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      House Democrats are scared to tax billionaires – that’s a costly mistake | Robert Reich

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      OpinionUS taxationHouse Democrats are scared to tax billionaires – that’s a costly mistakeRobert ReichPolitical cowardice means those funding Joe Biden’s ambitious social policy plan want to leave the mega-rich unscathed Sun 19 Sep 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 19 Sep 2021 05.30 EDTThis week, House Democrats released their proposed tax increases to fund Joe Biden’s $3.5tn social policy plan.‘Medium is the message’: AOC defends ‘tax the rich’ dress worn to Met GalaRead moreThe biggest surprise: they didn’t go after the huge accumulations of wealth at the top – representing the largest share of the economy in more than a century.You might have thought Democrats would be eager to tax America’s 660 billionaires whose fortunes have increased by $1.8bn since the start of the pandemic, an amount that could fund half of Biden’s plan and still leave the billionaires as rich as they were before the pandemic began.Elon Musk’s $138bn in pandemic gains, for example, could cover the cost of tuition for 5.5 million community college students and feed 29 million low-income public-school kids, while still leaving Musk $4bn richer than he was before Covid.But senior House Democrats decided to raise revenue the traditional way, taxing annual income rather than giant wealth. They aim to raise the highest income tax rate and apply a 3% surtax to incomes over $5m.The dirty little secret is the ultrarich don’t live off their paychecks.Jeff Bezos’s salary from Amazon was $81,840 last year, yet he rakes in some $149,353 every minute from the soaring value of his Amazon stocks, which is how he affords five mansions, including one in Washington DC which has 25 bathrooms.House Democrats won’t even close the gaping “stepped-up basis at death” loophole, which allows the heirs of the ultrarich to value their stocks, bonds, mansions and other assets at current market prices – avoiding capital gains taxes on the entire increase in value from when they were purchased.This loophole allows family dynasties to transfer ever larger amounts of wealth to future generations without it ever being taxed. Talk about an American aristocracy.Biden wanted to close this loophole but House Democrats balked.You might also have assumed Democrats would target America’s biggest corporations, awash in cash but paying a pittance in taxes. Thirty-nine of the S&P 500 or Fortune 500 paid no federal income tax at all from 2018 to 2020 while reporting a combined $122bn in profits to their shareholders.But remarkably, House Democrats have decided to set corporate tax rates below the level they were at when Barack Obama was in the White House. Democrats even kept scaled-back versions of infamous corporate loopholes such as private equity’s “carried interest”. And they retained special tax breaks for oil and gas companies.What’s going on? It’s not that Democrats lack the power. They’re in one of those rare trifectas when they hold the presidency and majorities, albeit small, in the House and Senate.It’s not the economics. Americans have been subject to decades of Republican “trickle-down” nonsense and know full well nothing trickles down. Billionaires hardly need to have their fortunes grow $100,000 a minute to be innovative. And as I’ve stressed, there’s more money at the top, relative to anywhere else, than at any time in the last century.Besides, Democrats need the revenue to finance their ambitious plan to invest in childcare, education, paid family leave, healthcare and the climate.So what’s holding them back?Put simply, Democrats are reluctant to tax the record-breaking wealth of the rich and big corporations because of … the wealth of the rich and big corporations.Many Democrats rely on that wealth to bankroll their campaigns. They also dread becoming targets of well-financed ad campaigns accusing them of voting for “job-killing” taxes.Republicans sold their souls to the moneyed interests long ago, but the timidity of House Democrats shows just how loudly big money speaks these days even in the party of Franklin D Roosevelt.US’s wealthiest 1% are failing to pay $160bn a year in taxes, report findsRead moreThat’s because there’s far less of it on the other side. Through the first half of 2021, business groups and corporations spent nearly $1.5bn on lobbying, compared to roughly $22m spent by labor unions and $81m by public interest groups, according to OpenSecrets.org.Progressive House Democrats will still have a say. Senate Democrats haven’t weighed in. But there’s reason for concern.The looming debate over taxes is really a debate over the allocation of wealth and power. As that allocation becomes ever more grotesquely imbalanced, this debate will loom ever larger over American politics.Behind it will be this simple but important question: Which party represents average working people and which shills for the rich? Democrats, take note.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
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      Debunking the Pro-Trump Right’s Claims About the Jan. 6 Riot

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      A rally scheduled for Saturday in Washington is intended to continue a Republican effort to rewrite the narrative of the assault on the Capitol. The facts undercut their assertions.In the eight months since a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, some Republicans have tried to build a case — belied by the facts — that the vast federal investigation of the riot has been essentially unfair, its targets the victims of political persecution.The people charged in the Jan. 6 attack are “being persecuted so unfairly,” former President Donald J. Trump said in a statement on Thursday.That sentiment is the organizing principle behind the rally scheduled in Washington on Saturday, billed as “Justice for J6.” According to the permit application submitted by the organizers, a group called Look Ahead America, the event is meant to “bring awareness and attention to the unjust and unethical treatment of nonviolent Jan. 6 political prisoners.”The rally is the latest effort in the right’s continuing attempt to rewrite the history of the mob attack on Congress, which prosecutors say led to as many as 1,000 assaults against the police and sought to disrupt certification of President Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.Here is what the facts say about assertions from those seeking to promote a false narrative about Jan. 6.The rioters weren’t just tourists who now face excessive criminal charges.One of the first claims that pro-Trump conservatives made about Jan. 6 was that the rioters were little more than tourists and that those arrested were victims of prosecutorial overreach. Representative Andrew Clyde, Republican of Georgia, described the scene at the Capitol that day as “a normal tourist visit,” implying that hundreds of people taken into custody were facing excessive charges.But, in fact, nearly half of the more than 600 people charged have been accused only of misdemeanors like trespassing and disorderly conduct, rather than more serious felonies.At this point, more than 50 of these low-level defendants have pleaded guilty. All of them will serve prison terms of six months or less, or no time at all — fairly modest sentences for the federal penal system. But even when the authorities have agreed to lenient penalties, they have still insisted that no one who broke into the Capitol is innocent.“A riot cannot occur without rioters,” prosecutors wrote in a recent memo proposing no jail time for Valerie Ehrke, a California woman who only spent one minute in the building. “And rioter’s actions — from the most mundane to the most violent — contributed, directly and indirectly, to the violence and destruction of that day.”The government hasn’t widely detained nonviolent protesters.At an event last month hosted by Republican officials in his home state of North Carolina, Representative Madison Cawthorn repeated an oft-heard myth. He complained that hundreds of people taken into custody after Jan. 6 were “political hostages.”The truth is that about 15 percent of those arrested so far in connection with the riot have been denied bail and remain in pretrial custody — much lower than the overall federal pretrial detention rate of 75 percent. Moreover, all of those being detained on charges related to Jan. 6 are facing serious charges like assault or obstruction of Congress; none have been accused of only misdemeanors.Far from jailing everyone, in fact, judges have granted bail to numerous defendants accused of violent attacks on the police or of belonging to extremist groups like the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers militia.There are a handful of cases in which people have been denied bail without having engaged in physical violence, but those are the exceptions to the rule.This week, a lawyer for Ethan Nordean, a leader of the Proud Boys, complained in court that his client has been in jail for months not because of anything he personally did on Jan. 6, but rather because he is a member of a reviled political organization.Judge Timothy J. Kelly, who was appointed to the federal bench by Mr. Trump, responded that the law alone was guiding Mr. Nordean’s case.“Politics has nothing to do with it,” Judge Kelly said. “Not one whit.”Capitol Police officers preparing riot equipment at the Capitol before the rally on Saturday.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesJan. 6 defendants haven’t been treated more harshly than racial justice protesters.The assertion has become a staple on the right: Trump supporters were charged with violent crimes in the Capitol attack because of their conservative beliefs while many leftist activists had similar charges stemming from the racial justice protests last year in cities like Portland, Ore., reduced or dismissed.This summer, a Jan. 6 defendant named Garret Miller filed court papers making that argument. Mr. Miller, who lives in Dallas, claimed he had been “treated differently by the government than the Portland rioters based upon the politics involved,” his lawyer wrote.In rebutting these claims, the government argued there was no comparison between the protests last year prompted by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the storming of the Capitol. While prosecutors acknowledged that those arrested during weeks of unrest at the Portland federal courthouse had committed “serious offenses,” they insisted that the rioters in Washington were involved in “a singular and chilling event” that threatened not only the Capitol but also “democracy itself.”Trying to explain why many cases in the racial justice protests were eventually dismissed, prosecutors also said they have much better evidence against Capitol rioters like Mr. Miller than they ever had against protesters in Portland. Among the material they collected after Jan. 6 were thousands of hours of video footage from surveillance and body cameras worn by the police, and hundreds of thousands of social media posts.A few months after Mr. Miller filed his claims, The Associated Press published an analysis of more than 300 criminal cases stemming from the protests incited by Mr. Floyd’s murder. The analysis undercut the argument that pro-Trump defendants were treated more harshly than Black Lives Matter protesters, showing that many leftist rioters had received substantial sentences.There’s no evidence that Jan. 6 defendants are being treated worse than others in jail.Perhaps the loudest grievances about Capitol defendants concern the jail conditions of those denied bail.The accusations have been many and wide-ranging. Some defendants have complained of being locked in their cells for 23 hours a day in what amounts to solitary confinement. Others have claimed that they have been denied the right to hold religious services and that their hygiene needs have been restricted.One defendant, charged with assaulting the police, has said that he was zip-tied and then “savagely” beaten by a correctional officer in the District of Columbia jail, according to his lawyer. The assault resulted in a broken nose, a dislocated jaw and the loss of sight in the man’s right eye.Jail, of course, is a terrible place to be, regardless of one’s politics. But at least so far, no one has offered evidence that the authorities have imposed harsh conditions on Jan. 6 defendants because of their political beliefs.A spokeswoman for the District of Columbia jail said the 23-hour lockdown was not imposed solely on the Capitol defendants but was a medical provision used throughout the jail to curb the spread of the coronavirus. It has recently been lifted, she said.The Justice Department is using a novel charge in some cases.Prosecutors have taken a legal risk in the way they have chosen to prosecute scores of Capitol cases. The potential problem concerns the use of a federal obstruction law to charge people with disrupting Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote. Lawyers for some of the defendants are challenging the Justice Department in court over use of the law, but pro-Trump activists have yet to make it a big public issue.Instead of using politically fraught and hard-to-prove charges like sedition or insurrection to describe the attempt to block certification of the election results, the Justice Department used a much more measured — albeit novel — law: obstruction of an official proceeding.The law is not a perfect match for what happened on Jan. 6; indeed, it had never before been used in a situation like the Capitol attack.Passed in 2002 as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a corporate overhaul law, the measure was devised to prohibit things like shredding documents or tampering with witnesses. Several lawyers have filed papers arguing that the law does not apply to the riot at the Capitol. Two federal judges have signaled that they might agree and could decide to toss the charge for more than 200 defendants.The Justice Department’s use of the obstruction law is arguably the most political move prosecutors have made to date. After all, as some defense lawyers have noted, the government did not use the same charge in 2018 when left-wing activists swarmed the Capitol to protest the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. More

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      Trump’s White House chief of staff is target of Capitol attack records request

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      US Capitol attackTrump’s White House chief of staff is target of Capitol attack records requestHouse select committee investigating 6 January wants telecom and social media companies to preserve records on Mark Meadows Hugo Lowell in WashingtonMon 13 Sep 2021 05.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 13 Sep 2021 05.02 EDTThe House select committee investigating the 6 January attack on the Capitol has instructed telecom and social media companies last week to preserve records of Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, according to a source familiar with the matter.The move positions the select committee on the doorstep of the Oval Office as it pursues a far-reaching inquiry into whether Trump and his White House helped plan or had advance knowledge of the insurrection perpetrated by the former president’s supporters.Republicans in crosshairs of 6 January panel begin campaign of intimidationRead moreHouse select committee investigators signaled their intention to examine potential involvement by the Trump White House and House Republicans when they last week made a series of records demands and records preservation requests for Trump officials connected to the Capitol attack.In the records preservation requests, the select committee instructed 35 telecom and social media companies to avoid destroying communications logs of several hundred people, including the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, and 10 House Republicans, in case it later issues subpoenas.But the previously unreported inclusion of Meadows on the list of people whose records the select committee wants preserved suggests the panel will seek more information on the most senior aide in the Trump administration and could upturn every inch of the West Wing in its inquiry.The former chief of staff is among several top White House officials who may hold the key to unlock inside information pertaining to the extent of the former president’s involvement in the Capitol attack that left five dead and nearly 140 injured.Meadows remained at Trump’s side in the weeks before 6 January as well as on the day itself, as the White House strategized ways to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and ensure the then vice-president, Mike Pence, would not certify Joe Biden’s victory.The White House chief of staff started the day of the insurrection with Trump in the Oval Office, before attending the “Save America” rally that preceded the Capitol attack, according to a Trump administration official familiar with his movements.Meadows then accompanied Trump back to the White House with a coterie of aides and advisers, from where the former president told the Republican senator Ben Sasse that he was “delighted” at the images of his supporters and domestic violent extremists storming the Capitol in his name.He then also spoke to Marc Short, the chief of staff to Pence, as well as Kash Patel, the chief of staff to the then defense secretary, Christopher Miller, the official said.Such proximity to Trump and the chiefs of staff to two key Trump cabinet members closely connected to the Capitol attack suggests Meadows is likely to be a prime witness for the inquiry, insofar as he can shed light on Trump’s private thoughts as the violence unfolded.A spokesperson for the select committee declined to comment on the preservation request for Meadows. But the chair of the House select committee, Bennie Thompson, previously told the Guardian that any conversations with Trump would be investigated by the select committee.The inclusion of Meadows on the list, alongside McCarthy and 10 other far-right House Republicans, nonetheless provides a clearer picture of the sharpening contours of the investigation and its overall direction as the select committee ramps up its work.It also echoes congressional investigations of eras past: Richard Nixon’s White House chief of staff, HR Haldeman, came under scrutiny from the Senate select committee into the Watergate scandal and was forced to testify about the extent of Nixon’s involvement.But it was not immediately clear which companies had received a records preservation request for Meadows from the select committee. Some telecom and social media companies – such as the online forum 8kun popular with QAnon conspiracy theorists – did not even receive a list of names, counsel for the forum said.House select committee investigators are still in the evidence-gathering phase, but the committee is likely to schedule its second hearing before the end of the month, according to a source familiar with the matter.The select committee said on Friday that investigators had received thousands of pages of documents, and that they understood the National Archives had started the process required by law for the review of presidential records.Meadows’s communications, meanwhile, may be of interest to the select committee in other aspects of the inquiry into the origins of 6 January, an area that falls under the panel’s purview after it took charge of all congressional investigations into the Capitol attack.The select committee subsumed several inquiries into the Trump administration’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election, including one by the House oversight committee that was examining how Meadows pressured the justice department to investigate baseless allegations of election fraud.Top Republicans under scrutiny have embarked on a campaign of threats and intimidation in an attempt to thwart the inquiry.The Republican House minority leader, McCarthy, last week lashed out at the select committee’s records preservation requests and warned that the GOP would retaliate against companies that complied when his party retakes the House majority.McCarthy argued, without citing any specific law, that it would be illegal for telecom and social media companies to comply with the records requests – even though congressional investigators have obtained phone and communications records without issue in the past.TopicsUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesTrump administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Republicans in crosshairs of 6 January panel begin campaign of intimidation

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      US Capitol attackRepublicans in crosshairs of 6 January panel begin campaign of intimidationHouse leader Kevin McCarthy threatened retaliation against tech companies that share records with the committee Hugo Lowellin WashingtonMon 6 Sep 2021 02.00 EDTTop Republicans under scrutiny for their role in the events of 6 January have embarked on a campaign of threats and intimidation to thwart a Democratic-controlled congressional panel that is scrutinizing the Capitol attack and opening an expanded investigation into Donald Trump.The chairman of the House select committee into the violent assault on the Capitol, Bennie Thompson, in recent days demanded an array of Trump executive branch records related to the insurrection, as members and counsel prepared to examine what Trump knew of efforts to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.House select committee investigators then asked a slew of technology companies to preserve the social media records of hundreds of people connected to the Capitol attack, including far-right House Republicans who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The select committee said that its investigators were merely “gathering facts, not alleging wrongdoing by any individual” as they pursued the records in what amounted to the most aggressive moves taken by the panel since it launched proceedings in July.But the twin actions, which threatened to open a full accounting of Trump’s moves in the days and weeks before the joint session of Congress on 6 January, has unnerved top House Republicans, according to a source familiar with the matter.The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, decried the select committee’s investigation as a partisan exercise and threatened to retaliate against any telecommunications company that complied with the records requests.“A Republican majority will not forget,” he warned, in remarks that seemed to imply some future threat against the sector.The warning from the top Republican in the House amounted to a serious escalation as he seeks to undermine a forensic examination of the attack perpetrated by Trump supporters and domestic violent extremists that left five dead and nearly 140 injured.But his remarks – which members on the select committee privately consider to be at best, harassment, and at worst, obstruction of justice – reflects McCarthy’s realization that he could himself be in the crosshairs of the committee, the source said.Most of McCarthy’s efforts to undercut the inquiry to date, such as sinking the prospects of a 9/11-style commission to scrutinize the Capitol attack, have been aimed at shielding Trump and his party from what the select committee might uncover.But deeply alarmed at the efforts by House select committee investigators to secure his personal communications records for the fraught moments leading up to and during the Capitol attack, McCarthy went on the offensive to pre-emptively protect himself, the source said.McCarthy was among several House Republicans who desperately begged Trump to call off the rioters as they stormed the Capitol in his name, only to be rebuffed by Trump, who questioned why McCarthy wasn’t doing more to overturn the election.Thompson previously told the Guardian in an interview that such conversations with Trump would be investigated by the select committee, raising the prospect that McCarthy could be forced to testify about what Trump appeared to be thinking and doing on 6 January.The statement from McCarthy asserted, without citing any law, that it would be illegal for the technology companies to comply with the records requests – even though congressional investigators have obtained phone and communications records in the past.The threat is unlikely to be viewed as a violation of federal witness tampering law, which, as part of a broader obstruction of justice statute, makes it a felony under some circumstances to try to dissuade or hinder cooperation with an official proceeding.Congressman Jamie Raskin, a member of the select committee and the former lead impeachment manager in Trump’s second trial, said that he was appalled by McCarthy’s remarks, which he described as tantamount to obstruction of justice.“He is leveling threats against people cooperating with a congressional investigation,” Raskin said. “Why would the minority leader of the House of Representatives not be interested in our ability to get all of the facts in relation to the January 6th attack?”Meanwhile, other members on the select committee have also seized on McCarthy’s threat as a reminder that Republicans could not be trusted to engage in the inquiry in good faith, according to a source connected to the 6 January investigation.It also underscored to them, the source said, the nervousness among top Republicans as the select committee ramps up its work, even though the inquiry is still in its early days and has yet to sift through thousands of pages of expected evidence.Emboldened by McCarthy’s combative stance, Trump denounced the select committee as a “partisan sham”, while Republicans under scrutiny by the panel such as Marjorie Taylor Greene threatened any companies that complied with the records requests would be “shut down”.The chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, Andy Biggs, is now also asking McCarthy to remove from the Republican conference Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger – the two vocal critics of Trump appointed to the select committee – whom he called “spies” for Democrats.Biggs on Thursday suggested in a letter, first reported by CNN, that Cheney and Kinzinger should be ejected because they are involved in investigating Republicans over 6 January and the party should be able to strategize without having the pair present at conference meetings.Still, McCarthy remains unable to shape an investigation likely to prove politically damaging to Trump and to Republicans at the ballot box at the midterms next year, a reality that has come largely as a result of his own strategic miscalculations.The proposed 9/11-style commission into the Capitol attack had envisioned a panel with equal power between Democrats and Republicans, and McCarthy’s decision to boycott the select committee in a flash of anger inadvertently left Trump without any defenders.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS elections 2020US politicsRepublicansHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

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      Liz Cheney Promoted to No. 2 Post on Jan. 6 Committee

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      The move was unusual in the House, where the majority party typically gives such roles to one of its own. The Wyoming Republican has been a vocal critic of Donald J. Trump.WASHINGTON — House Democrats leading the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob named Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming on Thursday as the committee’s vice chairwoman, elevating the role of a Republican who has been a vocal critic of former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.The announcement effectively makes Ms. Cheney the special committee’s second-ranking member, an unusual move for the majority party in the House, which typically grants that position to one of its own. But her appointment to the panel has been part of a break with convention from the start, given that Democrats nominated her and another Republican, Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, in a bid to bring bipartisan credibility to an investigation that most other G.O.P. lawmakers had denounced and worked to thwart.“Representative Cheney has demonstrated again and again her commitment to getting answers about Jan. 6, ensuring accountability, and doing whatever it takes to protect democracy for the American people,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the committee chairman, said in a statement announcing the move. “Her leadership and insights have shaped the early work of the select committee and this appointment underscores the bipartisan nature of this effort.”It comes as the special committee is ramping up its investigation into the violence that engulfed the Capitol as supporters of Mr. Trump stormed the building in his name, brutalizing police officers and delaying for hours the official counting of electoral votes to formalize President Biden’s victory.The committee sent record preservation demands this week to 35 technology firms naming hundreds of people whose records they might want to review, including 11 of Mr. Trump’s most ardent allies in Congress, according to several people familiar with the documents who were not authorized to speak about its contents.Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, has threatened to retaliate against any company that complies with the request.Mr. McCarthy led the charge to strip Ms. Cheney of her Republican leadership post over her continued denunciation of Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. This week, Representative Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona and leader of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus, circulated a letter calling on Mr. McCarthy to expel both Ms. Cheney, a staunch conservative whose father served as vice president, and Mr. Kinzinger from the Republican conference..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“Congresswoman Cheney and Congressman Kinzinger are two spies for the Democrats that we currently invite to the meetings, despite our inability to trust them,” Mr. Biggs wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.Mr. Biggs, who promoted false claims of widespread election rigging in the run-up to the Jan. 6 attack, is among the Republicans whose social media and phone records the select committee is seeking to preserve. In his letter, he proposed changing rules for the Republican caucus to expel any member who accepts a committee assignment from Democrats, a step that Mr. McCarthy has suggested in the past would be appropriate.“We cannot trust these members to sit in our Republican conference meetings while we plan our defense against the Democrats,” Mr. Biggs wrote.Ms. Cheney said in a statement that she was pleased to accept the post as the committee’s No. 2.“Every member of this committee is dedicated to conducting a nonpartisan, professional, and thorough investigation of all the relevant facts regarding Jan. 6 and the threat to our Constitution we faced that day,” Ms. Cheney said. “I have accepted the position of vice chair of the committee to assure that we achieve that goal. We owe it to the American people to investigate everything that led up to, and transpired on, Jan. 6th. We will not be deterred by threats or attempted obstruction and we will not rest until our task is complete.” More

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      How a Defunct Federal Provision Helped Pave the Way for New Voting Restrictions

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      Curbs on drop boxes, tougher ID requirements and purges of voter rolls would have been weakened, or never even passed, if a federal oversight system had been in place.Georgia toughened identification requirements for absentee voting. Arizona authorized removing voters from the rolls if they do not cast a ballot at least once every two years. Florida and Georgia cut back sharply the use of drop boxes for mail-in ballots.All of these new voting restrictions would have been rejected or at least softened if a federal civil rights protection from the 1960s were still intact, experts in election law said.For decades, the heart of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a practice known as preclearance, largely detailed under Section 5 of the statute. It forced states with a history of racial discrimination to seek approval from the Department of Justice before enacting new voting laws. Through preclearance, thousands of proposed voting changes were blocked by Justice Department lawyers in both Democratic and Republican administrations.In 2013, however, Section 5 was hollowed out by the Supreme Court, as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in a majority opinion that racial discrimination in voting no longer constituted a significant threat.As Republican-led state legislatures have tightened voting rules after the 2020 election, new restrictions have been enacted or proposed in four states that are no longer required to seek approval before changing voting laws: Georgia, Arizona, Texas and Florida. Those new restrictions would almost certainly have been halted, stalled or altered had Section 5 still been in use, according to interviews with former federal prosecutors and a review by The New York Times of past civil rights actions by the Justice Department.“There’s nothing subtle about what they’re trying to do,” said Tom Perez, the former head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division and a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “If Section 5 were still around, those laws would not see the light of day.”The restoration of preclearance is now at the center of a debate in Congress over the passage of federal voting legislation.On Tuesday, the House passed the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore preclearance in several states, among other changes. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has urged Congress to revive preclearance, but Senate Republicans oppose such a move, and a filibuster in the Senate threatens to sink the bill before it can reach President Biden’s desk.President Lyndon B. Johnson greeted Martin Luther King Jr. after signing the Voting Rights Act into law in August 1965.Lyndon B. Johnson LibrarySection 5 covered nine states — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia — and several counties in New York, Florida, California, South Dakota and North Carolina.Many changes sailed through the Department of Justice during the years of preclearance. Still, thousands of proposed voting laws and rules were found to be discriminatory. From January 1982 to July 2005, Justice Department lawyers filed 2,282 objections to 387,673 proposed voting changes under Section 5, according to a study by the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.Again and again this year, states have enacted voting restrictions that closely track measures that were flagged and rejected years ago under preclearance.In Georgia, a law that toughened ID requirements for absentee voting will have a disproportionate effect on Black voters, who make up about a third of the electorate. More than 272,000 registered voters lack the forms of identification that are newly required to cast absentee ballots, according to a study by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. More than half of them are Black.“If you have a voter-ID law where a lot of people don’t have one of the IDs, that’s a red flag,” said Jon Greenbaum, chief counsel for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and a former voting rights lawyer for the Justice Department under the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.Mr. Perez, the head of the civil rights division from 2009 to 2013, recalled an Arizona bill that proposed barring third parties from dropping off absentee ballots on behalf of voters. The Navajo Nation protested that some of its communities were hours from the nearest mailbox, making the act of voting by mail an arduous one.The Justice Department pushed back at Arizona lawmakers in preclearance. “We asked them a series of very pointed questions because we had real concerns that it was discriminatory, and they withdrew it,” he said. “As a result of the questions we asked, Section 5 worked in that case. But once Section 5 was emasculated in 2013, they had free rein to enact it.”That bill, Mr. Perez noted, was similar to a new Arizona ban on ballot collection upheld in a recent Supreme Court decision.Republicans across the country have defended the new voting laws and denied they are restrictive, often repeating the mantra that the laws make it “easier to vote, harder to cheat.”Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia called a Justice Department lawsuit over the state’s new ID requirements “disgusting” and a “politically motivated assault on the rule of law.”Republicans do not dispute that the current Department of Justice, under Mr. Garland, would have challenged the new laws under Section 5. But they argue that the Biden administration is focusing on the politics of voting rights and not on the merits of the laws.“Laws that would have likely been precleared in a previous Democratic administration would be easily objected to by the current Biden administration,” said Justin Riemer, the chief counsel at the Republican National Committee.He added: “And it is very apparent to us that their determinations would be politically motivated in stopping states from enacting reasonable regulations that protect the integrity of their election processes.”Six former leaders of the civil rights division under Republican presidents from Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump declined to comment or did not respond to requests to comment.The greatest power of Section 5, voting rights experts said, was as a deterrent.The burden of proof that laws were not discriminatory was placed on covered states: They had to show that the laws were not going to further restrict voting rights among communities of color.“A lot of these provisions would have never been enacted in the first place if Section 5 were still there,” Mr. Greenbaum said. “Because these states know that if they couldn’t disprove retrogression, it would go down in flames.”The recent law in Arizona that removed voters from the permanent early voting list if they do not cast a ballot at least once every two years caught the eye of Deval Patrick, who led the civil rights division during the Clinton administration and later was governor of Massachusetts.People rallied in support of the Voting Rights Act outside the Supreme Court in February 2013.Christopher Gregory for The New York TimesIn 1994, Mr. Patrick objected to a Georgia proposal that would purge registered voters from the rolls if they failed to vote for three years unless they reaffirmed their registration status. He said the Arizona law struck him as another example of purging.“I think purging is one of the more pernicious undertakings, and I say this as somebody who is preternaturally neat,” Mr. Patrick said. “It is easier in many states today to keep a driver’s license than it is to keep your voter registration.”Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, a Republican, insisted that the new law was about election integrity. Active voters would still get ballots, while resources would be freed for “priorities like election security and voter education,” he said in a video after signing the bill. “Not a single Arizona voter will lose their right to vote as a result of this new law.”Mr. Patrick also said the preclearance process had helped prevent changes in voting rules aimed at engineering a victory.He pointed to Georgia, where Mr. Biden won by fewer than 12,000 votes. Georgia’s new voting law prohibits the use of provisional ballots by voters who show up at the wrong precinct before 5 p.m. on Election Day. But “out of precinct” voters accounted for 44 percent of provisional ballots last year, by far the most common reason. Of 11,120 provisional ballots counted, Mr. Biden won 64 percent.“When the margin of victory was as slim as it was, the notion that the provisional ballots might not be counted because of some very technical and frankly trivial issue, that’s a problem,” Mr. Patrick said.Voting rights lawyers also liken new laws curbing the use of drop boxes to past attempts — blocked by the Justice Department under preclearance — to reduce the numbers of polling places or absentee-ballot locations.In 1984 alone, for example, Reagan administration lawyers objected to the relocation of a Dallas polling place to a predominantly white community from a largely Black one, and challenged bills in Arizona that would have reduced access to polling places by rotating locations and cutting operating hours.In Georgia, 56 percent of absentee voters in urban Fulton County and suburban Cobb, DeKalb and Gwinnett counties returned their ballots in drop boxes, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Under Georgia’s new law, those counties will now have just 23 drop boxes, compared with 94 during the 2020 election.And in Texas last year, with roughly a month left before Election Day, Gov. Greg Abbott directed counties to offer only one location for voters to drop off mail-in ballots.“So you had counties with four million people and it was one place essentially to drop off your ballot,” said Chad Dunn, a longtime voting-rights lawyer. “Those are provisions that would have been stopped immediately.” More