seeking to remind any Americans even vaguely aware of events across the pond when he told reporters: “If Republicans get their way, the deficit is going to soar, the burden is going to fall on the middle-class … They’re not going to stop there. “It’s Maga-mega trickle down.”For the avoidance of doubt, here’s how Larry Elliott, the Guardian’s economics editor, defines “trickle down”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The theory is simple. Governments should cut taxes for the better off and for corporations because that is the key to securing faster growth. Entrepreneurs are more likely to start and expand businesses, companies are more inclined to invest and banks will tend to increase lending if they are paying less in tax.
      Initially, the beneficiaries are the rich, but gradually everyone gains because as the economy gets bigger well-paid jobs are created for working people. Governments should stop focusing on how the economic pie is distributed and focus on growing the pie instead.
      Supporters of trickle down often cite the work of the US economist Arthur Laffer as proof that the theory works. Laffer said tax cuts for the wealthy had a powerful multiplier effect and any revenues lost by governments from reducing tax rates would be more than compensated for by the fruits of higher growth.For the further avoidance of doubt, Maga, written like that here because of Guardian style rules on acronyms, stands for “Make America great again”, aka Donald Trump’s campaign slogan in 2016.Biden was speaking at the White House, about the US deficit and efforts to reduce it. He said: “The federal deficit went up every year in the Trump administration – every single year he was president. On my watch, things have been different. The deficit has come down both years I’ve been in office, and I’ve just signed legislation that will reduce it even more in the decades to come.”Republicans will counter that Biden has passed a lot of legislation increasing government spending. And so the dance toward election day goes on.It’s a busy Friday again…In a bombshell scoop launched just as Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former campaign chair and White House adviser, was handed a four-month jail sentence for contempt of Congress, the Washington Post reports that some of the classified documents recovered from Trump’s Florida home in August included “highly sensitive intelligence regarding Iran and China”.The Post cites anonymous sources who said that “if shared with others … such information” as found by the Department of Justice at Mar-a-Lago “could expose intelligence-gathering methods that the United States wants to keep hidden from the world”. Exposure of such information, the paper reports, could endanger people aiding US intelligence efforts or invite retaliation from the powers concerned.The Post also says at least one document described Iran’s missile programme while others described “highly sensitive intelligence work aimed at China”.Trump or his spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment, the paper said.The FBI search of Mar-a-Lago on 8 August set off a monumental tussle between the former president and the Department of Justice. The contest has gone back and forth in the courts ever since, lawyers for Trump fighting a delaying action, a watching nation wondering if Trump might yet be indicted.Trump claims to have done nothing wrong by taking records from the White House after he was beaten by Joe Biden in 2020. Most observers say otherwise.More:‘Where’s the beef?’: special master says Trump’s Mar-a-Lago records claims lack substanceRead moreJoe Biden is speaking at the White House about the achievements of his economic plans, and what he says is a “record” reduction of the federal deficit.“This year the deficit fell by $1.4tn, the largest one year drop in American history,” the president said.“We’re rebuilding the economy in a responsible way.”In an earlier treasury department statement, the Biden administration said the annual deficit plummeted from $2.8tn in 2021 to about $1.4tn this year, the Washington Post reported.Biden is touting a “historic” Covid-19 vaccination effort for saving lives and helping the economy recover from the pandemic, and hailing successes in passing bipartisan bills such as the inflation reduction act, the Chips act boosting semiconductor production, and last year’s infrastructure act.Today’s speech is, however, a thinly disguised party political broadcast on behalf of the Democrats barely two and a half weeks before midterm elections in which they are expected to cede control of at least one chamber of congress.Warming to that theme, Biden said:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Congressional Republicans love to call Democrats big spenders. And they always claim to be for less federal spending. Let’s look at the facts. The federal deficit went up every single year in the Trump administration, every single year he was president, and went up before the pandemic, and went up during the pandemic.
      In three years before Covid hit, the deficit ballooned by another $400bn. One big reason for that is the Republicans voted for a $2tn Trump tax cut, which overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and the biggest corporations. That racked up the deficit significantly.
      On my watch, things have been different. The deficit has come down in both years that I’ve been in office.Here’s Hugo Lowell’s report on the Steve Bannon sentencing hearing this morning:Donald Trump’s top former strategist Steve Bannon was sentenced Friday to four months in federal prison and $6,500 in fines after he was convicted with criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to comply last year with a subpoena issued by the House January 6 select committee.The punishment – suspended pending appeal – makes Bannon the first person to be incarcerated for contempt of Congress in more than half a century and sets a stringent standard for future contempt cases referred to the justice department by the select committee investigating the Capitol attack.The sentence handed down by the US district court judge Carl Nichols in Washington was lighter than recommended by prosecutors, who sought six months in jail and the maximum $200,000 in fines because Bannon refused to cooperate with court officials’ pre-sentencing inquiries.Bannon, 68, had asked the court for leniency and requested in court filings for his sentence to either be halted pending the appeal his lawyers filed briefs with the DC circuit court on Thursday or otherwise have the jail term reduced to home-confinement.But Nichols denied Bannon’s requests, saying he agreed with the justice department about the seriousness of his offense and noting that he had failed to show any remorse and was yet to demonstrate that he had any intention to comply with the subpoena.The far-right provocateur now faces a battle to overturn the conviction on appeal, which, the Guardian first reported, will contend the precedent that prevented his lawyers from disputing the definition of “wilful default” of a subpoena, and arguing he had acted on the advice of his lawyers, was inapplicable.Read the full story:Steve Bannon given four months in prison for contempt of CongressRead more More

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      in US Politics

      Donald Trump formally subpoenaed by January 6 committee

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      Donald Trump formally subpoenaed by January 6 committeeFormer US president will be compelled to provide accounting under oath about his potential foreknowledge of the Capitol attack The House January 6 select committee has formally transmitted a subpoena to Donald Trump, compelling the former president to provide an accounting under oath about his potential foreknowledge of the Capitol attack and his broader efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Steve Bannon given four months in prison for contempt of CongressRead moreThe subpoena made sweeping requests for documents and testimony, dramatically raising the stakes in the highly charged congressional investigation and setting the stage for a constitutionally consequential legal battle that could ultimately go before the supreme court.“Because of your central role in each element,” the panel’s chairman, Bennie Thompson, and vice-chair, Liz Cheney, wrote, “the select committee unanimously directed the issuance of a subpoena seeking your testimony and relevant documents in your possession on these and related topics.”Most notably, the committee demanded that Trump turn over records of all January 6-related calls and texts sent or received, any communications with members of Congress, as well as communications with the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, extremist groups that stormed the Capitol.The expansive subpoena ordered Trump to produce documents by 4 November and testify on 14 November about interactions with key advisers who have asserted their fifth amendment right against self-incrimination, including the political operatives Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.“You were at the center of the first and only effort by any US president to overturn an election and obstruct the peaceful transfer of power,” the panel’s leaders wrote in making the case to subpoena Trump. “The evidence demonstrates that you knew this activity was illegal.”The subpoena also sought materials that appeared destined to be scrutinised as part of an obstruction investigation conducted by the select committee.One of the document requests, for instance, was for records about Trump’s efforts to contact witnesses and their lawyers.The documents request was specifically drafted to cover materials Trump would be able to turn over. The subpoena added: “The attached schedule is narrowly focused on records in your custody and control that you are uniquely positioned to provide to the select committee.”Thompson transmitted the subpoena after investigators spent days drafting the order and attorneys for the select committee contacted multiple lawyers working for Trump to ascertain who was authorized to accept its service.“We do not take this action lightly,” the subpoena said, noting the historical significance of the moment. But, the subpoena added, this was not the first time that a former president had been subpoenaed – and multiple former presidents have testified to Congress.Whether Trump will testify remains unclear. Though he has retained the Dhillon Law Group to handle matters relating to the subpoena, the final decision about his cooperation will be based to a large degree on his own instincts, sources close to the former president suggested.The driving factor pushing Trump to want to testify has centered around a reflexive belief that he can convince investigators that their own inquiry is a witch-hunt and that he should be exonerated over January 6, the sources said.Trump has previously expressed an eagerness to appear before the select committee and “get his pound of flesh” as long as he can appear live, the sources said – a thought he reiterated to close aides last week after the panel voted to issue the subpoena.But Trump also appears to have become more attuned to the pitfalls of testifying in ongoing investigations, with lawyers warning him about mounting legal issues in criminal inquiries brought by the US justice department and a civil lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general.The former president invoked his fifth-amendment right against self-incrimination more than 400 times in a deposition with the office of the New York attorney general before the office filed a giant fraud lawsuit against him, three of his children and senior Trump Organization executives.Trump also ultimately took the advice of his lawyers during the special counsel investigation into ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia, submitting only written responses to investigators despite initially telling advisers he wanted to testify to clear his name.That recent caution has come with the realization that Trump could open himself up to legal peril should he testify under oath, given his penchant for misrepresenting or outright lying about events of any nature – which is a crime before Congress.Any falsehoods from Trump would almost certainly be caught by the select committee. The subpoena letter said the panel intended to have the questioning conduct by attorneys, many of whom are top former justice department lawyers or federal and national security prosecutors.The former president’s testimony and transcript would almost certainly be reviewed by the justice department as part of its criminal probe into various efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which the select committee has alleged was centrally orchestrated by Trump.But the move to subpoena Trump comes with inherent risks for the panel itself. If it were to allow Trump for instance to testify live, they would be faced with a witness who might self-incriminate, but could also use proceedings to repeat lies about the 2020 election that led to the Capitol attack.The select committee might also face a difficult choice of how to proceed should Trump simply ignore the subpoena, claiming the justice department’s internal legal opinions for instance indicate that presidents and former presidents have absolute immunity from testifying to Congress.Investigators would then have to decide whether to seek judicial enforcement of the subpoena, though such an effort would likely take months – time that the select committee does not have, given it will almost certainly be disbanded at the end of the current Congress in January 2023.Should the panel instead simply move to hold Trump in contempt of Congress for defying the subpoena – his former strategist Steve Bannon was sentenced Friday to jail for his recalcitrance – it remains unclear whether the justice department would prosecute such a referral.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      Why Republicans Are Winning Swing Voters

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      Rachelle Bonja and Patricia Willens and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherAfter a summer of news that favored Democrats and with just two weeks until the midterms, a major new poll from The Times has found that swing voters are suddenly turning to the Republicans.The Times’s Nate Cohn explains what is behind the trend and what it could mean for Election Day.On today’s episodeNate Cohn, the chief political analyst for The New York Times.Mail-in ballots in Phoenix. Polling suggests that Republicans enter the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress with a narrow but distinct advantage.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesBackground readingAccording to the Times/Siena College poll, American voters see democracy in peril, but saving it isn’t a priority.Despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights, disapproval of President Biden seems to be hurting his party.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Nate Cohn contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Sofia Milan, Ben Calhoun and Susan Lee.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Desiree Ibekwe, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello and Nell Gallogly. More

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      in US Politics

      Biden to release 15m barrels from strategic reserve in effort to tamp down gas prices – as it happened

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      Here’s a quick summary of what happened today:
      Joe Biden announced the release of 15m barrels of petroleum from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a move he says will keep gas prices down. Biden pushed back on criticism that the timing of the announcement, which confirmed plans to release barrels from the reserve, was politically motivated by the looming midterms.
      John Fetterman, a key Democratic candidate in the US senate race in Pennsylvania, released a detailed doctor’s report that said he is fit to work and fully serve in office following a stroke in May. This was the first official medical report from Fetterman since June.
      At a speech at a conservative think tank, Mike Pence criticized the Republican party for straying from its values and said the party should be cautious of developing an isolationist mindset, particularly regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
      A district court judge said that emails from Donald Trump’s attorney, John Eastman – a key architect in his plan to overthrow the 2020 election – should be released to the House special committee investigating the insurrection. The judge said emails from Eastman prove Trump signed legal documents that contained information on election fraud that he knew was false.
      We’ll be closing the blog for today, but we will be back tomorrow with more live politics updates. A US district court judge said that Donald Trump signed legal documents that contained evidence of election fraud that he knew was false, Politico is reporting. Based on emails from Trump attorney John Eastman, “President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public,” wrote district court judge David Carter in an opinion. The opinion said that Eastman’s emails need to be turned over to the House select committee investigating the insurrection. Eastman refused to turn over their emails, citing attorney-client privilege. Carter wrote that while most of the emails may remain private, “the Court finds that these four documents are sufficiently related to and in furtherance of the obstruction crime”.A majority of Americans believe Donald Trump should testify over his involvement in the January 6 insurrection on the US Capitol, according to a Monmouth University poll released today. Six out of 10 Americans polled said that Trump should have to testify before the House committee investigating the attack. Unsurprisingly, Democrats and Republicans were split on whether Trump should have to testify, with 89% of Democrats saying he should and 67% of Republicans saying he shouldn’t. Most independents, 61%, said that he should have to testify, and only 34% said he should not have to appear at all. The American people: “We feel bad for the country, but this would be tremendous content.”60% of Americans want Trump to testify before the Jan. 6 committee, according to a new Monmouth poll; 77% say it should be public if he does. https://t.co/RBXB6IMo40 pic.twitter.com/WATj0owRcO— Kevin Robillard 🇺🇸 (@Robillard) October 19, 2022
      It is unclear whether Trump will testify before the House committee, which concluded its public hearings which it says proves Trump’s involvement in the attack by voting to subpoena Trump. A formal subpoena will likely be issued this week. Trump’s public response so far has been a rambling letter addressed to representative Bennie Thompson, who chairs the special committee. Sources close to Trump said last week that he is considering testifying in front of the committee. The committee said they do not expect to make criminal referrals to the department of justice, though they have laid out their findings to help federal investigators.A group of four members of Joe Biden’s Covid advisory board just published an op-ed in the New York Times saying that there needs to be more work to address the pandemic.“We are deeply dismayed by what has been left undone,” the group, which includes Ezekial Emanuel, David Michaels, Rick Bright and Michael Osterholm, wrote. “There were many opportunities that would have permanently improved American health and the public health system. They have not yet been pursued.”“There is no question other health crises lie ahead. We need to assess the opportunities squandered or missed in the Covid pandemic and seize them now.”The group wrote that rapid, low-cost at-home-testing could be used to detect multiple infections at once. But there is no comprehensive reporting system for individuals to submit their at-home test results to public health agencies, “rendering a broad swath of infections across the country invisible to officials trying to slow their spread.”The writers note that much of the blame for inaction can be put on the lack of funding from Congress, but “not all [are] attributable to financial limitations”.They write that one big missed opportunity was one to enhance indoor air quality, particularly in schools. They recommend improving national indoor air quality standards, with focuses on schools, nursing homes, assisted-living facilities, jails and prisons and other high-risk settings.Better data collection, more paid sick leave, stronger vaccine outreach and better domestic production of medical supplies were also needed during the pandemic, they wrote.“The list could go on and on, including the poor response to long Covid.”In a speech at conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, Mike Pence criticized the direction of the Republican party saying, “I think we need to chart a course that doesn’t veer off too far in either direction.” “Our movement cannot forsake the foundational commitment that we have to security, to limited government, to liberty and to life,” Pence said. “But nor can we allow our movement to be led astray by the siren song of unprincipled populism that’s unmoored from our oldest traditions and most cherished values.” Pence seemed to criticize the “America First” mindset, particularly in the midst of Russia invasion of Ukraine. “As Russia continues its unconscionable war of aggression to Ukraine, I believe that conservatives must make ti clear that Putin must stop and Putin will pay,” he said. “There can be no room in the conservative movement for apologists to Putin. There is only room in this movement for champions of freedom.” Pence at Heritage Foundation making an impassioned plea to continue to help Ukraine. There are those in the movement that “would have us disengage with the wider world,” he says. “But appeasement has never worked.”— Caitlin Huey-Burns (@CHueyBurns) October 19, 2022
      Opposition to isolationist ideals has not stopped Pence from endorsing candidates who have ultimately voiced opposition to involvement in the conflict, including Blake Masters, who is running for an Arizona US senate seat and called the war a “European problem”.Mehmet Oz, who is running as the Republican candidate in a key senate race, responded to today’s announcement from his opponent, John Fetterman, that a doctor clear Fetterman to work after a stroke in May. “That’s good news that John Fetterman’s doctor gave him a clean bill of health… Now that he is apparently healthy, he can debate for 90 minutes, start taking live questions from voters and reporters, and do a second debate now too,” a campaign spokesperson said. Oz senior comms adviser Rachel Tripp responds: “That’s good news that John Fetterman’s doctor gave him a clean bill of health…now that he apparently is healthy, he can debate for 90 minutes, start taking live questions from voters and reporters, and do a second debate now too.”— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) October 19, 2022
      Oz and other Republicans have been using Fetterman’s stroke as an attack against him, saying that he is unfit to be in office. Fetterman’s campaign, on the other hand, has carefully been talking about his stroke as a way to gain empathy from voters. At a rally in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, Fetterman asked the audience if they or a loved one had ever dealt with a serious health issue, and nearly every hand went up. Until the doctor’s report that was released, the last official medical update from Fetterman’s campaign on his health was released in June. At his press conference moments ago announcing the release of petroleum from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Joe Biden was asked to comment on criticism that he was making the announcement for political reasons ahead of the midterms.“I’ve been doing this for how many months now? It’s not politically motivated at all. Its motivation is to make sure that I continue to push on what I’ve been pushing on. And that is making sure there’s enough oil being pumped by the companies so that we have the ability to produce enough gas that we need here at home,” Biden said. “The problem is these guys were asleep. I don’t know where they’ve been.’”Joe Biden spoke on the release of 15m barrels of petroleum from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a move to seemingly signal to voters ahead of the midterms the White House’s efforts to tamper gas prices. Biden announced earlier this year that the energy department will be released 180m barrels from the strategic reserve this year. The 15m barrels announced today will complete the 180m barrels promised by the White House. The administration says the release will add 500,000 barrels per day of supply to the market in December. In a speech, Biden pointed to the war in Ukraine as the main reason for increasing gas prices and said that he “acted decisively” over the summer, and gas prices in turn have dropped $1.50 per gallon since their peak over the summer. “That’s progress, but they’re not falling fast enough,” Biden said. Gas prices are felt in almost every family in this country. It squeezes family budgets when the price of gas goes up, and other expenses get cut. That’s why I’ve been doing everything in my power to reduce gas prices.” “With my announcement today, we’re going to continue to stabilize markets and decrease the price at a time when the actions of other countries have caused such volatility.” Biden said that he has instructed his team to look into further releases from the reserve in the months ahead if needed. He also defended his administration against “myths” that he has slowed gas production.“Quite the opposite. We’re producing 12m barrels of oil per day. And by the end of the year, we will be producing 1m barrels a day – more than the day in which I took office.” Biden also said that the administration will repurchase crude oil from the strategic reserve once prices fall to $67 to $72 a barrel, incentivizing production for the future, and called on oil and gas companies to pass lower energy costs to consumers.Donald Trump in 2021 asked a group of people whether a Jewish documentary filmmaker was “a good Jewish character”, according to a video of the former president that was released as part of footage that was subpoenaed by the House special committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, the New York Times reports. The interaction was recorded by documentary filmmaker Alex Holder at an event at Trump’s New Jersey golf club in May 2021. Trump, speaking to several people, was responding to a woman’s comment about “Jews who didn’t vote for you”. Trump reportedly started talking about how he signed an executive order in 2019 that recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, yet he still polled low with Jewish voters in the US. “In Israel, I’m at like 94 percent, but I got 27, 28 percent [in the US],” Trump said at the time. “In Israel, I’m the most popular. With Orthodox, I’m the most popular.” Trump points to Holder, who is Jewish, “is this a good Jewish character right here?” At the end of the clip, before it cuts off, Trump asks, “You Persian? Very smart. Be careful, they’re very good salesmen.” News of the clip comes on the heels of a post Trump made on his social media platform Truth Social in which he lamented the lack of Jewish support for him despite his pro-Israel policies. “No president has done more for Israel than I have. Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of Jewish faith, especially those living gin the US,” he wrote. “US Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel – before it is too late!”The Guardian’s voting rights reporter Sam Levine writes: Georgia has seen an “astounding” increase in turnout through the first two days of in person early voting, the state’s top election official said on Wednesday.Early voting began on Monday in the state, where there are closely watched gubernatorial and senate races. 268,050 people voted in person during the first two days. At the same point in the 2020 presidential election, 266,403 had voted in person. That differential is notable because presidential elections usually have higher turnout than midterms. At the same point in the 2018 midterms, 147,289 people had voted in person.Georgia has been at the center of high-stakes battles over voting access and this is the first general a new law with sweeping new voting restrictions is in effect. The law shortens the window in which voters can request a mail-in ballot and places new identification requirements on both the mail-in ballot application and ballot itself. Stacey Abrams, the gubernatorial candidate for governor, as well as voting rights groups are encouraging voters to cast their ballots as early as possible to avoid any issues.Republicans in the past have pointed to surging turnout to push back on accusations of voter suppression. But voting advocates say that is misleading and does not take into account the increased obstacles voters face in getting to the polls, even if they are able to navigate them successfully.John Fetterman’s primary care physician said the Democratic senate candidate for Pennsylvania has no restrictions “and can work full duty in public office” following a stroke in May. Fetterman’s campaign released a detailed medical report today based on an examination that took place on Friday. His doctor, Clifford Chen, said that Fetterman’s strength was normal and has no coordination deficits. He also noted that he “spoke intelligently without cognitive deficits”.Fetterman continues to show symptoms of auditory processing disorder (trouble understanding certain spoken words) but “his communication is significantly improved compared to his first visit, assisted by speech therapy, which he has attended on a regular basis since the stroke.” Currently the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, Fetterman is in a heated election for an open Senate seat against celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, who is running as a Trump-endorsed Republican. Fetterman’s campaign celebrated the doctor’s report on Wednesday. “Bad news for Dr. Oz, who has been rooting hard against my recovery: I’m doing great + remain fully ready to serve,” Fetterman tweeted. Bad news for Dr. Oz, who has been rooting hard against my recovery: I’m doing great + remain fully ready to serveSo grateful to all of you who’ve stood with me. I’ll be fighting for each and every one of you in D.C. ❤️ https://t.co/RMUCsGpOpG— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) October 19, 2022
      Polls have shown Fetterman with a slight lead over Oz, though Oz has been narrowing the gap over the last week as the GOP has been hitting voters hard with messaging about Democrats and the economy.The Texas state government is sending DNA and fingerprint identification kits to parents with kids in kindergarten through eight grade in case of an emergency. The law that established the kit distribution was passed in 2021 and was meant to “help locate and return a missing or trafficked child”, though the timing of the kits’ distribution has reminded parents of the Uvalde shooting, where 19 children and two adults were killed. In the aftermath of the shooting, parents were asked for DNA samples of their children to help medical examiners identify the victims. AR-15s, the type of gun that was used in the shooting, is a powerful weapon that can leave victims unrecognizable. Brett Cross, the father of a student who was killed in Uvalde, tweeted of the kits: “Yeah! Awesome! Let’s identify kids after they’ve been murdered instead of fixing issues that could ultimately prevent them from being murdered. It’s like wiping your ass before you take a shit.” Yeah! Awesome! Let’s identify kids after they’ve been murdered instead of fixing issues that could ultimately prevent them from being murdered. It’s like wiping your ass before you take a shit. https://t.co/1V3i1lIfTc— Brett Cross (@BCross052422) October 18, 2022
      Kits have started to be distributed this week. Parents are not obligated to send in DNA samples, though schools are obligated to inform parents about the kits.House speaker Nancy Pelosi said in an interview published today that Democrats need “to message [inflation] better in the next three weeks ahead” but ultimately expressed optimism over the election.“Inflation’s an issue, but it’s global,” she said. “What’s [Republicans’] plan? They ain’t go nothing.”.@PunchbowlNews AM: Our wide-ranging interview with @SpeakerPelosi. Here’s Pelosi on inflation: “We’ll have to message on it better.”Much more here: https://t.co/lhCIUjCrLg pic.twitter.com/AcbALvTV4K— Punchbowl News (@PunchbowlNews) October 19, 2022
      Pelosi also said that the key for Democrats will be turnout. “We know the public is with us. But it’s about turnout. So I’m excited. We’ve outraised them, except for their big, dark money, which is endless.”When asked whether she’s worried about House minority leader Kevin McCarthy becoming speaker after the elections, Pelosi said: “We’re going to win this election so I don’t even entertain that notion. But it should be of concern to the Republicans.”Polls are showing a more uncertain future for Democrats, who have been slammed by Republicans over the economy and inflation over the last few weeks. A recent CBS News/YouGov survey found Democrats were two points behind Republicans on the congressional ballot.Democrats are using these next three weeks to try to electrify their base, sending out some of their prominent members to stump for candidates and encourage voters to head to the polls. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is heading west to speak to young voters at the University of California Irvine this Sunday. Irvine is in US representative Katie Porter’s swing district. .@AOC is heading to UC Irvine this Sunday to rally young voters: pic.twitter.com/nVXJMgx3Xc— Nicholas Wu (@nicholaswu12) October 18, 2022
      Meanwhile senator Bernie Sanders is heading to eight states for at least 19 events over the next two weeks, including California, Nevada, Texas and Florida. “It’s about energizing our base and increasing voter turnout up and down the ballot,” Sanders told the New York Times. “I am a little bit concerned [about] energy level for young people, working-class people… And I want to see what I can do about that.” Last week, Barack Obama’s team announced that the former president will be heading to Milkwaukee to rally for Mandela Barnes, who is looking to unseat Republican incumbent Ron Johnson in a seat that Democrats see as vulnerable.Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate in a heated Georgia senate race against Democrat Raphael Warnock, is planning to hand out fake law enforcement badges that say “I’m with Herschel” as part of his campaign. During a debate with Warnock last week, Walker held up an honorary deputy sheriff’s badge after Warnock attacked him on his claims of being a law enforcement officer. Walker has never been a trained officer, though he has received the endorsement of law enforcement groups. In the debate, the moderator told Walker that props are not allowed on the debate stage.“Let’s talk about the truth,” Walker said while holding his honorary badge. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D): “One thing I have not done — I have never pretended to be a police officer, and I’ve never threatened a shootout with the police.”In response, Herschel Walker (R) pulled out a prop badge: “I am work with many police officers.” pic.twitter.com/Wyh6oYD9zB— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) October 14, 2022
      Now, Walker’s campaign told NBC News that it has ordered 1,000 imitation badges as part of his campaign. “Herschel Walker has been a friend to law enforcement and has a record of honoring police, said Gail Gitcho, Walker’s campaign strategist. “If Senator Warnock wants to highlight this, then bring it on.”Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist in the Trump White House who is at the forefront of the Republican march toward hard-right populism, is throwing his weight behind a movement to radically rewrite the US constitution.Bannon has devoted recent episodes of his online show the War Room to a well-funded operation which has stealthily gained ground over the past two years. Backed by billionaire donors and corporate interests, it aims to persuade state legislatures to call a constitutional convention in the hope of baking far-right conservative values into the supreme law of the land.The goal is, in essence, to turn the country into a permanent conservative nation irrespective of the will of the American people. The convention would promote policies that would limit the size and scope of the federal government, set ceilings on or even abolish taxes, free corporations from regulations, and impose restrictions on government action in areas such as abortion, guns and immigration.“This is another line of attack strategically,” Bannon told his viewers last month. “You now have a political movement that understands we need to go after the administrative state.”By “administrative state”, Bannon was referring to the involvement of the federal government and Congress in central aspects of modern American life. That includes combating the climate crisis, setting educational standards and fighting health inequities.Mark Meckler, a founder of the Tea Party who now leads one of the largest groups advocating for the tactic, the Convention of States Action (Cosa), spelled out some of the prime objectives on Bannon’s show. “We need to say constitutionally, ‘No, the federal government cannot be involved in education, or healthcare, or energy, or the environment’,” he said.Meckler went on to divulge the anti-democratic nature of the state convention movement when he said a main aim was to prevent progressive policies being advanced through presidential elections. “The problem is, any time the administration swings back to Democrat – or radical progressive, or Marxist which is what they are – we are going to lose the gains. So you do the structural fix.”The “structural fix” involves Republican state legislatures pushing conservative amendments to America’s foundational document. By cementing the policies into the US constitution, they would become largely immune to electoral challenge.Inside Steve Bannon’s ‘disturbing’ quest to radically rewrite the US constitutionRead moreFlorida senator Marco Rubio had an intense debate last night with his opponent, Val Demings, currently a US representative. Demings, who is trying to be Florida’s first Black senator, pushed Rubio on issues ranging from abortion to gun control. Rubio, who is running for a third term, would not confirm whether he would support a federal ban on abortion that has no exceptions for rape on incest but sai, “every bill I have ever sponsored on abortion and every bill I’ve ever voted for has exceptions.” Demings responded by saying, “What we know is that the senator supports no exceptions. He can make his mouth say anything today. He is good at that, by the way. What day is it and what is Marco Rubio saying?” On gun control, Demings asked Rubio, “How long will you watch people being gunned down in first grade, fourth grade, school, college, church, synagogue, grocery store, movie theater, a mall and a nightclub and do nothing,” she asked. Demings is in an uphill battle trying to unseat Rubio in a state that has gone further to the right in recent years. Earlier this month, a poll showed Demings six points behind Rubio.Good morning, and welcome to the politics live blog. Joe Biden is set to announce the release of 15m barrels of gas from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve later today as the administration attempts to tamp down gas prices.The national average for gas prices stands at $3.85 a gallon today, according to AAA, slightly higher than the $3.34 a gallon that was seen this time last year. But it’s still lower than this summer, when gas peaked at over $5 a gallon.The move is Biden’s attempt to mitigate growing concerns over the economy as the midterms approach. Democratic candidates in heated races across the country have been facing attacks from their Republican candidates over inflation, which stood at 8.2% in September. Biden will make the announcement around 1 pm today.Here’s what else we’re watching:
      Donald Trump is heading to DC court today for a deposition in the lawsuit brought by former magazine columnist E Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of sexual assault. Carroll is suing Trump for defamation.
      A Politico/Morning consult poll shows that Republicans may have an edge over Democrats in the midterms due to the economy: 81% say the economy will play a major role in their vote, and 80% said the same about inflation.
      Stay tuned for more live updates. More