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      Alcee Hastings, Longtime Florida Congressman, Dies at 84

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      As a federal judge, he was impeached and removed from the bench. He was then elected to the House, where he became known as a strong liberal voice.Representative Alcee Hastings, a former federal judge who, despite being impeached and removed from the bench, was elected to Congress, where he championed civil rights and rose to become dean of the Florida delegation, died on Tuesday. He was 84.Lale Morrison, his chief of staff, confirmed the death. He provided no other details.Mr. Hastings, a Democrat, had announced in early 2019 that he had pancreatic cancer. He continued to make public appearances for a time but was unable to travel to Washington in January to take the oath of office.His death reduces his party’s already slim majority in the House of Representatives, which is now 218 to 211, until a special election can be held to fill his seat. His district, which includes Black communities around Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach as well as a huge, less populated area around Lake Okeechobee, is reliably Democratic.A strong liberal voice, Mr. Hastings was a pioneering civil rights lawyer in the 1960s and ’70s in Fort Lauderdale, which at the time was deeply inhospitable to Black people. Throughout his career he crusaded against racial injustice and spoke up for gay people, immigrants, women and the elderly, as well as advocating for better access to health care and higher wages. He was also a champion of Israel.He achieved many firsts. He was Florida’s first Black federal judge and one of three Black Floridians who went to Congress in 1992, the first time Florida had elected African-American candidates to that body since Reconstruction. He served 15 terms in the House, longer than any other current member, making him dean of the delegation.He had earlier in his career been the first Black candidate to run for the Senate from Florida.In 1979, he was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. In 1981, he became the first sitting federal judge to be tried on criminal charges, stemming from the alleged solicitation of a bribe. The case ended up before the House, which impeached him in 1988. The Senate convicted him in 1989 and removed him from the bench.But it did not bar him from seeking public office again, and he went on to win his seat in Congress three years later. He took the oath of office before the same body that had impeached him.If his wings were clipped in Washington, Mr. Hastings was adored at home, where his early fights for civil rights and his outspokenness helped him easily win re-election for nearly three decades.In a 2019 review of his career, The Palm Beach Post described him as “a man with immense gifts — boldness, intellect, wit — who repeatedly and brazenly strides close to the cliff’s edge of ethics, unconcerned that scandal could shake his hold on a congressional district tailor-made for him.”Mr. Hastings in 1987, when he was a federal judge. A year later, after a judicial panel concluded that he had committed perjury, tampered with evidence and conspired to gain financially by accepting bribes, the House impeached him; the year after that, the Senate removed him from the bench.Susan Greenwood for The New York TimesAlcee Lamar Hastings was born on Sept. 5, 1936, in Altamonte Springs, a largely Black suburb of Orlando. His father, Julius Hastings, was a butler, and his mother, Mildred (Merritt) Hastings, was a maid.His parents eventually left Florida to take jobs to earn money for his education. Alcee stayed with his maternal grandmother while he attended Crooms Academy in Sanford, Fla., which was founded for African-American students and is now known as Crooms Academy of Information Technology. He graduated in 1953.He attended Fisk University in Nashville, graduating in 1958 with majors in zoology and botany, and started law school at Howard University before transferring to Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in Tallahassee. He received his law degree there in 1963.As a student, he was involved in early civil rights struggles. Recalling a drugstore sit-in in North Carolina in 1959, he later said: “Those were the early days of the civil rights movement, and the people in Walgreens were breaking eggs on our heads and throwing mustard and ketchup and salt at us. We sat there taking all of that.”He went into private practice as a civil rights lawyer in Fort Lauderdale. When he arrived, according to The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, a motel wouldn’t rent him a room; throughout much of the 1960s and ’70s, parts of the county were dangerous for Black people.At a luncheon honoring Mr. Hastings in 2019, the newspaper said, Howard Finkelstein, a former Broward County public defender, called him a “howling voice” trying to change Broward from a “little cracker town that was racist and mean and vicious.”Mr. Hastings filed lawsuits to desegregate Broward County schools. He also sued the Cat’s Meow, a restaurant that was popular with white lawyers and judges but would not serve Black people. The owner soon settled the lawsuit and opened the restaurant’s doors to all.Mr. Hastings ran unsuccessfully for public office several times, including for the 1970 Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate. He wanted to show that a Black man could run, but he received death threats in the process.Representative Charlie Crist, who was a Republican when he was governor of Florida but who later became a Democrat, said in a statement on Tuesday that he had “long admired Congressman Hastings’s advocacy for Florida’s Black communities during a time when such advocacy was ignored at best and actively suppressed or punished at worst.”Gov. Reuben Askew appointed Mr. Hastings to the circuit court of Broward County in 1977; the swearing-in ceremony was held at a high school he had helped desegregate. Two years later, President Carter named him to the federal bench.But in 1981, Mr. Hastings was indicted on charges of soliciting a $150,000 bribe in return for reducing the sentences of two mob-connected felons convicted in his court.A jury acquitted him in a criminal trial in 1983 after his alleged co-conspirator refused to testify, and Mr. Hastings returned to the bench.Later, suspicions arose that he had lied and falsified evidence during the trial to obtain an acquittal. A three-year investigation by a judicial panel concluded that Mr. Hastings did in fact commit perjury, tamper with evidence and conspire to gain financially by accepting bribes.As a result, Congress took up the case in 1988. The House impeached him by a vote of 413 to 3. The next year, the Senate convicted him on eight of 11 articles and removed him from the bench.Despite his tainted record, Mr. Hastings was elected three years later to represent a heavily minority district.Mr. Hastings at the Capitol in 1998. He was elected to the House in 1992 and served 15 terms.Paul Hosefros/The New York TimesHis impeachment was never far from the surface in the House. This was evident after the Democrats took back control in 2006. Mr. Hastings was in line to become chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Republicans started using his history against the Democrats, prompting Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, to give the chairmanship to someone else.Mr. Hastings’ survivors include his wife, Patricia Williams; three adult children from previous marriages, Alcee Hastings II, Chelsea Hastings and Leigh Hastings; and a stepdaughter, Maisha.Mr. Hastings never sponsored major legislation, but he could be counted on to express himself freely. He had a particular loathing for President Donald J. Trump, whom he once called a “sentient pile of excrement.”Saying what was on his mind was long a habit of his. It started getting him in trouble as soon as he was appointed to the bench, when he veered from judicial norms, criticizing President Ronald Reagan and appearing at a rally in 1984 for the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was running for the Democratic presidential nomination.But Mr. Hastings saw nothing wrong with giving his views; just because he was a judge, he said, that did not mean he was “neutered.” As Mr. Crist said, Mr. Hastings “was never afraid to give voice to the voiceless and speak truth to power.”Nor was his self-confidence ever checked.“I’ve enjoyed some of the fights, and even the process of being indicted and removed from the bench,” he told The Associated Press in 2013. “All of those are extraordinary types of circumstances that would cause lesser people to buckle. I did not and I have not.”Maggie Astor contributed reporting. More

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      Alcee Hastings, congressman who was impeached as a judge, dies aged 84

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      Alcee Hastings, a fiercely liberal Florida congressman who was dogged by an impeachment that ended his career as a federal judge, died on Tuesday. He was 84.

      Hastings’ death was confirmed by his chief of staff, Lale Morrison. The Democrat announced two years ago that he had pancreatic cancer.
      Hastings was known as an advocate for minorities, a defender of Israel and a voice for gays, migrants, women and the elderly. He held senior posts on the House rules committee and the Helsinki Commission, which works on multinational issues.
      But his impeachment remained a nagging footnote. It was repeatedly invoked in news accounts and seen as derailing his ambitions for a greater leadership role.
      “That seems to be the only thing of significance to people who write,” Hastings said in 2013, predicting that the impeachment would be in the lead paragraph of his obituary.
      Hastings was passed over for chairmanship of the House intelligence committee when the Democrats took Congress in 2006.
      “Sorry, haters,” he said then. “God is not finished with me yet.”
      Under Florida law, Governor Ron DeSantis will now call a special election to fill the vacant seat.
      Hastings’ district is overwhelmingly Democratic – he received 80% of the vote in November. But his death lowers the Democrats’ majority to 218-211. The narrow margin is forcing the party to muster nearly unanimous votes to push legislation and bolstering Republican hopes for 2022. There are six vacancies, four from seats that were held by Democrats, two by Republicans.
      Hastings was born on 5 September 1936 in Altamonte Springs, Florida, a largely black Orlando suburb, the son of a maid and a butler. He attended Fisk University and Florida A&M. After a law degree he went into private practice, taking on civil rights cases. He made a bid for the US Senate in 1970, then earned a state judgeship.
      In 1979, Jimmy Carter named him to the federal bench. He was the first Black person to hold a federal judgeship in Florida since Reconstruction.
      His career was marked by controversy. His harsh criticism of Ronald Reagan, his appearance at a rally in 1984 for the then presidential candidate Jesse Jackson and other moves raised questions about his impartiality. He insisted he was doing nothing wrong.
      “Outside the courtroom, I speak out because I’m a citizen and I have the interests of a great number people of this country at heart,” he said. “I think it’s better to have public officials express themselves. I don’t think being a judge means I’m neutered.”
      It wasn’t long before he became the first sitting US judge tried on criminal charges. Along with the Washington lawyer William Borders Jr, Hastings was accused of soliciting a $150,000 bribe from two racketeers seeking to shorten their sentences.
      Borders was convicted and sentenced to five years. Hastings contended Borders acted without his knowledge and was acquitted but a judicial panel accused him of fabricating his defense. The House impeached him in 1988 and the Senate convicted him in 1989.
      A federal judge reversed the impeachment, saying Hastings was improperly tried by a 12-member panel instead of the full Senate, but his exoneration was short-lived. Ruling in the case of another ousted judge, the US supreme court decided 7-2 that courts could not second-guess the Senate’s power to remove federal officials.
      By then, Hastings had won a seat in Congress. He won the seat after two bitter runoffs fueled by accusations of racism in the largely Black district. At one point, in his heated race against Lois Frankel, he snapped to a reporter: “The bitch is a racist.” He went on to win and was re-elected time after time.
      Frankel earned her own ticket to Congress 20 years later, as a Democratic colleague.
      Hastings remained no stranger to controversy. In 2011, a former aide filed a sexual harassment lawsuit, claiming he hugged her against her will and suggested they go to his hotel room. Hastings called the accusations “ridiculous, bizarre, frivolous”. The House ethics committee cleared him.
      “I’ve enjoyed some of the fights, and even the process of being indicted and removed from the bench,” he said in 2013. “All of those are extraordinary types of circumstances that would cause lesser people to buckle. I did not and I have not.” More

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      'A 10ft pole is not long enough': Matt Gaetz isolated in sex-trafficking scandal

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      The Florida Republican congressman Matt Gaetz appears increasingly politically isolated amid a spiralling scandal over a federal sex-trafficking investigation. Even for Donald Trump, one Republican political operative said, “a 10ft pole is not long enough”.Federal prosecutors are reportedly examining whether Gaetz and a political ally facing sex trafficking allegations may have paid underage girls or offered them gifts in exchange for sex.Few Republicans have rushed to offer any kind of support to Gaetz, a three-term conservative provocateur known for support of Trump, high-volume attacks, sometimes against those in his own party, and frequent media appearances.The Associated Press reported that several lawmakers and aides who spoke on condition of anonymity said Gaetz’s prospects for remaining in Congress were complicated by his unpopularity in his own party.The Daily Beast, meanwhile, reported that advisers were pleading with the former president to keep quiet. Trump was reported to have said the affair seemed “really bad”, though he also thought the allegations could be a “smear” against Gaetz.“I don’t hope for anybody to be guilty of anything but it sounds like [Gaetz has] got a lot of explaining to do,” Barry Bennett, a longtime Republican operative and former Trump adviser, told the website.“People underestimate Donald Trump’s political ear … For something like this, a 10ft pole is not long enough. The former president should stay as far away from this as possible.”Fox News has also stayed quiet. As Vox reported, the Gaetz affair was not mentioned on the rightwing network on Thursday, or on Friday until the news anchor Brett Baier covered the allegations on his evening show.Gaetz has been a familiar presence on Fox News, according to Mediate appearing on the channel 18 times in March. Shortly before news of the allegations against him broke, he was reported to be considering retiring from Congress in order to pursue a media career.Any such plans are now under threat. The scrutiny of Gaetz reportedly stems from a justice department investigation of Joel Greenberg, a former Florida tax collector indicted last year and accused of a number of federal crimes. He has pleaded not guilty.In addition, CNN has reported that Gaetz allegedly showed nude photos of women he slept with to colleagues on the floor of the House of Representatives.Republican leaders have largely been silent. But Gaetz’s spokesman, Luke Ball, has resigned.Part of the investigation is examining whether Gaetz, 38, had sex with a 17-year-old and other underage girls and violated federal sex trafficking laws, sources told the AP, adding that federal agents suspect Greenberg may have enticed the girls and introduced some to Gaetz. Investigators are reported to be examining whether the two men had sex with the same girls.Details of the investigation were first reported by the New York Times, which also said Gaetz took ecstasy, an illegal drug, before having sex.Gaetz has said: “No part of the allegations against me are true.”Among rare lawmakers to express support for Gaetz is the freshman Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, another rising figure propelled by media appearances and baseless conspiracy theories.House minority leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters the accusations against Gaetz were “serious”. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House speaker, told reporters: “If in fact these allegations are true, of course being removed from the Judiciary committee is the least that could be done. From what we’ve heard so far, this would be a matter for the ethics committee.”The investigation into Gaetz has been extant since at least summer 2020 and has reportedly reached the highest levels of the justice department. Investigators have interviewed several witnesses and have been scrutinizing travel and financial records.Greenberg was the elected tax collector in Seminole county near Orlando when he resigned last June after his arrest on charges including stalking a political opponent, trafficking a minor for sex and illegally using a state database to create fake drivers licenses and other ID cards.Since then, the case has ballooned to more than 30 charges, including wire fraud and charges involving efforts to divert at least $400,000 from the tax collectors office into cryptocurrency for Greenberg’s own use. Other charges accuse him attempting to fraudulently obtain coronavirus relief funds.The justice department has a separate investigation into the extortion allegations, the AP reported. Gaetz has said his family has been cooperating with the FBI. More

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      in Elections

      One Republican’s Lonely Fight Against a Flood of Disinformation

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      After losing an ugly congressional race last year, Denver Riggleman is leading a charge against the conspiracy-mongering coursing through his party. He doesn’t have many allies.AFTON, Va. — Denver Riggleman stood virtually alone.It was Oct. 2, on the floor of the House of Representatives, and he rose as one of only two Republicans in the chamber to speak in favor of a resolution denouncing QAnon. Mr. Riggleman, a freshman congressman from Virginia, had his own personal experiences with fringe ideas, both as a target of them and as a curious observer of the power they hold over true believers. He saw a dangerous movement becoming more intertwined with his party, and worried that it was only growing thanks to words of encouragement from President Donald J. Trump.“Will we stand up and condemn a dangerous, dehumanizing and convoluted conspiracy theory that the F.B.I. has assessed with high confidence is very likely to motivate some domestic extremists?” asked Mr. Riggleman, a former Air Force intelligence officer. “We should not be playing with fire.”Six months later, conspiracy theories like QAnon remain a threat that most Republicans would rather ignore than confront, and Mr. Riggleman is out of office. But he is ever more determined to try to expose disinformation from the far right that is swaying legions in the Republican base to believe in a false reality.Mr. Riggleman is a living example of the political price of falling out of lock step with the hard right. He lost a G.O.P. primary race last June after he officiated at the wedding of a gay couple. And once he started calling out QAnon, whose followers believe that a satanic network of child molesters runs the Democratic Party, he received death threats and was attacked as a traitor, including by members of his own family.The undoing of Mr. Riggleman — and now his unlikely crusade — is revealing about a dimension of conservative politics today. The fight against radicalism within the G.O.P. is a deeply lonely one, waged mostly by Republicans like him who are no longer in office, and by the small handful of elected officials who have decided that they are willing to speak up even if it means that they, too, could be headed for an early retirement.“I’ve been telling people: ‘You don’t understand. This is getting worse, not better,’” Mr. Riggleman said, sitting on a stool at his family bar one recent afternoon. “People are angry. And they’re angry at the truth tellers.”Mr. Riggleman, 51, is now back home in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where he and his wife run the bar and a distillery. And for his next move in a career that has included jobs at the National Security Agency and founding a military contracting business, he is working with a group of other experts to shine a light on what he calls the “social disease” of disinformation.His experience with the issues and emotions at work is both professional and personal. He was so intrigued by false belief systems that he self-published a book about the myth of Bigfoot and the people who are unshakably devoted to it.Mr. Riggleman is working with a group of other experts to shine a light on what he calls the “social disease” of disinformation.Matt Eich for The New York TimesMr. Riggleman, who first ran and won in 2018 after the Republican incumbent in his district retired, joined the arch-conservative Freedom Caucus and was endorsed by Mr. Trump. Now he says it “gives me shivers” to be called a Republican. He hopes to show that there is still a way to beat back the lies and false beliefs that have spread from the fringe to the mainstream. It is a heavy lift, and one that depends on overcoming two strong impulses: politicians’ fear of losing elections and people’s reluctance to accept that they were taken in by a lie.Mr. Riggleman summarized his conversations with the 70 percent of House Republicans he said were privately appalled at the former president’s conduct but wouldn’t dare speak out.“‘We couldn’t do that in our district. We would lose,’” he said. “That’s it. It’s that simple.”Stocky, fast-talking and inexhaustibly curious, the former congressman is now working for a group of prominent experts and academics at the Network Contagion Research Institute, which studies the spread of disinformation in American politics and how to thwart it. The group has undertaken several extensive investigations into how extremists have used propaganda and faked information to sow division over some of the most contentious issues of the day, like the coronavirus pandemic and police violence.Their reports have also given lawmakers a better understanding of the QAnon belief system and other radical ideologies that helped fuel the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6.Mr. Riggleman said he had written one report about the involvement of far-right militants and white supremacist groups in the attack specifically at the request of a Republican member who needed help convincing colleagues that far-left groups were not the culprits.Getting lawmakers to see radical movements like QAnon as a threat has been difficult. Joel Finkelstein, the director of the Network Contagion Research Institute, said that in June, when the group tried to sound the alarm on QAnon to members of Congress, Mr. Riggleman was the only one who responded with a sense of urgency and agreed to help.“We were screaming it from the rooftops,” Mr. Finkelstein said. “We said: ‘This is going to be a problem. They’re growing increasingly militant in their conspiracies.’” When the institute’s members spoke to Mr. Riggleman, he said, “We showed him our data and he said, ‘Holy moly.’”Far from a theoretical or overblown concern, disinformation and its role in perpetuating false beliefs about Mr. Trump’s election loss and its aftermath are problems that some Republicans believe could cripple their party if left ignored.In a sign of how widespread these conspiracy theories are, a recent poll from Suffolk University and USA Today found that 58 percent of Trump voters wrongly believed the storming of the Capitol was mostly inspired by far-left radicals associated with antifa and involved only a few Trump supporters.“There was a troika of us who said, ‘This is going to a bad place,’” said Paul Mitchell, who represented Michigan in the House for two terms before retiring early this year in frustration. He said he had watched as members dismissed Mr. Riggleman, despite his experience in intelligence. “There weren’t many people who gave a damn what your expertise was,” Mr. Mitchell said. “It was inconsequential compared to the talking points.”Bob Good defeated Mr. Riggleman in a state Republican Party convention in June.Amy Friedenberger/The Roanoke Times, via Associated PressMr. Riggleman’s loss last summer in a closely held party convention allowed him to be more outspoken. The winner, Representative Bob Good, is a former associate athletic director at Liberty University who took issue with Mr. Riggleman’s officiation at the gay wedding and called him “out of step” with the party’s base.And as Mr. Riggleman kept it up and spoke out more aggressively against Mr. Trump after the election, his fight got lonelier.“I had a colleague of mine pat me on the shoulder and say: ‘Denver, you’re just too paranoid. You’re killing yourself for the rest of your life politically by going after the big man like this,’” Mr. Riggleman recalled.When he returned to Virginia for good in January, he said he sometimes felt just as isolated. Family members, former constituents and patrons at the distillery insisted that the election had been stolen from Mr. Trump. And they couldn’t be talked out of it, no matter how hard he tried.He recalled a recent conversation with one couple he is friends with that he said was especially exasperating.“I go over stats,” he said. “I go over figures. I go over the 50 states, how that actually works. How machines that aren’t connected are very hard to hack. How you’d have to pay off hundreds of thousands of people to do this.”“Did not convince them,” he added.Other friends of his, some of whom are also members of the growing group of former Republican lawmakers now publicly criticizing Mr. Trump, said that many conservative politicians saw no incentive in trying to dispel disinformation even when they know it’s false.“What some of these guys have told me privately is it’s still kind of self-preservation,” said Joe Walsh, a former congressman from Illinois who ran a short-lived primary campaign against Mr. Trump last year. “‘I want to hang onto the gig. And this is a fever, it will break.’”That is mistaken, Mr. Walsh said, because he sees no breaking the spell Mr. Trump has over Republican voters anytime soon. “It’s done, and it was done a few years ago,” he said.Mr. Riggleman, who is contemplating a run for governor in Virginia and is writing a book about his experience with the dark side of Republican politics, sees a way forward in his experience with Bigfoot. The sasquatch was how many people first learned about him as a politician, after an opponent accused him of harboring a fascination with “Bigfoot erotica,” in 2018.“I do not dabble in monster porn,” he retorts in his book, “Bigfoot … It’s Complicated,” which he based in part on a trip he took in 2004 on a Bigfoot expedition.Mr. Riggleman paid $2,000 to go on a Bigfoot expedition with his wife in 2004.Matt Eich for The New York TimesThe book is full of passages that, if pulled out and scrubbed of references to the mythical creature, could be describing politics in 2021.Mr. Riggleman quotes one true believer explaining why he is absolutely convinced Bigfoot is real, even though he has never seen it. In an answer that could have come straight from the lips of someone defending the myth that Mr. Trump actually won the 2020 election, the man says matter-of-factly: “Evidence is overwhelming. Check out the internet. All kinds of sightings and facts.”At another point, Mr. Riggleman describes a conversation he had with someone who asked if he really thought that all the people claiming to have seen Bigfoot over the years were liars. “I don’t think that,” Mr. Riggleman responds. “I do believe that people see what they want to see.”He did find one way to crack the Bigfoot false belief system: telling true believers that they were being ripped off to the tune of hundreds or thousands of dollars to go on expeditions where they would never actually see the creature.“They got very angry,” he said. But eventually, some started to come around. More

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      DoJ reportedly investigating whether Matt Gaetz paid women for sex

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      One of Donald Trump’s loudest cheerleaders in the US Congress is under federal investigation over allegations that he paid for sex with women recruited online, according to a media report.Matt Gaetz, a Republican congressman from Florida, is one of the former president’s most ardent supporters and frequently appeared on TV to promote his lies about a stolen election.But the 38-year-old’s rapid ascent is threatened by a strange, sordid and escalating scandal that includes a report by CNN that he allegedly showed nude photos of women he slept with to colleagues on the floor of the House of Representatives.The crisis for Gaetz began this week when it was reported that the justice department is investigating claims that he had a sexual relationship with an underage girl and paid the 17-year-old to travel with him, potentially breaking interstate sex trafficking laws.Gaetz denied the allegation and sought to deflect it by suggesting that he and his father are the victims of an “organised crime extortion”.But there was a further twist when it was reported that scrutiny of Gaetz stems from a separate justice department investigation into one of his allies, Florida politician Joel Greenberg, who was indicted last summer on sex trafficking and other charges that he stalked a political opponent.Greenberg was involved with multiple women who were recruited online for sex and received cash payments, the New York Times reported on Thursday. Greenberg “initially met the women through websites that connect people who go on dates in exchange for gifts, fine dining, travel and allowances, according to three people with knowledge of the encounters”, the paper said.“Mr Greenberg introduced the women to Mr Gaetz, who also had sex with them, the people said.”The New York Times said it obtained receipts from mobile apps that show payments from Gaetz and Greenberg to one of the women, and a payment from Greenberg to a second woman. “The women told their friends that the payments were for sex with the two men, according to two people familiar with the conversations.”Gaetz took ecstasy, an illegal drug, before having sex, the paper’s sources also claimed.The congressman vehemently denies the reports. His office said in a statement: “Matt Gaetz has never paid for sex. Matt Gaetz refutes all the disgusting allegations completely. Matt Gaetz has never ever been on any such websites whatsoever. Matt Gaetz cherishes the relationships in his past and looks forward to marrying the love of his life.”But adding to a sense of growing momentum against him, a separate report from CNN, based on anonymous sources, told how Gaetz showed off images of women on his phone – sometimes on the House floor – and talked openly about having sex with them. “It was a point of pride,” one source told the network.And on Friday Gaetz’s communications director, Luke Ball, resigned. A statement said: “The office of Congressman Matt Gaetz and Luke Ball have agreed that it would be best to part ways. We thank him for his time in our office, and we wish him the best moving forward.”Gaetz, who came to Congress in 2017, is among a pro-Trump coterie that has found a smash-mouth style and talent to outrage is a short cut to political stardom via rightwing media. He even travelled to Wyoming to hold a rally demanding that Liz Cheney, the No 3 Republican in the House, resign over her vote to impeach Trump following the 6 January riot at the US Capitol.But the congressman is also the latest in a long list of Trump allies to be tarnished by proven or alleged wrongdoing, with some ending up behind bars. So far the ex-president has remained silence on the issue and few of his followers have taken a firm position.Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority leader in the House and a staunch Trump supporter, said on Wednesday that he would not strip Gaetz of his committee assignments until the case against is established.McCarthy told Fox News: “Those are serious implications. If it comes out to be true, yes, we would remove him, if that was the case. But right now, Matt Gaetz says that it’s not true and we don’t have any information. So let’s get all the information.”But Democrats are urging McCarthy to remove Gaetz the House judiciary committee, which oversees the justice department. On Wednesday Ted Lieu, a Democratic congressman from California, tweeted that Gaetz should not be “sitting on the Congressional Committee that has oversight over the Department that is investigating him”.And Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, told reporters: “If in fact these allegations are true, of course being removed from the Judiciary committee is the least that could be done. From what we’ve heard so far, this would be a matter for the ethics committee.”The ethics committee, consisting of five members from each party, can recommend punishments ranging from a reprimand, or formal rebuke, to expulsion. The full House would have to approve such actions, with expulsion requiring a two-thirds majority.Gaetz – whose Twitter bio says “Florida man. Fiancé. Firebrand. America First” – posted to his 1m followers on Thursday: “The allegations against me are FALSE. The extortion of my family by a former DOJ official is REAL. DOJ has the tapes. Please release them.” More

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      NRA’s grassroots clout still formidable with Republicans despite legal setbacks

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      The once all-powerful National Rifle Association is mired in legal and financial woes but its 5 million members still exert hefty grassroots influence with most Republicans as a fresh gun control debate in Congress heats up, say gun experts and NRA veterans.The NRA’s grassroots clout – via the Internet, letters, phone and other tools – coupled with the influence wielded by millions of other gun owners, keep many Republican allies fighting almost reflexively against gun curbs, notwithstanding recent NRA problems including electoral setbacks, staff cuts, drops in member dues revenue and legal threats, according to analysts.Which means that even after two mass shootings in March in Atlanta, Georgia and Boulder, Colorado spurred the House to pass bills to ban assault weapons and require mandatory background checks on gun purchases, the outlook in the evenly divided Senate to pass these bills seems very slim – unless filibuster rules are changed, say analysts.Still, NRA and Republican sources say if a weaker background check bill than the House passed one is introduced it may have enough Republican support in the Senate to pass as a compromise measure.To be sure, the NRA’s political strength by some key measures is markedly less than in recent years.After giving Donald Trump a huge boost in 2016 with over $30m in ad spending to help him win the White House, the NRA had a much smaller presence in 2020 to Trump’s and the Republican party’s dismay. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the NRA’s spending in 2020 fell to $29.4m from $54.4m in 2016.What’s more in 2018, gun control advocates were credited with helping the Democrats take back control of the House in 2018 as their spending for the first time edged the NRA’s spending. And in 2019, the NRA’s revenue from its members dues declined from 2018 when it was $170m to $113m.Nonetheless, the NRA’s grassroots muscle remains formidable and is working to block the House passed measures.“The NRA is in a weakened condition, and their very future is at stake,” said Robert Spitzer, a political science professor at SUNY Cortland and author of several books on guns, in an interview. “But the gun rights movement is deeply embedded in the GOP. Even though the NRA as an organization is seriously weakened, grassroots supporters are still out there, and are willing to act on the issue.”“For the GOP, support for gun rights from its gun base is pretty much on autopilot,” Spitzer added.Moreover, Spitzer noted that the Senate prospects for the two bills that passed the House seem dim. “The divisions between the two parties are sharper than in the past. Democrats are clearly behind strong gun laws, and Republicans are mostly opposed.”“The filibuster is the real stumbling block,” he added. “ We’ve seen this movie before.”Similarly, a former senior NRA official touted the group’s grassroots strength.“The grassroots of gun owners are still a political force with or without the NRA. Even though the NRA has had significant problems and continues too, they will raise more money” to fend off new gun curbs, if past experience holds.But the ex-official cautioned that “if they changed the filibuster rule, all bets are off”.Further, the NRA veteran noted that he thought a weaker background checks bill like one sponsored in previous sessions by Senators Joe Manchin, a Democrat, and Pat Toomey, a Republican, had a decent chance of getting enough Republican votes to pass the Senate if Democrats accepted it as a fallback option.Republican operative and lobbyist Charlie Black agreed that the less onerous bill like that previously backed by Manchin and Toomey has a good shot of getting through the Senate if Democratic leaders embraced it.But Black noted that the odds of the House’s mandatory checks bill passing the Senate are slim. “You’re not going to get the House bill through the Senate,” Black said in an interview.President Joe Biden has called on the Senate to pass the House measures which he called “common sense”, but at his first press conference last week gave mixed signals about how hard he will push for them.Just 10 days before the Boulder shooter killed 10 people, the NRA weighed in on Twitter and applauded a Colorado court ruling blocking a Boulder assault weapons ban enacted in 2018 which it had sought to overturn.However, the NRA and its leadership remain mired in legal and political battles to defeat the New York attorney general’s lawsuit that accused the nonprofit NRA, which has been chartered in the state for 150 years, of mismanagement and corruption.The lawsuit that attorney general Letitia James filed charges last summer that the NRA’s veteran chief executive Wayne LaPierre and a few other top NRA leaders looted the group costing it about $64m in just the three prior years.LaPierre was accused of self dealing by letting the NRA pay for millions of dollars of junkets with his wife and other family members to Europe, the Bahamas and other scenic spots.LaPierre and NRA lawyer William Brewer III have denounced the lawsuit as fueled by “political animus”, noting that James is a Democrat. And Brewer has said the NRA has taken steps to correct its financial problems including replacing some senior staffers. The NRA’s long-time top lobbyist Chris Cox, who had become a critic of LaPierre, was forced out in 2019.But the NRA’s 76 member board was mostly in the dark this January, when NRA leaders announced it was filing for bankruptcy in Texas where it hoped to incorporate, steps that two NRA veterans say were aimed at thwarting James’s probe.James has filed a motion seeking to halt the NRA’s bankruptcy move, and a bankruptcy judge in Texas is slated to hold a hearing on 5 April on the matter.On Sunday the NRA held an emergency board meeting in Dallas specifically to get the board to “retroactively” ratify the bankruptcy action before the 5 April hearing , say two NRA sources.Despite all the NRA’s legal and political maneuvering, Black sounds bullish that the House bills won’t get through the Senate.“The NRA’s grassroots is still active and powerful and influential with members of Congress,” he said. More

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      in US Politics

      Black farmers speak out against the 'festering wound' of racism in agriculture

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      For the first time in US history, members of the House agriculture committee heard from Black farmers on the impact of systemic discrimination by the department of agriculture (USDA).Thursday’s hearing came on the heels of $5bn being allocated to socially disadvantaged farmers of color earlier this month as part of the coronavirus relief and economic stimulus package. The funding – $4bn for debt forgiveness, $1bn for other forms of support – is meant to account for generations of mistreatment of farmers of color by the USDA.“This festering wound on the soul of agriculture must be healed,” said congressman David Scott of Georgia, who was born on a farm in South Carolina owned by his grandparents and now serves as the first ever Black person to chair the committee. Black farmers offered familiar testimonies of racism in the industry and from the USDA. Sedrick Rowe, an organic peanut farmer in Georgia, spoke of crop buyers telling him they are done buying peanuts for the day when he shows up. PJ Haynie of the National Black Growers Council told of Black farmers getting by on non-irrigated land while their white neighbors used USDA assistance to irrigate theirs.Once making up about 14% of US farmers, Black farmers make up less than 2% today. Many were forced out by racist lending practices by the agriculture department that led to vast losses of land, income, profits and generation wealth. That wealth cannot be regained. Black farmers will never get the land they lost back. But the USDA seems to be trying to foster a renewed trust in the department.In addition to Scott’s landmark appointment in December, the USDA, perhaps as an acknowledgment of Tom Vilsack’s second term as agriculture secretary being met with disappointment by many Black farmers and leaders, named Dewayne Goldmon, former executive director of the National Black Growers Council, as the USDA’s first-ever senior adviser for racial equity. And, if confirmed, Jewel Bronaugh will be the first Black woman to serve as deputy secretary for the department.Still, Black farmers remain skeptical. “That’s all very much good intention. But the foundation of the USDA is crooked,” said Michael Carter, a Virginia farmer, of the seemingly reactive diversity efforts. “You can’t put a new roof on and expect the foundation to be straight again.”Scott asked Vilsack on Thursday how much of his time will be devoted to getting the $5bn in stimulus funds in the hands of Black farmers. Vilsack responded that he has no doubt his staff understands this is at the top of his list in terms of priorities.“This is a meeting I’ve been advocating for for 30 years,” said John Boyd Jr . “On behalf of every Black share cropper and Black farmer we thank you for finally hearing our cries.”But as president and founder of the National Black Farmers Association, Boyd said his phones were ringing off the hook with farmers asking when they will get the relief. By the end of the four and a half hour hearing, that rollout was still not clear. Boyd, who has advocated on behalf of Black farmers and brought issues of inequality to the forefront for decades, urged swift movement to implement this debt relief.“This should’ve been doing in the first place,” he said over the phone. Reminded of his own advocacy towards Thursday’s hearing, he remained resolute. “You don’t think about it. You got so many hurdles, so many fights,” More

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      in Elections

      Democrats Begin Push for Biggest Expansion of Voting Since 1960s

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      Democrats characterized the far-reaching elections overhaul as the civil rights battle of modern times. Republicans called it a power grab that would put their party at a permanent disadvantage.Democrats began pushing on Wednesday for the most substantial expansion of voting rights in a half-century, laying the groundwork in the Senate for what would be a fundamental change to the ways voters get to the polls and elections are run.At a contentious hearing on Capitol Hill, Democratic leaders made a passionate case for a bill that would mandate automatic voter registration nationwide, expand early and mail-in voting, end gerrymandering that skews congressional districts for maximum partisan advantage and curb the influence of money in politics.The effort is taking shape as Republicans have introduced more than 250 bills to restrict voting in 43 states and have continued to spread false accusations of fraud and impropriety in the 2020 election. It comes just months after those claims, spread by President Donald J. Trump as he sought to cling to power, fueled a deadly riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6 that showed how deeply his party had come to believe in the myth of a stolen election.Republicans were unapologetic in their opposition to the measure, with some openly arguing that if Democrats succeeded in making it easier for Americans to vote and in enacting the other changes in the bill, it would most likely place their party permanently in the minority.“Any American who thinks that the fight for a full and fair democracy is over is sadly and sorely mistaken,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader. “Today, in the 21st century, there is a concerted, nationwide effort to limit the rights of citizens to vote and to truly have a voice in their own government.”Mr. Schumer’s rare appearance at a committee meeting underscored the stakes, not just for the election process but for his party’s own political future. He called the proposed voting rollbacks in dozens of states — including Georgia, Iowa and Arizona — an “existential threat to our democracy” reminiscent of the Jim Crow segregationist laws of the past.He chanted “Shame! Shame! Shame!” at Republicans who were promoting them.It was the start of an uphill battle by Senate Democrats, who have characterized what they call the For the People Act as the civil rights imperative of modern times, to overcome divisions in their own ranks and steer around Republican opposition to shepherd it into law. Doing so may require them to change Senate rules to eliminate the filibuster, once used by segregationists to block civil rights measures in the 1960s.Republicans signaled they were ready to fight. Conceding that allowing more people to vote would probably hurt their candidates, they denounced the legislation, passed by the House this month, as a power grab by Democrats intent on federalizing elections to give themselves a permanent political advantage. They insisted that it was the right of states to set their own election laws, including those that make it harder to vote, and warned that Democrats’ proposal could lead to rampant fraud, which experts say has never been found to be widespread.Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, on Wednesday at the hearing.Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times“This is an attempt by one party to write the rules of our political system,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, who has spent much of his career opposing such changes.“Talk about ‘shame,’” he added later.Some Republicans resorted to lies or distortions to condemn the measure, falsely claiming that Democrats were seeking to cheat by enfranchising undocumented immigrants or encouraging illegal voting. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said the bill aimed to register millions of unauthorized immigrants, though that would remain unlawful under the measure.The clash laid bare just how sharply the two parties have diverged on the issue of voting rights, which attracted bipartisan support for years after the civil rights movement but more recently has become a bitter partisan battleground. At times, Republicans and Democrats appeared to be wrestling with irreconcilably different views of the problems plaguing the election system.Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, the top Republican on the Senate Rules Committee, which convened the hearing, said states were taking appropriate steps to restore public confidence after 2020 by imposing laws that require voters to show identification before voting and limiting so-called ballot harvesting, where others collect voters’ completed absentee ballots and submit them to election officials. He said that if Democrats were allowed to rush through changes on the national level, “chaos will reign in the next election and voters will have less confidence than they currently do.”The suggestion piqued Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and the committee chairwoman, who shot back that it was the current elections system — an uneven patchwork of state laws and evolving voting rules — that had caused “chaos” at polling places.“Chaos is what we’ve seen in the last years — five-hour or six-hour lines in states like Arizona to vote. Chaos is purging names of longtime voters from a voter list so they can’t go vote in states like Georgia,” she said. “What this bill tries to do is to simply make it easier for people to vote and take the best practices that what we’ve seen across the country, and put it into law as we are allowed to do under the Constitution.”With Republicans unified against them, Democrats’ best hope for enacting the legislation increasingly appears to be to try to leverage its voting protections — to justify triggering the Senate’s so-called nuclear option: the elimination of the filibuster rule requiring 60 votes, rather than a simple majority, to advance most bills.Even that may be a prohibitively heavy lift, though, at least in the bill’s current form. Liberal activists who are spending tens of millions of dollars promoting it insist that the package must move as one bill. But Senator Joe Manchin III, a centrist West Virginia Democrat whose support they would need both to change the filibuster rules and to push through the elections bill, said on Wednesday that he would not support it in its current form.Speaking to reporters in the Capitol, Mr. Manchin said he feared that pushing through partisan changes would create more “division” that the country could not afford after the Jan. 6 attack, and instead suggested narrowing the bill.Voters waited in line to cast ballots in the 2020 election in Suwanee, Ga.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“There’s so much good in there, and so many things I think all of us should be able to be united around voting rights, but it should be limited to the voting rights,” he said. “We’re going to have a piece of legislation that might divide us even further on a partisan basis. That shouldn’t happen.”But it is unclear whether even major changes could win Republican support in the Senate. As written, the more than 800-page bill, which passed the House 220 to 210 mostly along party lines, is the most ambitious elections overhaul in generations, chock-full of provisions that experts say would drive up turnout, particularly among minorities who tend to vote Democratic. Many of them are anathema to Republicans.Its voting provisions alone would create minimum standards for states, neutering voter ID laws, restoring voting rights to former felons, and putting in place requirements like automatic voter registration and no-excuse mail-in balloting. Many of the restrictive laws proposed by Republicans in the states would move in the opposite direction.The bill would also require states to use independent commissions to draw nonpartisan congressional districts, a change that would weaken the advantages of Republicans who control the majority of state legislatures currently in charge of drawing those maps. It would force super PACs to disclose their big donors and create a new public campaign financing system for congressional candidates.Democrats also said they still planned to advance a separate bill restoring a key enforcement provision in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, after a 2013 Supreme Court ruling gutted it. The ruling paved the way for many of the restrictive state laws Democrats are now fighting.In the hearing room on Wednesday, Republicans ticked through a long list of provisions they did not like, including a restructuring of the Federal Election Commission to make it more partisan and punitive, a host of election administration changes they predicted would cause mass “chaos” if carried out and the public campaign financing system.“This bill is the single most dangerous bill this committee has ever considered,” Mr. Cruz said. “This bill is designed to corrupt the election process permanently, and it is a brazen and shameless power grab by Democrats.”Mr. Cruz falsely claimed that the bill would register undocumented immigrants to vote and accused Democrats of wanting the most violent criminals to cast ballots, too.In fact, it is illegal for noncitizens to vote, and the bill would do nothing to change that or a requirement that people registering to vote swear they are citizens. It would extend the franchise to millions of former felons, as some states already do, but only after they have served their sentences.Senator Amy Klobuchar pressed against Republicans saying that it was the current elections system that had caused “chaos” at polling places.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesThough few senators mentioned him by name, Mr. Trump and his false claims of election fraud hung heavily over the debate.To make their case, Republicans turned to two officials who backed an effort to overturn then-President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s election victory. Mac Warner, the secretary of state of West Virginia, and Todd Rokita, the attorney general of Indiana, both supported a Texas lawsuit late last year asking the Supreme Court to invalidate the election results in key battleground states Mr. Biden won, citing groundless accusations of voting improprieties being spread by Mr. Trump.On Wednesday, Democrats balked when Mr. Rokita, a former Republican congressman, asserted that their proposed changes would “open our elections up to increased voter fraud and irregularities” like the ones that he said had caused widespread voter mistrust in the 2020 outcome.Senator Jon Ossoff, a freshman Democrat from Georgia, chastised the attorney general, saying he was spreading misinformation and conspiracies.“I take exception to the comments that you just made, Mr. Rokita, that public concern regarding the integrity of the recent election is born of anything but a deliberate and sustained misinformation campaign led by a vain former president unwilling to accept his own defeat,” Mr. Ossoff said.Mr. Rokita merely scoffed and repeated an earlier threat to sue to block the legislation from being carried out should it ever become law, a remedy that many Republican-led states would most likely pursue if Democrats were able to win its enactment.Election workers re-counting ballots in November in Atlanta.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“You are entitled to your opinion, as misinformed as it may be, but I share the opinion of Americans,” Mr. Rokita said.Sixty-five percent of voters believe the election was free and fair, according to a Morning Consult poll conducted in late January, but only 32 percent of Republicans believe that. 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