Republicans

Subterms

    More stories

    • 213 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      There’s a danger that the US supreme court, not voters, picks the next president | David Daley

      by

      It’s frighteningly easy to imagine. Kamala Harris wins Georgia. The state elections board, under the sway of its new Trump-aligned commissioners, grinds the certification process to a slow halt to investigate unfounded fraud allegations, spurring the state’s Republican legislature to select its own slate of electors.Perhaps long lines in Philadelphia lead to the state supreme court holding polls open until everyone has a chance to vote. Before anyone knows the results, Republicans appeal to the US supreme court using the “independent state legislature” (ISL) theory, insisting that the state court overstepped its bounds and the late votes not be counted.Or maybe an election evening fire at a vote counting center in Milwaukee disrupts balloting. The progressive majority on the state supreme court attempts to establish a new location, but Republicans ask the US supreme court to shut it down.Maybe that last example was inspired by HBO’s Succession. But in this crazy year, who’s to say it couldn’t happen? The real concern is this: if you think a repeat of Bush v Gore can’t happen this year, think again.There are dozens of scenarios where Trump’s endgame not only pushes a contested election into the courts, but ensures that it ends up before one court in particular: a US supreme court packed with a conservative supermajority that includes three lawyers who cut their teeth working on Bush v Gore, one whose wife colluded with Stop the Steal activists to overturn the 2020 results, and another whose spouse flew the insurrectionist flag outside their home.That’s why those scenarios should cause such alarm, along with very real actions and litigation over voting rolls already under way in multiple states. Meanwhile, in Georgia, Arizona, Texas and elsewhere, Republican legislators and boards that might otherwise fly under the radar are busy changing election laws, reworking procedures, altering certification protocols, purging voters and laying the groundwork for six weeks of havoc after Americans vote on 5 November but before the electoral college gathers on 17 December.Lower courts may brush aside this mayhem, as they did after the 2020 election. But if the election comes down to just one or two states with a photo finish, a Bush v Gore redux in which the court chooses the winner feels very much in play. The court divided along partisan lines in 2000; its partisan intensity, of course, has greatly intensified in the two decades since.What’s terrifying is that the court has already proved the Republican party’s willing ally. The Roberts court laid much of the groundwork for this chaos in a series of voting rights decisions that reliably advantaged Republicans, empowered Maga caucuses even in swing states, then unleashed and encouraged those lawmakers to pass previously unlawful restrictions based on evidence-free claims of voter fraud.Right now in Georgia, a renegade state election board – with Trump’s public gratitude – has enacted broad new rules that would make it easier for local officials to delay certifying results based on their own opinion that “fraud” occurred. Democrats have filed suit to block these changes; even the Republican governor, Brian Kemp, has sought to rein them in. But if those efforts fail, it could create a cascade of litigation and missed deadlines in perhaps the closest state of all.That, in turn, could jeopardize the certification of Georgia’s slate of electors – and even encourage the Republican state legislature, a hotbed of election denialism in 2020, to select their own.If that creates a terrifying echo of Bush v Gore, it should. In his influential 2000 concurrence, then chief justice William Rehnquist noted that Florida’s legislature would have been within its rights to name electors if court challenges threatened the state’s voice from being heard as the electoral college met. (A young Brett Kavanaugh explained the nascent independent state legislature theory to Americans during Bush v Gore; on the bench two decades later he would elevate it in a Moore v Harper concurrence that weaponized it for this post-election season.)Georgia’s not-so-subtle chicanery was enabled by the court’s 2013 decision in Shelby county v Holder, which freed state and local entities in Georgia, Arizona and elsewhere from having to seek pre-approval before making electoral changes.This was known as preclearance. It was the most crucial enforcement mechanism of the Voting Rights Act and required the states with the worst histories on voter suppression to have any changes to election procedures pre-approved by the Department of Justice or a three-judge panel in Washington DC.Its evisceration has had far-reaching consequences. Nearly all of them have helped Republicans at the ballot box by allowing Republican legislatures or other bodies to change the rules and place new barriers before minority voters, most of whom vote overwhelmingly Democratic.If preclearance remained intact, these changes – and a wide variety of voter ID schemes, voter purges in Texas, Virginia and elsewhere that confuse non-citizens and naturalized citizens and perhaps intimidate some from voting, as well as new laws about absentee ballots and when and how they are counted – would have certainly been rejected by the Biden justice department. Much of Trump’s predictable post-election madness could have been brushed aside before it did damage.That’s not the case now. Make no mistake: many actions underway at this very moment, with the very real risk of sabotaging the count, slowing the process and kicking everything into the courts, are Shelby’s demon chaos agents, bred for precisely this purpose.Whether enabling extreme gerrymanders, freeing radicalized lawmakers to change procedures they could not touch without supervision only a few years ago, or transforming Rehnquist’s footnote into the dangerous ISL theory, the conservative legal movement and the court’s own decisions, time and again, have made it easier for a contested election to land on its doorstep.And in that case, 180 million Americans might vote for president this fall, but the six Republicans on the US supreme court will have the final say. It shouldn’t surprise anyone if those robed partisans manufacture the theory to ensure the winner they prefer.

      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

    • 188 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden’s green policies will save 200,000 lives and have boosted clean energy jobs, data shows

      by

      The environmental policies of Joe Biden’s administration will save approximately 200,000 Americans’ lives from dangerous pollution in the coming decades and have spurred a surge in clean energy jobs, two independent reports outlining the stakes of the upcoming US presidential election have found.The first full year of the Inflation Reduction Act, the sprawling climate bill passed by Democratic votes in Congress in 2022, saw nearly 150,000 clean energy jobs added, according to a new report by nonpartisan business group E2.Nearly 3.5 million people now work in these fields in the US, more than the total number of nurses nationwide, with 1m of these jobs centered in the US south, a region politically dominated by Republicans.Clean energy jobs grew by 4.5% last year, nearly twice as fast as overall US employment growth, and account for one in 16 new jobs nationally, the report found. New roles in energy efficiency led the way, followed by an increase in jobs in renewable energy, such as wind and solar, electric car manufacturing and battery and electric grid upgrades.But the future of the IRA, which provides tax credits and grants for new clean energy activity, is a flashpoint in the election campaign, with Donald Trump vowing to “terminate Kamala Harris’s green new scam and rescind all of the unspent funds”.The former president and Republican nominee has accused Harris, his Democratic opponent, of waging a “war on American energy” and called for an end to incentives encouraging Americans to drive electric cars.Harris, who has promised in unspecified ways to build upon the IRA, has attacked Trump for “surrendering” on the climate crisis as well as in the US’s attempts to compete with China, the world’s clean energy manufacturing powerhouse.Bob O’Keefe, executive director of E2, said the IRA has helped lead “an American economic revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen in generations”.“But we’re just getting started,” Keefe added. “The biggest threats to this unprecedented progress are misguided efforts to repeal or roll back parts of the IRA, despite the law’s clear benefits both to American workers and the communities where they live.”Should Trump return to the White House, he will need congressional approval to completely repeal the IRA, although his administration could slow down and even claw back funding allocated but not yet released for clean energy projects, such as the $500m pledged for a green overhaul of a steel mill in JD Vance’s home town of Middletown, Ohio.A new Trump administration would have more discretion, though, over the future of air pollution regulations set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Biden. “One of the things that is so bad for us is the environmental agencies, they make it impossible to do anything,” Trump has complained while on the campaign trail.Any major rollbacks will have a heavy toll upon public health, however, with a new analysis of 16 regulations passed by the EPA since Biden’s term started in 2021 finding that they are on track to save 200,000 lives and prevent more than 100m asthma attacks by 2050.The analysis, conducted by the Environmental Protection Network, a group founded by retired EPA staff, calculated the public health benefits of the suite of new rules that aim to limit pollution flowing from cars, power plants and oil and gas operations.Jeremy Symons, a former climate policy adviser at the EPA and a co-author of the report, said the findings were “jaw-dropping”. He added: “The EPA’s accomplishments have been nothing short of lifesaving over the last four years. These are real people who wouldn’t be alive if not for the non-partisan work of the EPA to start doing its job again after the last administration.”It’s unclear what Trump’s exact plan for the EPA would be should he regain power but he attempted to radically cut the agency’s budget when he was president, only to be rebuffed by Congress, and oversaw the elimination and weakening of a host of pollution rules.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump has directly promised oil and gas industry executives a fresh wave of deregulation should he return to the White House, in return for $1bn in campaign contributions.Project 2025, a conservative blueprint authored by many former Trump officials but disavowed by the Trump campaign, demands the dismantling of parts of the agency, a rollback of environmental rules and a politicization of decision making.“This would put polluters in charge of air regulations and put millions of Americans at needless risk of cancer, heart disease and asthma,” said Symons.“Several of the authors of Project 2025 used the years of working at the EPA under Trump as a training ground for more reckless plans should they get their hands on the agency again. This plan would be a wrecking ball to the EPA.”Asked to comment, the Trump campaign criticized the Biden-Harris administration on inflation and what it called its “war on energy”.“Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate for the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, which actually created the worst inflation crisis in a generation. She proudly helped Joe Biden implement all of his disastrous policies including his war on American energy that is driving up prices astronomically for American consumers,” said Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign national press secretary.“President Trump is the only candidate who will make America energy dominant again, protect our energy jobs, and bring down the cost of living for all Americans,” Leavitt added.An EPA spokesperson said: “We appreciate the work of the Environmental Protection Network and look forward to reviewing their report. EPA remains committed to protecting public health and the environment by implementing science-based pollution standards that address climate change and improve air quality for all Americans.” More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden says ‘good Republicans’ are scared out of pro-LGBTQ+ stances by far right

      by

      Joe Biden believes “good Republicans … who don’t have a prejudiced bone in their body” are letting far-right elements of their political party intimidate them out of stances that would protect LGBTQ+ rights, he said in the first interview that a sitting US president has given to an LGBTQ+ news outlet.In a conversation that the Washington Blade published on Monday, Biden also said Donald Trump “was a different breed of cat” who had been “anti-LGBTQ … across the board”.The Democratic president’s remarks about his Republican predecessor and the Maga (Make America Great Again) movement behind him come as Trump seeks a return to the White House in the 5 November election.Trump has offered contradictory comments on LGBTQ+ rights, claiming to be “fine” with same-sex marriage during his victorious 2016 campaign but then stripping away protections for medical patients who are transgender once he was in the Oval Office.Then, in June 2023, three US supreme court justices appointed to the bench during Trump’s presidency joined three conservative colleagues in dealing a major blow to the LGBTQ+ community by ruling that a Colorado law that compels groups to treat same-sex couples equally violated the constitutional right to free speech.Republican-led state legislatures, meanwhile, have enacted a broad array of laws banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth and, in some cases, adults. They have also placed barriers to schoolchildren to express their gender, whether by the pronouns they use or the sports team on which they compete.Without naming anyone, Biden told the Blade he met “a lot of really good Republicans” in particular when he previously served as a US senator. He said they “don’t have a prejudiced bone in their body about this but are intimidated – because if you take a position, especially in the Maga Republican party now, … they’re going to go after you”.“Trump is a different breed of cat,” Biden added. “I mean, I don’t want to make this political, but everything he’s done has been anti, anti-LGBTQ – I mean across the board.”Biden ruled out running for re-election in July and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris to succeed him. Drawing a contrast with Trump, the president said that the Biden-Harris administration had made a number of decisions to advocate for the LGBTQ+ community.He singled out the Respect for Marriage Act, which he signed in 2022 and in part required all states to recognize the validity of same-sex marriages. He also alluded to how the Food and Drug Administration during his presidency implemented a new rule allowing sexually active gay and bisexual people to donate blood so long as they had not had sex with new or multiple partners.Biden furthermore touted what he described as having appointed a record-breaking number of LGBTQ+ officials across his administration, including the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, and White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre. And the president also noted how – days after his inauguration in 2021 – he issued an executive order reversing the Trump administration’s ban on transgender military service members.“They can shoot straight,” Biden said to the Blade, which described the president as lowering his voice for emphasis. “They can shoot just as straight as anybody else.” More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump recounts apparent assassination attempt as new details emerge

      by

      Donald Trump has given his first detailed account of what he experienced on Sunday during what the FBI has said “appears to be an attempted assassination of the former president”, as authorities revealed new details about the incident at his West Palm Beach golf club.Trump said he was playing golf with friends, including businessman Steve Witkoff, when he heard gunshots.“Everything was beautiful, nice place to be, and all of a sudden we heard shots being fired in the air, and – I guess probably four or five – and it sounded like bullets but what do I know about that? But Secret Service knew immediately it was bullets,” Trump told cryptocurrency personality Farokh Sarmad during a livestream on X.In his first public event since the apparent assassination attempt, Trump thanked the Secret Service, saying that soon after the shots were heard: “We got into the carts and we moved along pretty good. I was with an agent and the agent did a fantastic job, there was no question that we were off that course.”“The secret service did a great job, everybody did a great job,” he said later.Trump said the gunshots were the sound of another agent firing at the barrel of a gun he had seen pointing out of bushes at the golf course, and that “the other one never got a shot off”, appearing to refer to the suspected shooter.Cellphone records show that the alleged gunman, Ryan Wesley Routh, camped out near the golf course for about 12 hours with food before being confronted by a Secret Service agent. In court documents unsealed on Monday, officials said Routh’s phone was shown near the tree line at Trump’s golf course from 1.59am until 1.31pm on Sunday, around which point a Secret Service agent shot at him after seeing his rifle through the foliage, reported the Associated Press.Trump’s account – given on X during the launch of a cryptocurrency platform owned by his sons, broadly matched what authorities said on Monday. Ronald Rowe Jr, the US Secret Service acting director, said earlier that the alleged attacker did not fire any shots but that an agent discharged their firearm after spotting a rifle poking through the fence on the golf course perimeter.“He [the suspect] did not fire or get off any shots at our agent,” Rowe Jr said. “With reports of gunfire, the former president’s close protection detail immediately evacuated the president to a safe location.”Rowe also told reporters that Trump was “out of sight of the gunman” during his unscheduled visit to the golf club.Trump also praised the civilian who captured the suspect’s license plate, which helped authorities to track his car down. “The civilian did a phenomenal job”, he said.Where Trump differed from authorities was in his description of the political views of Routh and Thomas Matthew Crooks, the gunman killed in the assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania on 13 July.Asked what he made of this being a potential second attempt on his life, he said: “Well there’s a lot of rhetoric going on, a lot of people think that the Democrats when they talk about ‘a threat to democracy’ and all of this, and it seems that both of these people were radical lefts.”Routh, the man suspected of carrying out the second apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump, has professed a variety of political convictions that elude partisan definition.Although records show the 58-year-old former roofing contractor making small financial donations to Democratic candidates in recent years, Routh has acknowledged voting for Trump in his 2016 election before subsequently embarking on a ideological odyssey the aims of which appear incoherent and confused.Thomas Matthew Crooks’s motivation remains unclear. In July, investigators said they were examining a social media account with antisemitic and anti-immigrant posts that they suspected might be connected to Crooks, according to the FBI deputy director, Paul Abbate.Earlier on Monday, Trump sought to blame president Joe Biden and vice-president Kamala Harris for the shooting. “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country and they are the ones that are destroying the country – both from the inside and out,” Trump told Fox News Digital.“These are people that want to destroy our country,” he added. “It is called the enemy from within. They are the real threat.”Harris, her campaign, her running mate Tim Walz and the Biden administration have condemned political violence. The White House said earlier Biden had called Trump, “and conveyed his relief that he is safe. The two shared a cordial conversation and former president Trump expressed his thanks for the call.”Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection on 6 January 2021 but was later acquitted when he secured enough Republican support in the senate.In the X event on Monday evening, Trump repeated his complaints about Biden choosing to drop out of the presidential race. He said he had spoken to Biden on Monday, saying “he couldn’t have been nicer”.However, Trump went on to attack his rival presidential candidate, Harris, saying: “We can’t have a Marxist Communist president”. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      RFK Jr’s name will remain on ballot in swing state Wisconsin, judge rules

      by

      Robert F Kennedy Jr’s name will remain on the ballot in the swing state of Wisconsin, a judge ruled on Monday.Dane county circuit judge Stephen Ehlke ruled that Wisconsin law clearly states presidential candidates who have submitted nomination papers can’t be removed from the ballot unless they die. Kennedy’s campaign submitted nomination papers before the state’s 6 August deadline.“The statute is plain on its face,” Ehlke said, adding later: “Mr Kennedy has no one to blame but himself if he didn’t want to be on the ballot.”Time is running out for Kennedy to get his name off the Wisconsin ballot. County clerks face a Wednesday deadline to print ballots and distribute them to more than 1,800 local officials in cities, towns and villages who run elections.Kennedy asked a state appellate court to consider the case last week, days before Ehlke issued his ruling. The second district court of appeals has been waiting for Ehlke’s decision before deciding whether to take the case.The Wisconsin elections commission voted 5-1 earlier this month to approve Kennedy’s name for the ballot after an attempt by Republican commissioners to remove him failed. The commission noted the statute that prevents candidates from removing themselves from the ballot short of death.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe presence of independent and third-party candidates on the ballot could be a key factor in Wisconsin, where four of the past six presidential elections have been decided by between 5,700 votes and about 23,000 votes.In 2016, Green party nominee Jill Stein got just over 31,000 votes in Wisconsin – more than Trump’s winning margin of just under 23,000 votes. Some Democrats have blamed her for helping Trump win the state and the presidency that year.Kennedy suspended his campaign in August and endorsed Republican candidate Donald Trump. Kennedy said he would try to get his name removed from ballots in battleground states while telling his supporters that they could continue to back him in the majority of states where they are unlikely to sway the outcome.Kennedy won a court order in North Carolina earlier this month to remove his name from ballots there. Kennedy filed a lawsuit on 3 September an attempt to get off the Wisconsin ballot, arguing that third-party candidates are discriminated against because state law treats Republicans and Democrats running for president differently.Republicans and Democrats have until 5pm on the first Tuesday in September before an election to certify their presidential nominee. Independent candidates such as Kennedy can only withdraw before the 6 August deadline for submitting nomination papers. More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Political violence and fearmongering bigotry have become too normalized | Robert Reich

      by

      The second apparent attempt on Donald Trump’s life – on Sunday at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida – occurred just over two months after he was wounded during an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “They’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you,” the former president said after the first attempt. “I’m just standing in the way.”“They” should not be coming after anyone. There is no place in a democracy for violence, nor for threats of violence.Which brings me to Trump’s claim in last week’s debate that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the dogs … eating the cats. They’re eating – they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”It quickly became a vast internet joke, fueling thousands of hilarious memes and songs. But it’s no laughing matter. Trump’s claim has already provoked threats of violence.Last weekend, two hospitals in Springfield were locked down after bomb threats, police said. Other threats received by Springfield officials have forced government buildings to close, two elementary schools to be evacuated and the students moved to a different location, and a middle school to shut down altogether.After Republican VP nominee JD Vance first began spreading baseless rumors about Haitians in Springfield, members of the neo-Nazi group “Blood Tribe” marched into the city carrying guns, wearing body armor, and carrying Neo-Nazi flags. At a 27 August town hall meeting, one claimed that the city had been taken over by “degenerate third worlders”, blamed Jewish people for the influx, and warned “crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you allow in.”Springfield’s Haitian immigrants say they are afraid. Some have kept their children home from school, fearing violence. Others have reported harassment on the street, in their cars, and at stores.A Springfield family whose son died last year when a car driven by a Haitian immigrant accidentally collided with a school bus has pleaded for Trump and Vance to stop using their deceased son for political purposes.Yet Trump and Vance are doubling down. On Sunday, before the attempt on Trump’s life, Vance said on CNN that the claims about Haitians eating the pets of Springfield residents came from “firsthand accounts from my constituents”. When interviewer Dana Bash suggested that the claims had caused bomb threats, Vance called her a “Democratic propagandist”. But the connection is indisputable.Rather than offhand comments, Trump’s and Vance’s claims are calculated. Trump’s last two posts on Truth Social before the debate were AI images of cats – one depicting cats in military fatigues carrying assault rifles and wearing Maga hats, the other showing the candidate himself sitting on a plane amid a crowd of ducks and cats.Trump is now talking about holding a rally in Springfield. “We’re going to get these people out,” Trump said in a Friday news conference. Although Springfield’s Haitian immigrants are in the United States legally, he promised to stage “the largest deportation in the history of our country” if re-elected.Trump’s and Vance’s claims are completely bogus. Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, told CBS News on Wednesday: “These Haitians came in here to work because there were jobs, and they filled a lot of jobs. And if you talk to employers, they’ve done a very, very good job and they work very, very hard.”Another of Trump’s bogus claims is now threatening legal immigrants in Aurora, Colorado, a Denver suburb that Trump has repeatedly asserted is being “taken over” by Venezuelan criminals. “Simply not true”, Aurora’s Republican mayor and city council member wrote in a joint statement.As in Springfield, Trump’s baseless claims are harming innocent people in Aurora. Immigrants there say they have been told their nationality makes them ineligible for jobs or housing. Trump’s claims have led to threats and drawn armed groups to the city, claiming to offer vigilante-style protection.Trump and Vance are using the oldest of tyrannical ploys – fueling deep-seated fears by creating an “other”, depicted as subhuman, who “take over” towns and “devour” loved ones.In Springfield, the loved ones are peoples’ pets. But how far is this bogus claim from vicious Nazi claims of Jewish people devouring children? Substitute “Jew” for “Haitian” in Springfield or for “Venezuelan” in Aurora, and you’re back to the Nazis of the 1930s.In demonizing and dehumanizing migrants, Trump and Vance are not just seeking to win over a few wavering voters across the nation or making a play for control of the Senate. They are trying to scare America into becoming a more fearsome, more racist nation.“They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump said of immigrants at a rally in New Hampshire eight months ago – virtually quoting Adolf Hitler, who wrote in Mein Kampf: “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning.”In a last-ditch effort to prevail in their campaign, Trump and Vance are encouraging the haters. On 10 September, Vance told his followers to “keep the cat memes flowing”, notwithstanding that they were endangering people in his own state.Meanwhile, members of Trump’s social media war room – including Trump confidante Laura Loomer, known for sexist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Muslim, and antisemitic posts – are busily spreading AI-generated images of dogs and cats being protected by Trump, along with other content promoting the claim that pets are being eaten by Haitians.Let me repeat: there no justification whatsoever for violence or threats of violence in our democracy. While utterly despicable, Sunday’s second apparent assassination attempt on Trump can be seen as a symptom of the hate-filled politics that he and Vance are peddling.This must stop.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

    • 225 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      The world should breathe a sigh of relief that Donald Trump wasn’t harmed in Florida | Simon Tisdall

      by

      It’s worthwhile trying to imagine what might have happened had Donald Trump been shot and killed after playing the fifth hole at his Florida golf course at the weekend. Though many people might love to see the back of an obnoxious man who incited others to violence, this weekend’s incident has prompted calls for tighter security around the former president and weighty condemnation from his rival Kamala Harris, who says she is “deeply disturbed” by the apparent assassination attempt and tweeted: “I am glad he is safe. Violence has no place in America.”Yet, with this, the second mortal threat, speculation is inevitable. And, paradoxically, Trump dead could be even more dangerous than Trump alive.Trump’s killing would be a personal tragedy – primarily for him and his family. It would mark the end of an extraordinary, tumultuous, always polarising political career. It would add his name, undeservedly, to an honoured list of assassinated US presidents that includes John F Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln.But far more than that, Trump’s death at the hands of a lone would-be sniper (as reportedly nearly happened on Sunday) would have thrown US politics and the November presidential election into utter confusion. His sudden passing would create an unprecedented, certainly unpredictable and possibly anarchic political vacuum at home and abroad.A few foreign governments – Iran comes to mind – would welcome his elimination and seek to take advantage of the ensuing uncertainty. Yet the Russian and Chinese dictators, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, would not necessarily be among them. They regard Trump as a “useful idiot”, in the words of his former national security adviser, John Bolton – a shallow man easily flattered and manipulated. In any case, both Putin and Xi are understandably opposed to assassinating dictators. They’d miss him.A post-Trump world could look very different. The alleged would-be assassin in Florida reportedly held strong pro-Ukraine views and had lobbied and travelled to the country to express his support for its resistance to Russia’s illegal invasion. It’s no secret that Ukraine’s embattled government fears a second Trump term may mean the end of US military and financial assistance, and an enforced, unequal settlement with Moscow. A Kamala Harris presidency, in contrast, promises a continuation of Joe Biden’s policy of cautious support. Few would be so vulgar as to say so, but Trump’s abrupt departure might be a relief to Kyiv.Similarly, politicians across Europe, not least in Britain, might privately be pleased if hostile, xenophobic Trump were no longer around to hurl insults across the Atlantic, remind them of broken promises on defence and security – and disrupt western policy, from Gaza to the climate crisis.But it is at home that Trump’s sudden demise would most powerfully be felt. He would inevitably be cast as a martyr by his Make America Great Again followers and their media boosters. They would probably claim, as happened after July’s failed assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, that the Biden administration and the Democrats were somehow part of a plot to kill him. Even though Trump survived on Sunday, this is already happening again. Might violent disorder have ensued, had Trump died? It seems likely.The impact on a US election already upended by Biden’s late decision to quit the race would also be stupendous. There would be calls to postpone the vote. Constitutionally, that’s a tough, perhaps impossible, call. More probably, perhaps, the Republicans, like the Democrats in the summer, would turn, in extremis, to the number two on the ticket – their vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance. How scary that would be!At least Trump is a known quantity. Vance is equally “weird”, as Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, says, but he’s a dark horse with highly objectionable views of his own, notably about women’s roles. Vance seeking the presidency, milking the sympathy vote for his late lamented master, might be an even worse nightmare for Harris. Trump’s hopefully hyperbolic vows to penalise his enemies, should he be re-elected, might ultimately appear mild in comparison with a President Vance vengefully victimising democracy itself in order to settle scores with all who oppose his hand-me-down Trumpism.For many moral and other practical reasons, it’s just as well Trump wasn’t harmed in Florida. Far preferable, and safer for the battered cause of universal democracy and human rights, to shoot him down figuratively at the ballot box. Far better for a healthy, functional society that his arguments (such as they are), his gross prejudices and wild-eyed bigotry be publicly, firmly rejected for all to see. It’s more important to discredit and extirpate this brand of evil than to destroy its chief advocate in person.Trump belongs in jail, not in the ground, and if Harris prevails in November, it’s more possible that is where he will end up. Meanwhile, the US government, the FBI, the Secret Service and the rest of the “law enforcement community” must try to ensure the reviving US penchant for political assassination does not accelerate. There are real, justified fears now for the safety not only of Trump and Vance but also for Harris, Biden and Walz – all prominent potential copycat targets in a society sick with gun violence, schism and hate.This is the wider threat highlighted by the Florida golf course drama. Russian, Iranian and North Korean hackers can do their worst. Online social media disinformation is a huge problem. So, too, is vote suppression, as is local and state-level election interference by Trump’s misguided backers. But more worrying, more frightening than all of that, is the prospect of the US’s system of representative government, still despite everything a shining example to the world, being brought to its knees by gun-toting crazies, coup plotters and the violent use of force.Trying to kill Trump amounts to much the same as trying to kill democracy. Like a rat in a trap or a toad in a hole, it’s best to keep him alive and kicking – until he is politically put down.

      Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s foreign affairs commentator

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

    • 150 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      David Brock on Clarence Thomas and supreme court hijack: ‘The original sin’

      by

      Thirty years ago, David Brock made his name as a reporter with The Real Anita Hill, a book attacking the woman who accused Clarence Thomas, George HW Bush’s second supreme court nominee, of sexual harassment. After tempestuous hearings, Thomas was confirmed. Brock – who memorably characterized Hill, a law professor, in sexist terms as “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty” – was launched as a rightwing media star.Thirty years on, Thomas still sits on the court, the longest-serving hardliner on a bench tilted 6-3 to the right by three confirmations under Donald Trump. But Brock switched sides long ago, disillusioned by rightwing lies. He apologized for smearing Hill and eventually became a prominent Democratic operative, close to Bill and Hillary Clinton.He founded watchdogs and Super Pacs and kept on writing books. He dealt with his political conversion 20 years ago in Blinded by the Right: the Conscience of an Ex-Conservative. Now, with Stench: The Making of the Thomas Court and the Unmaking of America, he has returned to what he calls “the original sin” of the modern supreme court: “Thomas’s perjury to get on the court” and his allegedly untruthful answers to questions about his treatment of Hill and other women.“That’s my starting point,” Brock says. “And then I show over time that other justices misled the public in their Senate confirmation hearings based on their denial of the fact that they were opposed to Roe all along – which sort of came out in the wash with the Dobbs decision.”Dobbs v Jackson, which overturned Roe v Wade, removing the federal right to abortion, came in June 2022. The way it went down helped give Brock his subtitle. John Roberts, the conservative chief justice, sought to uphold Roe but Dobbs was decided 5-4 anyway, Roberts unable to sway any other rightwinger. As Brock sees it, Thomas now owns the court.View image in fullscreen“That was a tipping point,” Brock says, pointing to major rulings on guns, affirmative action, environmental regulation, corporate bribery, presidential immunity and more, all rightwing wins. “But the other thing about about Roberts is he’s let these ethical issues just sit there. They cast their own ethics code about a year ago – and it has no enforcement mechanism. He’s been a weak leader, I think.”If 2022 was the year of Dobbs, 2023 and 2024 have been the years of gifts and grift: a parade of reports, Pulitzer prize-winning in ProPublica’s case, about how Thomas did not declare lavish gifts from mega-donors with business before the court, prominent among them Harlan Crow, a billionaire with a penchant for Nazi collectibles.For Brock, “all the revelations about Clarence Thomas and the gifts put another layer on top of the book I was writing about the crisis of legitimacy at the court, as a result of the fact Dobbs was so unpopular. You had that ethical crisis as well.”Thomas denies wrongdoing. So do Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, other hardliners with reported ties to rightwing money. Roberts refuses to testify on the issue in Congress. The result, as Brock says, is “a situation where polls show the supreme court is held in very low regard”.Brock holds Thomas in low regard too. On the page, he calls the justice “a scrapper and a battler”, a “supreme court justice turned showman”, and a “Bork without the brains” – a stinging reference to Robert Bork, the hardliner whose nomination failed in 1987, fueling rightwing determination to dominate at all costs.Brock says: “We went for a number of years when Thomas didn’t really speak from the bench at all [but] he’s been much more active in these last few years, and I think he’s a bit emboldened by the fact that he has now at least four colleagues who on many of these cases are going to agree with him.”Another driver of the court’s sharp rightward turn is Leonard Leo, the dark money impresario Thomas once called “the number three most powerful person in the world”. Brock could have used “the Leo Court” for a subtitle too, given Leo was “clearly was responsible for the three Trump justices”, via “an unprecedented move by Trump during the 2016 campaign, to provide lists to the Federal Society [which Leo co-chairs] of who he would nominate, as a way of bolstering his credibility with the evangelical right, which was skeptical of his personal behavior”.Leo also provided ballast for Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, as he ruthlessly blocked Barack Obama’s last pick for the court, Merrick Garland, “and so Trump was able to campaign on there being an open seat, and so … the McConnell strategy and the Leo strategy came together, and that is basically how Trump got elected”.In such terms, Brock has written a broad history of the court’s rightward shift from Nixon to Trump and after. But he has also written an old-fashioned broadside, a 300-page call for political action. Regarding Thomas, Brock wants impeachment.Identifying “eight specific areas of wrongdoing that require further investigation by Congress”, Brock says Thomas should first face scrutiny for his “bald-faced lie” in his confirmation hearings, when he categorically denied “any sexual discussion within the workplace”, a statement challenged by numerous witnesses.Brock’s other counts are linked to Ginni Thomas, the justice’s wife and a prominent far-right activist, and include failure to recuse in cases connected to her lobbying work and involvement in Trump’s election subversion; failure to disclose her earnings from the rightwing Heritage Foundation; and failure to disclose his own gifts from Crow, Leo and others.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenBrock is not the first to call for Thomas to be impeached. In July, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez launched her own attempt in Congress. Like the New York Democrat, Brock is a realist: he knows that even should Democrats retake the House and impeach Thomas, a closely divided Senate would be extremely unlikely to convict and remove. But that is no reason not to try.“Sometimes I play this thought experiment with myself about how the Republicans would exploit an opportunity to take advantage of their opponents’ vulnerabilities. I have no doubt that if the shoe were on the other foot and you had a Democratic Clarence Thomas, you’d have hearing after hearing, and I think you probably would have an impeachment inquiry.“And so what I argue is that even if you only get an impeachment hearing or investigation in the House, it would still shine light on all of this, and it’s still worth doing, even though we know we wouldn’t have the votes required to remove him. I think it would be a good experience for the public to air all this out.”Brock also says impeachment “would help make the case for supreme court reform”, yearned for by the left, in the face of staunch rightwing opposition.Another good idea for Democrats in election season, Brock says, is to keep a spotlight on Ginni Thomas. That spotlight may soon grow brighter. Citing two anonymous sources, Brock reports that Liz Cheney, the anti-Trump Republican, was responsible for blocking serious scrutiny of the Thomases by the January 6 committee, even as it uncovered evidence of close involvement in Trump’s 2020 election subversion.It’s an explosive claim – particularly as Cheney recently endorsed Kamala Harris for president. To Brock, it’s simply indicative of the damage the Thomases have done.“I think increasingly people are becoming aware that there’s something rotten at the core of the fact that Thomas refuses to recuse himself from these cases where his wife is actively involved 100% … she’s been a longtime, but very behind the scenes, influential operative.”So of course has Brock. Once, he was on the same side as Clarence Thomas’s most prominent supporters, among them Mark Paoletta, a lawyer and former Trump administration official Brock says “knew the truth of the Anita Hill accusations” but worked to instal Thomas on the court regardless.Strikingly, Brock also once moved in the same circles as Brett Kavanaugh, then a Republican aide and attack dog, now another member of the far-right bloc that dominates the supreme court, his own controversial confirmation, also beset by allegations of sexual misconduct, also part of American history.Such close connections to his subject help make Brock’s book a fascinating read. Asked how he will respond to attacks from former comrades, whether they read the book or not, he says: “Those will come with the territory.”

      Stench is published in the US by Knopf More