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      Chain, chain, chain: political theatre confirms Elon Musk’s Maga hero status at jubilant CPAC

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      What do you give the man who has everything? A ballroom full of cheering conservative activists found out this week when Elon Musk was presented with a chainsaw by Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, who has used the power tool as a symbol of his push to impose fiscal discipline.Wearing sunglasses, a black Maga baseball cap and a gold necklace, Musk giddily wielded the chainsaw up and down the stage. “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy!” he declared. Members of the audience shouted: “We love you!” Musk replied: “I love you guys, too!” And he quipped: “I am become meme.”It was a wild political theatre that confirmed Musk’s status as a new hero of the Maga movement. The head of Tesla and SpaceX had been fully embraced by the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), long a window on the soul of the Republican party and, in recent years, a purity test among Donald Trump’s support base.This year’s conference at National Harbor in Maryland was a four-day celebration not only of Trump’s return to the White House but the rise of global rightwing populism. Emboldened, exultant and convinced that their momentum is unstoppable, speakers put less emphasis than usual on baiting liberals and more on spreading the Maga gospel around the world.Attendees were united in praise for the shock-and-awe approach of Trump’s first month in office, which JD Vance described as “a hell of a lot of fun”. Brett Hawkes, 69, from Rockville, Maryland, hailed the “blitzkrieg”; Christopher Cultraro, 19, from Easton, Pennsylvania, called it “phenomenal”; Adelbert Walker, 72, from Petersburg, Virginia, said: “He’s keeping his promises. He’s going about his agenda at warp speed.”View image in fullscreenThe enthusiasm extended to Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, which has slashed the federal government and fired thousands of workers in ways that have been challenged in the courts.Musk, the world’s richest man, who has blocked food and medicine for the world’s poorest people by gutting the agency responsible for delivering US aid, told CPAC: “We’re trying to get good things done, but also, like, you know, have a good time doing it and, you know, and have, like, a sense of humour.”Republicans including Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary; Pam Bondi, the attorney general; Mike Johnson, the House of Representatives speaker; Rick Scott, the Florida senator; and Eric Schmitt, the Missouri senator all took the stage to heap praise on Musk and Doge.Rightwing figures from overseas got in on the act. Britain’s Nigel Farage called Musk a “hero of free speech” and lauded the “amazing Doge project” a month after the tech billionaire suggested that Farage should stand down as leader of the Reform UK party.Liz Truss, the former British prime minister, indicated that Musk is now part of the Maga brand when she declared: “We want a Trump revolution in Britain. We want to flood the zone. We want Elon and his nerd-army of Musk rats examining the British deep state.”View image in fullscreenBut across America, there are already stirrings of a backlash against Musk’s “nerd army” of mostly young male engineers with no government experience. Members of Congress were this week confronted by raucous town halls in which citizens complained about Doge’s chaotic, indiscriminate and illegal tactics.Some 71% of people agree that the very wealthy have too much influence on the White House, according to a Reuters/ Ipsos survey, while 58% are concerned that programmes such as social security retirement payments and student aid could be delayed by Musk’s campaign.CPAC attendee Ashlie Hightower, who lives in northern Virginia, acknowledged that workers there are suffering the consequences of Musk’s cuts. She said: “Many people have been affected because it’s a huge area that mostly works for government or has some connection to government. I understand that and it might be painful at first.”Even so, Hightower approves of Doge’s actions, saying: “What they have discovered is that we can actually get out of debt if we rein in some of this nonsense spending. Right now they’ve found it’s equal to about 20 or 30% of our GDP. It incredible. I feel rejuvenated.”Others joined in the plaudits for Musk. Matthew Kochman, 76, a property broker from New York, said: “He’s a genius. What’s wrong with that? He could put people on Mars and the federal government is so effed up it’s not funny. He can do nothing but help. If you find $1 of waste, you’re doing a good thing. If you find $500bn, how can anybody possibly find fault with that unless you’re a moron?”Kochman, who drives a vehicle that he calls a “Trumpmobile”, is equally impressed by the president, saying: “He’s going Trump speed, as they say, and he’s not going to waste any time. He’s doing everything that he promised to do and he’s following the agenda to try and bring the country back from chaos and failure.”One big beast of CPAC is more ambivalent about South African-born Musk, however. Steve Bannon, a rightwing populist and former Trump adviser, regards Musk’s oligarch status and pro-immigration views with deep suspicion. He told the conservative website UnHerd: “Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. He wants to impose his freak experiment and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, tradition or values.”But in his CPAC speech, Bannon welcomed Doge’s assault on the administrative state and even dubbed Musk “Superman”. And on Friday, a long queue of people waiting to take selfies with Bannon included plenty of Musk admirers content to square that circle.Michael Stearns, 30, who works at a golf course near Nashville, Tennessee, was wearing a Nasa sweater and said: “I’m a big Steve Bannon fan. I love that guy. One of my heroes. I support Elon Musk and I Iove Doge. He’s doing the right thing cutting out all the waste and abuse. I support both guys.”Bannon, meanwhile, became embroiled in controversy of his own. As he called on the audience to “fight, fight, fight”, he briefly held out a stiff arm in what appeared to be a fascist salute reminiscent of one made by Musk on inauguration day. In response, France’s far-right leader, Jordan Bardella, cancelled his CPAC appearance because “one of the speakers out of provocation allowed himself a gesture alluding to Nazi ideology”.View image in fullscreenBannon also used his typically fiery speech to float the idea of a constitutional change that would allow Trump to run for a third term as president, saying: “We want Trump in 28.”The case was also put at CPAC by Third Term Project, a thinktank exploring the case for reconsidering presidential term limits. Wearing a “Trump 2028” sticker, Amber Harris of Third Term Project said: “You need more than four years to enact some of the things he wants to do.”However, most CPAC attendees interviewed by the Guardian opposed the idea. Nina Golden, 47, from Raleigh, North Carolina, believes Trump is exceeding her expectations and is “100%” supportive of Musk but said: “I believe in the constitution as it is and it should stay that way.”Bannon, who served four months in prison last year for defying a subpoena in the congressional investigation into the January 6 insurrection, hosted his influential War Room podcast from CPAC. He interviewed a group who had been imprisoned for attacking the US Capitol only to be pardoned by Trump on his first day in office.The “J6ers” received a heroes’ welcome at CPAC. Richard Barnett, who had put his feet on the House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk and was sentenced to more than four years in prison, revelled in his newfound celebrity by showing off his “certificate of pardon” from Trump.The 64-year-old retired firefighter, wearing a sweater emblazoned with “J6” and “political prisoner”, said of the president’s first month in office: “Awesome, baby. Keep it coming.”Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the far-right Oath Keepers, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy but had his 18-year sentence commuted, denied that his group had acted violently on behalf of Trump.Sporting a Trump tattoo on his arm, Rhodes, 59, from Granbury, Texas, said he was “very happy” with Trump, adding: “I got no complaints. His cabinet is fantastic from what I’ve seen so far. I love Doge. Let the sunlight come in and show all the corruption.”View image in fullscreenIn past years, CPAC has thrived on opposition to the status quo and targeted Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden with crude insults. But with Trump installed in the White House, and Democrats weak and leaderless, targets were less obvious or conspicuous.Kari Lake, Trump’s nominee to be director of the Voice of America media outlet, observed: “For the past four years, we have been in a fight-fight-fight mode and now we are in a win-win-win mode.” Sebastian Gorka, a White House adviser, said he had expected anti-Trump protests and “pink pussy hat insanity” but “where are they? We crushed them.”Instead, energy was channeled into Trump worship. People sported Maga caps and other regalia; some even wore giant Trump face masks. Sparkly jackets were on sale with slogans such as “Make fries great again” and “Gulf of America”.The swagger also fuelled CPAC’s expansionist ambitions. The conference was addressed by far-right figures from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Hungary, Japan, North Macedonia, Poland, Slovakia and South Korea. Many saw Trump as a blueprint for nationalist populism in their own countries; some adopted the slogan “Make Europe great again”.Vance criticised Germany’s free-speech laws, accused European leaders of failing to control immigration and defended Trump’s negotiations with Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine.As for Musk, he waved around the chainsaw – which had the words “Long live freedom, damn it” written along its blade – after an interview in which he pushed falsehoods about Europe jailing people for memes, astronauts being left in space for political reasons and Democrats having an electoral incentive “to maximise the number of illegals in the country”.Finally, he was asked to paint a picture of the inside of the mind a genius. “My mind is a storm,” Musk replied. “It’s a storm.” More

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      Trump blindsides Senate Republicans by endorsing rival House budget plan

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      Donald Trump has derailed Senate Republicans’ budget strategy by endorsing a competing House option, leaving GOP leaders scrambling to save their agenda just weeks before a potential government shutdown.The president’s surprise intervention came just hours after Senate Republicans moved to advance their own two-track proposal, as he declared instead that he wants “ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL” through the House’s reconciliation process.“Unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important Legislation currently being discussed, the House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda,” Trump posted on Truth Social.The announcement forces Senate Republicans to reconsider their carefully planned schedule of votes this week on a slimmer package that was meant to cover defense, border security and energy provisions.While the Senate majority leader, John Thune, admitted being blindsided, he told reporters his side was still full steam ahead on a Thursday vote for its version of a bill.“If the House can produce one big, beautiful bill, we’re prepared to work with them to get that across the finish line,” Thune said. “But we believe that the president also likes optionality.”The House proposal Trump is backing would add $4.5tn to the deficit through tax cuts while demanding enormous cuts to federal benefits programs. Under the plan’s strict rules, Republicans must either slash $2tn from mandatory programs (which could include Medicare, Medicaid and food assistance) or scale back their proposed tax breaks by an equal amount.The timing is already tight, as Congress is barreling down a 14 March deadline to pass the bill that would avoid a shutdown forcing hundreds of thousands of federal employees to go without pay. Although Republicans control both chambers, the majorities are so thin they will need Democratic votes to pass any funding measure.In the Senate, where Republicans hold 53 seats, at least 60 votes are needed to overcome a filibuster. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, working with a slim 218-215 majority, faces similar math problems and internal drama.Johnson immediately claimed victory over Trump’s endorsement of the House plan, saying on X that House Republicans are “working to deliver President Trump’s FULL agenda – not just a small part of it”.But his proposal faces resistance from Republicans worried about proposed entitlement cuts – cuts Trump himself rejected on Tuesday on Fox News, saying: “Medicare, Medicaid – none of that stuff is going to be touched.”“If a bill is put in front of me that guts the benefits my neighbors rely on, I will not vote for it,” the freshman Republican congressman Rob Bresnahan said on X.The White House dispatched the vice-president, JD Vance, to meet Senate Republicans on Wednesday afternoon, attempting to smooth tensions as both chambers grapple with how to advance Trump’s agenda. But it’s clear that some senators will be hard to convince.“I’m not sure [the House budget could] pass the House or that it could pass the Senate,” the Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson told reporters.The House remains in recess until next week, leaving Senate Republicans alone on Capitol Hill to plot their next move. More

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      Badenoch and Farage to vie for attention of Trump allies at London summit

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      Influential rightwingers from around the world are to gather in London from Monday at a major conference to network and build connections with senior US Republicans linked to the Trump administration.The UK opposition leader, the Conservatives’ Kemi Badenoch, and Nigel Farage of the Reform UK party, her hard-right anti-immigration rival, will compete to present themselves as the torchbearer of British conservatism.Conservatives from Britain, continental Europe and Australia attending the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference will seize on the opportunity to meet and hear counterparts from the US, including those with links to the new Trump administration. The House speaker, the Republican Mike Johnson, had been due to attend in person but will now give a keynote address remotely on Monday.Other Republicans due to speak include the US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Vivek Ramaswamy – who has worked with Elon Musk on moves to radically reshape the US government – and Kevin Roberts, the president of the US Heritage Foundation, the thinktank behind the controversial “Project 2025” blueprint for Trump’s second term.View image in fullscreenThe conference, which is intended to be a gathering of influential intellectuals shaping global rightwing thinking, has a distinctly anti-environmental and socially conservative theme. It pledges to build on “our growing movement and continue the vital work of relaying the foundations of our civilisation”.ARC was co-founded in 2023 by the Canadian psychologist and self-help author Jordan Peterson and the Tory peer Philippa Stroud. Financial backers include Paul Marshall, one of the owners of GB News, and the Legatum Institute libertarian thinktank.After last year’s first event at the O2 Arena, it has moved to a larger venue this year at the ExCel centre. About 4,000 people from 96 countries are due to attend this year, compared with 1,500 last year.Badenoch returns to the lavish three-day event as leader of her party after last year using an appearance to launch a “culture war” attack on the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall. But while she will give a welcome address to the conference on Monday morning ahead of a keynote speech by Johnson, there is no escape from the challenge her party faces from the hard-right anti-immigration Reform UK.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenFarage, the party’s leader, will be interviewed on stage on Tuesday by Peterson while Reform’s chair, Zia Yusuf, is expected to later take part in a panel for a session called “The choices we face: unilateral economic disarmament or a pro-human way?”Figures on the advisory board of ARC include the former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, the Tory MP Danny Kruger, the self-styled “sceptical environmentalist” Bjørn Lomborg and the Tory peer and financier Helena Morrissey.It also includes Maurice Glasman, the Labour peer associated with the socially conservative “Blue Labour” strand of thinking, who recently appeared on a podcast hosted by Steve Bannon, the US Republican strategist and on-and-off Trump ally.Peterson will also interview Peter Thiel, the US Republican donor and Silicon Valley billionaire known for controversial views such as asserting that democracy is not compatible with freedom and that he has “little hope that voting will make things better”.A list of attenders seen by Guardian Australia showed more than 50 Australians, including figures from rightwing thinktanks and churches, were intending to go to the gathering. Among those travelling are Bridget McKenzie, a senator for the National party, along with key figures from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.Those involved in ARC are keen to promote the gathering as more about the formulation of big ideas than political policy or campaigning and point to conference’s inclusion of scientists and figures from the arts.While religious faith does not explicitly feature in promotional material for the event, there is a strong religious influence on its direction from Peterson, who draws on the Bible in his work, and Stroud, a committed Christian credited with shaping many of the policies of the Conservative party during the 2000s. More

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      Democrats in Congress see potential shutdown as leverage to counter Trump

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      With the US federal government expected to shut down in one month unless Congress approves a funding bill, Democratic lawmakers are wrestling with just how far they are willing to go to push back against Donald Trump’s radical rightwing agenda that has thrown American politics into turmoil.Specifically, Democrats appear divided on the question of whether they would be willing to endure a shutdown to demonstrate their outrage over the president’s attempted overhaul of the federal government.The stakes are high; unless Congress passes a bill to extend funding beyond 14 March, hundreds of thousands of federal employees may be forced to go without pay at a time when they already feel under attack by Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”. And given Trump’s eagerness to flex his presidential authority, the fallout could be particularly severe, depending on how the office of management and budget (OMB) handled a shutdown.To be sure, Republicans are taking the lead on reaching a funding deal, as they control the White House and both chambers of Congress, but party leaders will absolutely need Democrats’ assistance to pass a bill. While Republicans hold a 53-to-47 advantage in the Senate, any funding bill will need the support of at least 60 senators to overcome the filibuster.In the House, Republicans hold a razor-thin majority of 218 to 215, and hard-right lawmakers’ demands for steeper spending cuts will likely force the speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, to also rely on Democratic support to pass a funding bill.“There’s no reasonable funding bill that could make its way through the Senate that wouldn’t cause uproar in the Republican party on the House side,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of the progressive group Indivisible. “That is the fault of the Republicans in the House, not anybody else. But because of that, it is something that is giving Democrats in the House leverage.”In recent weeks, a bipartisan group of congressional appropriators from both chambers have met to hash out the details of a potential funding agreement, but Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, suggested on Thursday that Johnson had instructed his conference members to “walk away” from the talks.“At this moment, there is no discussion because the speaker of the House has apparently ordered House Republican appropriators to walk away from the negotiating table,” Jeffries told reporters. “They are marching America toward a reckless Republican shutdown.”Johnson shot back that Democrats appeared “not interested in keeping the government funded”, adding: “So we will get the job done. We’re not going to shut the government down. We’ll figure out a path through this.”The dynamics of the funding fight have empowered some Democrats to suggest that the negotiations could become a powerful piece of political leverage as they scramble to disrupt Trump’s efforts to freeze federal funding, unilaterally shutter the foreign-aid agency USAid and carry out mass firings across the government.“I cannot support efforts that will continue this lawlessness that we’re seeing when it comes to this administration’s actions,” Andy Kim, a Democratic senator of New Jersey, said on NBC’s Meet the Press last weekend. “And for us to be able to support government funding in that way, only for them to turn it around, to dismantle the government – that is not something that should be allowed.”Progressive organizers have called on Democratic lawmakers to hold the line in the negotiations to ensure Congress passes a clean funding bill that Trump will be required to faithfully implement.On Monday, prominent congressional Democrats rallied with progressive groups outside the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in Washington, and 15 of them pledged to withhold their support from a funding deal until Trump’s “constitutional crisis” comes to an end.“We’re not just looking for statements. We’re not looking for protest votes. We’re also asking them to identify where they have power, where they have leverage and use that power,” Levin said. “And because of the nature of this funding fight, this is a clear opportunity.”Other Democrats have appeared much more cautious when it comes to the possibility of a shutdown, even as they insist that Republicans should shoulder the blame for any funding lapse.The senator Cory Booker, a Democrat of New Jersey, argued that Democrats must now embrace their role as “a party of protecting residents, protecting veterans, protecting first responders, protecting American safety from [Trump’s] illegal actions”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The Republican party has shown year after year that they’re the party of shutdowns. They’re the party of government chaos,” Booker said on CNN’s State of the Union last weekend. “So we’re not looking to shut down the government. We’re looking actually to protect people.”The political fallout of past shutdowns may give Democrats pause as well.The last shutdown occurred during Trump’s first term and began in December 2018, eventually stretching on for 35 days and becoming the longest shutdown in US history. It started after Trump demanded that Congress approve billions of dollars in funding to construct a wall along the US-Mexico border, and it ended with Trump signing a bipartisan bill that included no money for the wall. At the time, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed 50% of Americans blamed Trump for the shutdown, while 37% said congressional Democrats were responsible.“Historically, I think it has been the case that shutdowns are costly, and they’re disruptive. When they conclude, you look back and wonder, what did we get for all of that? The answer is usually nothing,” said Gordon Gray, executive director of Pinpoint Policy Institute and a former Republican staffer for the Senate budget committee. “For people who have to interact with the government during a shutdown [and] for the workforce, there’s real downsides. Politically, there just seems to be more downside than upside.”This shutdown, if it occurs, could be unlike any other.Trump has shown an extraordinary willingness to test the bounds of executive power, and while past presidents have taken steps to alleviate the pain caused by shutdowns, he may choose not to do so. Considering his apparent fixation on eliminating government “waste”, some fear Trump and the new OMB director, Russell Vought, might use the shutdown as an opportunity to sideline federal agencies and departments that the president deems unimportant.“There’s a tremendous degree of discretion that OMB can exert in its interpretation of this,” Gray said. “Clearly this administration is willing to contemplate its discretion more expansively than we’ve seen. It would not surprise me if we saw novel developments under Trump.”Levin agreed that it is entirely possible Trump and some of his congressional allies may want to “shut down the government so that they can more easily steamroll” federal agencies. He expects some House Republicans to propose funding provisions that will be absolute non-starters with Democrats, such as eliminating the health insurance program Medicaid, to potentially derail negotiations.“I absolutely think it’s possible that the Republicans’ plan is to drive us into shutdown. I think that it is giving them the benefit of the doubt to say that they are interested in making any kind of deal,” Levin said. “Democrats have some amount of leverage here, but if we head into shutdown, there should be no illusion of who benefits and whose grand plan this is.” More

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      Did gerrymandering keep Republicans from a bigger majority? Absolutely not | David Daley

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      Mike Johnson, the House Speaker, will soon have the challenge of leading a three-seat Republican majority. He has an interesting theory about why the Republican edge will be so slender. Last week, on Fox News, he blamed Democratic gerrymandering.While it’s always a delightful surprise to hear a Republican leader express concern about the evils of gerrymandering, Johnson has the facts and the math completely backwards.The truth is the opposite: Republicans drew the district lines of nearly three times as many US House seats as did Democrats – 191 to 71. Republicans gerrymandered more than three times as many seats than Democrats. They started from a position of power after drawing historic gerrymanders in 2011 that lasted a decade in states like Wisconsin, Ohio and North Carolina. And the Republicans’ gerrymandered advantage was preserved and protected by the Republican supermajority on the US supreme court.Johnson is right about one thing: he holds the speakership because of gerrymandering – but because of the election rigging done by his own side.The Republican party’s three-seat majority would not exist at all without a new, mid-decade gerrymander in North Carolina that gift-wrapped the Republicans the three additional seats that made the difference. Before the Republican-controlled state supreme court upended North Carolina’s congressional map, the purple state elected seven Democrats and seven Republicans. (When Democrats controlled the court, they mandated a fair map, not a Democratic one; when Republicans took over, the gerrymander returned.)And what happened after the newly seated Republican court destroyed the balanced map and returned it to the Republican legislature to be tilted in its direction? The new map produced 10 Republicans and four Democrats. Many experts believe it could yet elect 11 Republicans and three Democrats. The gerrymander handed Johnson the three seats that made him speaker. Without it, Democrats might even control the House.Johnson, quite simply, couldn’t be any more wrong. Both parties certainly gerrymandered where they could. But Republicans had the power to gerrymander far more districts in far more places.Overall, according to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University law school, it all adds up to a 16-seat edge for Republicans nationwide. “The bias in this cycle’s maps strongly favors Republicans due primarily to aggressive gerrymandering in GOP strongholds in the South and Midwest,” a Brennan report concludes.There are no redistricting angels. The US supreme court made sure of that with their 2019 decision in Rucho v Common Cause, which closed the federal courts to partisan gerrymandering cases at exactly the time when lower-court judges appointed by both parties had found the tools they needed to determine when partisan gerrymanders went too far.But when the Republican court ended the possibility of a national solution, it launched a game of mutual assured destruction: the Republican party built its advantages in state legislature and Congress throughout the 2010s via redistricting. With no hope of help from neutral courts in leveling tilted playing fields in Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Georgia and elsewhere, Democrats were left with little choice but to maximize gerrymanders of their own. This is terrible for voters. It’s bad for democracy. Sometimes it is even hypocritical. Yet doing nothing while Republican gerrymanders run wild isn’t a better strategy and presents no moral victory.So in 2021, Democrats turned a 13-5 map in Illinois into a 14-3 edge, gaining one seat and wiping away two from the Republicans. (Illinois lost a member in reapportionment.) Democrats also helped themselves to an additional seat in Oregon, Nevada and New Mexico, and retained their gerrymander of Maryland. This year, a court-ordered redistricting in New York resulted in one additional Democratic seat, and mildly strengthened a handful of others, each by no more than a percentage point. (Only one flip in New York this cycle can be attributed to redistricting.)Those are the only gerrymanders Johnson wants you to know about. The truth is that they are dwarfed by what Republicans did themselves.Start in Florida, where Ron DeSantis, the governor, oversaw an aggressive and likely unconstitutional gerrymander that netted the Republican party four additional seats, wiped away two historically Black districts and created a wildly disproportional 20-8 Republican delegation.The North Carolina gerrymander added three more seats. This was hardball politics to the core: national Republicans deeply wired into Leonard Leo’s court-packing, billion-dollar dark money entity helped fund the takeover of North Carolina’s state supreme court. The new Republican majority quickly did the national party’s dirty work and overturned a year-old decision that created the balanced 7-7 map and enabled the Republican state legislature to radically tilt it toward Republicans.Florida and North Carolina alone account for more Republican gerrymanders than Democratic ones. They don’t stop there.Republicans gerrymandered two additional seats in Texas, creating an unbalanced 25-13 Republican delegation. In Ohio, Republicans lawlessly stiff-armed the state supreme court not once, not twice, but seven times to preserve gerrymanders of the state’s legislature and congressional delegation. A federal court packed with Federalist Society and Leonard Leo acolytes allowed them to get away with it.Republican judges similarly abused the legal process to allow Wisconsin to get away with its congressional gerrymander which awards the Republican party a 6-2 edge in the ultimate swing state. The US supreme court slow-walked cases on racial gerrymandering, which also accrued, unsurprisingly, to the Republicans’ benefit.In Tennessee, the Republican party wiped a Democratic seat in Nashville off the map by cracking the blue city in half and attaching small pieces to conservative, rural districts. They played similar tricks with swing seats in Salt Lake City, Oklahoma City and Indianapolis, and reinforced a Republican seat in Omaha, Nebraska, swapping suburban areas for more Republican, rural ones. It might well have tipped Democratic this year otherwise.Republican hardball with Iowa’s redistricting commission added another seat. In Arizona, Republicans didn’t bother playing games at all; they simply hijacked the entire process by taking over an obscure state board that vets the commissioners and packing the field of supposedly independent chairs with longtime partisans, friends and family of Republican leadership, and business acquaintances. Arizona now consistently sends a 6-3 Republican-dominated delegation to Washington, even in years where Democrats all but sweep statewide offices.Mike Johnson doesn’t want to admit it, but Republican gerrymanders are the only reason he will wield the gavel for another term.Whether Democrats should control the chamber is a trickier question; Republican candidates did win four million more votes nationwide. Yet the “national popular vote” for the House is a statistic that has also been distorted and made meaningless by gerrymandering. Uncompetitive gerrymandered seats generate weak opposition and lower voter turnout. Nearly all of that bulge comes from states where gerrymanders gutted competitive elections and created Republican delegations wildly disproportionate to the presidential vote: Florida, Texas, Ohio and North Carolina.Fair maps and competitive contests in those Republican and mixed states – rather than districts rigged so one side comes away with three-quarters of the seats in a 50/50 state – would make the “popular vote” look entirely different. (It is, of course, equally exciting to see Republican leaders talk about the popular vote as it is to hear them discuss gerrymandering concerns.) No one would look at the results in nations where district lines have been so drastically warped and suggest that they reflect the will of the people. We shouldn’t either.Johnson’s gaslighting, however, probably has a deeper purpose. He may well be laying the groundwork for a Republican package to change how we vote. What if the Republican party advanced a package of redistricting “reforms” that actually reverberated to their advantage – say, ending any consideration of race, counting population based on citizenship rather than all residents, requiring congressional districts to be drawn by the legislature and not an independent commission, and making it more difficult to challenge maps in the courts? Or if they required prioritizing “compactness”, which could naturally pack Democratic voters in a handful of urban districts and benefit the party that is spread out more efficiently?We live in a gerrymandered nation twisted into extremism by one side as eager to warp the map as they are to protect their ill-won gains. And every time you think it can’t get worse, or harder to overcome, Johnson’s mistruths suggest that it very much still can.

      David Daley is the author of the new book Antidemocratic: Inside the Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections as well as Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count More

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      Trans congresswoman Sarah McBride responds to Capitol Hill bathroom ban

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      Sarah McBride, the incoming congresswoman and first openly transgender person elected to the US House of Representatives, on Wednesday shared a statement on social media in response to the House banning trans people from using single-sex bathrooms on Capitol Hill that match their gender identity.Earlier in the day, the House speaker, Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson, issued a statement “regarding facilities throughout the US Capitol complex”.Johnson said: “All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings – such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms – are reserved for individuals of that biological sex.”He added: “It is important to note that each member office has its own private restroom, and unisex restrooms are available throughout the Capitol. Women deserve women’s only spaces.”McBride is due to be sworn in in January to represent Delaware after handily winning the seat in the election earlier this month, having been the first openly trans person elected to the state senate seat there in 2020.She had initially pushed back over proposed restrictions by saying the argument was a far-right-driven distraction from issues such as housing, healthcare and childcare.But on Wednesday, after Johnson’s announcement, McBride responded with a post on X: “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms, I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families. Like all members, I will follow the rules as outlined by Speaker Johnson, even if I disagree with them … serving in the 119th Congress will be the honor of a lifetime, and I continue to look forward to getting to know my future colleagues on both sides of the aisle.”On Monday Nancy Mace, the South Carolina Republican representative, had introduced a bill to ban transgender people, including congressional members, officers and employees, from using single-sex bathrooms and other facilities on Capitol Hill that correspond to their gender identity.Mace told reporters that McBride “does not belong in women’s spaces, women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, period, full stop” and called her a biological man, insisting that McBride “doesn’t get a say”, CNN reported.Mace’s bill comes as Republicans have attacked transgender people as part of a broader political culture-war strategy, limiting what bathrooms they can use and the youth sports teams they can play on. Fourteen states currently have laws that prohibit transgender people from using the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ rights group.Donald Trump leaned into such politics vigorously during the presidential election campaign.

      This article was amended on 20 November 2024 to remove a reference to a Bluesky post that had been attributed to Sarah McBride. A representative for McBride later said the account is not affiliated with the congresswoman-elect. More

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      ACLU sues for information on Trump’s mass deportation plan – live

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      The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit a little earlier today seeking basic details on how the federal government would carry out a program to deport millions of people from the US, which President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to begin on “day one” of his new administration.As part of the federal action, the ACLU demanded to be given information about the government’s current relationships with, for example, private airlines, ground transportation facilities and other elements that would be involved in arranging deportation flights for undocumented people. The lawsuit was first reported by the Washington Post this afternoon.The suit was filed in Los Angeles by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California and accuses the government of keeping the mechanisms used to deport people “shrouded in secrecy”.Trump has pledged to begin deporting millions of people despite the legal, financial, economic and human rights implications, also confirming today that he would be prepared to shred norms and harness the US military to enforce his policy, despite the threat to democracy and due process.As the Trump administration continues to take form, the field of potential appointees to lead the treasury department has widened to include Marc Rowan who founded and runs one of the nation’s largest public equity firms, and Kevin Warsh a central banker who from 2006 to 2011 served as a governor for the Federal Reserve, Reuters reports.Two others in the running for the seat are Scott Bessent, the founder of the capital management firm Key Square who has said he wants the US dollar to remain the world’s reserve currency and use tariffs as a negotiating tactic, and Howard Lutnick who leads Cantor Fitzgerald.Trump ally Elon Musk publicly threw his support behind Lutnick in a post on X that argues that Lutnick “will actually enact change”.A lawyer who is representing two women who gave testimony to the ethics committee of the House of Representatives investigating Matt Gaetz has said in an interview that the former congressman paid the women to have sex with him.The two women were adults at the time but also told lawmakers that she witnessed Gaetz having sex with a 17-year-old at the same party she attended, ABC News reported.Gaetz resigned from his position as a Republican representative for Florida last week immediately on being nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to become US attorney general. That immediately shut down the congressional investigation and, despite pressure, the House has not yet agreed to release the report of the investigation to the public or the US Senate, the body that will have the job of confirming Gaetz’s appointment.Florida-based lawyer Joel Leppard spoke to ABC News earlier today.“Just to be clear, both of your clients testified that they were paid by [then] Representative Gaetz to have sex?” interviewer Juju Chang asked Leppard.“That’s correct. The House was very clear about that and went through each. They essentially put the Venmo payments on the screen and asked about them. And my clients repeatedly testified, ‘What was this payment for?’ ‘That was for sex,’” Leppard told Chang.One of the clients, Leppard said, also told the House committee that at the party she was at in July 2017 as she went to the pool area she saw Gaetz having sex with a friend of hers, who was 17.Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing throughout various investigations into his behavior amid allegations of sexual misconduct. The names of Leppard’s clients have not been disclosed.Donald Trump appears to be planning to attend a SpaceX Starship rocket launch tomorrow, in the latest indication of influence of the company’s founder, Elon Musk, on the president-elect and his orbit.The Federal Aviation Administration has issued temporary flight restrictions over the area of Brownsville and Boca Chica, at the eastern end of the Texas-Mexico border, for a VIP visit that coincides with the SpaceX launch window for a test of its massive Starship rocket from its launch facility on the Gulf of Mexico, the Associated Press reports.Tuesday’s 30-minute launch window opens at 4pm central time (5pm ET), according to the company, with the company again looking to test the landing capture system of the booster in Texas, which it debuted last month and about which Trump has been complimentary, while the upper stage continues to a splashdown in the Indian Ocean.Musk pumped an estimated $200m through his political action committee to help elect Trump.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit a little earlier today seeking basic details on how the federal government would carry out a program to deport millions of people from the US, which President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to begin on “day one” of his new administration.As part of the federal action, the ACLU demanded to be given information about the government’s current relationships with, for example, private airlines, ground transportation facilities and other elements that would be involved in arranging deportation flights for undocumented people. The lawsuit was first reported by the Washington Post this afternoon.The suit was filed in Los Angeles by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California and accuses the government of keeping the mechanisms used to deport people “shrouded in secrecy”.Trump has pledged to begin deporting millions of people despite the legal, financial, economic and human rights implications, also confirming today that he would be prepared to shred norms and harness the US military to enforce his policy, despite the threat to democracy and due process.Mikie Sherrill has represented New Jersey’s 11th District, which includes parts of Essex, Morris and Passaic counties, since her 2018 election during president-elect Donald Trump’s first administration’s midterm. Sherrill flipped the district from Republican control with former Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen’s retirement and has been reelected three times since.Before getting elected to Congress, she was a prosecutor for the US attorney for the district of New Jersey. She served in the Navy from 1994 to 2003, the AP writes.Sherrill joins fellow Democratic US House member Josh Gottheimer, who announced his run for governor last week. Also seeking the Democratic nod are Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Jersey City mayor Steven Fulop, teachers union president Sean Spiller and former state Senate President Steve Sweeney.Republicans are also lining up to run. Among them are state senator Jon Bramnick, former state legislator Jack Ciattarelli, former state senator Ed Durr and radio host Bill Spadea.New Jersey Democratic congresswoman Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey has announced today that she’s running for governor, saying it’s time to fix the state’s economy and make it more affordable.Sherrill, a former federal prosecutor and US Navy helicopter pilot, joins a crowded field of Democrats vying to succeed Democratic governor Phil Murphy, whose second term expires after next year’s election. Murphy is barred by term limits from running again, the Associated Press reports.In a video announcing her run, Sherrill introduced herself as a US Naval Academy graduate and chopper pilot and leaned on her military experience.
      I learned early on: In a crisis, the worst thing you can do is freeze. You have to choose to lead, to follow, or get out of the way.”
      She went on to say in the video that the state’s economy needs to be fixed.
      “Let’s make life more affordable for hardworking New Jerseyans, from health care to groceries to childcare. These challenges aren’t new and it’s time to confront them head on.”
      Tom Fitton, the president of the influential conservative group Judicial Watch, has had a little more to say today, after his social media post prompted Donald Trump this morning to confirm that he is prepared to utilize the US military to conduct mass deportations when he takes office.Fitton popped up on the hard-right Newsmax cable channel a little earlier. He said that his social media post that Trump 2.0 would be prepared to declare a national emergency in order to use military assets was not derived from any insider knowledge but just from stories that were around. Trump has caused a stir by reposting the message today with the endorsement “True!”He told Newsmax: “Does anyone dispute the invasion is not a national emergency? It’s got to be a whole government approach.”Rightwingers such as Fitton, Trump and Texas’s anti-immigration hardline governor, Greg Abbott, often invoke an “invasion” of undocumented people seeking refuge in the US and crossing the border from Mexico without authorization as and invasion.“They cut the line and they need to be sent home,” he said.The House ethics committee is reportedly set to meet on Wednesday to discuss its report into Matt Gaetz, according to NBC News.The committee has been looking into allegations that Gaetz engaged in sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other ethical breaches.Last week, Gaetz was nominated by president-elect Donald Trump to serve as his Attorney General. Gaetz then resigned from the House of Representatives, which effectively ended the ethics inquiry.The news of the meeting on Wednesday comes as an increasing number of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have said that they would like to review the Ethics committee report.Eric Hovde, the Republican Senate candidate in Wisconsin, has conceded the race to Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin in a video message.In the message, Hovde, who lost to Baldwin by about 29,000 votes, said that he would not request a recount of the vote but expressed concerns about the election process and alleged “many troubling issues” related to absentee ballots in Milwaukee.His claims of impropriety have been refuted by Republicans, Democrats and non-partisan election leaders.In the video message Hovde said that “without a detailed review of all the ballots and their legitimacy, which will be difficult to obtain in the courts, a request for a recount would serve no purpose, because you will just be recounting the same ballots, regardless of their integrity”.The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, said that the process of selecting someone to fill Florida senator Marco Rubio’s seat has begun and that a selection will likely be made by the beginning of January.In a statement on Monday, DeSantis said that Rubio is expected to resign from the Senate to assume duties as secretary of state when the Trump administration takes power on January 20th.Under Florida law, DeSantis is tasked with appointing Rubio’s successor.“We have already received strong interest from several possible candidates, and we continue to gather names of additional candidates and conduct preliminary vetting” DeSantis said. “More extensive vetting and candidate interviews will be conducted over the next few weeks.”

      Donald Trump gave the nod on social media this morning to the notion that he wants to use the military to enforce his previously-stated intentions for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants from the US once he gets into office.

      Conservative strategist Steve Bannon was due to go to trial next month on state charges in New York of conspiring to dupe donors to build a border wall but a judge said this morning that Bannon won’t face trial until February.

      There are reports of clashes among top Trump insiders over leadership picks.

      According to reports, Linda McMahon, a former Small Business Administration (SBA) director, is expected to be announced as Trump’s secretary of commerce.

      Trump picked Brendan Carr, Project 2025 co-author, to lead FCC as speculation over treasury secretary appointment mounts.
      Steve Bannon did not turn up in person to attend the latest hearing in his court case in New York City today, on state charges of conspiring to dupe donors to build a wall on the US-Mexico border.Instead, he listened in virtually as the judge, April Newbauer, set 25 February for jury selection, postponing it from December.Bannon did not speak except to say, “yes, ma’am” when asked whether he understood he must be in court on the new date, the Associated Press reported.The judge delayed the trial date from 9 December after deciding to let the future jurors hear evidence that some of the wall charity’s money went to pay a more than $600,000 credit card debt that a separate Bannon-related not-for-profit organization had racked up in 2019.Prosecutors wanted to introduce it and defense lawyers argued unsuccessfully that it was irrelevant.Bannon denies the charges, including conspiracy and money laundering. Manhattan prosecutors brought the case after Donald Trump pardoned Bannon in a similar federal prosecution that was in its early stages, where Bannon had denied pocketing over $1m from the We Build the Wall outfit.Newbauer has yet to rule on whether jurors’ names will be kept confidential, as the prosecution has requested. More

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      in US Politics

      Republican senator calls for release of Matt Gaetz ethics report to chamber

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      Discussion on Donald Trump’s selection of Matt Gaetz, the former Florida congressman who had been accused of sexual misconduct, for US attorney general continued on Sunday, with Republican senator Markwayne Mullin calling for an unreleased ethics report to be released to the Senate.Mullin told NBC’s Meet the Press that the Senate, which will oversee Gaetz’s confirmation hearings to become attorney general, “should have access to that” but declined to say if it should be released publicly.Gaetz resigned from his seat in Congress on Wednesday soon after the president-elect made his controversial pick, frustrating plans by a congressional ethics panel to release a review of claims against Gaetz, including sexual misconduct and illegal drug use. Gaetz denies any wrongdoing.Republican House speaker Mike Johnson repeated his position on Sunday that the survey should remain out of the public realm. Gaetz had faced a three-year justice department investigation into the same allegations that concluded without criminal charges being brought.Johnson said the principle was that the ethics committee’s jurisdiction did not extend to non-members of the House. “There have been, I understand, I think, two exceptions to the rule over the whole history of Congress and the history of the ethics committee,” Johnson told CNN, adding that while he did not have the authority to stop it “we don’t want to go down that road.”Trump’s selection of Gaetz, while successfully provoking Democrats’ outrage, is also seen as a test for Republicans to bend Trump’s force of will. Mullin has previously noted situations in which Gaetz had allegedly shown colleagues nude photographs of his sexual conquests and described him as “unprincipled”.But the senator said he had not made a decision on whether to support Gaetz in a confirmation vote. “I’m going to give him a fair shot just like any individual,” Mullin said.The pending report seems likely to emerge in some form after other senior Republicans, including senators Susan Collins, John Cornyn and Thom Tillis have all said they believe it should be shown to them.Separately, Pennsylvania Democratic senator John Fetterman repeated his advice to members of his own party to not “freak out” over everything Trump does, pointing out that for at least the next two years, Republicans can “run the table”.Fetterman, who won decisive re-election in the state this month, said he looked forward to reviewing some of Trump’s nominations but others “are just absolute trolls”, including Gaetz.For Democrats, who are still trying to figure out reasons for their devastating loss at the ballot box this month, their outrage at Trump’s nominations “gets the kind of thing that he wanted, like the freak out”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It’s still not even Thanksgiving yet and if we’re having meltdowns at every tweet or every appointment.”Democrats, Fetterman added, should be “more concerned” about Republicans being able “to run the table for the next two years. Those are the things you really want to be concerned about, not small tweets or, you know, random kinds of appointments.”But Democratic senator-elect Adam Schiff told CNN that Gaetz was “not only unqualified, he is really disqualified” to become the country’s top lawyer.“Are we really going to have an attorney general [with] … credible allegations he was involved in child sex-trafficking, potential illicit drug use, obstruction of an investigation? Who has no experience serving in the justice department, only being investigated by it,” Schiff said. More