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      House Republicans move to impeach homeland security secretary

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      House Republicans voted along party lines after midnight on Wednesday to move toward impeaching the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, for a “willful and systematic” refusal to enforce immigration laws as border security becomes a top 2024 election issue.In a charge against a cabinet official unseen in nearly 150 years, the homeland security committee debated all day on Tuesday and well into the night before recommending two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas to the full House.The committee Republicans voted in favor, while the Democrats unified against, 18-15.The partisan showdown reflected the Republicans’ efforts to make the Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s hardline deportation approach to immigration their own.That approach was mirrored on a second front on Tuesday, as Republicans also lambasted the border deal recently brokered between the Joe Biden White House and a bipartisan group of senators, Democrats and Republicans alike.Mayorkas, in a letter sent to the Republican chair of the House committee on homeland security before the hearing began, dismissed the impeachment process against him as “politically motivated”.“I have been privileged to serve our country for most of my professional life. I have adhered scrupulously and fervently to the oath of office I have taken six times in my public service career,” Mayorkas wrote.“I assure you that your false accusations do not rattle me and do not divert me from the law enforcement and broader public service mission to which I have devoted most of my career and to which I remain devoted.”The Republican chair of the committee, Mark Green of Tennessee, criticized Mayorkas’s letter as an inadequate response to concerns about the situation at the US-Mexican border, where arrests for illegal crossings have reached record highs.“This 11th-hour response demonstrates the lack of seriousness with which Secretary Mayorkas views his responsibilities,” Green said. “We cannot allow this man to remain in office any longer. The time for accountability is now.”Democrats retorted that Republicans were making a farce out of the impeachment process by rushing to oust a cabinet official without showing any wrongdoing. House Republicans have presented no clear evidence that Mayorkas committed high crimes and misdemeanors, which is the requirement for impeachment. Their resolution accuses the cabinet secretary of refusing to comply with the law and breaching public trust.“We’re here based on two completely fabricated, unsupported and never-used-before articles of impeachment,” said the Democratic congressman Dan Goldman. “This is completely debasing and demeaning the impeachment clause of the United States constitution, and it is a gross, gross injustice to the credibility of this institution.”Now that the Republican-controlled committee has advanced the resolution, the House speaker, the Republican Mike Johnson of Louisiana, has indicated that the full chamber will vote on impeaching Mayorkas in the coming days. Even if the resolution passes the House, it will certainly fail in the Senate, where Democrats hold a majority.To demonstrate his scorn over the proceedings, the ranking Democrat on the committee, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, introduced several procedural motions to delay the progress of the hearing.Thompson accused Republicans of attempting to impeach Mayorkas to boost the political prospects of Trump.“If House Republicans were serious about improving conditions along the border, they would provide the department the funding necessary to do so. They have not,” Thompson said. “They don’t want progress. They don’t want solutions. They want a political issue. And most of all, they want to please their disgraced former president.”Meanwhile, as the House moves forward with impeaching Mayorkas, Trump has called on Republicans to sink the border deal. Johnson has said that the proposal, a bipartisan arrangement that would grant Joe Biden the authority to shut down the border between ports of entry when attempted crossings increase to a certain level, would be “dead on arrival” in the House.Johnson is expected to address the House on Wednesday. At a press conference on Tuesday, he dismissed claims that Republicans were doing Trump’s bidding as “absurd” and insisted they were focused on addressing the situation at the border.“Our duty is to do right by the American people, to protect the people. The first and most important job of the federal government is to protect its citizens. We’re not doing that under President Biden,” Johnson said. “Our majority is small. We only have it in one chamber, but we’re trying to use every ounce of leverage that we have to make sure that this issue is addressed.”The White House attacked Johnson for flip-flopping, noting that the speaker previously called on members of both parties to “come together and address the broken border”.“Today, Speaker Johnson claimed he believes action should be taken to secure the border,” said the White House spokesperson Andrew Bates. “That’s exactly what President Biden and Republicans and Democrats in the Senate are doing. Speaker Johnson should join them.” More

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      House showdown as Republicans try to escalate border and immigration issues

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      A partisan showdown was on display on Tuesday as House Republicans attempted to escalate immigration and border issues on two fronts.Republicans moved forward with efforts to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, as they lambasted the border deal recently brokered between the Joe Biden White House and a bipartisan group of senators, in a split-screen that Democrats criticized as hypocritical.A House committee convened on Tuesday to consider two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, who attacked Republicans’ accusations against him as “false”, “baseless” and “inaccurate”.In a letter sent to the Republican chair of the House committee on homeland security just hours before the markup hearing began, Mayorkas dismissed the impeachment process as “politically motivated”. House Republicans have presented no clear evidence that Mayorkas committed high crimes and misdemeanors, which is the requirement for impeachment, but their resolution accuses the cabinet secretary of refusing to comply with the law and breaching public trust.“I have been privileged to serve our country for most of my professional life. I have adhered scrupulously and fervently to the oath of office I have taken six times in my public service career,” Mayorkas wrote in his letter. “I assure you that your false accusations do not rattle me and do not divert me from the law enforcement and broader public service mission to which I have devoted most of my career and to which I remain devoted.”The Republican chair of the committee, Mark Green of Tennessee, criticized Mayorkas’s letter as a woefully inadequate response to concerns about the situation at the US-Mexican border, where arrests for illegal crossings have reached record highs.“This 11th-hour response demonstrates the lack of seriousness with which Secretary Mayorkas views his responsibilities,” Green said in his opening statement at the markup hearing. “We cannot allow this man to remain in office any longer. The time for accountability is now.”Democrats retorted that Republicans were making a farce out of the impeachment process by rushing to oust a cabinet official without evidence of wrongdoing.“We’re here based on two completely fabricated, unsupported and never used before articles of impeachment,” Dan Goldman, a Democrat of New York, said at the hearing. “This is completely debasing and demeaning the impeachment clause of the United States constitution, and it is a gross, gross injustice to the credibility of this institution.”The Republican-controlled committee is expected to advance the resolution, and the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson of Louisiana, has indicated that the full chamber will vote on impeaching Mayorkas in the coming days. Even if the resolution passes the House, it will certainly fail in the Senate, where Democrats hold a majority.To demonstrate his scorn over the proceedings, the ranking Democrat on the committee, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, introduced several procedural motions to delay the progress of the hearing. Thompson accused Republicans of attempting to impeach Mayorkas to boost the political prospects of Donald Trump, who is widely expected to win his party’s presidential nomination.“If House Republicans were serious about improving conditions along the border, they would provide the department the funding necessary to do so. They have not,” Thompson said in his opening statement. “They don’t want progress. They don’t want solutions. They want a political issue. And most of all, they want to please their disgraced former president. The extreme Maga [‘Make America Great Again’] Republicans who are running the House of Representatives are deeply unserious people.”While the House moves forward with impeaching Mayorkas, Trump has called on Republicans to sink the bipartisan border and national security deal. Johnson has said that the proposal, which would grant Joe Biden the authority to shut down the border between ports of entry when attempted crossings increase to a certain level, would be “dead on arrival” in the House.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt a press conference held on Tuesday, Johnson dismissed claims that House Republicans were doing Trump’s bidding as “absurd” and insisted they were focused on addressing the situation at the border.“Our duty is to do right by the American people, to protect the people. The first and most important job of the federal government is to protect its citizens. We’re not doing that under President Biden,” Johnson said. “Our majority is small. We only have it in one chamber, but we’re trying to use every ounce of leverage that we have to make sure that this issue is addressed.”The White House then attacked Johnson for flip-flopping on the passage of a bipartisan immigration bill, noting that the speaker previously called on members of both parties to “come together and address the broken border”.“Today, Speaker Johnson claimed he believes action should be taken to secure the border,” said the White House spokesperson Andrew Bates. “That’s exactly what President Biden and Republicans and Democrats in the Senate are doing. Speaker Johnson should join them.”Speaking on the House floor, Jim McGovern, a Democrat of Massachusetts, mocked Republicans’ assertions that they were entirely focused on policy concerns and emphasized the challenges of the current divided Congress. While Republicans hold a narrow majority in the House, Democrats control both the Senate and the White House.“I will say to my Republican friends: you are not in control of everything. You don’t have a dictatorship,” McGovern said. “If you want to get something done, we’re going to have to compromise.” More

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      Republicans unveil impeachment articles against head of homeland security

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      Republicans published two articles of impeachment against homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday, and plan to formally advance them on Tuesday towards a full House vote, despite two hearings failing to produce any evidence of his wrongdoing.The politically charged move comes amid a raging battle in Washington DC over immigration, with a senior Democrat announcing Sunday that senators had reached a bipartisan agreement to tighten border security, even as Donald Trump took credit for likely sinking it.The impeachment charges against Mayorkas allege, first, that he ignored laws passed by Congress and court orders, in order to pursue policies that led to a surge in illegal immigration; and second, that he breached the public trust by making false statements and obstructing oversight of the homeland security department.“Congress has a duty to see that the executive branch implements and enforces the laws we have passed. Yet Secretary Mayorkas has repeatedly refused to do so,” Tennessee Republican congressman Mark Green, chair of the House homeland security committee, said in a statement.A homeland security official responded by calling the charges “a sham” and a distraction from “other vital national security priorities”.“This markup is just more of the same political games from House homeland security committee Republicans,” the official said in a statement.“They don’t want to fix the problem; they want to campaign on it. That’s why they have undermined efforts to achieve bipartisan solutions and ignored the facts, legal scholars and experts, and even the Constitution itself in their quest to baselessly impeach Secretary Mayorkas.”Many Republicans have privately questioned the push to impeach Mayorkas, who would almost certainly be acquitted by the Democratic majority in the Senate, fearing it could negatively impact members of Congress running for re-election in marginal districts.No evidence was produced during two public House committee meetings to support Republicans’ allegations of “high crimes and misdemeanors”, while constitutional scholars have said the rare move to try to impeach a cabinet secretary for policy decisions was illegitimate.“If the members of the committee disapprove of the Biden administration’s immigration and border policies, the constitution gives this Congress a wealth of legislative powers to change them. Impeachment is not one of them,” Frank Bowman, a professor at the University of Missouri school of law, testified to the panel this month.Mayorkas has been a key player in the months-long bipartisan negotiations in the Senate for a border deal. Joe Biden’s administration has made concessions to Republican hardliners in an effort to secure their support for US aid for the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.On Friday, the president said he would not just sign the bill, but use the authority it would grant to close the southern border the day he signed it, in order to stem the flow of migrants.“What’s been negotiated would – if passed into law – be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country,” Biden said in a statement.Connecticut Democratic senator Chris Murphy, who led his party’s negotiating team, told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that a bipartisan deal had been reached and could face a vote in the coming days.“We are finalizing last pieces of text right now and this bill could be ready to be on the floor of the Senate next week. But it won’t be if Republicans decide that they want to keep this issue unsettled for political purposes,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I am hopeful that we will still have enough Republicans in the Senate who want to fix the problem at the border rather than just do Donald Trump’s bidding, but we will see over the next 24 to 48 hours.”Murphy was referring to the former president’s attempts to derail the bill as he seeks to lock down the Republican 2024 White House nomination and run an election campaign themed around Democrats’ perceived failure to solve the border crisis.Last week, Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader who has long supported the push for a deal, reportedly told colleagues in a closed-door meeting that the “politics on this have changed”, while Trump took credit for trying to blow up the agreement during a campaign speech in Nevada on Saturday.“A lot of the senators are trying to say, respectfully, they’re blaming it on me. I say, that’s okay. Please blame it on me. Please,” he said.Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker and a staunch Trump ally, has said any deal passed by the Senate would be “dead on arrival” in the House. Johnson is also blamed by Democrats for reigniting the once-stalled push to impeach Mayorkas, after the speaker announced last week that he would make it a priority.In a statement, the Congressional Integrity Project took aim at Johnson and Trump for trying to block the deal while at the same time attempting to impeach Mayorkas for failing to solve the border crisis.“Let us be clear, this bogus impeachment is as wrong as it is immoral and it will blow up in their faces,” the group said in a statement.“And if Republicans from swing districts, and especially districts Biden won in 2020, think they can quietly support this nonsense without repercussions, they are as delusional as Donald Trump.” More

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      Can Biden win back Iowa rural voters who shifted away from Democrats?

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      During the eight years he served in the Iowa state Senate, Tod Bowman was a self-described “door knocker”, trekking to the front porches and patios of constituents in the rural counties he represented to appeal for votes.They would, in turn, tell Bowman, a moderate Democrat, of their concerns – that government assistance programs amounted to a “handout”, that too many undocumented migrants were entering the country, that Barack Obama, the president for much of Bowman’s time in office, was planning to take their guns away. Occasionally, whoever opened the door would start interrogating Bowman before he even finished introducing himself.“Are you a Democrat or a Republican?” was the typical demand, Bowman remembered. The former high school teacher and wrestling coach came up with his own disarming reply: “I’m an Iowan.”By 2018, such encounters were happening more and more frequently, and that November, voters in the farms and small towns that made up Bowman’s eastern Iowa district replaced him with a Republican. While Bowman believes a combination of alienation from the national Democratic party and dislike of some bills he supported led to his defeat, he saw only one man to blame for the rising hostility he faced on the campaign trail.View image in fullscreen“Trump certainly made it almost acceptable in our psyches to name call, to lie, to manipulate, to be very aggressive instead of civil,” Bowman said in an interview at his house in the town of Maquoketa. “I really feel he’s changed politics, probably, if not forever, for a certain, significant period of time.”Beyond altering the tone of American politics, Donald Trump’s ascension to the helm of the Republican party undid progress Democrats had made in winning the trust of voters in rural areas nationwide, and many of their election victories ever since have relied on support from cities and suburbs. Whether this trend continues could prove crucial in deciding the victor of this year’s presidential election, where turnout in rural areas could tip swing states towards either Trump or Joe Biden. It will also play a role in determining control of the House of Representatives and the Senate, the latter of which Republicans are trying to gain by winning seats in Montana, West Virginia and Ohio.Few states exhibit the consequences of rural voters shifting away from Democrats better than Iowa. Once viewed by the party as a swing state, Trump won Iowa decisively in 2016 and carried 31 counties that had twice voted for Obama – the most of any single state. In the 2020 election, Biden won none of them back, and the president this year is not expected to campaign for victory in the Hawkeye state.The rise of Trump also undid a fragile tie that voters had unknowingly reached in Wyoming, a town of 523 people in Bowman’s district that was, at the end of 2015, the only community in Iowa with a population of more than 500 evenly split between registered Democrats and Republicans, according to a Des Moines Register analysis.The next year, Wyoming voters overwhelming voted for Trump. So, too, did the surrounding Jones county, which supported a Republican candidate for the first time in 28 years. Wyoming voted again for the New York real estate mogul in 2020, and today, there are more than twice as many registered Republicans than Democrats in town, according to the county auditor.“People are thinking that, you know, there’s a way to make a living, and there’s a way to do things, and I think it’s caused them to change parties. They’re tired of the way that the nation has been run,” the town’s mayor, Steve Agnitsch, a Republican, said by way of explanation for why Trump did so well with his neighbors.Tony Amsler, the chair of the county Democratic party, views the once-and-perhaps-future-president as a politician whose message seemed almost tailored to Iowa. “Democrats have traditionally been progressive when it comes to social issues. Iowans are very conservative when it comes to money. Those things are something, and then comes Donald Trump,” he said.“He certainly represented those who have been disenfranchised, those who think politics wasn’t listening to them. If you add this all together, you’ve got a juggernaut, and it’s hard to change direction.”The former president was the pick of Wyoming’s Republicans last week, when the Iowa caucuses were held. In the months preceding the first-in-the-nation contest, neither Trump nor any other candidate stopped in what is nicknamed “The Christmas City” for the lights Wyoming residents string all over its Main street each year. A few blocks of houses and businesses bisected by a state highway, Angitsch described his town as a community that is avoiding the stagnation that can grip the midwestern countryside. There are new buildings in its high school, the library is open five days a week and though Wyoming’s sole grocery store closed not long ago, a Dollar General was built just down the street.As for Trump, Biden, and their ilk, few in Wyoming believe either man, or anyone else in Washington DC for that matter, thinks much about the town.“We’re in podunkville. Nobody cares about the simple people in life,” said 67-year-old farmer Steve Wherry from a barstool at Rack’s Swinging Door, Wyoming’s main watering hole, where the television was showing a local news broadcast about Trump’s angry outbursts during his defamation trial in New York City that day.Wherry had voted for Trump in the past two presidential elections, and planned to do so for a third time in November, but with all the drama he heard from the news about the former president, he was less upbeat about his candidacy this time.View image in fullscreen“I think there’s people that are not gonna vote for him because of all the trials and all that stuff that’s going on, and there’s people that don’t think that he can guide this country in the right way,” Wherry said. “He’s got himself in trouble a little bit.”Sitting on the opposite end of the bar, 71-year-old retiree Craig Taylor said Trump’s troubles were enough to make him want to vote for someone else.“He’s all about the United States and the country, but they’re just not going to leave him alone,” said Taylor, who twice voted for Trump after supporting Obama in 2008.“We need to make America great again, but we need someone better than him to do it,” Taylor said, as he cracked open a Miller Light. But who? Conspiracy theorist and vaccine opponent Robert F Kennedy Jr was appealing, but Taylor didn’t think he would get much farther. “They’re not going to let him get in,” he said.Heather Campbell, a 39-year-old human resources manager, believed she had found a candidate who cared about communities like Wyoming in Tim Scott. Campbell saw the South Carolina senator speak when he visited her workplace in a nearby town, and was impressed by how he refrained from attacking any of his rivals.But Scott ended his campaign two months before the caucuses, deepening Campbell’s disillusionment with politics. “That’s what sucks,” she said, as she picked up dinner for her family. “He didn’t have the funding, he didn’t have the media funding, and that’s not right.”How communities like Wyoming ultimately vote can have ripple effects across the county. Republicans were able to create the current conservative supermajority on the supreme court only after Democratic senators were defeated in rural states like North and South Dakota, Missouri, Arkansas and Iowa, paving the way for the appointment of justices who have limited environmental regulation and allowed states to ban abortion.“The rural skew in especially the Senate and the electoral college is really shaping our institutions in a way that I don’t think people fully comprehend,” said Matt Hildreth, executive director of progressive group RuralOrganizing.org.Three years ago in Virginia, Republican Glenn Youngkin used strong support from the countryside to become governor of a blue state, while last year, a Democratic-aligned judge was elected to a crucial seat on Wisconsin’s supreme court, in part because of votes from the state’s smaller towns.In November, Democrats’ continued control of the Senate will hinge on the re-election of imperiled lawmakers from Montana and Ohio, both red states where rural voters are plenty. And in the expected rematch between Trump and Biden, turnout by right-leaning voters outside of population centers could determine if it is the former president or the current president at the inauguration next year.For Democrats, “You’re not looking to win some of these rural counties, you’re looking to cut the losses, maybe by two or three points, which could make a difference in a close race,” said Robin Johnson, an adjunct political science professor at Monmouth College in Illinois, who has consulted with the party on how to improve their rural support.View image in fullscreenIn his view, Democratic candidates have suffered in rural areas because they neglected campaign tactics that work. Chief among them: yard signs, which he says can greatly boost their visibility.“When I was working campaigns, you were taught that yard signs don’t vote. But in rural areas, it’s important because your neighbors notice. If you’ve got a sign up for a Democrat and you normally vote Republican, it kind of gives an okay to consider that person,” Johnson said.Two years ago, Amsler ran for a state house seat representing an area that included Wyoming. He met many voters who spoke approvingly of Biden and were supportive of his candidacy, but didn’t want to display a yard sign for his campaign.“I’m afraid of what those fanatics will do to my lawn, to my home,” they’d tell him.Amsler’s Republican opponent beat him handily, the same year the GOP gained a supermajority in the state senate, and defeated the last Democrat in its congressional delegation.“When I ran for office, I knew I would not win. I wanted to move the needle,” Amsler said. A year-and-a-half later, he’s not sure if he did. “What really concerns me is, we’ve had that real shift from purple to red.” More

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      US historians sign brief to support Colorado’s removal of Trump from ballot

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      Twenty-five historians of the civil war and Reconstruction filed a US supreme court brief in support of the attempt by Colorado to remove Donald Trump from the ballot under the 14th amendment, which bars insurrectionists from running for office.“For historians,” the group wrote, “contemporary evidence from the decision-makers who sponsored, backed, and voted for the 14th amendment [ratified in 1868] is most probative. Analysis of this evidence demonstrates that decision-makers crafted section three to cover the president and to create an enduring check on insurrection, requiring no additional action from Congress.”Lawyers for Trump argue that the presidency is not an “office” as described in the 14th amendment, that only congressional action can stop someone from running, and that Trump did not incite an insurrection.Trump was impeached in Congress (for the second time) for inciting an insurrection: the Capitol attack of 6 January 2021, an attempt to overturn defeat by Joe Biden now linked to nine deaths, more than 1,200 arrests and hundreds of convictions.Impeached with the support of 10 House Republicans but acquitted when only seven Senate Republicans voted to convict, Trump now dominates his party and its presidential primary, 91 criminal charges (17 for election subversion), civil trials and ballot challenges notwithstanding.Maine has also sought to remove Trump from its ballot, a ruling delayed, like that in Colorado, while the supreme court considers the issue. Oral arguments are set for 8 February.Amicus briefs allow interested parties to make relevant arguments. Earlier this month, nearly 180 Republicans joined a brief in support of Trump.The 25 historians – among them James McPherson of Princeton, the pre-eminent civil war scholar – pointed to 1860s congressional debate.“Senator Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, a Democratic opponent of the 14th amendment, challenged sponsors as to why section three omitted the president. Republican Lot Morrill of Maine … replied, ‘Let me call the senator’s attention to the words “or hold any office civil or military under the United States”.’ Johnson admitted his error; no other senator questioned whether section three covered the president.”The historians also cited Andrew Johnson, in 1868 the first president impeached, referring to himself as “chief executive officer”.Pointing out that section 3 of the 14th amendment is self-executing, and that “no former Confederate instantly disqualified from holding office under section three was disqualified by an act of Congress”, the historians also noted that Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, cited his own disqualification as reason an indictment for treason should be quashed.“Contemporary information provides direct evidence of the enduring reach of the 14th amendment,” the historians wrote. “Congress … chose to make disqualification permanent through a constitutional amendment.“Republican senator Peter Van Winkle of West Virginia said, ‘This is to go into our constitution and to stand to govern future insurrection as well as the present.’ To this end, the Amnesty Acts of 1872 and 1898 did not pardon future insurrectionists.”The historians also said “adverse consequences followed” amnesty, many ex-Confederates winning office and “participat[ing] in the imposition of racial discrimination in the south that vitiated the intent of the 14th and 15th amendments to protect the civil and political rights of the formerly enslaved people.”The historians concluded: “The court should take cognisance that section three of the 14th amendment covers the present, is forward-looking, and requires no additional acts of Congress for implementation.”Some political and legal observers have suggested Trump should be allowed to run regardless of the constitution, because to bar him would be anti-democratic.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a forthcoming article for the New York Review of Books, seen by the Guardian, Sean Wilentz of Princeton – an eminent historian not part of the supreme court brief – calls such arguments “risible”.“By their reasoning,” Wilentz writes, “Trump’s misdeeds aside, enforcement of the 14th amendment poses a greater threat to our wounded democracy than Trump’s candidacy. In the name of defending democracy, they would speciously enable the man who did the wounding and now promises to do much more.”Trump and allies including Elise Stefanik of New York, a House Republican leader, have refused to commit to certifying the result should Trump lose in November.Wilentz continues: “Whether motivated by … fear of Trump’s base, a perverted sense of democratic evenhandedness, a reflexive hostility toward liberals, or something else, [commentators who say Trump should stay on the ballot] betray a basic ignorance of the relevant history and thus a misconception of what the 14th amendment actually meant and means. That history, meanwhile, has placed the conservative members of the supreme court in a very tight spot.”Wilentz says justices who subscribe to originalism, a doctrine that “purports to divine the original intentions of the framers [of the constitution] by presenting tendentious renderings of the past as a kind of scripture”, will in the Colorado case have to contend with evidence – as presented by the historians’ brief – of what the framers of the 14th amendment meant.Recently used to remove the right to abortion and to gut voting rights, originalism now threatens, Wilentz says, to become a “petard … exploding in the majority’s face.”He also writes: “The conservative majority of the supreme court and the historical legacy of the [Chief Justice John] Roberts court have reached a point of no return. The law, no matter the diversions and claptrap of Trump’s lawyers and the pundits, is crystal clear, on incontestable historical as well as originalist grounds … the conservatives face a choice between disqualifying Trump or shredding the foundation of their judicial methodology.”If the court does not “honour the original meaning of the 14th amendment and disqualify Donald Trump”, Wilentz writes, “it will trash the constitutional defense of democracy designed following slavery’s abolition; it will guarantee, at a minimum, political chaos no matter what the voters decide in November; and it will quite possibly pave the way for a man who has vowed that he will, if necessary, rescind the constitution in order to impose a dictatorship of revenge.” More

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      The search for Trump’s running mate: ‘like auditions for The Apprentice’

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      The last person who occupied the job of US vice-president ended up the target of a violent mob calling for him to be hanged. Even so, as Donald Trump closes in on the Republican nomination for 2024, there is no shortage of contenders eager to be his deputy.It is safe to assume that Mike Pence, who was Trump’s running mate in 2016 and 2020, will not get the job this time. His refusal to comply with his boss’s demand to overturn the last election caused a permanent rift and made Pence a perceived traitor and target of the January 6 insurrectionists.Undeterred, Trump’s campaign surrogates in the recent Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, both of which he won handily, have been trying to outdo each other with extravagant displays of fealty. “It’s very clear he’s holding these open auditions like it’s The Apprentice,” said Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist. “He will flirt with everyone. He will make them dance. They will all debase themselves and humiliate themselves and jockey for that spot.”When he first ran for president in 2016, Trump understood that he needed a vice-presidential pick who could help shore up support among Republican evangelicals and social conservatives, who were suspicious of the thrice-married reality TV star. Pence, the then Indiana governor and fierce social conservative, was from what Trump likes to call central casting.This year Trump’s allies and Republican strategists believe that he needs help attracting suburban swing voters in a handful of battleground states, where November’s election will likely be decided. Many commentators therefore predict that he will choose a woman or a person of colour, especially since the demise of the constitutional right to abortion.Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, said one of the factors important to Trump is “just how much of a sycophant they would be, not just in terms of ‘Oh, I love you, Donald Trump’, but do you love me enough when I tell you to violate your oath of office in the constitution that you’ll do it?’ And that person for me is Elise Stefanik.”Stefanik, 39, the highest-ranking woman in the Republican conference in the House of Representatives and one of the first members of Congress to endorse Trump, appears to have timed her run perfectly.She gained national prominence last month after embarrassing the heads of three top universities about antisemitism on their campuses during a congressional hearing, which prompted two of them to later resign. Stefanik claimed victory and declared: “I will always deliver results.” Trump reportedly described her as a “killer”.Since then she has outdone even the notoriously obsequious Pence. Soon after Trump described those convicted of crimes in the insurrection as “hostages”, she parroted the same term on NBC television’s flagship Meet the Press programme. When Trump confused rival Nikki Haley with former House speaker Nancy Pelosi while discussing January 6, Stefanik brazenly denied what everyone had heard.Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “She’s running flat out for it. That’s the only explanation for the things she says and does. I’m embarrassed for her but she’s not embarrassed because she only has one career goal. She says whatever she thinks he’ll like. He does like it.”In what is currently Washington’s favourite parlour game, the smart money is currently on Stefanik. Bill Whalen, a former media consultant for politicians including the former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, said: “Just based on what she did at that congressional hearing, what could make Trump more pleased than watching her take apart the Ivy League presidents? That would be very appealing for him to put her on the ticket.”Another contender is Kristi Noem, serving her second term as South Dakota’s governor after a landslide re-election victory in 2022. She gained national attention after refusing to impose a statewide mask mandate during the coronavirus pandemic. Noem campaigned for Trump at several events in Iowa earlier this month.Then there is the South Carolina senator Tim Scott, who is African American and could help Trump make inroads among Black voters. Scott was a one-time Republican rival to Trump but dropped out of the race in November. He has since endorsed Trump and told him during his victory speech in New Hampshire: “I just love you!” He also just announced his engagement to be married.Other potential running mates are Trump’s former White House press secretary and current Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders; Ben Carson, who was Trump’s housing secretary; Kari Lake, who narrowly lost a gubernatorial bid in Arizona in 2022 and is now running for the Senate there; Florida congressman Byron Donalds; Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene; and Ohio senator JD Vance.There appears to be broad resistance to picking Haley, Trump’s former UN ambassador and his last rival for the Republican nomination. On 19 January she said being a running mate was “off the table” while Trump said he would “probably” not pick her. Since then relations between the two have soured with Trump using insults such as “birdbrain” and Haley critiquing his age and mental acuity.In addition, Haley’s hawkish views on foreign policy, including military aid for Ukraine, are anathema to Trump’s “America first” base. Rightwing broadcaster Tucker Carlson vowed recently: “I would not only not vote for that ticket, I would advocate against it as strongly as I could.”Trump has publicly said he has already made up his mind, but he is reportedly still calling friends, supporters and donors for advice on whom he should pick. The stakes are unusually high this time and the oft-quoted old saw from Franklin Roosevelt’s deputy John Nance Garner – “The vice-presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss” – may not apply in 2024: Biden is 81 and Trump is 77, meaning that a vice-president’s ability to assume command has never been more pertinent.Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution thinktank at Stanford University, said: “A wary, sceptical voter is going to be thinking: ‘OK, what happens if … ?’ It makes the choice of the running mate all the more important.“We talk about this every election and we then dismiss it as voters don’t really think that way. But it’s on the table in this election in ways it hasn’t been in the past because you are focusing on the candidate’s health and their mental faculty, and the chance that one or both could not finish out a term.“That does lead to a different calculation with Trump in this regard. It’s not so much about picking up some electoral votes or reaching out to a group. It is the question of picking somebody who credibly can say they’re ready to lead from day one. You would think their chops would be more important than just their demographic.”Trump may not be in a hurry to make a final decision. The longer he dangles the prospect of the vice-presidency, the more that aspirants will genuflect and make elaborate attempts to get in his good graces.Wendy Schiller, a political scientist at Brown University, agreed. She said: “He doesn’t think he needs anybody to win this election so my guess is he’ll require lots of prominent people to come and pay homage to him. Then he’ll wait for the convention [in July] to announce it because he wants to make clear that VP – that they’re irrelevant. Generally, we worry more who his VP will be than he does.” More

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      Biden vows to ‘shut down the border’ if Senate immigration bill is passed

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      Joe Biden said on Friday that the border deal being negotiated in the US Senate was the “toughest and fairest” set of reforms possible and vowed to “shut down the border” the day he signs the bill.The bipartisan talks have hit a critical point amid mounting Republican opposition. Some Republicans have set a deal on border security as a condition for further Ukraine aid.Earlier in the day, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, said the deal is “dead on arrival” in its current form, according to a letter to Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives reviewed by Reuters.Biden, a Democrat seeking another term in the 5 November elections, has grappled with record numbers of migrants caught illegally crossing the US-Mexico border during his presidency. Republicans contend Biden should have kept the restrictive policies of Republican former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for his party’s nomination.“What’s been negotiated would – if passed into law – be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country,” Biden said in a statement.“It would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.”The White House has agreed to new limits on asylum at the border, including the creation of an expulsion power that would allow migrants who cross the US-Mexico border illegally to be rapidly returned to Mexico if migrant encounters surpass 4,000 per day, three sources familiar with the matter said.If encounters pass 5,000 per day, the use of the expulsion authority would become mandatory, according to the sources who requested anonymity to discuss details of the private negotiations.In December, encounters averaged more than 9,500 per day, according to US government statistics released on Friday.The sweeping authority would be comparable to the Covid-era Title 42 policy put in place under Trump during the pandemic and which ended under Biden in May 2023.Migrants trying to claim asylum would still be able to do so at legal border crossings if the expulsion power was in effect, one of the sources said.The US would be required to allow at least 1,400 migrants per day to approach legal crossings to claim asylum if the expulsions were in effect, the source added.The bill aims to resolve asylum claims in six months without detaining migrants, the source said, faster than the current process, which can take years.Trump, however, took to social media last week to warn against any deal that fails to deliver everything Republicans want to shut down border crossings.Biden also urged Congress on Friday to provide the funding he asked for in October to secure the border.“This includes an additional 1,300 border patrol agents, 375 immigration judges, 1,600 asylum officers, and over 100 cutting-edge inspection machines to help detect and stop fentanyl at our south-west border,” the president said. More

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      Trump’s ‘achilles heel’? Haley’s refusal to drop out infuriates ex-president

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      It was a moment for Donald Trump to be gracious, magnanimous, perhaps even presidential. Instead he lashed out at his opponent’s clothes. “When I watched her in the fancy dress that probably wasn’t so fancy, I said, ‘What’s she doing? We won,’” he said of rival Nikki Haley in New Hampshire on Tuesday night.Trump had just won the first primary election of 2024 and all but clinched the Republican nomination for US president. Party leaders and campaign surrogates are now eager to banish Haley to irrelevance, move on from the primary and unify against Democrats. They want Trump to pivot to an almost inevitable rematch with Democrat Joe Biden in November.Yet the 77-year-old remains consumed with rage over Haley’s unwillingness to quit the race. His petulance offers a reminder of the unhinged behaviour that turned off independent voters in New Hampshire and could prove to be a liability in a head-to-head contest with Biden. It is also at odds with what is an unusually professional and disciplined campaign operation.Wendy Schiller, a political scientist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “Donald Trump wants the race to be over and we see evidence of why that’s important for the Trump campaign from his speech, which was essentially a train wreck and exhibited all the worst tendencies of Donald Trump. It was an undisciplined Trump and this is what turns off independent voters.”She added: “This is the achilles heel for the Trump campaign and they know it. The sooner this gets wrapped up then he doesn’t have any more of those impromptu late night speeches. Their worry is not that they’re not going to win the nomination; their worry is the damage that Trump having to respond to Haley will do in the general election with independent voters.”Trump’s investment of emotion and energy in attacking Haley is wildly out of proportion for the minimal threat that Haley poses. He won the Iowa caucuses in a landslide – she was third – and beat her by double digits in New Hampshire. No other Republican candidate in history who won the first two contests has failed to clinch his party’s nomination. His dominance looks set to render the next five months of primaries irrelevant.Newt Gingrich, a former House of Representatives speaker and ex-presidential candidate, said: “Trump’s best strategy is to assume he is the nominee and go straight at Biden and ignore Haley, let her flounder around until she either runs out of money or realises that there is no future. She’ll presently disappear.”Republicans have coalesced around the former president, putting pressure on Haley to step aside. She is not competing in next month’s Nevada caucuses. Trump has racked up endorsements from most of South Carolina’s leading Republicans and opinion polls show him with a big lead in the state, which has a strong base of Christian evangelicals, ahead of the primary on 24 February.View image in fullscreenYet Haley, 52, a former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the UN, is soldiering on. She tweeted on Thursday: “Underestimate me, that’s always fun.” Next week she is scheduled for a fundraising tour that includes stops in New York, Florida, California, Texas and South Carolina. She is expected to continue to draw donor support as Never Trumpers within the party make a last stand and hope he could yet be derailed by the 91 criminal charges against him.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “I do know some of her donors and my guess is they want her staying in to put Trump through his paces. They don’t put it on the record but they think there’s a reasonable chance that something will happen to Trump, either health-wise or conviction to the extent that he can no longer be the nominee.”Haley describes herself as “scrappy”, continues to hold rallies and is becoming more aggressive in her denunciations of Trump. On Wednesday she launched a $4m advertising campaign in South Carolina describing the prospect of a Biden v Trump election as “a rematch no one wants”. Its narrator says: “Biden – too old. Trump – too much chaos. There’s a better choice for a better America.”How long can she last? Michael Steele, a Trump critic and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “My bet is two weeks. You really want to go into that race in your home state and lose by 30 or 40 points? Where is the political viability after that? We’ve seen candidates who run actual general election presidential campaigns and they lose their home state and we never heard from them again.”Haley’s tenacity has enraged Trump. He has branded her “birdbrain”. He has threatened to blacklist anyone who donates to her campaign. He has railed against her frequently on social media, writing: “Could somebody please explain to Nikki that she lost – and lost really badly. She also lost Iowa, BIG, last week. They were, as certain non-fake media say, ‘CRUSHING DEFEATS.’”The insults and outbursts are a reminder of why Trump alienated moderate voters in the past. While his win in New Hampshire was historic, it also exposed general election vulnerabilities, showing him to be highly popular with Republicans but highly unpopular with independents, who were allowed to take part in the Republican primary under the state’s rules.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere has never been such a wide gap between the Republican vote and the independent vote in a New Hampshire Republican primary. According to CNN’s exit polls, Trump won Republican voters by 74% to 25%, but Haley won independents 58% to 39%.Forty-two per cent of voters said they would not consider Trump to be fit for office if he were convicted of a crime. An analysis by Fox News found that 35% of voters in New Hampshire would be so dissatisfied with a Trump nomination that they would not vote for him in November.Steele, a host on the MSNBC cable news network, added: “There’s 91 indictments hanging over this guy. Of course he’s vulnerable but everyone wants to keep puffing him up like he’s some tiger or some lion. It’s just ridiculous.“I just wish people would get honest about what’s in front of them. This guy is vulnerable as hell. He’s weak as hell. But in reality TV land, he’s the guy that fires people: he’s rough, he’s tough, he’s single-minded. No, he’s a petulant little boy who shows that petulance when he’s challenged.”Biden’s campaign is working on the premise that Trump will be the nominee. He has delivered two major speeches about the threat that Trump poses to democracy and the dangerous rise of white supremacy. This week he held a joint event with his vice-president, Kamala Harris, in Virginia to promote reproductive freedom, highlighting Trump’s role in the supreme court’s Dobbs decision that overturned the constitutional right to abortion.Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist, said: “The Dobbs decision basically became this before-and-after moment in American politics where there just became this sense that the Republican party had become too ugly, too extreme, too dangerous, and it has struggled mightily in election after election since the spring of 2022.”He added: “You’re starting to see, even in the early going here, there is a lot more weakness than strength coming out of the Republican party in the last couple of weeks. It’s because Maga [Make America great again] has become unattractive even to Republican voters. Fear and opposition to Maga is the most powerful force in American politics. It’s why Republicans keep losing, and Republicans have chosen a candidate who is ultra-Maga to be their nominee in 2024.” More