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      In Ad, Shotgun-Toting Greitens Asks Voters to Go ‘RINO Hunting’

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      A right-wing Senate candidate accompanies a squad of heavily armed men as they storm a home looking for ‘Republicans in name only.’Eric Greitens, a Republican candidate for the United States Senate in Missouri, released a violent new political advertisement on Monday showing himself racking a shotgun and accompanying a team of men armed with assault rifles as they stormed — SWAT team-style — into a home in search of “RINOs,” or Republicans in name only.“Join the MAGA crew,” Mr. Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, declares in the ad. “Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”The ad by Mr. Greitens was just the latest but perhaps most menacing in a long line of Republican campaign ads featuring firearms and seeking to equate hard-core conservatism with the use of deadly weapons.It was posted online less than a week after the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol showed how threats by former President Donald J. Trump against his own vice president, Mike Pence, had helped to instigate the mob attack on the building.During a hearing by the committee on Thursday, J. Michael Luttig, a former federal judge widely respected by conservatives, suggested that Mr. Trump and his allies posed a “clear and present danger to American democracy.”The use of violent rhetoric has steadily increased in Republican circles in recent months as threats and aggressive imagery have become more commonplace in community meeting rooms, congressional offices and on the campaign trail.While much of the violent speech and image-making by Republicans has been aimed at Democrats, some of it, as in Mr. Greitens’s ad, has been focused on fellow party members thought to be insufficiently conservative.On Sunday, Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois and a member of the Jan. 6 committee, published a letter addressed to his wife from someone who had threatened to execute the couple.By midafternoon on Monday, Twitter had hidden Mr. Greitens’ new ad behind a warning saying that it violated rules about “abusive behavior.” Facebook removed the ad altogether.Mr. Greitens’s campaign made no apologies for it, however. “If anyone doesn’t get the metaphor, they are either lying or dumb,” said Dylan Johnson, the campaign manager.The ad by Mr. Greitens, a former Missouri governor, comes as his campaign for Senate has stumbled following lurid allegations of blackmail, sexual misconduct and child abuse. In March, Mr. Greitens’s former wife, Sheena Greitens, accused him of abusive behavior, including an incident she recounted that loosened one of their son’s teeth. A number of Republicans, including Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, called on Mr. Greitens then to quit the race.Mr. Greitens has sought an endorsement from Mr. Trump, so far without success. His campaign chair is Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancée of Donald Trump Jr.Experts have warned that violent rhetoric can often result in actual physical violence.“When individuals feel more confident and legitimate in voicing violent sentiments, it can encourage others to feel more confident in making actual violence easier,” said Robert Pape, who studies political violence at the University of Chicago. “Unfortunately, this is a self-reinforcing spiral.”Some Republicans criticized Mr. Greitens for posting the ad.“Every Republican should denounce this sick and dangerous ad from Eric Greitens,” Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congresswoman from Virginia, said on Monday. “This is just a taste of the ‘clear and present danger’ that Judge Luttig talked about last week.” More

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      Missouri Senate primary highlights rise of violent rhetoric on the right

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      Missouri Senate primary highlights rise of violent rhetoric on the rightIn an era of polarization, candidates posing with guns and using extreme language about opponents threatens more violence On 25 April, the former Missouri governor Eric Greitens, now running for US Senate, posted a video on Twitter of him and Donald Trump Jr, firing semi-automatic rifles at a range.“Striking fear in the hearts of liberals everywhere,” the former president’s son said.Republican Senate hopeful Eric Greitens accused of abuse by ex-wife Read moreIn the accompanying post, Greitens wrote: “Striking fear into the hearts of liberals, RINOs, and the fake media.”Greitens, a former Navy Seal, shared the video even though a woman whom he had an affair with accused him of tying her up and tearing her clothes off without her consent, and his ex-wife, Sheena, accused him of knocking her down and hitting one of their sons hard enough to knock one of his teeth loose, according to an affidavit filed as part of a child custody dispute.She also alleged that he purchased a gun, refused to tell her where it was and threatened to kill himself unless she expressed public support for him.Greitens’ gun-focused messaging is concerning, according to researchers who study links between communication and political violence, not only because more than a third of the mass shooters in recent years also had a history of committing domestic violence, according to a Bloomberg report.But it’s also part of a significant increase among politicians – largely Republicans – in recent years in references to guns and threatening language in campaign ads, according to researchers.That rhetoric contributes to polarization in our society and can translate to physical violence, they say.Given the tense political climate, researchers expect rhetoric from rightwing political figures to continue to coarsen and lead to more violence before the pendulum swings back to a less charged time.“Violence is in politics as a violation of the idea that people have an equal say in the political process of choosing their governments and of being able to express themselves freely,” said Nathan Kalmoe, professor of political communication at Louisiana State University and author of Radical American Partisanship. “Clearly this kind of messaging, where you’re calling out political opponents while you’re shooting at a gun range, is a kind of a violent threat.”Since Donald Trump became president in 2016, the number of threats against members of Congress has soared, according to data provided by the Capitol police to news organizations. That year, there were 902 threats against the lawmakers. In 2021, there were 9,600.Republicans are also more likely than Democrats to think civilians may need to engage in combat to save America. A majority of Republicans support the possible use of force to preserve the “traditional American way of life”, according to a 2021 George Washington University Politics Poll. Among Democrats the number was 15%.When asked if a time will come when “patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands”, 47% of Republicans agreed, as opposed to 9% of Democrats.About one-third of Republicans also agreed that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country”, according to a 2021 survey from the Public Religion Research Institute. Among Democrats, the number was 18%.But the use of incendiary speech to rile up supporters in a democracy did not start with Trump.“Certainly, we’ve experienced time periods in the US that were as divisive and as polarized as today,” James Piazza, professor of political science at Penn State University, said. “It kind of goes in waves. And if you look at the type of speech and rhetoric that politicians used in those previous eras of polarization and division, they look a lot like what you see today; it’s dehumanizing speech.”Trump and other Republicans are using threatening language to tap into anger about the shifting demographics of the United States and the sense that a Christian way of life is coming under threat, according to political scientists.“Trump played into that anger and amplified it and went much further than most Republican leaders, especially the most prominent, had gone in very explicitly making these statements, not just the election rejection, but also the other kinds of anti-democratic statements, including hostility towards various racial, ethnic and religious minority groups,” said Kalmoe.One key difference between the Trump era and other highly polarized periods is the advent of social media, which amplifies speech by instantly sending it to millions of people and often strips nuance from a statement, according to Helio Fred Garcia, professor of professional development and leadership at Columbia University and the author of Words on Fire: The Power of Incendiary Language and How to Confront It.“There’s a giant megaphone that is out there,” said Piazza, who authored a study on the connection between political hate speech and domestic terrorism. “There really is a whole new realm of the ability to mobilize people, to radicalize people, to have more fringe voices play an outsized role in national discussions.”Greitens is not alone among Republicans in using such incendiary language. For example, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, recently told Real America’s Voice, a media group, “The Democrats are the party of pedophiles. The Democrats are the party of princess predators from Disney … Their identity is the most disgusting, evil, horrible thing happening in our country.”In interviews, political scientists said such language was occurring mostly but not exclusively on the right. But they struggled to provide examples of Democrats doing the same thing.In 2018, former attorney general Eric Holder, who served in Obama administration, said: “When they go low, we kick ’em. That’s what this new Democratic party is about.”“Immediately the right jumped on him and said, ‘He’s provoking violence.’” Garcia said. “Interestingly, the same people who said, ‘No, Trump isn’t promoting violence,’” criticized Holder.Given the charged political climate, the academics say more violence like – or worse than – the January 6 Capitol riot is inevitable. Piazza said this wave of divisiveness and polarization is reminiscent of the time before the civil war when “you had similar politician rhetoric to mobilize voters and to demobilize and demonize the other side that resulted in political violence”.That said, Piazza does not expect something like the civil war to erupt.“We do actually have pretty strong political institutions in the United States, and we have strong security institutions. The US military is extraordinarily professionalized, and the US military has done an extremely good job of being apolitical,” he said.Garcia also forecasts more violence. He thought the US could return to a more normal place after the end of Trump’s presidency but because Trump still insists he won, Garcia thinks it will take more than eight years and further carnage for the pendulum to swing back to a more normal place.To avoid that, Piazza and others call for more regulation of social media. He is encouraged by bipartisan efforts to hold the companies accountable.He hopes the government introduces regulations so that a politician “trying to rile people up for political gain or attention, or to raise money, wouldn’t be able to get away with that on social media. They would have to really watch what they had to say in terms of demonizing others and engaging in hate speech,” he said.In the meantime, Greitens ranks third in the Republican Senate primary polling but still leads against Democratic candidates, according to FiveThirtyEight. Greitens and his primary opponents did not respond to requests for comment.In the campaign ad, Greitens and Trump switch from the semi-automatic rifles to handguns.It closes with them firing more shots and Greitens saying: “Liberals beware.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsMissourifeaturesReuse this content More

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      Eric Greitens Tests the Limits of the Trump Scandal-Survival Playbook

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      A leading Republican candidate for Senate in Missouri, Greitens faces new allegations from his ex-wife that join a long list of controversies. But for now, he’s staying in the race.Lurid allegations of blackmail, sexual misconduct and child abuse would doom most politicians.Not Eric Greitens. Or at least not yet.Until recently, the former Missouri governor was the undisputed leader of the state’s Senate race, despite facing years of scandals. Republicans have urged him to drop out amid fears that his possible victory in the Aug. 2 primary could hand a seat in the chamber to Democrats — or at least force the G.O.P. to stomach an unpalatable candidate in a state that should be undisputed Republican turf.Pressure has grown on Greitens in recent weeks over allegations made in court filings by his ex-wife, Sheena Chestnut Greitens. In a statement to a Missouri judge first published on Tuesday, she said he had become “unhinged” and “threatening.”Sheena Greitens, a scholar of Asian geopolitics, had previously accused her former husband of abusive behavior, including an alleged incident that loosened one of their son’s teeth. In her new statement, she said she stood ready to provide “photographic evidence” of the child’s injuries “at the appropriate time.”Instead of stepping aside, Eric Greitens has made a brazen attempt to defy political gravity. Short on cash and bereft of allies, he has vowed to fight on, arguing without evidence that national Republican figures are conspiring with his ex-wife to sully his reputation, which she denies.“I want to tell you directly, Karl Rove and Mitch McConnell,” Greitens said late last month in a video shared on his social media accounts. “Hear me now. You are disgusting cowards. And we are coming for you.”Greitens has denied all wrongdoing, and on Tuesday, Tim Parlatore, a lawyer for the candidate, said in a statement that the alleged abusive behavior “never happened” and accused Sheena Greitens of lying.A shrinking base of supportNews of Sheena Greitens’s latest statement rippled through Republican political circles in Missouri, where anxiety over the former governor’s bid to replace the retiring Senator Roy Blunt was already extremely high. Greitens, a former Navy SEAL and Rhodes scholar, resigned as governor in 2018 amid allegations that he had tied up his former hairdresser, taken an explicit photo of her and threatened to make it public if she revealed their sexual affair.“The latest revelations that hit this morning will upend his candidacy and will mean catastrophic shrinkage in his effort,” said Peter Kinder, a Republican former Missouri lieutenant governor who is supporting one of Greitens’s opponents, Representative Vicky Hartzler. The other major contender in the Republican primary is Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who has the backing of some in the state party establishment.There are some signs that Greitens’s support is softening. The latest public poll of the primary, by the Trafalgar Group, showed Greitens falling into second place among likely primary voters for the first time. Another recent survey commissioned by Schmitt’s campaign showed similar results. And on Saturday, in what some saw as evidence of his growing difficulties, Greitens skipped a Republican Party event in Taney County, one of the bigger annual gatherings of activists in the state. The turmoil in the Republican primary has complicated Donald Trump’s efforts to influence the outcome. Some party insiders had feared that Trump would endorse Greitens, who has tailored his campaign message around “defending President Trump’s ‘America First’ policies” and has questioned the 2020 presidential election results.After the previous round of allegations by Sheena Greitens, Trump issued a statement praising “the big, loud and proud personality of Congressman Billy Long,” who is also running for the Missouri Senate seat but has failed to gain much traction. “This is not an Endorsement, but I’m just askin’?” Trump said.Eric Greitens has struggled to raise money, with finance reports showing that his campaign had less than $300,000 in the bank as of January. Super PACs supporting Greitens have received large donations from two Republican billionaires, Richard Uihlein, a shipping magnate, and Bernard Marcus, a founder of Home Depot. Greitens has also brought in nearly $900,000 through his joint fund-raising committee, and a spokesman said his upcoming fund-raising report would show that the campaign had raised a “six-figure” sum of money since Sheena Greitens made her first statement.But James Harris, a Republican lobbyist who has been talking with Missouri donors and activists about the race, said, “They’re really just done with him.” Harris recounted a conversation with a donor who recently turned down a fund-raising pitch by Greitens, saying his wife would “kill me” if he gave money to the former governor.And now, the entry into the race of an heiress to a beer-company fortune threatens to make the general election competitive.Trudy Busch Valentine, an heiress to the Anheuser-Busch fortune, is a well-known donor in Missouri.Hillary Levin/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, via Associated PressDemocrats’ dilemma: The heiress or the veteran?Republicans are warily eyeing the newly announced campaign of Trudy Busch Valentine, who is the daughter of August Busch Jr., the Anheuser-Busch beer baron who died in 1989.A registered nurse who grew up on her family’s 281-acre estate, Grant’s Farm, Busch Valentine is making empathy central to her campaign message.“It seems we have lost our ability to be understanding and compassionate for each other,” she said in her announcement video. “We have so much more that unites us than divides us.”In the video, she also spoke about her son’s death in 2020 from opioid abuse.“Twenty months ago, my oldest son died of an opioid overdose,” Busch Valentine said. “Matt’s death brought us so much sadness, but his death also reignites the passion in me to make a positive difference for others, this time on a larger scale.”Busch Valentine has never held elected office, but she’s a well-known donor in Missouri. Democrats expect her to plow her personal fortune into her campaign, with a focus on winning back some of the white rural voters who have defected to Republicans in recent elections. She is close friends with Claire McCaskill, the last Democrat to win a Senate seat in Missouri.Busch Valentine is already facing questions about her past. And she’ll first have to dispatch her main rival in the Democratic primary, Lucas Kunce, a retired Marine and former Pentagon official whose campaign could hardly be more different.In an interview, Kunce said he was running to “fundamentally change who has power in this country.” He explained how he grew up keenly aware of his parents’ struggles with money — recalling how his family went bankrupt when his sister was born — and laughingly described participating in medical experiments at a V.A. hospital to earn money while he was in college.A veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Kunce said he was disgusted by how American politicians had spent hundreds of billions of dollars on those conflicts while starving their own communities of resources.“There’s always money for war and Wall Street, never for stuff back home,” he said.Kunce has sworn off money from corporate PACs and federal lobbyists, and his campaign says it has raised nearly $3 million, primarily from grass-roots donations online. He’s as critical of Democrats as he is of Republicans; voters in Missouri have lost faith in both parties, he said.“People feel betrayed by Democrats,” Kunce said. “They think they don’t stand up for working people anymore.”Kirsten Noyes More

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      Ex-Wife of Eric Greitens, Missouri Senate Candidate, Accuses Him of Abuse 

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      Sheena Greitens said in an affidavit that her former husband had physically abused both her and their young son. Mr. Greitens, a former governor of Missouri, denied the accusation.The former wife of Eric Greitens, a leading Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Missouri, has accused him of physically abusing her and one of their sons in a sworn affidavit that could have serious implications in the race for the seat of Senator Roy Blunt, who is retiring.Mr. Greitens, whose campaign denied the allegations on Monday, abruptly resigned as governor in 2018 amid a swirling scandal that involved a sexual relationship with his former hairdresser and allegations that he had taken an explicit photograph of her without her permission. He was also accused by prosecutors of misusing his charity’s donor list for political purposes.But until the latest revelation, his attempt at a political comeback had appeared improbably successful, despite efforts by Missouri’s Republican establishment to block it. Mr. Greitens, 47, a former Navy SEAL, had aligned squarely with former President Donald J. Trump, cheered on anti-vaccine and anti-mask protesters, and surged to the lead in a crowded Republican primary race for a key open Senate seat.He now faces fresh calls from his opponents to drop out, lest he turn a reliably red seat competitive in November.Representative Vicky Hartzler of Missouri, who is running against Mr. Greitens in the Republican primary and has garnered support from many top state officials, issued a statement accusing Mr. Greitens of “a pattern of criminal behavior that makes Eric unfit to hold any public office.”“He should drop out of the U.S. Senate race immediately,” she said. Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, who as the state’s attorney general in 2018 pressed Mr. Greitens to resign as governor, wrote on Twitter, “If you hit a woman or a child, you belong in handcuffs, not the United States Senate.”Part of a continuing child custody dispute, the sworn affidavit from Sheena Chestnut Greitens, 39, a professor of public policy at the University of Texas at Austin, accused Mr. Greitens of physical abuse and “unstable and coercive behavior.” The 41-page affidavit, filed on Monday in Boone County Circuit Court in Missouri, said that Mr. Greitens had become increasingly violent in 2018 as his sex scandal threatened to end a once-promising political rise that he hoped would take him to the White House.“Prior to our divorce, during an argument in late April 2018, Eric knocked me down and confiscated my cellphone, wallet and keys so that I was unable to call for help or extricate myself and our children from our home,” wrote Dr. Greitens, who has two young sons with Mr. Greitens and whose divorce from him became final in May 2020.She added that his “behavior included physical violence toward our children, such as cuffing our then-3-year-old son across the face at the dinner table in front of me and yanking him around by his hair.”In a statement on Monday, Mr. Greitens’s campaign denied the allegations and said that they were politically motivated. The statement said that Dr. Greitens was “engaged in a last-ditch attempt to vindictively destroy her ex-husband.” Mr. Greitens later issued a personal statement saying he would continue “fighting for the truth and against completely fabricated, baseless allegations.” A lawyer for Dr. Greitens did not respond to requests for comment on Monday about the affidavit, which was reported earlier by The Associated Press. Representative Billy Long of Missouri, another Republican candidate for the Senate seat, said on Monday that he was “shocked and appalled” by the affidavit, adding that Mr. Greitens was “clearly unfit to represent” their state in the Senate.Mr. Greitens’s lead in the polls has flummoxed other Republicans like Mr. Long, considering that the 2018 investigation of Mr. Greitens was led by Republicans and looming impeachment proceedings would have been carried out by the Republican-controlled legislature.In 2018, Mr. Greitens’s former hairdresser described an alarming sexual encounter in which, she said, he had taken a photo of her and threatened to share it if she told anyone about their affair. Around the same time, questions began to emerge about whether he had used the donor list of a veterans charity he founded to help his political campaign in 2016.In her affidavit, Dr. Greitens said her husband had bought a gun but refused to tell her where he had hidden it. She said he had threatened to kill himself “unless I provided specific public political support to him,” despite accusations of infidelity that she said he had admitted to, even as she said he threatened her with legal action if she revealed that confession.Mr. Greitens is one of several Republican candidates aligned with Mr. Trump who have drawn concerns from top party leaders in Washington, though the former president has yet to endorse anyone in the Missouri race. In November, Sean Parnell, a Trump-endorsed candidate for the Pennsylvania Senate seat being vacated by Patrick J. Toomey, a Republican, dropped out of that contest after a judge ruled in favor of his estranged wife in a custody fight that also involved allegations of abuse. In Ohio, a former Trump White House aide, Max Miller, challenged Representative Anthony Gonzalez after Mr. Gonzalez voted to impeach Mr. Trump, helping to push the incumbent into retirement. Mr. Miller is now suing an ex-girlfriend and former White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, after she accused him of physical abuse.In December, another Trump-backed Senate candidate, the former professional football player Herschel Walker, who is running in Georgia, told Axios he was “accountable” for past violent behavior toward his former wife, Cindy Grossman. However, his campaign said he still denied accusations from two other women who said he had displayed threatening behavior toward them.Hannah Norton contributed reporting. More

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      Toni Morrison novel The Bluest Eye off banned list in St Louis schools

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      Toni Morrison novel The Bluest Eye off banned list in St Louis schoolsNobel laureate’s classic debut was removed from libraries but backlash and lawsuits prompted vote to restore

      Books bans and ‘gag orders’: the crackdown no one asked for
      A banned book by the Nobel laureate Toni Morrison will be available again to high school students in a district in St Louis, Missouri, after the Wentzville school board reversed its decision to ban The Bluest Eye, in the face of criticism and a class-action lawsuit.‘Adults are banning books, but they’re not asking our opinions’: meet the teens of the Banned Book ClubRead moreThe board made national news last month when it voted 4-3 to removed the book from school libraries, citing themes of racism, incest and child molestation.Morrison’s 1970 debut novel is one of several titles, including Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe and L8R, G8R by Lauren Myracle, to have gained the attention of school boards in conservative US areas.The Wentzville ban was imposed after a challenge by a parent exercising the right to request titles not be available to their children. Backlash was swift, critics saying the board had violated first amendment rights.In a letter of protest, the Intellectual Freedom Committee of the Missouri Library Association said: “We encourage you to reexamine the depth of your commitment to education in the truest sense, and to find your courage in the face of baseless political grandstanding at the expense of educators and students in your district.”The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri sued the district on behalf of two students. According to the St Louis Post-Dispatch, the board accepted a review committee’s recommendation to retain Morrison’s book, voting 5-2 on Friday to rescind the ban. An ACLU official, Anthony Rothert, welcomed the news but warned that books remain suppressed including All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M Johnson, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, Heavy by Kiese Laymon and Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison. Challenges against two other books had been withdrawn, the Post-Dispatch reported.The board also approved the retention of Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero, which faced challenges regarding language and depiction of rape.“Wentzville’s policies still make it easy for any community member to force any book from the shelves even when they shamelessly target books by and about communities of color, LGBTQ people and other marginalized groups,” said Rothert. “Access to The Bluest Eye was taken from students for three months just because a community member did not think they should have access to Toni Morrison’s story.”Many library associations argue that parents of minors should be able to control their children’s reading but should not make books unavailable to others.Opponents of Morrison’s book, including conservative lawmakers, urged the school board to maintain its ban. After the decision, board member Sandy Garber maintained that The Bluest Eye “doesn’t offer anything to our children”.According to the American Library Association, which monitors challenges to books, calls for bans are increasing.“It’s a volume of challenges I’ve never seen in my time at the ALA – the last 20 years,” the director of the ALA office of intellectual freedom, Deborah Caldwell-Stone, told the Guardian in November. “We’ve never had a time when we’ve gotten four or five reports a day for days on end, sometimes as many as eight in a day.Reuse this content More

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      Ties that bind: Missouri Senate candidate hopes Trump notices neckwear

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      Ties that bind: Missouri Senate candidate hopes Trump notices neckwearCongressman Billy Long seeks Trump’s endorsement for ‘the guy that was with you from day one. I mean, look at this tie’ Senate candidates endorsed by Donald Trump have struggled of late, from Sean Parnell’s withdrawal in Pennsylvania while denying allegations of domestic abuse to the former NFL star Herschel Walker angering party leaders with his run in Georgia.Republican McCarthy risks party split by courting extremists amid Omar spatRead moreBut to one candidate for the Republican nomination in Missouri, Congressman Billy Long, the former president’s endorsement still carries the ultimate weight.“If he endorses in this race,” the 66-year-old told Politico, “I don’t care who he endorses, it’s over … And that’s what I’m trying to impress upon him is that, you know, ‘You need to get involved in this race and put an end to it.’”Long said he would tell the former president: “You’re looking at the guy that was with you from day one.’ Never ever left. I mean, look at this tie.”The former auctioneer duly showed off his neckwear, a gold striped number signed, apparently in his signature Sharpie marker, by Trump himself.Long said Trump signed the $37 tie in Nevada in 2016, when Long spoke on his behalf. Long has had – and auctioned off – other ties signed by the president, including a striking example featuring flags and caricatures which Long wore to the State of the Union in 2019.Trump’s own ties played a prominent role in the 2016 election and its aftermath.In 2015, Macy’s made news when it dropped Trump’s menswear line – many headlines said the retail giant was “cutting ties” – over his racist remarks about Mexicans at his campaign launch.In 2019, the former New Jersey governor and Trump ally Chris Christie revealed that Trump advised him to wear longer ties in order to look slimmer.Politico described Long as “built like a lineman” and said he spoke with a “thick ‘Missoura’ twang”. In Missoura’, whose other sitting senator is the Trump-supporting controversialist Josh Hawley, a large field is jostling to replace the retiring Roy Blunt.One candidate, Mark McCloskey, rose to fame in 2020 when he and his wife pointed guns at protesters for racial justice near their home in St Louis. Both pleaded guilty to misdemeanours. Another, Eric Greitens, resigned as governor in 2018, amid scandals over sex and campaign finance. Criminal charges were dropped.Speaking to Politico, Long called Greitens “Chuck Schumer’s candidate”, a reference to the Democratic leader who will defend control of the Senate next year, hoping to face weak or controversial Republicans in key states.Michael Cohen: prosecutors could ‘indict Trump tomorrow’ if they wantedRead moreA spokesperson for Greitens told Politico: “Billy Long is a much better comedian than he is a Senate candidate.”Observers including Blunt said Long, who also has a habit of handing out fake money with Trump’s face on it, had a chance of winning Trump’s endorsement.But though Long voted to object to electoral college results in 2020 he has also recognised Joe Biden as president, thereby failing a key test in a party in Trump’s grip.Long told Politico he would not follow his leader in the House, Kevin McCarthy, to Florida to worship the party’s golden idol.“I have people say: ‘Call him, call him every day. Go sit at Mar-a-Lago and tell him you’re not leaving till he endorses,’” Long said. “I’m smart enough to know that’s not going to win favour with Donald Trump.”Others might say that it would.TopicsMissouriUS SenateUS CongressUS politicsRepublicansDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Pleas for clemency grow ahead of Ernest Lee Johnson’s execution

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      MissouriPleas for clemency grow ahead of Ernest Lee Johnson’s execution Missouri Democrats Cori Bush and Emanuel Cleaver II join Pope in calls to governor for sentence to be set aside Edward HelmoreMon 4 Oct 2021 06.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 4 Oct 2021 10.27 EDTPleas for clemency on behalf of Ernest Lee Johnson, who was convicted of a 1994 murder, are growing more frantic ahead of his scheduled execution by lethal injection in Missouri on Tuesday after the Pope and two members of the US Congress issued calls for the sentence to be set aside.In a statement last week, Pope Francis requested clemency for Johnson in a letter to Missouri governor Michael Parson. The letter did not deny that “grave crimes such as his deserve grave punishment” but called on Parson to consider “the simple fact of Mr Johnson’s humanity and the sacredness of all human life.” If carried out it will be the first execution by Missouri since May 2020.The Pope’s call for clemency has been joined by two of Missouri’s Democratic members of Congress, Cori Bush and Emanuel Cleaver II, who petitioned the governor to halt the execution.Bush and Cleaver, both members of the Congressional Black Caucus, urged the governor to acknowledge “the moral depravity of executions” and argued that Johnson’s execution perpetuates the same cycles of trauma and violence against Black people as “slavery and lynching did before it”.“The fact of the matter is that these death sentences are not about justice. They are about who has institutional power and who doesn’t,” they wrote. “Like slavery and lynching did before it, the death penalty perpetuates cycles of trauma, violence and state-sanctioned murder in Black and brown communities.”Advocates for the condemned man, including Bush and Cleaver, say that he has had developmental delays since birth, when he was born with fetal alcohol syndrome to a mother who battled addiction. Johnson, 61, has also had an operation to take out a tumor that removed as much as 20% of his brain tissue, the AP reported, which advocates say has further reduced his intellectual capacity.Johnson’s public defender, Jeremy Weis, has said that Johnson has scored between 67 and 77 in IQ tests and “meets all statutory and clinical definitions” of intellectual disability. Missouri law broadly defines intellectual disability as “substantial limitations in general functioning.”But last month, the Missouri supreme court ruled that Johnson is not, as he claims, intellectually disabled and denied his request for execution by firing squad based on his claim that death by lethal injection would cause severe pain.Johnson’s death sentence stems from February 1994 when he walked into a general store near his home in northeast Columbia and bludgeoned, stabbed, and shot three employees, Mary Bratcher, 46; Mable Scruggs, 57; and Fred Jones, 58, before hiding their bodies in a walk-in cooler and robbing the store for drug money.Johnson’s scheduled execution has highlighted racial and social inequities in the application of justice. Issuing a call for clemency, the Kansas City Star’s editorial board noted that Parson had swiftly pardoned Mark and Patricia McCloskey, a white St Louis couple who plead guilty to assault after waving weapons at Black Lives Matter demonstrators last year.The board criticized the governor for failing to convene a board of inquiry but said it did not “even dare to hope that the evidence that Johnson today has the awareness of a child might convince our governor to commute his sentence”.It added: “When the state, our state, does kill this man, as it almost certainly will, it will be yet another indictment of a system so bloodthirsty that it delights in vengeance against those who don’t even know why they’re being punished.”TopicsMissouriCapital punishmentUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      St. Louis Couple Who Aimed Guns at Protesters Plead Guilty to Misdemeanors

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      Mark McCloskey and Patricia McCloskey of Missouri will pay a total of nearly $3,000 in fines and give up the weapons used in the confrontation.A St. Louis couple who gained national notoriety last year after they were filmed pointing guns at demonstrators walking near their home each pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge on Thursday and agreed to pay a total of nearly $3,000 in fines. The couple, both lawyers, also agreed to give up the guns they had brandished in the confrontation.Patricia McCloskey pleaded guilty to second-degree harassment and will pay a $2,000 fine. Her husband, Mark, who is running for a U.S. Senate seat from Missouri, pleaded guilty to fourth-degree assault and will pay a $750 fine.As part of the plea deal, Ms. McCloskey gave up the Bryco handgun she brandished during the June 2020 confrontation, and Mr. McCloskey agreed to relinquish ownership of the weapon he used, an AR-15 rifle. Neither will face jail time under the plea deal.In a brief interview, Joel J. Schwartz, a lawyer for the McCloskeys, said, “They are very happy with the disposition of the case and will have the fine paid as early as possible and look forward with moving on with their life and focusing on his campaign for the U.S. Senate.”Outside the courthouse, Mr. McCloskey agreed with prosecutors that he had put the protesters in danger. “That’s what the guns were there for, and I’d do it again anytime the mob approaches me,” he said.Patricia McCloskey and her husband, Mark, aimed firearms at protesters who marched through their neighborhood last June.Lawrence Bryant/ReutersRichard Callahan, the special prosecutor assigned to the case, said in a statement that the plea agreement was reasonable, in part, because no shots had been fired, nobody had been injured and the McCloskeys had called the police. “The protesters, on the other hand, were a racially mixed and peaceful group, including women and children, who simply made a wrong turn on their way to protest in front of the mayor’s house,” Mr. Callahan said.On June 28, 2020, protesters, many of whom were Black, marched past the McCloskeys’ home, which is on a private street, on their way to the home of Mayor Lyda Krewson, a Democrat, who lives nearby. Ms. Krewson had angered local residents after she went on Facebook Live and read the names and addresses of people who had said the police should be defunded.The McCloskeys said they had felt they were in imminent danger from the protesters. Images of the couple pointing their weapons at protesters circulated widely, garnering national attention.The day after the protest, President Donald J. Trump retweeted a video of the gun-toting couple. In July, the Circuit Attorney’s Office in St. Louis filed felony charges against them. In August, they spoke at the Republican National Convention.The couple maintained that they had acted in self-defense, in order to prevent the demonstrators from entering their home and harming them. “I really thought it was storming the Bastille, that we would be dead and the house would be burned and there was nothing we could do about it,” Mr. McCloskey told KSDK, a local television station, last year. In an interview on Fox News, Mr. McCloskey said, “We chose to stop them from coming in.” Mr. McCloskey also told KSDK, “My wife doesn’t know anything about guns” but had felt compelled to defend their home.Republicans and conservatives rallied to the couple’s defense. Mr. Trump later said the prosecution of the couple was “a disgrace.” Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, a Republican, had said the case against the McCloskeys “is a politically motivated attempt to punish this family for exercising their Second Amendment rights.”The attention helped catapult Mr. McCloskey into politics. Last month he announced he would run as a Republican for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Roy Blunt, a Republican, who earlier announced he would not seek re-election next year. More