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      Biden attacks Trump as grave threat to democracy in rousing 2024 speech

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      A day before the third anniversary of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, Joe Biden delivered a pointed speech to warn voters against re-electing Donald Trump, criticizing the likely Republican presidential nominee as a fundamental threat to democracy in an attempt to shape the dynamics of the 2024 election.“Today we’re here to answer the most important of questions: is democracy still America’s sacred cause?” Biden said. “Today, I make this sacred pledge to you: the defense, protection and preservation of American democracy will remain, as it has been, the central cause of my presidency.“America, as we began this election year, we must be clear: democracy is on the ballot.”Sharply contrasting himself with his opponent, Biden accused Trump of attempting to undermine America’s system of government, painting the Republican leader as a would-be autocrat hellbent on revenge. Biden noted that Trump had vowed “retribution” against his political enemies if he is elected, and had indicated he would act as a dictator on the first day of his second term.“Donald Trump’s campaign is about him – not America, not you. Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future,” Biden said. “Trump’s assault on democracy isn’t just part of his past. It’s what he’s promising for the future.”The speech came a day before the anniversary of the January 6 attack in 2021, when a group of Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol in a violent effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. A bipartisan Senate report found that seven people died as a result of the insurrection, and Trump now faces four felony counts over his role in the attack and his broader campaign to overturn the election results.But Trump has continued to defend those who carried out the attack as “patriots”, promising to issue pardons to them if he is elected.“In trying to rewrite the facts of January 6, Trump was trying to steal history the same way he tried to steal the election. But we knew the truth because we saw with our own eyes,” Biden said.“Trump’s mob wasn’t a peaceful protest. It was a violent assault. They were insurrectionists, not patriots. They weren’t there to uphold the constitution. They were there to destroy the constitution.”Trump, who spoke to hundreds of supporters in Iowa Friday night in his first campaign visit of 2024, shot back at Biden’s speech, painting a dark portrait of the US. He called it a “failing” nation, beset by “terrorists” and immigrants from “mental asylums” pouring over the US-Mexico border.Biden highlighted the setting of his speech, which took place roughly 10 miles from Valley Forge national historical park in Pennsylvania, to underscore the high stakes of the presidential race. During America’s fight for independence in the revolutionary war, George Washington and his Continental army troops camped at Valley Forge during a difficult winter.“After all we’ve been through in our history – from independence to civil war to two world wars to a pandemic to insurrection – I refuse to believe that in 2024 we Americans would choose to walk away from what’s made us the greatest nation in the history of the world: freedom, liberty,” Biden said.The speech came at a particularly vulnerable moment for Biden. Polls show Biden’s approval rating mired in the high 30s with Americans expressing concerns about the state of the economy, despite strong job creation and the easing of inflation. A Gallup poll conducted last month found that only 22% of Americans view economic conditions as “good” or “excellent”, while 78% consider current conditions to be “fair” or “poor”. National polls show Biden and Trump running neck and neck in a hypothetical general election.Biden is holding a series of events to reframe the 2024 election as a fight for democracy and fundamental freedoms. In addition to the Valley Forge speech, Biden will speak on Monday at Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, where nine African Americans were fatally shot by a white supremacist in 2015.Biden’s campaign has said the president will also hold events later this month to commemorate the anniversary of Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that established a federal right to abortion access. That ruling was overturned by the conservative-leaning supreme court in 2022, resulting in abortion bans in more than a dozen states.“When Joe Biden ran for president four years ago, he said, ‘We are in the battle for the soul of America,’” Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Biden’s campaign manager, told reporters on Tuesday. “As we look towards November 2024, we still are. The threat Donald Trump posed in 2020 to American democracy has only grown more dire in the years since.”Despite that grim outlook, Biden expressed his trademark optimism as he spoke to supporters in Pennsylvania, reiterating his message of American exceptionalism and urging voters to embrace hope.“None of you believe America is failing. We know America is winning. That’s American patriotism,” Biden said. “We all know who Donald Trump is. The question we have to answer is: who are we?”Reuters contributed to this report More

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      Michigan Republicans move to oust conspiracy theory-touting chair

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      Michigan Republicans are on the verge of ousting their party’s conspiracy theory-touting chair after a tenure marred by financial collapse and internal feuds that have at times turned into physical altercations.Kristina Karamo, the Michigan Republican party chair, an election-denying activist who won a hard-fought race for the position last year, is facing a likely vote to fire her at a special meeting convened by concerned party leaders on Saturday.“She has failed as a leader,” said Bree Moeggenberg, a state committee member who called for the Saturday special meeting to vote on Karamo’s removal. “She has failed to build a bigger coalition of Republicans, and instead, she has disenfranchised many, including those who don’t specifically agree with her.”Anger over the chair’s leadership has grown in recent weeks. A majority of the Michigan GOP’s district chairs have demanded Karamo’s resignation. Even Karamo’s running mate and co-chair has called for her removal.“We see our opportunity to win Michigan for Republicans slipping through our fingers,” wrote party leaders in an open letter to Karamo, signed by eight of the Michigan Republican party’s 13 district chairs. “We, the undersigned District Chairs, are locking arms in our request for your resignation. Please put an end to the chaos in our Party,” they wrote.It’s unclear whether Karamo’s opponents will convince enough people to show up to the Saturday meeting to achieve the quorum needed to officially oust her – and even if they do, Karamo may not accept defeat. But it could prove the culmination of a year of bitter infighting.The calls for Karamo to step down come less than a year after she was elected to lead the state party and three years after her outspoken claims of election fraud elevated her from a virtually unknown Christian podcaster and former community college teacher to a leading voice in Donald Trump’s campaign to discredit the results of the 2020 election. She parlayed that newfound prominence into winning the GOP nomination for secretary of state in 2022, but was crushed in the general election. Despite that lopsided loss, she ran against a Trump-endorsed candidate for party chairman last year – and defeated him.Karamo’s outlandish views are not confined to election conspiracy theories. She has echoed the claim promoted by the QAnon conspiracy theory movement that a shadowy cabal of elites are harvesting children’s organs.“There’s a ton of money involved in those freshly harvested organs,” Karamo said on a 2020 podcast hosted by RedPill78, a conspiracy theory website. She has also called Beyoncé and Jay-Z satanists, said yoga is a satanic ritual and described Cardi B as a “tool of Lucifer”.But it’s her apparent financial mismanagement of the party as much as her polarizing politics and wild views that have local GOP leaders prepared to oust her. The state party was already in poor financial shape when she took over, with donations drying up after Democrats won a trifecta in the statehouse in 2022 – but things have gotten significantly worse on her watch. Since Karamo took over, the party has gone further into debt, with other party officials furious over questionable decisions like a loan to spend more than $100,000 to pay a speaking fee to Jim Caviezel, the actor in the 2004 biblical drama The Passion of the Christ who has emerged as a celebrity in QAnon-affiliated circles.Karamo initially agreed via text message to a phone interview, but subsequent attempts to reach her were unsuccessful. She and her general counsel on Thursday called for a town hall on Friday evening “to discuss any concerns or answer any questions” about the party’s legal woes in an apparent last-ditch effort to salvage her job.The Michigan GOP under Karamo’s leadership has even sued the Michigan Republican party Trust and Comerica Bank, which reportedly sent the party a notice of default, in an effort to gain control of the party’s Lansing headquarters. In a motion filed on Tuesday, the trust, which is governed by former establishment party leaders, asked the court to sanction the party for engaging in a “frivolous” suit.A January email obtained by the Guardian from the state GOP treasurer, Jennifer Standerfer, called concerns about the party’s financial solvency – among them, an internal report that showed the party owed more than $600,000 – “misinformation” and claimed the party “retains a net profit of approximately $30,000”. Standerfer did not immediately reply to a request for comment and has not publicly substantiated the claim.The stakes could not be higher for the state GOP. Michigan is one of a handful of states that will decide the 2024 presidential election. And local candidates on the ballot are worried about their own fates as well.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’m coming up for re-election in 2024,” said state representative Mark Tisdel, who articulated the fear, shared by state party activists, that the current Republican party would be unable to shore up campaign cash for state elected officials. “The anticipation is that with limited resources, there will be limited support.”Even if Republicans manage to remove Karamo from office, it is unclear who would be able to take over and unify the party – the divide within the state GOP runs deeper than their controversial chair. Numerous county party chapters are at war internally, with tensions in the Hillsdale and Kalamazoo GOP chapters spilling out into public battles. At a July meeting of the party’s executive committee, tensions devolved into a physical altercation when an activist tackled a local party chair, later citing a “war” between the grassroots and establishment Republicans as a cause of the dispute in an interview with the Detroit Free Press.“I had somebody say to me, ‘Well, I’m more Maga than you,’” said Kelly Sackett, the chair of the Kalamazoo Republican party, who is facing a protracted revolt within her chapter by allies of Karamo who view her as insufficiently rightwing. Sackett and her allies accused the state party of meddling in their affairs after the Michigan GOP’s general counsel called for a meeting that the Kalamazoo county leadership denounced as in violation of the party’s bylaws.Karamo’s allies offered a curious justification.“It was a ‘Peace Summit’ the term was selected because, in world politics, it is a meeting of warring factions to reach a peace accord,” the Michigan GOP general counsel, Daniel Hartman, replied in a September email obtained by the Guardian. “It was not called a meeting, and I am aware that the bylaws do not ‘authorize’ a meeting.”Party activists told the Guardian the rise of a paranoid form of Christian nationalism within the party has also played a role in dividing Michigan Republicans.“One of the things that has been said is that the Kalamazoo county Republican party is godless,” said Sackett, “and we start every single meeting with an invocation.” Muslim leaders in the party have also spoken publicly about the party’s evangelical Christian leadership, which they viewed as exclusionary and hostile to Michigan’s diverse population.“It’s fundamentalism,” said Jon Smith, a former Michigan GOP district chair who supported Karamo before becoming disillusioned with her leadership. “What I’m seeing is, like, if you don’t believe in their [view of] salvation 100% to a tee, you’re the enemy or you’re evil.” More

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      Storm Trump is brewing – and the whole world needs to brace itself | Jonathan Freedland

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      It is not a prediction, but it is a possibility – and a growing one. Barring a major upset, Donald Trump is on course to be the Republican nominee for US president. If he wins that contest, which begins in earnest in Iowa on 15 January, then polling in the handful of must-win, battleground states suggests he has a better than even chance of beating Joe Biden in November. Of course, much can change between now and then: once voters’ minds are concentrated on the looming prospect of a Trump return, many might recoil. All the same, Americans need to prepare themselves now for a second Trump presidency – and so does the rest of the world.A good first step will be shedding any illusions that the sequel would simply be a repeat of the original. Trump 2.0 will be more focused and more capable than the initial iteration. In January 2017, he was a novice, new to Washington, new to political office and clueless as to the machinery of government. He relied on appointees who could, and often did, thwart his crazier, darker impulses – even if that meant swiping key documents from his desk before he had a chance to see or sign them.Trump is different now. Four years in the White House taught him where the levers of power are and who he needs to push aside to reach them. Next time, he won’t allow himself to be babysat or reined in by assorted appropriate adults: there will be no Rex Tillerson at the state department or James Mattis at the Pentagon. Instead, he will populate his administration with loyalists undistracted by any duty to democratic norms and conventions, committed solely to ensuring Trump’s will is done. Once those informal, unwritten constraints are off, there is little that will stand in his way.He has been shockingly upfront about this. As early as last summer, Trump aides were briefing their plans for a massive presidential power grab should their boss be re-elected. They promise to bring independent agencies, including those that oversee the media and the internet, or trade and industry, under the direct control of the Oval Office. They will hand themselves the power to fire tens of thousands of civil servants, replacing them with yet more loyalists – eyeing up especially the intelligence and security agencies, rooting out anyone deemed unreliable. In the words of Russell Vought, who served in the first Trump term and is now involved in drawing up plans for a second: “What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them.”Team Trump makes no secret of its particular interest in the justice department, ditching the convention that the executive stay out of decisions over who does, and does not, get prosecuted. With judicial independence cast aside, Trump would be able not only to pardon himself and his pals, but to order investigations into his enemies, starting with the Biden family and all those who, he believes, have wronged him – including, no doubt, those state election officials who refused to fiddle the numbers and declare him the winner of the 2020 contest. If that sounds hyperbolic, remember Trump’s stated promise to his supporters: “I am your warrior. I am your justice … I am your retribution.”Not for nothing is there serious concern in the US that January 2025 could open a new chapter of US authoritarianism, even an American dictatorship – with Trump bent on filling the judiciary and the upper reaches of the military with those whose first loyalty will be not to the US constitution but to him. Perhaps the most telling moment of the primary season so far came last month when Trump was interviewed by major league sycophant Sean Hannity of Fox News. Clearly trying to help, Hannity invited Trump to quash the rumours that he planned to rule as a dictator, abusing power and seeking revenge against his political rivals. “Except for day one,” came the reply. “After that, I’m not a dictator.So Americans have much to brace for: a Trump presidency with all the darkness, bigotry and corruption of the first, only this time more determined, efficient and ruthless. But it is not only those inside the country who need to gird themselves. The rest of the world must prepare too.Among the more startling pieces in a collection compiled by the Atlantic magazine under the heading “If Trump wins”, was one by the analyst Anne Applebaum. Her stark prediction: “Trump will abandon Nato.” She makes the persuasive case that even if he does not formally withdraw from the alliance, Trump can render it defunct simply by shaking confidence in its central commitment: that each member come to the defence of any other if attacked. Once the likes of Vladimir Putin conclude that Trump no longer believes in that creed of collective defence, the game will be up.The immediate casualty of such a shift will be Ukraine. Kyiv has relied on US arms and aid since Russia’s invasion nearly two years ago, an act of aggression whose initial stages were praised by Trump as “genius”. A re-elected Joe Biden would keep that support for Ukraine coming. Under Trump, it would dry up.Orysia Lutsevych of Chatham House told me that, in that scenario, Kyiv would have to pursue a “totally different war strategy, lowering its ambition from retaking territory seized by Russia to denying Russia the opportunity to take more”. One former high-ranking figure in the US military reckons that “the best we can hope for is that Europe pressures [Volodymyr] Zelenskiy into accepting some form of armistice with Russia that concedes Donbas and Crimea”, along with international security guarantees. He offers that verdict with no enthusiasm: “This is exactly the outcome Putin desires.”It’s worth spelling out what that means: a Moscow no longer deterred by the threat of Nato, rewarded for its aggression and free to pursue more elsewhere, eyeing up its neighbours and licking its lips. If the US is led by a man who, we already know, grovels to dictators and disdains the US’s allies, other nations will start to recalculate: watch smaller, more vulnerable countries in Asia cosy up to Beijing, as a matter of self-preservation. Some might welcome a Trump-led retreat as the end of US imperialism; in reality, it would merely advance the day when Chinese and Russian imperialism take its place.None of this can wait. The US’s allies need to prepare now for a change that could well be just a year away. To defend Ukraine without US help will take money and hardware on a scale dwarfing anything Europe has come up with so far. But no less important, the return of Trump will also require deep cooperation, whether on security or the climate emergency, especially among the nations of Europe – and that includes Britain.The go-it-alone fantasies of the Brexit era were always delusional. In a second Trump era, they would be downright dangerous. An orange storm could be coming – and we need to be ready.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
      Join Jonathan Freedland at 8pm GMT on Tuesday 16 January for a Guardian Live online event. He will be talking to Julian Borger, whose new memoir, I Seek a Kind Person, reveals the story of his father’s escape from the Nazis via an ad placed in the Guardian. Tickets available here More

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      US ‘won’t survive’ four more years of Trump ‘chaos’, Nikki Haley says

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      The re-election of Donald Trump would bring “four more years of chaos” the US “won’t survive”, the former president’s closest challenger for the Republican nomination, Nikki Haley, told an Iowa audience, turning her fire on the frontrunner as the first vote of the 2024 primary looms.The former South Carolina governor has caught up with Ron DeSantis, the hard-right governor of Florida, in the battle for second place in Republican presidential polling. The gap between Haley and Trump is also closing, particularly in New Hampshire, the second state to vote when it holds its primary on 23 January.Trump faces a slate of criminal and civil trials as well as attempts to keep him off the ballot, for inciting the 6 January 2021 insurrection.Nonetheless, he remains formidably popular with the Republican base and Haley, who as UN ambassador under Trump was often touted as a potential vice-president, must perform a balancing act on the campaign trail.In Iowa, she said Trump had been “the right president at the right time”. But she added: “The reality is, rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him, and we all know that’s true … and we can’t have a country in disarray and a world on fire and go through four more years of chaos. We won’t survive it.”Saying she used to tell Trump he was “his own worst enemy”, Haley added: “We have a country to save, and that means no more drama. No more taking things personally.”Haley was speaking in Des Moines, as CNN hosted town hall events for her and DeSantis, rivals who will also meet on the debate stage next week, as Trump continues to avoid such traditional forums. DeSantis also used his airtime to attack Trump, but Haley is widely seen to have acquired greater momentum and therefore attracted greater attention.A confident performer and stump speaker, she is not immune to gaffes. On stage at Grand View University, she addressed her controversial failure last week in New Hampshire to say slavery caused the civil war.Saying she “had Black friends growing up”, and that slavery was “a very talked-about thing” in her state (the first to secede in 1860, its declaration of secession citing slavery as the cause), Haley said: “I shouldn’t have done that. I should have said slavery. But in my mind that’s a given, that everybody associates the civil war with slavery.”She was also forced to deal with a remark in New Hampshire only the day before, when she appeared to dismiss the importance of Iowa, telling voters: “You know how to do this. You know Iowa starts it. You know that you correct it.”DeSantis is Trump’s closest challenger in Iowa, Haley closest in New Hampshire. In Iowa, Haley claimed she had been joking.“You are going to see me fight until the very end, on the last day in Iowa,” she said. “And I’m not playing in one state. I’m fighting in every state. Because I think everybody’s worth fighting for.”Trump’s campaign has switched to a fighting stance, airing its first attack ad against Haley in New Hampshire this week, portraying her as soft on immigration.That offensive coincided with Haley securing the endorsement of Don Bolduc, a far-right former special forces general who ran for US Senate with Trump’s backing but now says: “With Trump, there’s too many distractions. There’s too much risk of losing.”Still, any Trump opponent faces an uphill fight: Haley’s state, South Carolina, will vote in February and she trails Trump there by about 30 points. There are also other candidates still in the race.On Thursday, the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, the only explicitly anti-Trump candidate, pinning his hopes on New Hampshire, angrily rejected calls to drop out and throw his weight behind Haley.“The fact is that I’m running for president of the United States and no one’s voted yet,” Christie told Hugh Hewitt, a rightwing radio host, in an interview that started awkwardly and went downhill from there. “And I don’t have an obligation to do anything other than to answer questions, tell the truth, run a good campaign, and try to win. And so, you know, where this has become Nikki Haley’s campaign when no one’s voted yet is kind of a mystery to me.”The biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and the former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson are also still in the race. But their odds are even longer than Christie’s.On Friday, writing on Substack, the Republican operative turned anti-Trump crusader Steve Schmidt said: “Nikki Haley is an imitation of Trump, a hollow woman … firmly on Trump’s side of the field. She is an acolyte who has strayed, probably much to Trump’s amusement because he knows she will be back in the menagerie more loyal than ever.“It is Chris Christie who stands alone against Trump. He is … the only moral choice.”Christie, however, told Hewitt that if he did not win the nomination, and even if Trump did, he would not vote for Joe Biden. More

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      in Elections

      Biden to start election year with speech on third anniversary of Capitol attack

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      Joe Biden will on Friday mark the third anniversary of the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, delivering his first presidential election campaign speech of 2024 at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania – a site replete with historical meaning.A day before the anniversary, due to forecast bad weather, Biden will speak where George Washington’s army endured another dark moment: the bitter winter of 1777-78, an ordeal key to winning American independence from Britain.Biden will also speak about January 6 on Monday at the Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, where in June 2015 a gunman shot dead nine Black people in an attempt to start a race war.Donald Trump’s nearest challenger for the Republican nomination, Nikki Haley, was governor of South Carolina at the time and subsequently oversaw the removal of the Confederate battle flag from statehouse grounds.Haley has since struggled to define her position on the flag and the interests it represented, last week in New Hampshire failing to say slavery caused the civil war.But the Biden campaign is focusing on Trump, who refused to accept his conclusive defeat in 2020, spreading the lie that he was denied by electoral fraud and ultimately encouraging supporters to attempt to stop certification of Biden’s win by Congress.The attack on the Capitol delayed certification but the process was completed in the early hours of 7 January. Biden was inaugurated two weeks later.On Thursday, the Biden campaign previewed his Valley Forge speech and released Cause, an ad one adviser said would “set the stakes” for this year’s election.“I’ve made the preservation of American democracy the central issue of my presidency,” Biden says in the ad, over footage of Americans voting.But, he adds, over shots of white supremacists marching in Virginia in 2017 and the attack on Congress, “There’s something dangerous happening in America. There’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy.”Wes Moore, the first Black governor of Maryland, widely seen as a possible Democratic presidential candidate in 2028 but now a Biden campaign adviser, told MSNBC: “The president is really setting the stakes and really hoping to set the platform for what people are going to hear.“From him, it is a vision for their future. From Donald Trump, they’re going to hear a vision about his future. That’s the difference.”Less than two weeks from the Iowa caucuses, Trump dominates Republican polling, regardless of 91 criminal charges – 17 concerning election subversion – in four cases, civil trials over his business affairs and a rape allegation and attempts to bar him from the ballot in Colorado and Maine under the 14th amendment, introduced after the civil war to stop insurrectionists running for office.Trump has called January 6 “a beautiful day” and supporters imprisoned because of it “great, great patriots” and “hostages”. At rallies he has played Justice for All, The Star-Spangled Banner sung by jailed rioters, interspersed with his own recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. On Saturday, he will stage a rally in Iowa, less than five days before caucuses in the midwestern state kick off the 2024 election.Republicans in Congress continue to range themselves behind Trump, the majority whip Tom Emmer’s endorsement this week completing the set of GOP House leaders. Among the rank and file, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right representative from Georgia who has touted herself as Trump’s running mate, was due to host a January 6 commemoration in Florida, until the venue canceled it.Many observers see winning the White House as Trump’s best hope of staying out of prison. Some polling suggests a criminal conviction (also possible over retention of classified information and hush-money payments) would reduce support but for now he is competitive with Biden or leads him in surveys regarding a notional general election.Furthermore, polling shows more Americans accepting Trump’s stolen election lie.This week, the Washington Post and the University of Maryland found that only 62% of respondents said Biden’s 2020 win was legitimate, down from 69% two years ago. On the question of blame for January 6, meanwhile, the same pollsters found that 25% of Americans (and 34% of Republicans) thought it was probably or definitely true that the FBI, not Trump, was responsible for inciting the riot.Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, referred to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan when she said: “Led by Donald Trump, Maga Republicans are running on an extreme platform of undermining the will of the American people who vote in free and fair elections, weaponising the government against their political opponents, and parroting the rhetoric of dictators.”Biden’s new ad and January 6 speeches, Chavez Rodriguez said, would “serve as a very real reminder that this election could very well determine the very fate of American democracy”.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      in Elections

      Trump allies behind January 6 also leading Biden impeachment, says watchdog

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      The attempted US coup of 6 January 2021, never ended, according to a watchdog report, since the same Donald Trump allies behind that insurrection are now leading a sham impeachment effort against Joe Biden.The report, marking three years since a mob of Trump supporters ransacked the US Capitol in a bid to overturn his election defeat, was produced by the Congressional Integrity Project and obtained by the Guardian.It argues that scores of Trump loyalists in the House of Representatives have continued to push the former president’s election lies and are ready to go further in a bid to put him back in the White House.“In fact, the key players involved in Trump’s scheme to overturn the election in 2020 are the very same Republicans leading the bogus impeachment effort against President Biden,” it says.These include Mike Johnson, the House speaker; Jim Jordan, the chair of the House judiciary committee; and James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee, all of whom continue to push Trump’s debunked conspiracy theories and wage a crusade to impeach Biden.Last month, the House voted along party lines to officially authorise an impeachment inquiry into Biden after months of claiming that he and his son, Hunter, engaged in an influence-peddling scheme. Even some Republicans, such as Utah senator Mitt Romney, pointed out that there is no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden himself.The project’s report describes the Biden impeachment inquiry as “a partisan political stunt” designed to hurt Biden and help Trump return to the White House in 2024, and says it is “an extension of, not separate from, the events of January 6, 2021”.It quotes Jim McGovern, a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, as saying: “They still want to overturn the election. What they couldn’t do on January 6th they’re trying to do with this process.”The report highlights the role of Johnson, who was elected speaker in October to replace the ousted Kevin McCarthy and has supported an impeachment inquiry for months. After the 2020 election, he said the outcome had been “rigged” and amplified Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories about Dominion voting machines.Johnson stayed in close contact with Trump and publicly encouraged him to “stay strong and keep fighting”. He pressured Republican colleagues to support a Texas lawsuit that sought to overturn the election on the unconstitutional premise that the expansion of vote by mail during the pandemic had been illegal, and he managed to collect signatures from more than 60% of House Republicans.On the morning of 6 January 2021, Johnson tweeted: “We MUST fight for election integrity, the Constitution, and the preservation of our republic!” Later that day he voted to overturn the 2020 election, refusing to certify the results in Arizona and Pennsylvania. In all, eight Republican senators and 139 Republican representatives voted to overturn the result.Johnson also voted against bipartisan legislation that would create a September 11-style commission to investigate the attack on the US Capitol. He refused to hold people accountable for the violence that day, voting against holding Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House January 6 committee.He has attacked investigations into January 6 as a “third impeachment” and “pure political theatre”. More recently, Johnson alleged that the FBI director Christopher Wray was “hiding something” about the FBI’s presence in the Capitol on 6 January 2021, echoing a conspiracy theory spread by rightwing extremists implying that federal agents had a role in orchestrating the insurrection.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhen asked in October whether he believed the 2020 election was stolen, Johnson refused to comment: “We’re not talking about any issues today … My position is very well-known.”Jordan, meanwhile, was a key figure in the attempt to subvert US democracy who pushed the Trump administration to “unilaterally reject certain states’ electors” the day before January 6. He opposed the creation of a January 6 committee and has refused to cooperate with any investigative efforts into the violence of that day.Before the 2022 midterm elections, Jordan stated that his investigations into Biden “will help frame up the 2024 race … We need to make sure that [Donald Trump] wins.” Last month he boasted that the impeachment inquiry against Biden was influencing polling numbers for the 2024 presidential election: “I think all that together is why you see the [polling] numbers where they are at.”The report names other key “election deniers and insurrection apologists” in Congress such as Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, Pete Sessions of Texas, Byron Donalds of Florida, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Troy Nehls of Texas, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Greg Steube of Florida, Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin, Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin and Cliff Bentz of Oregon.Kyle Herrig, the executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project, said: “The attempted impeachment of President Biden isn’t merely a political stunt: it’s an attempt to finish the job Jordan, Trump, Greene and Johnson started long before January 6, 2021, culminating in the violent attack on the Capitol.“They are willing to trash the institution of the House, its role in legitimate oversight, the constitution and our democracy. At the Congressional Integrity Project, the gloves are off, and protection of our democracy is on.” More

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      Trump businesses received millions in foreign payments while he was in office

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      Donald Trump “repeatedly and willfully” violated the US constitution by “allowing his businesses to accept millions of dollars from some of the most corrupt nations on Earth”, prominently including China, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee charged on Thursday, unveiling a 156-page report on the matter.Four businesses owned by Trump’s family conglomerate received at least $7.8m in payments in total from 20 countries during his four years in the White House, the report said. It added that the payments probably represented just a fraction of foreign payments to the Republican president and his family during his administration, which ran from 2017 to 2021.The foreign emoluments clause of the US constitution bars the acceptance of gifts from foreign states without congressional consent.Trump broke with precedent – and his own campaign-trail promises – and did not divest from his businesses or put them into a blind trust when he took office, instead leaving his adult sons to manage them.The issue of foreign spending at Trump-owned businesses proceeded to dog Trump throughout his time in power.On Thursday, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the oversight committee, said: “After promising ‘the greatest infomercial in political history’ [regarding his business interests] … Trump repeatedly and willfully violated the constitution by failing to divest from his business empire and allowing his businesses to accept millions of dollars in payments from some of the most corrupt nations on earth.”Such countries spent – “often lavishly”, the report said – on apartments and hotel stays at properties owned by Trump’s business empire, thereby “personally enriching President Trump while he made foreign policy decisions connected to their policy agendas with far-reaching ramifications for the United States”.Raskin said: “The limited records the committee obtained show that while Donald Trump was in office, he received more than $5.5m from the Chinese government and Chinese state-owned enterprises, as well as millions more from 19 other foreign governments including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia, through just four of the more than 500 entities he owned.”Those four properties – Trump International Hotel in Washington, Trump Tower and Trump World Tower in New York, and Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas – represented less than 1% of the 558 corporate entities Trump owned either directly or indirectly while president, the report said.Raskin said: “The governments making these payments sought specific foreign policy outcomes from President Trump and his administration. Each dollar … accepted violated the constitution’s strict prohibition on payments from foreign governments, which the founders enacted to prevent presidents from selling out US foreign policy to foreign leaders.”Shortly after Trump was elected, Congress began investigating potential conflicts of interest and violations of the emoluments clause. The investigation led to a lengthy court dispute which ended in a settlement in 2022, at which point Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars, began producing documents requested.After Republicans took over the House last year, the oversight committee stopped requiring those documents. A US district court ended litigation on the matter. Mazars did not provide documents regarding at least 80% of Trump’s business entities, Democrats said on Thursday.Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination this year, despite facing 91 criminal indictments, assorted civil threats and moves to bar him from the ballot in Colorado and Maine, under the 14th amendment meant to stop insurrectionists running for office.His campaign did not immediately comment on the Democratic report.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRaskin pointed a finger at a leading Trump ally, James Comer of Kentucky, the Republican oversight chair.“While the figures and constitutional violations in this report are shocking, we still don’t know the extent of the foreign payments that Donald Trump received – or even the total number of countries that paid him and his businesses while he was president – because committee chairman James Comer and House Republicans buried any further evidence of the Trump family’s staggering corruption.”Comer – who is leading Republican attempts to impeach Joe Biden over alleged corruption involving foreign money – issued a statement of his own.“It’s beyond parody that Democrats continue their obsession with former President Trump,” Comer said. “Former President Trump has legitimate businesses but the Bidens do not. The Bidens and their associates made over $24m by cashing in on the Biden name in China, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Romania. No goods or services were provided other than access to Joe Biden and the Biden network.”Most observers say Republicans have not produced compelling evidence of corruption involving Biden, members of his family and foreign interests. The New York Times, for example, judged recently that “many messages cited by Republicans as evidence of corruption by President Biden and his family are being presented out of context”.On social media on Thursday, the California Democrat Eric Swalwell said: “No president ever personally enriched himself more while in office than Donald Trump. And mostly, in his case, from foreign cash. I don’t want to hear another peep about bogus Biden allegations. Game, set, match. Move on.”Raskin said: “By concealing the evidence of Trump’s grift, House Republicans shamefully condone former President Trump’s past conduct and keep the door open for future presidents to exploit higher office.”The family business empire, the Trump Organization, including Donald Trump and his two oldest sons, Don Jr and Eric, is in the closing stages of a civil trial brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Republicans seek to override Ohio governor’s veto of trans rights bill

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      A legislative showdown is brewing in Ohio after Governor Mike DeWine split from his party to veto a bill that would impose substantial new restrictions on the lives of trans children.The bill, HB 68, prohibits doctors from providing gender-affirming care to trans youths. It also blocks transgender female student athletes from participating in girls’ sports.On Friday, DeWine said signing HB 68 into law would signal that “the government knows better what is medically best for a child than the two people who love that child the most: the parents”.Ohio hospitals do not offer gender-affirming care to young patients without the consent of a parent or guardian.“Parents are making decisions about the most precious thing in their life, their child, and none of us should underestimate the gravity and the difficulty of those decisions,” the governor said. “Many parents have told me that their child would be dead today if they had not received the treatment they received from an Ohio children’s hospital.”The veto by DeWine, a Republican, marked a rare victory for LGBTQ+ advocates, who spent the past year battling a historic rise in anti-trans legislation and rhetoric across the United States.Maria Bruno, policy director for Equality Ohio, said the governor’s veto was “a relief for Ohio’s transgender youth, parents, healthcare professionals and educators who can finally take a breath and get back to their lives”.But that relief could be short-lived. Top Ohio Republicans, including the secretary of state, Frank LaRose, are now urging the state legislature to reverse the governor’s decision by overriding his veto.“We have a duty to protect safety and fair competition for female athletes and to protect children from being subjected to permanent, life-altering medical procedures before the age of 18,” LaRose said.The Republican speaker, Jason Stephens, announced this week that the Ohio house would reconvene on 10 January, weeks earlier than scheduled, in an attempt to revive the bill before the official start of the 2024 legislative session. Republicans hold a supermajority in both chambers of the Ohio legislature, meaning Stephens’ push to sidestep the governor is likely to succeed.“It is disappointing that the governor vetoed House Bill 68,” Stephens said. “The bill sponsors, and the house, have dedicated nearly three years to get the bill right.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDespite Stephens’ insistence that HB 68 is a tool to “empower parents and protect children,” hundreds of Ohio families, including the parents of transgender children, have spoken out in fierce opposition to the GOP-backed proposal.Last year, the Ohio house received more than 600 written testimonies from people who oppose the ban on gender-affirming care, compared with just 56 in support of the legislation.In her testimony against the bill, Minna Zelch, the parent of a transgender daughter, asked why she and her husband “are qualified to make other medical decisions for our children, such as if they should have surgery for a broken bone or take ADHD medication, but we’re not qualified to decide if and when they should receive gender care?”Zelch added: “All transgender kids and their families deserve the basic right of deciding what medical care they receive.” More