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      Kevin McCarthy, ousted House speaker, says he will leave Congress at end of the year – US politics live

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      In an address today, Joe Biden urged Congress to pass his national security supplemental request, including funding to support Ukraine.Speaking from the White House’s Roosevelt Room, the president said:
      Congress has to uphold the national security needs of the United States and, quite frankly, of our partners as well. This cannot wait. Congress needs to pass supplemental funding for Ukraine before they break for the holiday recess. It’s as simple as that.
      Biden also touched on border policies, saying:
      Extreme Republicans are playing chicken with our national security, holding Ukraine’s funding hostage to their extreme partisan border policies.
      Let me be clear: we need real solutions. I support real solutions at the border. I put forward a comprehensive plan the first day I came into office. I’ve made it clear that we need Congress to make changes to fix what is a broken immigration system, because we all know it’s broken. And I’m willing to do significantly more. But in terms of changes to policy and to provide resources that we need at the border, I’m willing to change policy as well.
      The Senate has begun a procedural vote on Joe Biden’s national security supplemental funding request. Sixty votes are required surrounding the $106bn Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan funding.So far, there are 30 yes’s and 29 no’s. The voting remains underway.In an address today, Joe Biden urged Congress to pass his national security supplemental request, including funding to support Ukraine.Speaking from the White House’s Roosevelt Room, the president said:
      Congress has to uphold the national security needs of the United States and, quite frankly, of our partners as well. This cannot wait. Congress needs to pass supplemental funding for Ukraine before they break for the holiday recess. It’s as simple as that.
      Biden also touched on border policies, saying:
      Extreme Republicans are playing chicken with our national security, holding Ukraine’s funding hostage to their extreme partisan border policies.
      Let me be clear: we need real solutions. I support real solutions at the border. I put forward a comprehensive plan the first day I came into office. I’ve made it clear that we need Congress to make changes to fix what is a broken immigration system, because we all know it’s broken. And I’m willing to do significantly more. But in terms of changes to policy and to provide resources that we need at the border, I’m willing to change policy as well.
      A new school board president in Pennsylvania was sworn in on Monday on a stack of frequently banned books.In a video posted by the Recount, Karen Smith, the new Central Bucks school board president can be seen saying her vows on a stack of six banned books.According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the books include Night by Elie Wiesel, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Lily and Dunkin by Donna Gephart, All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M Johnson, Flamer by Mike Curato, and Beyond Magenta by Susan Kukin.According to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), between 1 January and 31 August, OIF reported 698 to censor library materials and services and documented challenges to 1,915 unique titles.The ban marks a 20% increase from the same reporting period in 2022, OIF said.Four Republican presidential candidates are set to meet onstage in Alabama tonight for the fourth Republican presidential debate.The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino reports:Four White House hopefuls will meet onstage in Alabama for the fourth Republican presidential primary debate, the smallest lineup yet as the window for denting Donald Trump’s lead narrows.Wednesday night’s debate, hosted by the cable network NewsNation at the Moody Music Hall at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, offers one of the last major opportunities for the candidates to make their case to Republican voters before the party’s nominating contest begins next month.The two-hour event will feature Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and former United Nations ambassador, who are locked in an increasingly combative scrap to be the second-place alternative to Trump. They will be joined by Chris Christie, a former governor of New Jersey and Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur, who both trail far behind.Read the full story here:Joe Biden has announced that his administration is approving another $4.8bn in student debt cancellation for 80,300 people.In a statement released on Wednesday, the president said that this brings the total debt cancellation that his administration has approved to $132bn for over 3.6 million Americans.Biden said:
      Today’s announcement comes on top of all we’ve been able to achieve for students and student loan borrowers in the past few years.
      This includes: achieving the largest increases in Pell Grants in over a decade to help families who earn less than roughly $60,000 a year; fixing the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program so that borrowers who go into public service get the debt relief they’re entitled to under the law; and creating the most generous Income-Driven Repayment plan in history – the Save plan.
      The Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison has released the following statement on Kevin McCarthy’s resignation announcement in which he said the US will be “better off without Kevin in office”:
      In his short time as speaker, Kevin McCarthy managed to plunge the People’s House into chaos in the name of serving one person and one person alone: Donald Trump. At every turn, Kevin sought to give his puppet master a lifeline, even after the horrific events of January 6, and spent his embarrassing speakership bending the knee to the most extreme factions of the MAGA base. This anticlimactic end to Kevin’s political career is in line with the rest of his time on Capitol Hill – plagued by cowardice, incompetence, and fecklessness. Our country will be better off without Kevin in office, but his failed tenure in the House should serve as a stark warning to the country about the future of the GOP – no matter how much he kowtowed to the extreme right, no matter how much he kissed the ring, none of it was MAGA enough for the de facto leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump.
      Wisconsin’s Democratic governor Tony Evers has vetoed a Republican bill that would have banned gender-affirming care including surgeries and hormone treatments for minors in the state.In a statement released on Wednesday, Evers said:
      I promised I would veto any bill that makes Wisconsin a less safe, less inclusive, and less welcoming place for LGBTQ folks and kids—and I keep my promises.
      George Santos, the expelled Republican representative from New York, is reportedly making six figures by selling Cameo videos.The Guardian’s Gloria Oladipo reports:The disgraced lawmaker George Santos is reportedly making six figures by selling videos on the platform Cameo, generating more income than his previous salary as a US congressman, Semafor first reported.Santos, a former Republican representative from New York state, was expelled from Congress last Friday following a blistering ethics report that detailed his misuse of campaign funds.Since his removal, Santos has been publishing videos on Cameo, a website that allows users to purchase personalized videos from celebrities. The disgraced congressman has drastically increased the price of his videos, now selling them for $400 a pop from his initial $75-per-video price point.Read the full story here:Here is a video Kevin McCarthy released surrounding his resignation announcement:In the video, McCarthy said:
      Traveling the country and serving with all of you, I have encountered far more people that want to build something than those who want to tear it down. I have faith in this country because America is more than a country, America is an idea.
      Today, I am driven by the same purpose that I felt when I arrived in Congress but now it is time to pursue my passion in a different arena.
      Joe Biden has responded to a question on whether he thinks there are any Democrats who could beat Donald Trump other than himself.”Probably 50 of them,” replied Biden.He then went on to say, “I’m not the only one who can beat him, but I will beat him.”In response to Kevin McCarthy’s resignation announcement, California’s Democratic representative Adam Schiff said:
      “My dad asked me recently what I thought of Kevin McCarthy. In light of his retirement, I figured I’d share …”
      He went on to post a video in which he spoke about McCarthy, saying, “I think he’s a bad egg.”South Carolina’s Republican senator Lindsey Graham has released the following statement on Kevin McCarthy’s resignation announcement:
      I wish Kevin McCarthy well in his future endeavors to help the conservative cause. Kevin has much to be proud of, rising through the ranks to Minority Leader and Speaker of the House. He navigated the Republican Party through some of the most turbulent periods in recent history, getting results in difficult circumstances.
      “He will be missed, but I am sure his contributions to the future of the Republican Party will be enormous.”
      California’s Democratic representative Eric Swalwell, who predicted earlier this week that McCarthy would leave Congress, has responded to McCarthy’s resignation with a check mark emoji.Earlier this week, Swalwell tweeted:
      “With Santos gone, you’re hearing it here first: the next GOP member to leave Congress will be@SpeakerMcCarthy. No way he stays. A guy who kidney punches his colleagues from behind is too afraid to serve out a full term with them. I bet he’s gone by end of year. What say you?”
      In an odd and fairly threatening post, Georgia’s Republican representative Majorie Taylor Greene responded to the news of Kevin McCarthy resigning, saying:
      “Well..
      Now in 2024, we will have a 1 seat majority in the House of Representatives.
      Congratulations Freedom Caucus for one and 105 Rep who expel our own for the other.
      I can assure you Republican voters didn’t give us the majority to crash the ship.
      Hopefully no one dies.”
      Kevin McCarthy’s resignation will come before the special elections which are expected to take place either next February or March to fill the vacancy left by George Santos who was expelled from the House last Friday.With McCarthy gone, there will be two Republican vacancies in the House. More

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      Republicans to blur faces in January 6 footage as ‘we don’t want them charged’

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      The House speaker, Mike Johnson, said he would blur the faces of the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6 before releasing new footage to the public, in order to shield the rioters from justice.In a Tuesday press conference Johnson, who was personally involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, said: “We have to blur some faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DoJ.”Johnson’s office later acknowledged that the justice department already has the surveillance film.Some Republicans claim the events of that day were mischaracterized. Two years ago, the Georgia Republican congressman Andrew Clyde said protesters entering the Capitol had “walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes taking videos and pictures”.“If you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit,” he added.More than 1,200 defendants have been charged in connection with the January 6 attempt to interrupt the certification of the election, according to a tally by NBC News.More than 400 have been sentenced to periods of incarceration and an additional 1,000 January 6 participants have been identified but not arrested.Johnson said he planned to release the first tranche of security footage, around 90 hours, to the public because he wants people to do their own research into the Capitol attack.“We want the American people to draw their own conclusions,” Johnson said. “I don’t think partisan elected officials in Washington should present a narrative and expect that it should be seen as the ultimate truth.”Raj Shah, former deputy White House press secretary in the Trump administration and currently Johnson’s deputy chief of staff for communications, said in a statement shared online: “Faces are to be blurred from public viewing room footage to prevent all forms of retaliation against private citizens from any non-governmental actors. The Department of Justice already has access to raw footage from January 6, 2021.”Earlier this month, Johnson said that releasing the film, which totals 44,000 hours, was part of a pledge he had made to far-right members of his party when he was campaigning for his current job.“This decision will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials,” he said in a statement.Johnson’s comments come as Colorado’s highest court will hear arguments on Wednesday on whether Trump provoked and participated in the January 6 insurrection – as the January 6 committee found – and if that act requires his removal from the ballot.The case, the first of several to reach court, will look at if the former president can be disqualified under a section of the 14th amendment that states that anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” after taking an oath of office to support the Constitution is forbidden from holding any public office.A lower court in Colorado previously found that Trump could remain on the ballot because the insurrection clause does not apply to the office of the president.Colorado’s secretary of state, Jena Griswold, has said that ruling was “pretty surprising”. Griswold, a Democrat, told Politico: “The court’s decision to say the presidency is excluded from section 3 of the 14th Amendment is the really surprising part. Under that decision, Donald Trump is above the law when it comes to insurrection.” More

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      Liz Cheney hopes for Democratic win with US ‘sleepwalking into dictatorship’

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      Liz Cheney, whose opposition to Donald Trump’s presidency alienated her from her fellow Republicans, has said she would prefer Democrats to win in the 2024 elections over members of her own party because she feared the US was “sleepwalking into dictatorship”.In an interview with CBS on Sunday, Cheney suggested a Republican congressional majority that would be subservient to another Trump White House presented a tangible “threat” to American democracy.“I believe very strongly in those principles and ideals that have defined the Republican party, but the Republican party of today has made a choice, and they haven’t chosen the constitution,” the former Wyoming congresswoman said when asked if she was rooting for Democratic victories in the 2024 election cycle. “And so I do think it presents a threat if the Republicans are in the majority in January 2025.”She went on to say that the US was “sort of sleepwalking into dictatorship” with Trump emerging as the clear favorite for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, notwithstanding the fact that he faces more than 90 criminal charges, including some for attempting to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election against his Democratic rival Joe Biden.Polls also suggest it would be a competitive race if Biden is rematched with Trump, who has been running on promises to use federal authorities to crush his enemies and to dramatically expand the immigration crackdown that his White House oversaw after his 2016 victory.“The tools that he is using are tools that we’ve seen used by authoritarians, fascists, tyrants around the world,” said Cheney, the daughter of the ex-congressman, defense secretary and vice-president Dick Cheney. “The things that he has said and done, in some ways, are so outrageous that we have become numb to them.“What I believe is the cause of our time is that we not become numb, that we understand the warning signs, that we understand the danger, and that we ignore partisan politics to stop him.”Cheney served as the vice-chairwoman of the US House committee which investigated the deadly Capitol attack staged by Trump supporters on 6 January 2021 in a desperate but failed attempt to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory in the election weeks earlier.Cheney and her colleagues recommended that the justice department file criminal charges against Trump in connection with the Capitol attack, portending the four indictments obtained against the former president this year.In her remarks on Sunday, Cheney asserted that the Republican US House speaker, Mike Johnson, was “absolutely” a collaborator in Trump’s attempt to remain in office after his 2020 defeat.Johnson voiced conspiracy theories about Biden’s victory; authored a supreme court brief as Texas sought to have key state results invalidated; and was among more than 147 Republicans who unsuccessfully objected to certifying the outcome of the 2020 election even after the Trump mob’s attack on the Capitol had been foiled.“What Mike was doing was taking steps that he knew to be wrong, doing things that he knew to have no basis in fact or law or the constitution … in order to attempt to do Donald Trump’s bidding,” Cheney said, echoing comments she has made in interviews and in her new book Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning.Cheney said Johnson “can’t be” US House speaker when the new Congress takes its oath of office in early January 2025 and begins grappling with certifying the outcome of a presidential election the previous fall.“We’re facing a situation with respect to the 2024 election where it’s an existential crisis,” Cheney said. “We have to ensure that we don’t have a situation where an election that might be thrown into the House of Representatives is overseen by a Republican majority.”Cheney left office in January. She lost her bid to be re-elected to Wyoming’s sole House seat – which she had held since 2017 – after a Trump-supported challenger, Harriet Hageman, ran against her in a Republican primary.Hageman subsequently won a general election and succeeded Cheney in the House.Cheney’s thoughts do not seem to be her party’s mainstream position, if comments from the prominent US Republican senator Lindsey Graham are any indication.During an appearance on CNN, Graham – who has endorsed Trump – told Cheney that the former president “was far better” than Biden “in terms of actions and results”.“I think Liz’s hatred of Trump is real,” Graham said. More

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      US House close to vote on Biden impeachment inquiry, speaker says

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      The US House speaker Mike Johnson signaled on Saturday that Republicans are nearing holding a formal vote to launch an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.“I think it’s something we have to do at this juncture,” Johnson said during a Saturday appearance on Fox and Friends Weekend.Republicans have spent months investigating Biden and his son Hunter’s business dealings, hoping to find improprieties they could use as the basis for impeachment. The full House has not yet voted to formally authorize an impeachment inquiry, as some Republicans have publicly expressed doubts about whether there is enough evidence to justify such action.The White House has rebuffed GOP efforts to force it to turn over information in part by citing a 2020 opinion from the justice department’s office of legal counsel citing the need for a full House vote before a House committee could force the production of documents or interviews.“We conclude that the House must expressly authorize a committee to conduct an impeachment investigation and to use compulsory process in that investigation before the committee may compel the production of documents or testimony in support of the House’s ‘sole Power of Impeachment’,” the memo says.Johnson, who appeared with the GOP conference chair, Elise Stefanik, expressed confidence that there were enough votes to authorize an inquiry and said it was a “necessary step” to obtain information from the White House.“Elise and I both served on the impeachment defense team of Donald Trump twice when the Democrats used it for brazen, partisan political purposes. We decried that use of it. This is very different. Remember, we are the rule-of-law team. We have to do it very methodically,” he said.The Republican investigation thus far has not resulted in several misleading claims, but nothing substantial. At a September hearing, several of the expert witnesses called by Republicans said they did not believe there was enough evidence to justify impeachment.Hunter Biden has also offered to publicly testify before the committees investigating his business dealings. More

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      George Santos to face expulsion vote on Thursday, House speaker says

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      The Republican speaker of the US House, Mike Johnson, said the chamber would vote on whether to expel George Santos on Thursday, leaving it up to lawmakers to decide whether the New Yorker should be removed from office for embellishing his résumé and allegedly breaking federal law.“What we’ve said as the leadership team is we’re going to allow people to vote their conscience,” Johnson told reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.“I think it’s the only appropriate thing we can do. We’ve not whipped the vote and we wouldn’t. I trust that people will make that decision thoughtfully and in good faith.“I personally have real reservations about doing this, I’m concerned about a precedent that may be set for that. So, everybody’s working through that and we’ll see how they vote tomorrow.”On Tuesday, Santos said he would not resign in order to avoid becoming only the sixth representative ever expelled from the House.“If I resign, I make it easy for this place,” Santos, 35, told reporters. “This place is run on hypocrisy. I’m done playing a part for the circus. If they want me to leave Congress, they’re going to have to take that tough vote.”But that tough vote was already drawing near.Earlier, two Democrats, Robert Garcia of California and Dan Goldman of New York, initiated proceedings to require an expulsion vote within two legislative days. Later, two Republicans, Anthony D’Esposito of New York and Michael Guest of Mississippi, did the same.“We want to make sure that happens this week,” Garcia said. “I think whatever it takes to get that vote this week is what we’re doing. He has no place in Congress.”The list of previous expellees includes three men who fought for the Confederacy in the civil war and two convicted of crimes. The last man forced out, James A Traficant of Ohio, a congressman with a famous “piled-high pompadour” toupée who was convicted of fraud, bribery, obstruction of justice and racketeering, was expelled in 2002.On Thursday, a two-thirds majority will be required to add Santos to the list of shame.Santos was elected last year but quickly saw his résumé torn to pieces by investigative reporting and past actions subjected to legal scrutiny. He admitted embellishing that résumé – which included bizarre claims about his academic and professional history – but denied wrongdoing. Among more picaresque episodes, he denied having been a drag performer in Brazil – a denial now undermined by reporters including the author of a new biography.Santos has pleaded not guilty to 23 federal fraud charges but has not yet stood trial. As indicated by Johnson on Wednesday, many in Congress, including senior Democrats, have cited the lack of a conviction when opposing previous attempts to expel Santos, saying to do so without the verdict of a court would set a dangerous precedent.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat in the closely divided Senate, is under indictment for alleged corruption. He denies wrongdoing.In Santos’s case, his own party generated a previous attempt to expel him. But it took a damning House ethics committee report, issued this month and detailing the use of campaign funds for expenses including Botox treatment and luxury purchases, to change the political equation.Johnson must govern with a narrow and unruly majority. A Santos exit would eat into that margin but Johnson this week attempted to persuade Santos to quit before he could be thrown out.Santos has said he will not run again but his refusal to quit prompted an unnamed Republican to tell Axios he thought Santos wanted the “notoriety” of becoming the sixth person ever forcibly expelled.If Santos is removed, his New York district, which covers parts of Long Island and Queens, will have a special election within 90 days. More

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

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

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      Mike Johnson to publicly release 44,000 hours of sensitive January 6 footage

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      House speaker Mike Johnson said Friday he plans to publicly release thousands of hours of footage from the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, making good on a promise he made to far-right members of his party when he was campaigning for his current job.“This decision will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials,” Johnson said in a statement.The newly elected speaker said the first tranche of security footage, around 90 hours, will be released on a public committee website Friday, with the rest of the 44,000 hours expected to be posted over the next several months. In the meantime, a public viewing room will be set up in the Capitol.For the last several months, the GOP-led House Administration Committee has made the video available by appointment only to members of the media, criminal defendants and a limited number of other people. The video shows some of the fighting up close and gives a bird’s-eye view of the Capitol complex – one that visitors rarely see – as hundreds of president Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the building, violently attacking police officers and breaking in through windows and doors.By expanding this access to the general public, Johnson is fulfilling one of the pledges he made last month to the most conservative members of his party, including the representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, who orchestrated the ouster of the former speaker, Kevin McCarthy. Both Gaetz and Trump – who is currently running for re-election as he faces federal charges for his role in the January 6 attack – applauded Johnson’s decision.In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump congratulated the speaker “for having the courage and fortitude” to release the footage.The move by Johnson will grant the general public a stunning level of access to sensitive and explicit January 6 security footage, which many critics have warned could endanger the safety of staff and Congressmembers in the Capitol complex if it gets into the wrong hands. The hours of footage detail not only the shocking assault rioters made on US Capitol police as they breached the building but also how the rioters accessed the building and the routes lawmakers used to flee to safety.A request for comment from Capitol police was declined.Johnson said Friday that the committee is processing the footage to blur the faces of individuals “to avoid any persons from being targeted for retaliation of any kind”. He added that an estimated 5% of the footage will not be publicly released as it “may involve sensitive security information related to the building architecture”.Gripping images and video from the Capitol attack by Trump supporters have been widely circulated by documentarians, news organizations and even the rioters themselves. But until this year, officials held back much of the surveillance video from hundreds of security cameras stationed in and around the Capitol.In February, McCarthy gave then Fox News host Tucker Carlson exclusive access to the footage, a move that Democrats swiftly condemned as a “grave” breach of security with potentially far-reaching consequences.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe conservative commentator aired a first installment to millions of viewers on his prime-time show in the spring, working to bend perceptions of the violent, grueling siege that played out for the world to see into a narrative favorable to Trump.It is all part of a larger effort by Republicans to redefine the narrative around the deadly insurrection after the findings of the House January 6 committee last year. The select committee of seven Democrats and two Republicans spent months painstakingly documenting, with testimony and video evidence, how Trump rallied his supporters to head to the Capitol and “fight like hell” as Congress was certifying his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.The committee’s final report released last December concluded that Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.The panel passed their investigation to the justice department, recommending that federal prosecutors investigate the former president on four crimes, including aiding an insurrection. In August, Trump was indicted on four felony counts for his role in the attack as the justice department accused him of assaulting the “bedrock function” of democracy. More

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      George Santos will not seek re-election after House details ‘pervasive’ fraud

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      The New York Republican congressman, fabulist and criminal defendant George Santos said he would not seek re-election next year, after the US House ethics committee issued a report detailing “grave and pervasive campaign finance violations and fraudulent activity” and recommended action against him.“I will NOT be seeking re-election for a second term in 2024 as my family deserves better than to be under the gun from the press all the time,” Santos said, calling the report “biased” and “a disgusting politicised smear”.But after the report detailed his conduct, moves for a new expulsion resolution began.“Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit,” the committee said.“He blatantly stole from his campaign. He deceived donors into providing what they thought were contributions to his campaign but were in fact payments for his personal benefit.“He reported fictitious loans to his political committees to induce donors and party committees to make further contributions to his campaign – and then diverted more campaign money to himself as purported ‘repayments’ of those fictitious loans.“He used his connections to high-value donors and other political campaigns to obtain additional funds for himself through fraudulent or otherwise questionable business dealings. And he sustained all of this through a constant series of lies to his constituents, donors, and staff about his background and experience.”Santos, 35, was elected last year, as Republicans retook the House in part thanks to a strong performance in New York. But as his résumé unraveled amid increasingly picaresque reports about his life before entering Congress, including questions about his actual name, he admitted “embellishing” his record.Allegations of criminal behaviour emerged. Santos has now pleaded not guilty to 23 federal criminal charges, including laundering funds and defrauding donors.He has survived attempts to expel him from the House, including from members of his own party. Most recently, 31 Democrats voted against making him only the sixth member ever expelled, saying he should not be thrown out without being convicted. Three congressmen were expelled in 1861, for supporting the Confederacy in the civil war. Two have been expelled after being criminally convicted, the last in 2002.Republican leaders, beholden to a narrow majority, had said they would wait for the ethics report.On Thursday, the New York Democrat Dan Goldman said: “More than 10 months after Congressman [Ritchie] Torres and I filed a complaint … the committee has … concluded that George Santos defrauded his donors, filed false Federal Election Commission reports, and repeatedly broke the law in order to fraudulently win his election last November.”Promising to “file a motion to expel Santos from Congress once and for all” after the Thanksgiving break, Goldman said Republicans “no longer have any fictional excuse to protect Santos in order to preserve their narrow majority”.Mike Lawler, a New York Republican who has tried to expel Santos, said Santos should “end this farce and resign immediately. If he refuses, he must be removed from Congress. His conduct is not only unbecoming and embarrassing, it is criminal. He is unfit to serve and should resign today”.Mike Johnson, the new Republican speaker, has said Santos deserves due process. Speaking to Fox News last month, he also said Republicans had “no margin for error”.But according to the Washington Post, citing an anonymous source, Michael Guest of Mississippi, the Republican committee chair, planned to file a motion to expel Santos on Friday, setting up a possible vote after the Thanksgiving holiday next week.Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said she “intend[ed] to vote yes on any privileged expulsion resolution … as the work of the committee is now complete, and I am no longer obligated to maintain neutrality”.Santos said: “If there was a single ounce of ETHICS in the ‘ethics committee’, they would have not released this biased report. The committee went to extraordinary lengths to smear myself and my legal team about me not being forthcoming (my legal bills suggest otherwise).“It is a disgusting politicised smear that shows the depths of how low our federal government has sunk. Everyone who participated in this grave miscarriage of justice should all be ashamed of themselves.”Somewhat optimistically, he called for a constitutional convention to formalise action against Joe Biden for supposed crimes. More contritely, Santos said he was “humbled yet again and reminded that I am human and I have flaws”.The report was accompanied by extensive appendices including evidence of apparent malpractice. Santos was shown to have spent donor money on vacations, luxury goods, Botox treatment and the website OnlyFans.One exhibit showed a suggestion by a staffer to place a microphone under a table bearing donuts for reporters, an offering that made headlines earlier this year.The committee said Santos had not cooperated, “continues to flout his statutory financial disclosure obligations and has failed to correct countless errors and omissions in his past [financial disclosure] statements, despite being repeatedly reminded … of his requirement to do so.“The [committee] also found that, despite his attempts to blame others for much of the misconduct, Representative Santos was a knowing and active participant in the wrongdoing. Particularly troubling was Representative Santos’ lack of candour during the investigation itself.”The committee said it would refer its findings to federal prosecutors. Members of Congress, it said, should take any action “appropriate and necessary … to fulfill the House’s constitutional mandate to police the conduct of its members”.Outside Congress, Brett Edkins, of the pressure group Stand Up America, said: “This report has one clear conclusion: Santos is wholly unfit to hold office.“If George Santos had any shame or remorse over deceiving hard-working New Yorkers and his colleagues in Congress, he would resign immediately. Instead, he continues to use every possible lie and excuse to cling to power … since he refuses to step down, House Republicans should grow a backbone and expel him.” More