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      Meadows Was Warned Jan. 6 Could Turn Violent, House Panel Says

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      The committee investigating the attack also said in a filing that the former White House chief of staff proceeded with a plan for “alternate electors” despite being told it wasn’t legally sound.WASHINGTON — Mark Meadows, the final chief of staff for President Donald J. Trump, was told that plans to try to overturn the 2020 election using so-called alternate electors were not “legally sound” and that the events of Jan. 6 could turn violent, but he pushed forward with a rally anyway, the House committee investigating the Capitol attack alleged in a Friday night court filing.In the 248-page filing, lawyers for the committee highlighted the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, a White House aide in Mr. Meadows’s office, who revealed new details about the events that led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress by a pro-Trump mob.“I know that there were concerns brought forward to Mr. Meadows,” Ms. Hutchinson told investigators at a deposition on March 7, adding: “I know that people had brought information forward to him that had indicated that there could be violence on the 6th. But, again, I’m not sure if he — what he did with that information.”Ms. Hutchinson — who testified twice before the panel in closed-door interviews in February and March — said Anthony M. Ornato, the former White House chief of operations, told Mr. Meadows that “we had intel reports saying that there could potentially be violence on the 6th. And Mr. Meadows said: All right. Let’s talk about it.”“But despite this and other warnings, President Trump urged the attendees at the January 6th rally to march to the Capitol to ‘take back your country,’” Douglas N. Letter, the general counsel of the House, wrote in the filing.Read the Jan. 6 Committee’s Filing in Its Lawsuit With Mark MeadowsThe committee alleged that Mark Meadows, the final chief of staff for President Donald J. Trump, was told that an effort to try to overturn the 2020 election using so-called alternate electors were not “legally sound” and that Jan. 6 could turn violent, but he pushed forward with plans to hold a rally in Washington anyway.Read Document 248 pagesThe committee put forward the evidence Friday to try to persuade a federal judge in Washington to throw out Mr. Meadows’s suit against the panel. Mr. Meadows is trying to block the committee’s subpoenas, which he called “overly broad and unduly burdensome,” including one sent to Verizon for his phone and text data.In response, the committee laid out numerous ways its lawyers say Mr. Meadows was deeply involved in the effort to the overturn the 2020 election. Those included his work furthering a scheme to direct certain battleground states to put forward pro-Trump electors even though their voters had chosen Joseph R. Biden Jr. and a pressure campaign in Georgia and other states to try to change the election outcome.Citing Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony, the panel said it had evidence “that Mr. Meadows and certain congressmen were advised by White House counsel that efforts to generate false certificates did not comply with the law.”Ms. Hutchinson told investigators that she heard lawyers from the White House Counsel’s Office say the plan for alternate electors was not “legally sound,” according to the filing.“The select committee’s filing today urges the court to reject Mark Meadows’s baseless claims and put an end to his obstruction of our investigation,” the leaders of the committee, Representatives Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, said in a statement. “Mr. Meadows is hiding behind broad claims of executive privilege even though much of the information we’re seeking couldn’t possibly be covered by privilege and courts have rejected similar claims because the committee’s interest in getting to the truth is so compelling.”A lawyer for Mr. Meadows did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The committee issued a subpoena in November to Ms. Hutchinson, who served as special assistant to the president for legislative affairs and was at the White House on Jan. 6 and with Mr. Trump when he spoke at the “Stop the Steal” rally that day. She also reached out directly to Georgia officials about Mr. Meadows’s trip to that state.She was present for key meetings and discussions in the White House in the buildup to Jan. 6.Ms. Hutchinson also told the panel that top White House lawyers had threatened to resign over extreme plans to seize voting machines, and that had helped persuade Mr. Meadows to back off that plan. “Once it became clear that there would be mass resignations, including lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office, including some of the staff that Mr. Meadows worked closely with, you know, I know that did factor into his thinking,” she said.And she said members of Congress had urged a crowd to amass at the Capitol on Jan. 6.One investigator asked her whether Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, who is now the head of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, supported “the idea of sending people to the Capitol on January the 6th.”“He did,” Ms. Hutchinson replied.The panel also emphasized how personally involved Mr. Meadows was in attempts to pressure Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, over Mr. Trump’s loss there — so much so that Mr. Raffensperger ducked and ignored his phone calls, viewing them as improper.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Signs of progress. 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      N.Y. House Districts Illegally Favor Democrats, Appeals Court Rules

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      A divided five-judge panel found that Democrats engaged in gerrymandering in creating new district maps. The case is expected to head to New York’s highest court.A New York appeals court ruled on Thursday that new congressional districts drawn by Democrats violated the state’s ban on partisan gerrymandering, partially upholding a lower-court ruling that would block the state from using the lines in this year’s critical midterm elections.A divided five-judge panel in Rochester said Democratic legislative leaders had drawn the new House map “to discourage competition and favor Democrats,” knowingly ignoring the will of voters who recently approved a constitutional amendment outlawing the practice.“We are satisfied that petitioners established beyond a reasonable doubt that the Legislature acted with partisan intent,” a three-judge majority wrote in its opinion. Two judges dissented.Gov. Kathy Hochul and top legislative leaders are expected to immediately appeal the decision to the state’s highest court, the New York Court of Appeals. The judges there, all of whom were appointed by Democratic governors, have indicated they could render a final verdict as soon as next week.The outcome in New York will have significant implications in the broader fight for control of the House of Representatives. National Democratic leaders are counting on the maps their party drew in New York to help offset gains by Republicans.Without them, Democrats are at risk of emerging from this year’s redistricting cycle having been bested by Republicans for the second consecutive decade. Republican gains were on track to grow further after Florida lawmakers this week approved a map drawn by Gov. Ron DeSantis that would create four new Republican-friendly seats.The ruling was the second consecutive setback for New York’s Democratic mapmakers, and this time it came in an appellate court that was viewed as generally friendly to the party.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Analysis: For years, the congressional map favored Republicans over Democrats. But in 2022, the map is poised to be surprisingly fair.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.“Like other state courts around the country, New York courts aren’t finding the question of whether a map is a partisan gerrymander a particularly hard one to decide,” said Michael Li, senior counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “It’s very hard to defend a map like New York’s, and ultimately if it quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck.”Still, Mr. Li added, Thursday’s decision was only the second of three acts in New York’s redistricting legal drama.On Thursday, the judges from the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court ordered the Democrat-led Legislature to promptly redraft the map by April 30 or leave the task to a court-appointed neutral expert. The judges were largely silent on another key question at stake: whether some of the primaries scheduled for June should be postponed until August to accommodate new districts.The congressional lines in question, adopted by Democratic supermajorities in the Legislature in February, would give Democrats a clear advantage in 22 of the state’s 26 congressional districts by shifting voters favorable to their party into redrawn seats on Long Island and Staten Island and in Central New York, and packing Republicans in a smaller number of districts. Republicans currently hold eight districts on a map that was drawn by a court-appointed special master in 2012.State leaders did emerge with some good news from the latest ruling. The panel rejected more sweeping parts of the decision by the lower-court judge, Patrick F. McAllister of Steuben County, that held that lawmakers lacked the authority to draw any maps at all after New York’s newly created redistricting commission failed to agree on a plan for the state.As a result, the appeals court ruling reinstated State Senate and Assembly maps that Justice McAllister had thrown out.Mike Murphy, a spokesman for Senate Democrats, said they were “pleased” that the appeals court had validated the Legislature’s right to draw the maps this year, and predicted the higher court would reinstate the congressional maps as well.“We always knew this case would end at the Court of Appeals and look forward to being heard on our appeal to uphold the congressional map as well,” he said.John Faso, a spokesman for the Republican-backed voters challenging the maps, said that they would file their own appeal to try to strike the state legislative maps. But he called Thursday’s decision a “great victory.”The broader legal dispute turns on two interlocking questions: whether the mapmaking process properly adhered to procedures laid out in a 2014 amendment to the State Constitution, and whether the maps themselves violated an accompanying ban on drawing districts for partisan gain.The procedural changes made in 2014 were designed to remove the line-drawing process from the hands of politicians by creating an outside commission to solicit public input and forge a bipartisan proposal for House, State Senate and Assembly districts. If the commission had reached agreement, the Legislature’s role would have been to ratify the maps.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Biden announces another $800m in military aid for Ukraine: ‘We’re in a critical window’ – as it happened

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      US politics liveUS politicsBiden announces another $800m in military aid for Ukraine: ‘We’re in a critical window’ – as it happened
      President also announces ‘Unite for Ukraine’ refugee program
      US will take in 100,000 refugees, says Biden
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       Updated 1h agoVivian Ho (now) and Richard Luscombe (earlier)Thu 21 Apr 2022 16.31 EDTFirst published on Thu 21 Apr 2022 09.22 EDT Show key events onlyLive feedShow key events only
      The Florida legislature approved a congressional map approved by governor Ron DeSantis that will severely curtail Black voting power in the state – and also passed a bill dissolving the self-governance status of Disney World. This all took place despite Democrats staging a sit-in on the legislature floor in protest of the new congressional map.
      Joe Biden is scheduled to deliver remarks momentarily in Portland, Oregon on infrastructure. He is then staying in Portland to participate in a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee, before flying to Seattle to participate in yet another fundraiser for the DNC.
      A federal judge temporarily blocked an anti-abortion law in Kentucky that was so restrictive that the two remaining abortion clinics had to halt procedures.
      A federal judge has temporarily blocked enforcement of a sweeping new anti-abortion law in Kentucky that banned abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy and called for a combination birth-death or stillbirth certificate for each abortion. The restrictive law forced Kentucky’s two remaining abortion clinics to halt procedures. NEWS: Abortions can happen again in Kentucky — for now.A federal judge has temporarily blocked the state’s sweeping new abortion law, HB3, which clinics said made it impossible to provide care.If Roe is overturned this summer, KY has a trigger ban that would outlaw abortion.— Shefali Luthra (@shefalil) April 21, 2022
      Despite the efforts of Florida Democrats, the Florida legislature approved a congressional map approved by governor Ron DeSantis that will severely curtail Black voting power in the state.Earlier today, Florida Democrats staged a sit-in on the floor of the state legislature to interrupt the special legislative session.“What we see today is an overreach, and it’s something we see as unacceptable,” Democratic representative Kamia Brown, who chairs the legislative Black caucus, told the Associated Press after the session adjourned. “Today was one thing we could not just take and stand. We’re sick and tired of being sick and tired.”The congressional map passed today favors the GOP in 20 of the state’s 28 congressional districts in an increase of four seats for the party, by eliminating two congressional districts where Black voters have the ability to elect the candidate of their choosing. One of those, the fifth congressional district, which stretches from Jacksonville to Tallahassee and has a voting population that is 46% Black, will be chopped up into four districts where Black voters comprise a much smaller share of the population. Rep. Al Lawson, whose district is on the chopping block in maps passed by FL legislation, tees off on DeSantis “Once again, DeSantis is showing Florida voters that he is governing the state as a dictator.” pic.twitter.com/TUVALHiV1S— Nicholas Wu (@nicholaswu12) April 21, 2022
      Florida will be sued. https://t.co/wkoecH0Qbb— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) April 21, 2022
      Donald Trump is in the news again, this time for…not being on the news? Trump is denying that he stormed out of a televised interview with Piers Morgan, claiming instead that the clip released yesterday promoting “the most explosive interview of the year” was misleadingly edited to give the impression that he shouted “turn the camera off” while rising from his chair in anger. Trump’s team provided audio to US media outlets that suggested that he had said “turn the camera off” after he and Morgan exchanged pleasantries at the end of the interview. “This is a pathetic attempt to use President Trump as a way to revive the career of a failed television host,” said Taylor Budowich, Trump’s spokesperson.“He says it’s a rigged election, and he now says I have a rigged promo,” Morgan said. “What I would say is watch the interview. It will all be there. We won’t be doing any duplicitous editing.”Read more here: Donald Trump denies storming out of Piers Morgan interviewRead moreIt’s been quite a day in Florida. First Florida Democrats staged a sit in on the floor of the state legislature, halting a special legislative session in which Republicans are poised to pass new congressional districts that would severely curtail Black voting power in the state. All while this was happening, the Florida legislature passed a bill dissolving the self-governance status of Disney World.BREAKING: The Florida legislature has passed the bill dissolving Disney World’s self-governance status in retaliation for Disney’s (belated) opposition to Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law. It now heads to DeSantis’ desk to be signed into law.— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) April 21, 2022
      This bill dissolving Disney World’s self-governance came after Disney’s opposition to what critics call the state’s “don’t say gay” law that bars instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.If Florida governor Ron DeSantis signs the bill into law, it could have huge tax implications for Disney – but Democrats also warned that the move could cause local homeowners to get hit with big tax bills if they have to absorb bond debt from Disney.Politico-Morning Consult poll:75% of voters consider themselves “fans” of Disney’s movies and TV shows31% have a favorable view of Ron DeSantis— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) April 21, 2022
      This week in FL politics:-DeSantis announces a May special session on property insurance (+ other topics?)-DeSantis adds bills affecting Disney to redistricting special session-Lawmakers take up and pass Disney bills-Democrats stage unprecedented House sit-in.It’s Thursday.— Kirby Wilson (@KirbyWTweets) April 21, 2022
      ABC News is reporting that in the coming days, Donald Trump Jr is expected to meet with the House select committee tasked with investigating the 6 January attack on the US Capitol. Sources tell ABC News that the meeting is voluntary and the committee did not have to subpoena the eldest son of Donald Trump. Trump Jr joins his sister Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, as the most recent Trump family members to speak to the panel. An auction of artwork, including pieces by Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol, and other personal items owned by the late supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is expected to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars next week.Much of her collection of paintings and ceramics forms a 115-lot modern art auction hosted by the Potomack company of Alexandria, Virginia, in an online catalog. An additional collection entitled “chambers and home” features 145 more lots of miscellaneous curios, including pewter bowls, crystal vases and numerous other personal items.Ginsburg, the iconic human and civil rights pioneer who died in 2020 aged 87 from complications of pancreatic cancer, owned a multitude of artefacts spanning the last two centuries, by artists including Picasso and Warhol.One of the most valuable items is a 1953 oil painting, Presagio-Premonition, by the Mexican artist Gunther Gerzso, which is expected to raise up to $100,000.Among the most personal is a “Gartenhaus natural black mink coat” with Ginsburg’s name embroidered in a pocket. By Thursday morning, bidding for that was already above $2,000, more than twice its original estimate.Ceramics by Picasso, and a Warhol painting of a can of tomato soup, are among the other highlights.“These items are truly tangible pieces of her life and times as one of America’s greatest supreme court justices,’’ Elizabeth Haynie Wainstein, owner of the Potomack Company, told the New York Times.Read more:Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s personal art collection up for auctionRead moreThe much vaunted and heavily promoted CNN+ subscription streaming service, which the network intended to be a value-added supplement to its regular news programming, has folded, less than a month after it was launched.The decision to halt the service on 30 April will be seen as a massive humiliation for CNN, which was relying on its big-name presenters to draw in customers at $5.99 a month.Take up was slow, however, and the new corporate owners of CNN+, Warner Bros Discovery, decided to pull the plug on Thursday. The company’s hopes of 2m subscribers in the first year appeared hugely optimistic, with reports saying it had attracted barely 150,000 in the three weeks since its launch. In a statement to staff attempting to paint the abrupt closure as a reshuffle of resources, CNN’s incoming president Chris Licht said:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}While today’s decision is incredibly difficult, it is the right one for the long-term success of CNN. It allows us to refocus resources on the core products that drive our singular focus: further enhancing CNN’s journalism and its reputation as a global news leader. Breaking: CNN+, the streaming service that was hyped as one of the most signifiant developments in the history of CNN, will shut down on April 30, just one month after it launched. Here’s our initial story – more to come https://t.co/JElI3cVyDF— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) April 21, 2022
      Black Democrats have staged a sit-in protest in the Florida legislature to disrupt approval of Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s congressional redistricting plans, which they say seeks to eliminate representation for Black voters.According to the Miami Herald, the special legislative session called by DeSantis was adjourned just before lunchtime Thursday as the Black lawmakers began chanting, and were joined in the protest by White colleagues.The Herald reports: “The House was halfway through a three-hour debate on the map when Rep Yvonne Hinson, a Gainesville Democrat, was cut off because she had exceeded the five-minute time limit set for member debate. “As her microphone was silenced, Rep Angie Nixon, a Jacksonville Democrat, walked on the floor with a T-shirt under her suit jacket that read ‘Stop the Black Attack’ and held a sign in protest.“As Black Democrats started chanting and white Democrats joined the protest, House Speaker Chris Sprowls ordered the House in recess and stunned Republicans slowly walked off the floor.”DeSantis has proposed his own redrawn map for Florida’s congressional districts, which the Republican-controlled legislature has said it will pass without change, despite it being lawmakers’ responsibility to draw up boundaries.The governor’s proposal would chop up the fifth congressional district into four new ones where Black voters would comprise a much smaller share of the vote. Critics say his “racist” plan would eliminate the seats of two Black congress members.Read more:‘A racist move’: Florida’s DeSantis threatens Black voter power with electoral mapsRead moreJoe Biden must act to reduce mounting economic pressure by ditching “woke advisers”, Mitt Romney said.The Utah senator and former Republican presidential nominee made the demand in a column for the Wall Street Journal.“A new set of priorities requires a new set of principals,” Romney wrote. “President Biden needs to ditch his woke advisers and surround himself with people who want to get the economy working again.”Romney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about what a “woke adviser” was or who might qualify for the title. The White House did not comment. As midterm elections approach, the Biden administration faces strong economic headwinds. Inflation is at long-term highs, adding to a cost-of-living crisis fueled by the coronavirus pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.Biden’s favourability rating has plummeted as polling shows disapproval of his handling of economic affairs.Read more:Joe Biden must ditch ‘woke advisers’ to fix US economy, Mitt Romney saysRead more
      Joe Biden announced that the US would be providing another $800m military assistance package to Ukraine, in addition to $500m in economic assistance. He acknowledged that he had nearly exhausted the drawdown authority authorized by Congress in a bipartisan spending bill last month, and that he would be making a supplemental budget request in order to continue funding Ukraine as it defends itself from Russia.
      In this same address, Biden announced the creation of Unite for Ukraine, a humanitarian parole program to expedite the migration of Ukrainian refugees from Europe to the US through sponsorship.
      In addition to more sanctions announced yesterday, Biden announced that Russian-affiliated ships are now banned from American ports.
      Ukraine prime minister Denys Shmyhal is in Washington, and met briefly with Biden and some of his cabinet members before Biden gave his remarks. Shmyhal then went on to Capitol Hill, where he met with House speaker Nancy Pelosi.
      A new book by reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns has new details of the days following the 6 January attack on the US Capitol in which Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, the two top Republican leaders in Congress, privately told associates that they believed Donald Trump should be held responsible for the insurrection. McCarthy has come out strongly against the New York Times report on the book’s findings, calling it “totally false and wrong”. My statement on the New York Times pic.twitter.com/PWi2WkoWzh— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) April 21, 2022
      Read more here: Top Republicans held ‘atrocious’ Trump responsible for Capitol attack, book saysRead moreDelta Airlines will restore flight privileges to the 2,000 customers who were barred from flights for failing to comply with the federal mask mandate, Reuters is reporting. Now that a federal judge has ruled the mandate unlawful and the Biden administration will no longer enforce it on public transit – though the justice department appealed the ruling yesterday at the request of public health officials – Delta said it will restore passengers “only after each case is reviewed and each customer demonstrates an understanding of their expected behavior when flying with us.”“Any further disregard for the policies that keep us all safe will result in placement on Delta’s permanent no-fly list,” Delta said. This will not affect the 1,000 or so passengers “who demonstrated egregious behavior and are already on the permanent no-fly list.”Delta joins United Airlines in overturning a ban on passengers who had been banned for not wearing masks on a “case by case basis.”Here’s the White House readout of the meeting between Joe Biden and Ukraine prime minister Denys Shmyhal:NEW: White House releases readout of Pres. Biden’s meeting with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal. “President Biden conveyed the continued commitment of the United States to support the people of Ukraine and to impose costs on Russia.” https://t.co/CzlbOnpowT pic.twitter.com/l0z52cIK6z— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) April 21, 2022
      Now Ukraine prime minister Denys Shmyhal is on Capitol Hill with House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Earlier, Shmyhal spoke with Joe Biden, which delayed his remarks. Ukrainian PM Denys Shmyhal is here on the Hill with Speaker Pelosi today. pic.twitter.com/s7el1TuErZ— Nicholas Wu (@nicholaswu12) April 21, 2022
      After providing an update on Ukraine, Joe Biden is now off to Portland, Oregon to talk about infrastructure and attend a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee.NewestNewestPrevious1 of 2NextOldestOldestTopicsUS politicsUS politics liveJoe BidenRepublicansDemocratsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesUS SenateReuse this content More

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      McConnell and McCarthy’s Jan. 6 Fury at Trump Faded by February

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      In the days after the attack, Representative Kevin McCarthy planned to tell Mr. Trump to resign. Senator Mitch McConnell told allies impeachment was warranted. But their fury faded fast.In the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol building, the two top Republicans in Congress, Representative Kevin McCarthy and Senator Mitch McConnell, told associates they believed President Trump was responsible for inciting the deadly riot and vowed to drive him from politics. Mr. McCarthy went so far as to say he would push Mr. Trump to resign immediately: “I’ve had it with this guy,” he told a group of Republican leaders.But within weeks both men backed off an all-out fight with Mr. Trump because they feared retribution from him and his political movement. Their drive to act faded fast as it became clear it would mean difficult votes that would put them at odds with most of their colleagues.“I didn’t get to be leader by voting with five people in the conference,” Mr. McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, told a friend.The confidential expressions of outrage from Mr. McCarthy and Mr. McConnell, which have not been previously reported, illustrate the immense gulf between what Republican leaders say privately about Mr. Trump and their public deference to a man whose hold on the party has gone virtually unchallenged for half a decade.The leaders’ swift retreat in January 2021 represented a capitulation at a moment of extraordinary political weakness for Mr. Trump — perhaps the last and best chance for mainstream Republicans to reclaim control of their party from a leader who had stoked an insurrection against American democracy itself.This account of the private discussions among Republican leaders in the days after the Jan. 6 attack is adapted from a new book, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future,” which draws on hundreds of interviews with lawmakers and officials, and contemporaneous records of pivotal moments in the 2020 presidential campaign.Mr. McConnell’s office declined to comment. Mark Bednar, a spokesman for Mr. McCarthy, denied that the Republican leader told colleagues he would push Mr. Trump to leave office. “McCarthy never said he’d call Trump to say he should resign,” Mr. Bednar said.Representative Kevin McCarthy in the Capitol two weeks after the riot.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesNo one embodies the stark accommodation to Mr. Trump more than Mr. McCarthy, a 57-year-old Californian who has long had his sights set on becoming speaker of the House. In public after Jan. 6, Mr. McCarthy issued a careful rebuke of Mr. Trump, saying that he “bears responsibility” for the mob that tried to stop Congress from officially certifying the president’s loss. But he declined to condemn him in sterner language.In private, Mr. McCarthy went much further.On a phone call with several other top House Republicans on Jan. 8, Mr. McCarthy said Mr. Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6 had been “atrocious and totally wrong.” He faulted the president for “inciting people” to attack the Capitol, saying that Mr. Trump’s remarks at a rally on the National Mall that day were “not right by any shape or any form.”During that conversation, Mr. McCarthy inquired about the mechanism for invoking the 25th Amendment — the process whereby the vice president and members of the cabinet can remove a president from office — before concluding that was not a viable option. Mr. McCarthy, who was among those who objected to the election results, was uncertain and indecisive, fretting that the Democratic drive to impeach Mr. Trump would “put more fuel on the fire” of the country’s divisions.But Mr. McCarthy’s resolve seemed to harden as the gravity of the attack — and the potential political fallout for his party — sank in. Two members of Mr. Trump’s cabinet had quit their posts after the attack and several moderate Republican governors had called for the president’s resignation. Video clips of the riot kept surfacing online, making the raw brutality of the attack ever more vivid in the public mind.The mob breaking into the Capitol.Win McNamee/Getty ImagesOn Jan. 10, Mr. McCarthy spoke again with the leadership team and this time he had a plan in mind.The Democrats were driving hard at an impeachment resolution, Mr. McCarthy said, and they would have the votes to pass it. Now he planned to call Mr. Trump and tell him it was time for him to go.“What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that and nobody should defend it,” he told the group.Mr. McCarthy said he would tell Mr. Trump of the impeachment resolution: “I think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign.”He acknowledged it was unlikely Mr. Trump would follow that suggestion.Mr. McCarthy spent the four years of Mr. Trump’s presidency as one of the White House’s most obedient supporters in Congress. Since Mr. Trump’s defeat, Mr. McCarthy has appeased far-right members of the House, some of whom are close to the former president. Mr. McCarthy may need their support to become speaker, a vote that could come as soon as next year if the G.O.P. claims the House in November.Representative Kevin McCarthy with Mr. Trump in Bakersfield, Calif., in 2020.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut in a brief window after the storming of the Capitol, Mr. McCarthy contemplated a total break with Mr. Trump and his most extreme supporters.During the same Jan. 10 conversation when he said he would call on Mr. Trump to resign, Mr. McCarthy told other G.O.P. leaders he wished the big tech companies would strip some Republican lawmakers of their social media accounts, as Twitter and Facebook had done with Mr. Trump. Members such as Lauren Boebert of Colorado had done so much to stoke paranoia about the 2020 election and made offensive comments online about the Capitol attack.“We can’t put up with that,” Mr. McCarthy said, adding, “Can’t they take their Twitter accounts away, too?”Mr. McCarthy “never said that particular members should be removed from Twitter,” Mr. Bednar said.Other Republican leaders in the House agreed with Mr. McCarthy that the president’s behavior deserved swift punishment. Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the second-ranking House Republican, said on one call that it was time for the G.O.P. to contemplate a “post-Trump Republican House,” while Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the head of the party’s House campaign committee, suggested censuring Mr. Trump.Yet none of the men followed through on their tough talk in those private conversations.In the following days, Mr. McCarthy heard from some Republican lawmakers who advised against confronting Mr. Trump. In one group conversation, Representative Bill Johnson of Ohio cautioned that conservative voters back home “go ballistic” in response to criticism of Mr. Trump, demanding that Republicans instead train their denunciations on Democrats, such as Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden.“I’m just telling you that that’s the kind of thing that we’re dealing with, with our base,” Mr. Johnson said.When only 10 House Republicans joined with Democrats to support impeaching Mr. Trump on Jan. 13, the message to Mr. McCarthy was clear.By the end of the month, he was pursuing a rapprochement with Mr. Trump, visiting him at Mar-a-Lago and posing for a photograph. (“I didn’t know they were going to take a picture,” Mr. McCarthy said, somewhat apologetically, to one frustrated lawmaker.)Mr. McCarthy has never repeated his denunciations of Mr. Trump, instead offering a tortured claim that the real responsibility for Jan. 6 lies with security officials and Democratic legislative leaders for inadequately defending the Capitol complex.Senator Mitch McConnell, left, with Senator Patrick Leahy after it was announced that Mr. Leahy would preside over Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesIn the Senate, Mr. McConnell’s reversal was no less revealing. Late on the night of Jan. 6, Mr. McConnell predicted to associates that his party would soon break sharply with Mr. Trump and his acolytes; the Republican leader even asked a reporter in the Capitol for information about whether the cabinet might really pursue the 25th Amendment.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Signs of progress. More

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      Attempt to bar Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress can proceed, judge says

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      Attempt to bar Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress can proceed, judge saysFederal judge cites ‘whirlpool of colliding constitutional interests’ in allowing 14th-amendment challenge to far-right Republican An attempt to bar the far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress over her support for the January 6 attack can proceed, a federal judge said.‘Election integrity summits’ aim to fire up Trump activists over big lieRead moreCiting “a whirlpool of colliding constitutional interests of public import”, Amy Totenberg of the northern district of Georgia sent the case on to a state hearing on Friday.A coalition of liberal groups is behind the challenge, citing the 14th amendment to the US constitution, passed after the civil war.The amendment says: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”Supporters of Donald Trump attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, seeking to stop certification of his defeat by Joe Biden. A bipartisan Senate committee connected seven deaths to the riot. About 800 people have been charged, some with seditious conspiracy.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection. Acquitted, he is free to run again.Organisers of events in Washington on January 6 have tied Greene to their efforts. Greene has denied such links and said she does not encourage violence.In October, however, she told a radio show: “January 6 was just a riot at the Capitol and if you think about what our Declaration of Independence says, it says to overthrow tyrants.”In the immediate aftermath of the Capitol attack, Greene was one of 147 Republicans in Congress who objected to results in battleground states, an effort inspired by Trump’s lies about electoral fraud.An effort to use the 14th amendment against Madison Cawthorn, an extremist from North Carolina, was unsuccessful, after a judge ruled an 1872 civil war amnesty law was not merely retroactive.In her ruling on Greene’s attempt to dismiss her challenge, on Monday, Totenberg said: “This case involves a whirlpool of colliding constitutional interests of public import. Upon a thorough analysis of each of the claims asserted in this case, the court concludes that [Greene] has not carried her burden of persuasion.”Even if a state judge rules against Greene, she could challenge the ruling. The Georgia primary is on 25 May, cutting time short. Greene seems likely to win re-election.Writing for the Guardian this month, the Georgetown University professor Thomas Zimmer said: “Greene’s position within the Republican party seems secure … in fact, Greene is the poster child of a rising group of rightwing radicals … [not] shy about their intention to purge whatever vestiges of ‘moderate’ conservatism might still exist within the Republican party.”Extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene are the future of the Republican party | Thomas ZimmerRead moreOne of the groups behind the challenge to Greene is Free Speech for the People. In January, the group’s legal director, Ron Fein, told the Guardian the group aimed to set “a line that says that just as the framers of the 14th amendment wrote and intended, you can’t take an oath to support the constitution and then facilitate an insurrection against the United States while expecting to pursue public office”.On Monday, Fein said: “We look forward to asking Representative Greene about her involvement [in January 6] under oath.”Mike Rasbury, an activist with the Bernie Sanders-affiliated Our Revolution group and a plaintiff in the lawsuit against Greene, said he was “elated” by Totenberg’s ruling.Greene, Rasbury said, “took an oath of office to protect democracy from all enemies foreign and domestic, just as I did when I became a helicopter pilot for the US army in Vietnam. However, she has flippantly ignored this oath and, based on her role in the January 6 insurrection, is disqualified … from holding any future public office”.TopicsRepublicansThe far rightUS Capitol attackUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsUS constitution and civil libertiesnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      ‘Birthing while Black’ is a national crisis for the US. Here’s what Black lawmakers want to do about it

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      ‘Birthing while Black’ is a national crisis for the US. Here’s what Black lawmakers want to do about it For Black women in Congress, maternal mortality hits close to home. The Black Maternal Health Caucus seeks changeWhen Alma Adams’s daughter complained of abdominal pain during a difficult pregnancy, her doctor overlooked her cries for help. The North Carolina congresswoman’s daughter had to undergo a last-minute caesarean section. She and her baby daughter, now 16, survived. “It could have gone another way. I could have been a mother who was grieving her daughter and granddaughter,” Adams told the Guardian, following a week in which the White House highlighted the crisis of pregnancy-related deaths among Black women. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Black women die at three times the rate of white women.For Adams and other Black women in Congress, who formed the Black Maternal Health Caucus, the issue hits close to home. Last week, during Black Maternal Health Week, they talked about how their experiences and the work of advocates had propelled legislation, known as the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2021, to fight a healthcare crisis that disproportionately affects Black women regardless of income.The US has the highest maternal mortality rate among industrialized countries. Since 2000, the maternal mortality rate has risen nearly 60%, making it worse now than it was decades earlier. More than half of these deaths are preventable.Health experts point to the fact that other industrialized countries have significantly different approaches to motherhood than the US, including paid maternity leave, access to comprehensive postpartum care and enough maternity care providers, especially midwives, to meet the needs of their populations. Policy advocates add that the crisis among Black women is a symptom of racism in the nation’s healthcare system – from who has access to care to attitudes toward Black people and their bodies.“It doesn’t matter what your socioeconomic status is. It doesn’t matter how much insurance you have, or how much education you have,” Adams said, adding that her daughter, Jeanelle Lindsay, had a master’s degree and health insurance. “Those things don’t matter. This could happen to anyone. Look at women like Beyoncé and Serena Williams, who had these near misses because the doctors really didn’t pay the kind of attention that they should have.”Black women in the House used the week of recognition to bring attention to several bills that are part of a sweeping Momnibus package to address the dangers of birthing while Black. Their efforts to elevate the longtime work of organizations such as the Black Mamas Matter Alliance showed the power of representation in putting issues affecting Black women on the congressional agenda, said Lauren Underwood, an Illinois congresswoman and registered nurse.“It takes women in these spaces to call out problems, set an agenda, and bring together a coalition of legislators, advocates, and community members to work toward comprehensive, evidence-based solutions that will save moms’ lives,” Underwood said in an email.In January 2019, after Underwood received her committee assignments, Adams met with her to see if she wanted to launch a caucus focused on Black maternal health. One of Underwood’s friends, an epidemiologist at the CDC, had died three weeks after she gave birth. “I was still grappling with her death when I came to Congress,” Underwood said.Three months later, they launched the caucus with 53 founding members, including Ayanna Pressley, Lucy McBath and Barbara Lee. Today, it has 115 members from both parties.After consulting with maternal health advocacy groups, Underwood and Adams introduced the Momnibus Act in March 2020, nine bills aimed at combating maternal health disparities through investment in community-based programs and other efforts to rectify social determinants of health – the conditions in which people live, work and grow up – that affect who lives and who dies in childbirth.Their legislative pursuit was timely, coming before a pandemic that would bring racial health disparities to the public’s attention. Between 2019 and 2020, the mortality rate for Black and Latina women and birthing people rose during the first year of the pandemic.Kamala Harris, the nation’s first Black and South Asian female vice-president, amplified the issue last week during a speech at the Century Foundation, a progressive thinktank based in Washington DC. Harris called for “building a future in which being Black and pregnant is a time filled with joy and hope rather than fear”.As a US senator from California, Harris was lead sponsor for the Senate version of the Momnibus Act in 2020, which stalled in committee. Underwood and Adams, along with Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, reintroduced the Momnibus bill in February 2021.Most of the proposals in the package are included in the Build Back Better Act, a social spending bill that is stuck in gridlock.“Were it not for Black women in the Congressional Black Caucus, there would not be a Black Maternal Health Caucus,” said the Massachusetts representative Ayanna Pressley. “When we say that we are the voice of Congress, we mean that.”Pressley lost her paternal grandmother, whom she never knew, when she died giving birth to Pressley’s uncle in the 1950s. “Decades later, the Black maternal mortality crisis continues to rob us of our loved ones and to destabilize families,” she said during the Century Foundation event.What explains the disparities in outcomes between Black and white mothers boils down to what Pressley called “policy violence”. It’s not just the discrimination that Black women and birthing people experience, but also the lack of access to quality healthcare and medical coverage.“These are the result of centuries of laws in a systematic, systematically racist health care system that too often discounts our pay, ignores our voices, disregards our lives,” Pressley said. “Birthing while Black should not be a death sentence.”In November 2021, Joe Biden signed into law one of the bills in the Momnibus package that invests $15m in maternity care for veterans. But other legislative efforts remain stalled in Congress. Eight bills that were part of the original Momnibus package are part of the Build Back Better Act, according to a tracker by The Century Foundation. They include awarding grants to community organizations to help pregnant people find affordable housing, documenting transportation barriers for pregnant and postpartum people, expanding food stamp eligibility and permanently expanding Medicaid coverage for mothers in every state for a year after childbirth.And on Friday, Booker and seven other lawmakers introduced Mamas First Act, which would expand Medicaid to cover services from doulas and midwives.“We’ve made historic progress, from the enactment of the first bill in my Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act to the recent cabinet meeting Vice-President Harris led, the first-ever White House cabinet meeting convened to address maternal health disparities as a national priority,” Underwood said.Adams pointed to another piece of the legislation that feels very close to home: the Kira Johnson Act, named after a 39-year-old Black mother who, after complaining of abdominal pain, died in 2016 from a hemorrhage following a routine caesarean section. The bill would direct the health and human services department to send grants to community groups focused on improving the maternal health outcomes for Black, Latino and other marginalized communities and for training to reduce racial bias and discrimination among healthcare providers.The connection between Johnson’s and her daughter’s situations resonated with Adams. The pain they experienced was dismissed – a familiar form of racial bias that the Momnibus package attempts to address.“Either you have a mother, you are a mother, or you know women who are moms,” Adams said. “When we raise the tide for Black women, who are among the most marginalized and the most vulnerable, we ultimately raise the tide for all women.”TopicsUS CongressParents and parentingFamilyKamala HarrisAyanna PressleyHouse of RepresentativesUS SenatefeaturesReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      Effort to Remove Marjorie Taylor Greene From Ballot Can Proceed, Judge Says

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      The case that Ms. Greene unsuccessfully sought to have dismissed mirrors efforts against other Republicans centered on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.A federal judge cleared the way on Monday for a group of Georgia voters to move forward with legal efforts seeking to disqualify Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from running for re-election to Congress, citing her role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.The disqualification effort is based on a constitutional provision adopted after the Civil War that barred members of the Confederacy from holding office. It mirrors several other cases involving Republican members of Congress, whose roles leading up to and during the deadly riot have drawn intense criticism.The judge, Amy Totenberg, who was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia by President Barack Obama, denied Ms. Greene’s request for a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order in the high-profile legal feud.Ms. Greene, 47, who is known for her unflinching loyalty to former President Donald J. Trump and for her clashes with Democrats, has steadfastly denied that she aided and engaged in the attack on the Capitol.In the 73-page ruling, Judge Totenberg wrote that Ms. Greene had failed to meet the “burden of persuasion” in her request for injunctive relief, which she called an extraordinary and drastic remedy.“This case involves a whirlpool of colliding constitutional interests of public import,” Judge Totenberg wrote. “The novelty of the factual and historical posture of this case — especially when assessed in the context of a preliminary injunction motion reviewed on a fast track — has made resolution of the complex legal issues at stake here particularly demanding.”James Bopp Jr., a lawyer for Ms. Greene, said on Monday night that the ruling was flawed and minimized the adverse effect that the disqualification effort was having on Ms. Greene’s right to run for office.“This is fundamentally antidemocratic,” Mr. Bopp said, maintaining that Ms. Greene had “publicly and vigorously condemned the attack on the Capitol.”He called the effort to remove her from the ballot part of a well-funded nationwide effort to strip voters of their right to vote for candidates of their choice, with elections determined by “bureaucrats, judges, lawyers and clever legal arguments.”In her request for an injunction, Ms. Greene argued that it would be impossible to fully resolve the case before Georgia holds its primary elections on May 24. Absentee ballots will start to be mailed on April 25, Ms. Greene’s motion said.In the ruling, Judge Totenberg determined that Ms. Greene had failed to prove that there was a strong likelihood that she would prevail on the merits of her legal claims. A state administrative judge is scheduled to hear the case on Friday.The decision by Judge Totenberg stood in stark contrast with a recent ruling in a similar case involving Representative Madison Cawthorn in North Carolina. In blocking that disqualification effort, U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers II, an appointee of Mr. Trump, ruled that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution narrowly applied to members of the Confederacy after the Civil War.Ms. Greene’s critics have said that she frequently referred to efforts to challenge the 2020 presidential election results as “our 1776 moment” in public comments that led up to the riot at the Capitol. They contend that the phrase was a code used to incite violence, and point to the third section of the 14th Amendment in their argument to drop her from the ballot.That section says that “no person shall” be a member of Congress or hold civil office if they had engaged in insurrection or rebellion after “having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State.”Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3Debating a criminal referral. More

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      Senator Elizabeth Warren: Democrats Can Win if We Keep Our Word

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      Democrats are the party of working people. Ahead of the 2020 election, we advanced ideas and plans that we believed would, in ways big and small, make our democracy and our economy work better for all Americans. Across this country, voters agreed with us — and gave us a majority in Washington so that we could deliver on those promises.Republican senators and broken institutions have blocked much of that promised progress. Now Republicans are betting that a stalled Biden agenda won’t give Democrats enough to run on in the midterm elections — and they might be right. Despite pandemic relief, infrastructure investments and the historic Supreme Court confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, we promised more — and voters remember those promises.Republicans want to frame the upcoming elections to be about “wokeness,” cancel culture and the “militant left wing.” Standing up for the inherent dignity of everyone is a core American value, and Democrats are proud to do that every day. While Republican politicians peddle lies, fear and division, we should use every single one of the next 200 days or so before the election to deliver meaningful improvements for working people.Democrats win elections when we show we understand the painful economic realities facing American families and convince voters we will deliver meaningful change. To put it bluntly: if we fail to use the months remaining before the elections to deliver on more of our agenda, Democrats are headed toward big losses in the midterms.Time is running short. We need to finalize a budget reconciliation deal, making giant corporations pay their share to fund vital investments in combating climate change and lowering costs for families, which can advance with only 50 Senate votes. Other priorities can be done with the president’s executive authority. It’s no secret that I believe we should abolish the filibuster. But if Republicans want to use it to block policies that Americans broadly support, we should also force them to take those votes in plain view.Let’s begin with corruption. For years, Americans have identified corrupt government officials as a top concern. And they’re right: to tackle the urgent challenges we face — climate change, income inequality, systemic injustice — we must root out corruption. To start cleaning up government, members of Congress and their spouses shouldn’t be allowed to own or trade individual stocks, which the vast majority of voters support banning, according to multiple polls. Whether you’re a Republican senator or the Democratic speaker of the House, it is obvious to the American people that they should not be allowed to trade individual stocks and then vote on laws that affect those companies. I have the strongest plan and the only bipartisan bill in the Senate to get it done.We can also act quickly to rein in costs for middle-class families. In the very short term, that means stopping companies from jacking up prices to boost their profits. Price increases are driven by many factors, including pandemic disruptions to global supply chains and Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. But when the Kroger chief executive, Rodney McMullen, said “a little bit of inflation is always good in our business,” it’s no surprise that, by a margin of two-to-one, American voters don’t buy the explanation that companies are just passing along costs. Instead, they blame corporations for raising prices to boost their own profits. Even Fed Chair Jerome Powell, a conservative Republican, acknowledged that giant corporations raise prices simply “because they can.”The president deserves enormous credit for advancing an ambitious agenda to promote competition and appointing effective regulators to enforce our antitrust laws, and it’s time for congressional Democrats to have his back. According to Data for Progress surveys, eight in 10 Americans believe Congress should pass laws to reinvigorate competition and three-quarters strongly believe that oil and gas companies should not make gobs of money off this energy crisis. Beefing up regulators’ authority to end price-gouging, breaking up monopolies, and passing a windfall profits tax is a good start. Only in Washington, where America’s biggest companies spend billions to drown out reality, are these controversial ideas. Across America, these are popular plans.We can stand up to the armies of lobbyists and P.R. flacks and tackle tax loopholes for the rich and powerful. About two-thirds of likely American voters — including a majority of Republicans — say it’s time for billionaires to pay more in taxes. Nearly three-quarters of Americans want to put an end to wildly profitable corporations paying nothing or little in federal income taxes (yes, Amazon, I’m looking at you) and put into place a global minimum corporate tax. And a majority of Americans would like to use some of those tax revenues to invest in clean energy, affordable child care, and universal pre-K.That’s a big legislative agenda, but it isn’t big enough. We also need to use every tool of the presidency to deliver for working people.For example, by a margin of more than two-to-one, Americans support providing some student loan debt cancellation — an action the president could take entirely on his own. Doing so would lift the economic outlook for too many borrowers who still weren’t able to get a college diploma, for the millions of female borrowers who shoulder about two-thirds of all student loan debt, and for Black and Hispanic borrowers, a higher percentage of whom take on debt to attend college compared to white students, and have a harder time paying it off after school. With the stroke of a pen, the president could make massive strides to close gender and racial wealth gaps.And he can do more. Decisive action on everything from lowering prescription drug prices to ensuring that more workers are eligible for overtime pay can be executed by the president alone, using the authority already given to him by existing laws, without rounding up 50 Senate votes.Like many Americans, I’m frustrated by our failure to get big things done — things that are both badly needed and very popular with all Americans. While Republican politicians obstruct many efforts to improve people’s lives and many swear loyalty to the Big Lie, the urgency of the next election bears down on us.Democrats cannot bow to the wisdom of out-of-touch consultants who recommend we simply tout our accomplishments. Instead, Democrats need to deliver more of the president’s agenda — or else we will not be in the majority much longer.Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) is a United States senator for Massachusetts.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