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      Rosalynn Carter memorial service: Jimmy Carter joins mourners at Atlanta church – as it happened

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      Former president Jimmy Carter was in attendance at the tribute service for his wife, Rosalynn Carter:Carter turned 99 in October, and has been in hospice in his home town of Plains, Georgia, since February.Here’s the moment he arrived at the church for the ceremony:Mourners including Joe and Jill Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Melania Trump and Georgia’s two Democratic senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock paid tribute to former first lady Rosalynn Carter at a ceremony in Atlanta. Back in Washington DC, House Democrats called up a resolution to expel fraudster George Santos from the chamber that must be voted on within two days, while the chamber’s Republican leaders are reportedly considering holding a vote on a separate resolution Thursday.Here’s what else has been happening today:
      Jimmy Carter was in attendance at the memorial service in Atlanta. The 99-year-old former president has been receiving hospice care since February.
      Amy Carter spoke about her parents’ love for each other, and read from a letter her father wrote to Rosalynn while he was serving in the navy.
      Nikki Haley received the endorsement of Koch-affiliated Super Pac Americans for Prosperity Action, in a potential boost for her quest to overtake Donald Trump in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
      Santos insists he will not resign, while the House resolution to expel him needs two-thirds majority support to pass.
      Trump and Santos aren’t so different, a biographer of the New York congressman says.
      Back in Congress, Punchbowl News reports that the House’s Republican leadership is considering taking up GOP lawmaker Michael Guest’s resolution to expel George Santos on Thursday:Passing Guest’s resolution would make the separate motion proposed by Democrat Robert Garcia moot. It remains to be seen if either proposal has the two-thirds majority support necessary to pass.Here are a few photos as the tribute to Rosalynn Carter wrapped up in Atlanta:Pallbearers have loaded Rosalynn Carter’s casket into a hearse, which is now departing the tribute ceremony.Her funeral is scheduled for tomorrow in Plains, Georgia, the Carters’s hometown. That ceremony and her burial at the family residence are restricted to family and friends, according to the Carter Center.The tribute to Rosalynn Carter is nearing its conclusion in Atlanta.The closing benediction was given by Tony Lowden, a pastor at the church the Carters attended in Plains, Georgia, who made a point to acknowledge the work of the Secret Service agents who guarded the former president and his family during his time in office, and in the decades since:
      Oftentimes, Mr. President, we don’t acknowledge those who keep us safe. Rosalynn Carter is in heaven, and she did the work of the Lord and the kingdom all around the world. And Don and all the directors for 46 years got her and her family home safe. And I say thank each and every one of you, those that are standing post and those that are listening on the radios right now. Thank you and she loves you and a nothing you can do about it.
      Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter’s grandson Jason, a former Georgia state senator, spoke about his grandmother’s work fighting Guinea worm disease, as well as advocating for better mental health care.“Her advocacy for mental health was a 50-year climb that is as remarkable as any other and has been mentioned already. But if you imagine just how far our society has come in the last five years on issues of mental health, and you think that she decided in 1970 to tackle the anxious and stigma associated with mental illness, it is remarkable how far she could see and how far she was willing to walk,” Carter said. “And that effort changed lives and it saved lives, including in my own family. She was made for these long journeys.”Jason Carter continued:
      John Lewis once said that in all of his marches, he only really learned one thing: Don’t let them turn you around. That was my grandmother to a tee. One of my last memories of her was in a hospital. We were there for my grandfather, but she had her own physical limitations that made it hard for her to walk. She had to practice. She was ready to go for one of these walks and she picked up this cane and I looked at the cane. She looked at me and she said, ‘you know it’s not a cane … it’s a trekking pole’ She said, ‘the exact same kind that those women use when they go to the South Pole.’
      I watched her walk down that hall with that trekking pole. I followed her and I just pray that we never lose sight of that path.
      Back in Georgia, Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter’s daughter Amy Carter spoke about the importance of love in their relationship:“My mom spent most of her life in love with my dad,” she said. “Their partnership and love story was a defining feature of her life. Because he is unable to speak to you today, I’m going to share some of his words about loving and missing. This is from a letter he wrote 75 years ago while he was serving in the navy”:
      My darling, every time I have ever been away from you, I had been thrilled when I returned to discover just how wonderful you are. While I’m away I tried to convince myself that you really are not could not be as sweet and beautiful as I remember. But when I see you I fall in love with you all over again. Does that seem strange to you? It doesn’t to me. Goodbye darling. Until tomorrow, Jimmy.
      Two House Democratic lawmakers have moved to force a vote within 48 hours on a resolution to expel Republican congressman and admitted fabulist George Santos from the chamber.California’s Robert Garcia introduced the resolution earlier this year, and together with New York’s Dan Goldman have called it up as a privileged resolution, meaning it must be voted on within the next two days. While it will need a two-thirds majority vote of the chamber to pass, momentum to oust Santos has increased in the past weeks following the release of an ethics committee report that found “grave and pervasive campaign finance violations and fraudulent activity” by the New York Republican.“The time has finally come to remove George Santos from Congress. If we’re going to restore faith in government, we must start with restoring integrity in the U.S. House of Representatives,” Garcia said in a statement.Added Goldman: “George Santos is an admitted liar, fraud, and cheat, and the recent Ethics Committee report confirms what we’ve long known: George Santos is wholly unfit for public office.”Former president Jimmy Carter was in attendance at the tribute service for his wife, Rosalynn Carter:Carter turned 99 in October, and has been in hospice in his home town of Plains, Georgia, since February.Here’s the moment he arrived at the church for the ceremony:Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s son, James “Chip” Carter is speaking now at his mother’s memorial service.He called Rosalynn the glue that held the family together “through the ups and downs and thicks and thins” of family life and politics.Chip Carter, 73, recalled that when he was 14 he used to get beaten up for wearing a sticker supporting Lyndon Johnson for president.But he said his mother would mend his shirt torn in the fight and replace the sticker for him, as he supported the Democratic Party cause.He also said that Rosalynn Carter “was influential in getting me into rehab for drug and alcohol addiction. She saved my life.”He called Jimmy Carter’s loss in the 1980 election to the Republican ticket of Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush “devastating to us all.”Chip Carter just mentioned that his mother was “racked with dementia” prior to her death last month.The memorial service for first lady Rosalynn Carter is now under way, with the call to worship and invocation.The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus just gave the patient congregation a stirring rendition of America the Beautiful, as Carter’s casket entered the church.The setting is the Glenn Memorial United Methodist church on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.The sunlight is streaming through the windows and illuminating many on the left-hand side of the congregation.The front row in the church is now occupied with the leadership names of the day.Jimmy Carter, 99, has just entered, semi-recumbent on a sort of wheeled chair-bed. He is at one end of the row. Joe Biden is close by with, to the president’s right, Jill Biden, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, Michelle Obama and Melania Trump.The choir is now singing America the Beautiful, as Rosalynn Carter’s casket has been brought in and placed at the front of the church.The hearse has pulled up to the steps of the church and the military guard is marching forward to lift the coffin and take it in to the service.Rosalynn Carter’s flower-decorated coffin is now being carried. The political leaders past and present are now in the church. More details shortly.Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, a Republican, has just entered the church and taken a pew.Georgia’s Democratic US Senators, Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff have also entered and found a seat.We await the biggest names of the day. It’s a brilliantly sunny day with a cloudless, bright blue sky above the church on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta.Things are clearly running a little behind schedule before the start of the memorial service for Rosalynn Carter.It’s due to start at 1pm ET but there are still at least five rows at the front of the church in Atlanta empty and clearly waiting for their VIP occupants.The congregation that’s there so far was just treated to some Elgar from the orchestra and now something of a hush has descended upon the church, apart from a bit of hold music. We await the arrival of the courtege.Guests are filing in to the Glenn Memorial church in Atlanta for the tribute service to former first lady Rosalynn Carter. Her husband Jimmy Carter will attend, as will Joe and Jill Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Melania Trump and Georgia’s two Democratic senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. None of the group is scheduled to speak at the event, which will instead feature eulogies from Carter family members and people who knew the former first lady. Back in Washington DC, House Democrats are expected to propose a resolution to expel fraudster George Santos from the chamber that must be brought up for consideration within two days. We’ll be watching for signs of if the resolution has the support to pass.Here’s what else has been happening today:
      Nikki Haley received the endorsement of Koch-affiliated Super Pac Americans for Prosperity Action, in a potential boost for her quest to overtake Donald Trump in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
      Santos insists he will not resign, while the House resolution to expel him needs two-thirds majority support to pass.
      Trump and Santos aren’t so different, a biographer of the New York congressman says.
      Reporters traveling with Joe Biden say the president and first lady have arrived at Glenn Memorial church in Atlanta ahead of the tribute service for Rosalynn Carter.Traveling with them are a number of current and former elected officials, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Georgia’s two Democratic senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. Jimmy Carter is also expected to attend, though is not reported to be traveling with the president, as is former first lady Melania Trump.As guests are filing in, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is running through some of Rosalynn Carter’s favorite songs, including compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach.In Atlanta, guests are arriving for this afternoon’s tribute service to former first lady Rosalynn Carter. Here are some photos ahead of the event, which begins at 1pm: More

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      in US Politics

      Nikki Haley wins Koch endorsement for Republican presidential nomination

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      The influential rightwing US billionaire Charles Koch endorsed Nikki Haley for the Republican presidential nomination, choosing the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador over Donald Trump, the clear frontrunner, and Ron DeSantis, the hard-right Florida governor.“The moment we face requires a tested leader with the governing judgment and policy experience to pull our nation back from the brink,” Emily Seidel, senior adviser to Americans for Prosperity Action, the political arm of the Koch network, wrote in a memo first reported by the New York Times.“Nikki Haley is that leader.”Trump is the clear leader in polling, nationally and in battleground states. But Haley has climbed into second, passing DeSantis with assured debate-stage performances (in contests Trump skipped) and consequent fundraising success.In her memo, Seidel lamented recent Republican electoral defeats widely seen to be fueled by Trumpist extremism and by the conservative movement as a whole on issues prominently including threats to abortion rights.“Republicans have been nominating bad candidates who are going against America’s core principles [a]nd voters are rejecting them,” the Americans for Prosperity memo said.But Seidel also accused Democrats of “responding with extreme policies that also cut against core American principles” and said voters wanted to “move on” from a political era represented by Trump and Joe Biden, who contested the 2020 election.Polls do show that more Americans think Biden is too old for a second Oval Office term, at 81, than think the same about Trump, who is 77.Seidel wrote, “Our internal polling confirms what our activists are hearing and seeing from voters in the early primary states: Nikki Haley is in the best position to defeat Donald Trump in the primaries.“Between her surging to second place in the polls since August and being well-positioned among supporters of the other candidates, she is in a strong position to gather more support.“In addition, our internal polling consistently shows that Nikki Haley is by far the strongest candidate Republicans could put up against Joe Biden in a general election – winning every key battleground state and up nationally by nearly 10 points.“While our polling shows Donald Trump loses to Joe Biden, Nikki Haley outperforms Trump by eight to 14 points in the key presidential battleground states.”Haley, Seidel said, could also “boost [Republican] candidates up and down the ballot, winning the key independent and moderate voters that Trump has no chance to win”.The Koch network was not expected to back Trump, having indicated its wish for a new candidate in a similar memo earlier this year.On Tuesday, a Trump spokesperson called Americans for Prosperity “the political arm of the China First, America Last movement”, which was spending “shady money [and choosing] to endorse a pro-China, open borders, and globalist candidate in Nikki ‘Birdbrain’ Haley”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHaley was appointed to her former UN role by Trump. The 51-year-old said she was “honoured to have the support of Americans for Prosperity Action, including its millions of grassroots members all across the country … We have a country to save.”A DeSantis spokesperson said the Koch endorsement showed the conservative “establishment … lining up behind a moderate who has no mathematical pathway of defeating the former president.“Every dollar spent on Nikki Haley’s candidacy should be reported as an in-kind [contribution] to the Trump campaign. No one has a stronger record of beating the establishment than Ron DeSantis, and this time will be no different.”Among commentators, Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, issued a warning over claims that Haley is a conservative moderate.“Perennial memo to reporters and editors: any reference to Nikki Haley as a ‘moderate’ is journalistic malpractice,” Ornstein wrote. “National abortion ban. Slash social security and Medicare. Blow up the federal workforce. Helluva platform.”But Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic pollster, suggested that the Koch network may not be throwing its endorsement away.Offering “a reminder to everyone writing about Nikki Haley today”, Rosenberg said: “Trump is only at 60% in the primary now. 40% of Republicans are not currently supporting him. This is a big number.“Trump is under 50% in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina [the first three states to vote]. A majority of Republicans in these early states are not supporting him.” More

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      in Elections

      Georgia prosecutors oppose plea deals for Trump, Meadows and Giuliani

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      Fulton county prosecutors do not intend to offer plea deals to Donald Trump and at least two high-level co-defendants charged in connection with their efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, according to two people familiar with the matter, preferring instead to force them to trial.The individuals seen as ineligible include Trump, his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani.Aside from those three, the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis has opened plea talks or has left open the possibility of talks with the remaining co-defendants in the hope that they ultimately decide to become cooperating witnesses against the former president, the people said.The previously unreported decision has not been communicated formally and could still change, for instance, if prosecutors shift strategy. But it signals who prosecutors consider their main targets, and how they want to wield the power of Georgia’s racketeering statute to their advantage.A spokesperson for the district attorney’s office declined to comment.Trump and 18 co-defendants in August originally pleaded not guilty to a sprawling indictment that charged them with violating the Rico statute in seeking to reverse his 2020 election defeat in the state, including by advancing fake Trump electors and breaching voting machines.In the weeks that followed, prosecutors reached plea deals in quick succession with the former Trump lawyers Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and Kenneth Chesebro – who all gave “proffer” statements that were damaging to Trump to some degree – as well as the local bail bondsman Scott Hall.The plea deals underscore the strategy that Willis has refined over successive Rico prosecutions: extending offers to lower-level defendants in which they plead guilty to key crimes and incriminate higher-level defendants in the conspiracy pyramid.As the figure at the top of the alleged conspiracy, Trump was always unlikely to get a deal. But the inclusion of Meadows and Giuliani on that list, at least for now, provides the clearest roadmap to date of how prosecutors intend to take the case to trial.The preference for the district attorney’s office remains to flip as many of the Trump co-defendants as possible, one of the people said, and prosecutors have asked the Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee to set the final deadline for plea deals as far back as June 2024.At least some of the remaining co-defendants are likely to reach plea deals should they fall short in their pre-trial attempts to extricate themselves from Trump, including trying to have their individual cases transferred to federal court, or have their individual charges dismissed outright.The prosecutors on the Trump case appear convinced that they are close to gaining more cooperating witnesses. In recent weeks, one of the people said, prosecutors privately advised the judge to delay setting a trial date because some co-defendants may soon plead out, one of the people said.On Monday, former Trump lawyer and co-defendant John Eastman asked the judge to allow him to go to trial separately from the former president, and earlier than the August 2024 trial date proposed by prosecutors. Eastman also asked for the final plea deal deadline to be moved forward.The court filing from Eastman reflected the apparent trepidation among a growing number of Trump allies charged in Fulton county about standing trial alongside Trump as a major Rico ringleader, a prospect widely seen as detrimental to anyone other than Trump.In a statement, Trump’s lawyer Steve Sadow suggested the former president was uninterested in reaching a deal. “Any comment by the Fulton county district attorney’s office offering ‘deals’ to President Trump is laughable because we wouldn’t accept anything except dismissal,” Sadow said.But the lack of a plea deal would be a blow to Meadows. The Guardian previously reported that the former Trump White House chief of staff has been “in the market” for a deal in Georgia after he managed to evade charges in the federal 2020 election subversion case in Washington after testifying under limited-use immunity.It was unclear why prosecutors are opposed to negotiating with Meadows, though the fact that he only testified in Washington after being ordered by a court suggested he might only be a reluctant witness. Meadows’s local counsel did not respond to a request for comment on Monday night.The lawyers for Giuliani, meanwhile, have long said he never expected a plea deal offer. Giuliani’s associates have also suggested he wanted to remain loyal to Trump, who is scheduled to host a dinner at Mar-a-Lago in December to raise money to pay for his compounding legal debts. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘George Santos models himself pretty directly off Trump’ – biographer Mark Chiusano

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      “I always thought it would be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.” So says Matt Damon in the title role of The Talented Mr Ripley, the Oscar-winning film from 1999. The line would make a fitting political epitaph for George Santos, the New York Republican facing imminent expulsion from Congress after a scathing House ethics committee report cited “overwhelming evidence” of lawbreaking.Santos, 35, also faces federal charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, false statements, falsification of records, aggravated identity theft and credit card fraud, in a 23-count indictment in his home state. If convicted, he is likely to spend years in prison.“This story is a tragedy,” says Mark Chiusano, author of The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos, a book published this week. “He is someone who is clearly very ambitious and wants to live a kind of wealthy life, a life of fame and notoriety, and he is trying to attain essentially a version of the American dream, which so many people have sought over the years.“The sad thing is that he realises pretty early on that he’s not going to get there, he’s not going to be able to make a ton of money on Wall Street, he’s not going to be as famous as The Real Housewives, for example. Because of the difficulty and grittiness of the usual road to the American dream, he decides to go a different route.“He starts making everything up, rather than [be like] members of his family who just kept their heads down and worked hard and tried to build a life. He tries to take this shortcut and the shortcut eventually catches up with him and it’s a real tragedy. He has no one to blame but himself but he is in a very difficult place now.”Chiusano, 33, covered Santos at Newsday, a newspaper serving Long Island. He first spoke to Santos by phone in 2019, when he was announcing a run for Congress. When Chiusano asked where the launch would happen, he was surprised to hear Santos say right now – even though the candidate was in Florida.The author recalls: “That was the first strangeness of him and then I kept writing about other strange things he was doing. It was unclear where he lived, whether he even really lived in the district, his QAnon slogan promoting – all sorts of strange things for the next two cycles.”Like Ripley, Chiusano discovered that Santos can be charming. “One of the things that almost everyone I talked to who knew him said is he’s very charismatic and it’s true. He has a big personality. He’s a tall man. He makes friends easily. He’s a fun guy to hang out with.“I got a little bit of that sense in our phone calls but the flip side is that he can turn nasty and cutting very quickly, which he certainly did with his financial victims and to a lesser extent with me, just starting to get more critical and angry, and I’m sure there’s more of that to come once the book comes out.”Santos did not cooperate for the book.‘This hustling, grifting lifestyle’In 2020, up against an incumbent, Santos lost the election by more than 12 points. But two years later the incumbent was gone, redistricting worked in Republicans’ favour and there was local frustration over Covid and crime. Santos won New York’s third congressional district, which encompasses parts of Nassau county and Queens.His biography came under intense scrutiny – and began to fall apart. Among his most spectacular lies: his grandparents fled the Holocaust; his mother was caught up in the 9/11 attacks in New York; he was the “star” of the Baruch College volleyball team; he worked for the Wall Street firms Citigroup and Goldman Sachs; he was a producer on the failed Broadway show Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark; he “lost four employees” in the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida; the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.Furthermore, it emerged that in 2008 Santos, who has deployed an array of pseudonyms, was charged by Brazilian prosecutors for using a fake name and a stolen chequebook to buy goods including tennis shoes. Also, in 2016 he allegedly took $3,000 from an online fundraiser intended to help save the life of a dog owned by a disabled military veteran.It seems there was no “loss of innocence” or “turning point” for Santos. Raised in New York by Brazilian migrants, he was always a fabulist leaving a trail of victims.“One thing that struck me in reporting the book is how committed he was to this hustling, grifting lifestyle from a very early age,” Chiusano says.When Santos was in high school, he cheated his sister’s 16-year-old friend, who spoke little English, out of video game equipment and technology worth hundreds of dollars.“This kid saw Santos as a kind of older brother figure, a mentor looking out for him, which is a through line with Santos: he’ll befriend you and be very charming and charismatic before he turns. He did turn on this kid and the kid ended up going back to Brazil pretty empty-handed.”Not even Santos’s family was safe. Chiusano adds: “I write in the book about how he mooches off his very elderly and religiously devout grandmother, who’s living in Brazil. He gets money off her to fund his fun lifestyle in Brazil as a late adolescent teenager.“In New York he is stealing from his Aunt Elma, who again is this woman who worked very hard to build a life in New York and seems to have doted on Santos and he used that to his benefit. This commitment to doing whatever he can to make a couple of bucks is a through line in his life up to the present.”Interviewees agreed that this goes beyond everyday grifting. “A story that I heard many times was a version of: ‘Santos was talking to me and told me X and not only was it fake but he really believed it.’ The idea that he believed the lies he was telling was something that many people thought was the case.”Chiusano spent weeks in Brazil tracking down people who remember Santos as a drag queen and beauty pageant hopeful.“The Brazil piece of his story was important to the book because it shows Santos at this major moment of his development, which is that he’s in Brazil away from the New York life he knew. No one knows who he is that well so he can pretend to be this other person.“He pretends to be a very wealthy person, someone who’s on his way up in the world, using his American background to seem more impressive than he actually is. I talked to a lot of people down there who knew him and this, of course, is when he is experimenting with dressing in drag.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This has been a controversial part of Santos’s story. There’s a couple of famous pictures and videos of him dancing in drag but he claims that these pictures are all that there was. That was not what I found when I went down there and talked to people who remembered him as a drag queen.”Santos is married to a man named Matt. Yet he has endorsed Florida’s hardline “don’t say gay” bill and aligned himself with far-right Republicans who scaremonger about drag queens in schools and advocate book bans. Does he have any true political convictions or are these, too, just an act?Chiusano finds it hard to say. “He has flipped on so many things. He’s flip-flopped on abortion. He claims that he was no rightwinger and now he is very much associated with the far right of the Republican party. He’s definitely flipped and he’ll definitely say whatever he needs to satisfy an audience.“But there do seem to be some core conservative beliefs. Many members of his family are pretty conservative. They’re pretty pro-[Jair] Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil who’s very conservative. I don’t think that he is secretly a super-lefty guy who is making this up. He’s conservative but he takes any opportunity that is laid in his path.”Santos belongs to what Chiusano dubs “the shamelessness caucus” in Congress, along with provocateurs such as Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. “They are there mostly to get more attention for themselves,” Chiusano says. “They don’t seem to have so much interest in governing and he has joined them, sometimes voting in concert with them, co-sponsoring bills with them. Obviously a lot of people are very angry at him in Congress and are not giving him the time of day but he does have these friends on the far right.”Long obsessed with celebrity – his old tweets betray a fascination with Miley Cyrus, Paris Hilton and The Real Housewives – Santos got rich in a political era in which fame is the ultimate currency.“Some of these more shameless members feel a sense of impunity, that it doesn’t matter what they say,” Chiusano says. “In fact, the crazier that they sound, the more social media clout they have.“This is the result of breakdown of all these American institutions including the media and the party system, which used to be gatekeepers that helped give voters a better sense of here’s who this person is, but also weeding out candidates who should not have gotten to higher office. This is a very modern thing and he is a symptom of the disease. He’s not the disease itself.”‘A scary idea’There is not much doubt about Santos’s political mentor: Donald Trump.Chiusano continues: “Santos models himself pretty directly off Trump. Trump is this almost sui generis figure who is kind of shaping the Republican party and he himself is the result of all these other political forces outside himself. But Trump is a person who was already famous and already had at least a perception of being very rich and certainly had more resources that Santos did.“You can see how someone like that was able to harness these crazy political forces and become president. What’s interesting to me is the Santos story shows that even a regular person can be lying and shameless and get to office and that is, in some senses, almost scarier than someone like Trump being able to do it. If there can be many Trumps who aren’t as rich and powerful as Trump and still lie their way to office, that’s a scary idea.”But it does not appear that Santos could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes. The House ethics committee detailed extravagant – and possibly illegal – spending of campaign money, including thousands of dollars on Botox, luxury brands such as Hermès, and “smaller purchases” from OnlyFans, an online platform known for sexual content.Consequently, Santos looks set to be expelled from Congress, as even Republicans run out of patience, and has said he will not run again. He has no Trump-style option to pardon himself. But Chiusano does not believe this is the last the world will hear of George Santos.“These charges are very significant and he’s facing an uphill battle but he wouldn’t be in jail for a hundred years, like Sam Bankman-Fried seems likely to be. As far as we know now, if he’s convicted, he’ll get out as a relatively young man. I definitely see a second act for him, maybe not in elected politics but certainly in the Dancing with the Stars/rightwing podcast game. It would be back to his original love of celebrity.”
      The Fabulist is published in the US by One Signal/Atria More

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      in US Politics

      Joe Biden and first lady ‘horrified’ by Vermont shooting of three Palestinian students – as it happened

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      Joe and Jill Biden as well as Vermont’s congressional delegation condemned the weekend shooting of three Palestinian students in the northeastern state’s most-populous city Burlington, while police announced an arrest was made in the case yesterday. It was an otherwise quiet day in Washington DC, but it won’t stay that way for long. The House will perhaps as soon as Wednesday vote on kicking admitted fabulist George Santos out of the chamber after a damning report from its ethics panel, while the Senate is gearing up to consider Biden’s request for more than $100b to fund border security and military assistance to Ukraine and Israel.Here’s what else happened today:
      Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, reportedly said he discussed “options” with Santos ahead of the expected expulsion vote.
      A rift is emerging among Democrats over Biden’s request for military assistance to Israel in the wake of Hamas’s 7 October terrorist attack.
      Merrick Garland said federal authorities are looking into whether the Vermont shooting was a hate crime.
      Donald Trump is making it very clear that a priority of his second presidential term will be retaliating against his enemies.
      The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said they believe the three students were targeted in Vermont because of their ethnicity.
      In a new statement, Joe Biden condemned the shooting of three Palestinian students, two of whom were US citizens, in Vermont this weekend, saying the White House would support the investigation into the attack:
      Jill and I were horrified to learn that three college students of Palestinian descent, two of whom are American citizens, were shot Saturday in Burlington, Vermont. They were simply spending Thanksgiving gathered with family and loved ones.
      We join Americans across the country in praying for their full recovery, and we send our deepest condolences to their families. While we are waiting for more facts, we know this: there is absolutely no place for violence or hate in America. Period. No person should worry about being shot at while going about their daily lives. And far too many Americans know a family member injured or killed as a result of gun violence. We cannot and we will not accept that.
      Earlier today, I spoke to Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger to offer my support. We are grateful to the Burlington Police Department – as well as the FBI, ATF, and other law enforcement partners – for their swift work identifying and arresting a suspect. Our Administration will provide any additional federal resources needed to assist in the investigation.
      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said that members of both political parties discussed government funding over the Thanksgiving break ahead of a January deadline to avoid a shutdown.From Politico’s Burgess Everett:Here’s more background on Biden’s use of the the Defense Production Act, from the Guardian’s Edward Helmore.
      …The Defense Production Act of 1950, which was passed to streamline production during the Korean war, was last used in early 2021 during the coronavirus pandemic to accelerate and expand the availability of ventilators and personal protective equipment.
      The supply chain council is set to address issues ranging from improved data sharing between government agencies, supplying renewable energy resources and freight logistics…
      Monday’s announcement arrived as the US economy appears to be doing well on paper. But the White House has acknowledged that improving economic picture is not shared by consumers, and the administration has explicitly tied the economy to the president by calling it Bidenomics.
      A recent Economist/YouGov poll found that only 39% of voters approve of Biden’s handling of jobs and the economy. And a separate Reuters/Ipsos poll puts the economy as the most important issue to Americans for the past two years.
      Even as the pace of inflation has slowed, consumers are shouldering an economic burden they had not experienced in years. Prices have risen as much in the past three years as they had in the previous decade, according to a report by Bloomberg, and it now costs almost $120 to buy the same goods and services a family could afford with $100 before the pandemic.
      Read the full article here.Biden is currently speaking in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building about strengthening US supply chains and his Bidenomics policy, as the burden of high inflation costs remain a priority for many US voters.During today’s event, Biden announced that he would be evoking the Defense Production Act to boost production of “essential medicine”.The 1950s law will allow Biden to strength the domestic manufacturing of medicines that is seen as crucial for national security, improving US supply chains that the Biden administration believes will address the higher price of goods and services.Biden also flagged falling inflation rates and that wages for families were increasing as wins for the US economy under his Bidenomics plan.Biden added that “costs went down” in time for the Thanksgiving holiday.“As a share of earnings, dinner was the fourth cheapest ever on record. I want you all to know that,” Biden said, referring to the cost to produce the Thanksgiving feast.From the Guardian’s David Smith:In an appearance in Florida, Republican House speaker Mike Johnson said he had talked to George Santos about “his options” as the chamber gears up to vote on an effort to expel the New York congressman for his lies and ethics breaches, Politico reports:The vote on the expulsion resolution proposed by ethics committee chair Michael Guest is expected to come as soon as Wednesday, but Johnson’s comment is an sign that he may be looking for another solution to Santos’s ethical lapses that does not involve voting him out of the chamber.Joe Biden is due to right about now hold an event at the White House on his administration’s actions to strengthen supply chains.That event is late in starting, perhaps due to the fact that he was on the phone with Miro Weinberger, the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, where three Palestinian students were shot over the weekend. Here’s what Weinberger had to say about the call:The police have not yet said if they consider the shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont as a hate crime, but advocacy group the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said they believe it was:Joe and Jill Biden as well as Vermont’s congressional delegation have condemned the weekend shooting of three Palestinian students in the northeastern state’s most-populous city Burlington, while police announced an arrest was made in the case yesterday. It’s an otherwise quiet day in Washington DC, but it won’t stay that way for long. The House will perhaps as soon as Wednesday vote on kicking admitted fabulist George Santos out of the chamber after a damning report from its ethics panel, while the Senate is gearing up to consider Biden’s request for more than $100b to fund border security and military assistance to Ukraine and Israel.Here’s what else has happened today:
      A rift is emerging among Democrats over Biden’s request for military assistance to Israel in the wake of Hamas’s 7 October terrorist attack.
      Merrick Garland said federal authorities are looking into whether the Vermont shooting was a hate crime.
      Donald Trump is making it very clear that a priority of his second presidential term will be retaliating against his enemies.
      Also attending today’s White House press briefing was John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council.He offered details of the agreement reached for Hamas to release more of the hostages taken in the 7 October terrorist attack:Follow our live blog for the latest on the conflict between Israel and Hamas:At her briefing today, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Joe and Jill Biden were “horrified” by the shootings of three Palestinian students in Vermont:Here’s footage of the arraignment of Jason Eaton, the suspect in the shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont: More

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      Trump’s ‘intolerance towards everyone’ encourages hate, Chris Christie says

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      Donald Trump’s “intolerance towards everyone” encourages antisemitism and Islamophobia in the US amid tensions over the war between Israel and Hamas, said Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor challenging Trump for the Republican presidential nomination.“When you show intolerance towards everyone – which is what he does – you give permission as a leader for others to have their intolerance come out,” Christie told CNN on Sunday.“Intolerance towards anyone encourages intolerance towards everyone. And that’s exactly what’s going on here.”Like the rest of the Republican field, Christie lags far behind Trump in national and key state polling.Christie endorsed Trump in 2016 and supported him throughout his subsequent presidency. The ex-New Jersey governor remained supportive of Trump even after Trump appeared to have given him Covid-19, sending him into intensive care.But Christie turned against the former president over his election subversion and incitement of the January 6 attack on Congress.Now a rare candidate willing to attack Trump, particularly over his 91 criminal charges and assorted civil trials, Christie has nonetheless only really registered in polling in New Hampshire, the second state to vote – and then only to scrape third place, 30 points behind.Speaking on Sunday, Christie was asked about a recent New York Times piece in which he was quoted as saying he did not think “Trump’s an antisemite” – even though he has often used stereotypes most say qualify for that label.For instance, in a 1991 book, a former staffer wrote that Trump said: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”Trump denied saying that.To the New York Times, Christie said Trump’s “intolerance of everybody” had “contributed to” surging bigotry across the US.“He says what he says, without regard to the fact that he’s perceived as a leader and that his words matter,” Christie said. This, he said, meant bigots “think you’re giving them permission be a bigot and that’s even worse than them thinking you are one”.On Sunday, Christie also said Trump was now not the only leader giving followers an excuse to show bigoted behaviour, pointing to tensions over the Israel-Hamas war in US colleges.“University administrators and presidents … have been unwilling to stand up against antisemitism on their campuses,” Christie said.“There should be no campus in this country where a Jewish student is afraid to leave their dorm, a Jewish student is afraid to go to their classes, a Jewish student is afraid to go to even have a meal in the dining hall. I mean, that is outrageous, and it’s wrong.“And so in the end … I think that there have been a lot of people contributed to it. And I believe Donald Trump’s intolerant language and his intolerant conduct gives others permission to act the same way.” More

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      MTG review: far-right rabble rouser makes case to be Trump’s VP

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      “Marjorie Taylor Greene has been one of the most fierce warriors in Congress for America First and all it stands for,” Donald Trump announces, before the reader reaches the table of contents for the far-right Georgia congresswoman’s book. Over more than 275 pages, the tome duly reads like an audition for the No 2 slot on the 2024 Republican presidential ticket.The idea of being Trump’s vice-presidential pick is “talked about frequently and I know my name is on a list but really my biggest focus right now is serving the district that elected me”, Greene told the Guardian in August. “But, of course, that’s up to [Trump]. But I would be honored and consider it … I’ll help him do whatever in any way I can.”Venom, score-settling, fiction, self-absolution, self-aggrandizement. Greene’s book, MTG, has it all. It is published by Winning Team, the publishing firm Donald Trump Jr co-founded. In an unforced error, the book was printed in Canada. So much for America First.On the page, Greene repeatedly reminds us that she is a mother and a Christian. As for her divorce in 2022 from her long-suffering husband and business partner? Barely a word. As for its alleged surrounding circumstances, affairs, “tantric sex guru” and all? Nada.Greene lies about January 6. She claims Democrats abandoned the House chamber to the rioters and exited without resistance, in contrast to brave, gun-toting Republicans. Not so. Jason Crow, a former army ranger from Colorado, was among Democrats who stood their ground and helped members of Congress escape.“Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t exist in the same reality as the rest of us,” Crow previously told the Guardian. “For those of us who were there on January 6 and actually defended the chamber from violent insurrectionists, her view is patently false. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”Greene offered no rebuttal. Like Trump, she embraces the insurrectionists who attacked Congress. She writes about visiting them in lock-up, calls the DC jail a gulag.“The events of January 6 have been mischaracterized by the Democrats … and these people cruelly mistreated,” Greene writes. “They will not be forgotten. I will never forget.”She recently tweeted: “[Christopher] Wray’s FBI targets innocent conservatives and MAGA grandmas who peacefully walked through the Capitol on January 6 instead of real threats. We cannot trust them to keep us safe.”In her book, she also offers a meandering defense of her famous comment about so-called Jewish space lasers, insisting she is not antisemitic. Instead, Green advises, she has “donated to the Temple Institute in Israel, a fund that helps rebuild the Jewish temple on the Temple Mount in Israel”.The mission of the group, Machon HaMikdash, is to rebuild the temple on the site of the Dome of the Rock – one of Islam’s holiest places – and to the reinstate the sacrificial rite. Against a backdrop of Hamas terror and Israel’s response, with Jerusalem on edge, this may not be the most opportune time to trumpet such an audacious endeavor. Lots could go wrong, quickly.When Greene was a congressional newbie, the then Democratic House majority and 11 Republicans stripped her of committee assignments, after it came to light that she had “liked” a January 2019 Facebook post that called for “a bullet to the head” of Nancy Pelosi, then the Democratic speaker.Greene also branded Pelosi a traitor, accused her treason and demanded the death penalty. Sooner than most, she had realized Republican politics had become a mixture of performance art, menace and violence.Professional wrestling comes to mind. In 2018, after Greg Gianforte body-slammed Ben Jacobs, then a Guardian reporter, Trump called the Montana Republican “my guy”.“Greg is smart. And by the way, never wrestle him,” Trump warned. “You understand. Never.” The base had to be fed and flattered. Gianforte is governor now.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGreene also posted to social media a photo in which she held a gun alongside images of the Democratic congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. The caption: “Squad’s worst nightmare.”“I urge my colleagues to look at that image and tell me what message you think it sends,” Steny Hoyer, the then House majority leader said, pointing to the inflammatory post. “Here she is armed with a deadly assault rifle pointed toward three Democratic members.”In her book, Greene does not address such escapades directly. Instead, she dumps on the Squad and revels in her liberation from committee work, which led to her repeated demands for roll call votes bringing the House to a crawl.“With all my free time, I stayed on the floor for every bill I could and asked for recorded votes,” she recalls. “It became kind of my thing, shocking representatives on both sides!”These days, after getting close to Kevin McCarthy while he was speaker, Greene sits on the House oversight and homeland security committees. At a recent hearing, she mistakenly suggested to Wray, the FBI director and a Trump appointee, that he works for the Department of Homeland Security. “I’m not part of the Department of Homeland Security,” he responded, evenly. Greene remained unmoved, viewing him as an ally of Joe Biden.In MTG, Greene proudly admits calling Lauren Boebert, a Colorado congresswoman and rival rightwing rabble rouser, a “little bitch”. Greene has also reportedly referred to Boebert as a “whore”. Lesson: some people never leave middle school.Purportedly, Boebert stole Greene’s thunder by plagiarizing and introducing as her own an article of impeachment Greene had already filed against Biden. In her book, Greene also accuses Boebert of being the driving force behind her expulsion from the rightwing House Freedom caucus.Under Trump, retribution and vengeance are Republicans’ fuel. Greene wants to sit at his right hand.
      MTG is published in the US by Winning Team Publishing More

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      ‘It doesn’t look good’: George Santos expects to be expelled from Congress

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      Republican George Santos has said he expects to be expelled from Congress following a scathing report by the House ethics committee that found substantial evidence of lawbreaking by the lying New York representative.In a defiant speech Friday sprinkled with taunts and obscenities aimed at his congressional colleagues, Santos insisted he was “not going anywhere”. But he acknowledged that his time as a member of Congress may soon be coming to an end.“I know I’m going to get expelled when this expulsion resolution goes to the floor,” he said Friday night during a conversation on X Spaces. “I’ve done the math over and over, and it doesn’t look really good.”The comments came one week after the Republican chair of the House ethics committee, Michael Guest, introduced a resolution to expel Santos once the body returns from Thanksgiving break.While Santos has survived two expulsion votes, many of his colleagues who formerly opposed the effort now say they support it, citing the findings of the committee’s months-long investigation into a wide range of alleged misconduct committed by Santos.The report found Santos used campaign funds for personal purposes, such as purchases at luxury retailers and adult content websites, then caused the campaign to file false or incomplete reports.“Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit,” investigators wrote. They noted that he did not cooperate with the report and repeatedly “evaded” straightforward requests for information.On Friday, Santos said he did not want to address the specifics of the report, which he claimed were “slanderous” and “designed to force me out of my seat”. Any defense of his conduct, he said, could be used against him in the ongoing criminal case brought by federal prosecutors.Instead, Santos struck a contemplative tone during the three-hour livestream, tracing his trajectory from Republican “It girl” to “the Mary Magdalene of the United States Congress”. He lashed out at his congressional colleagues, accusing them of misconduct – such as voting while drunk – that he said was far worse than anything he’d done.“They all act like they’re in ivory towers with white pointy hats and they’re untouchable,” he said. “Within the ranks of United States Congress, there’s felons galore, there’s people with all sorts of shystie backgrounds.”His decision not to seek re-election, he said, was not because of external pressure, but due to his frustration with the “sheer arrogance” of his colleagues.“These people need to understand it’s done when I say it’s done, when I want it to be done, not when they want it to be done,” he added. “That’s kind of where we are there.” More