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      White House decries ‘nasty personal smears’ after House Republicans subpoena Biden family – US politics live

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      The Republican-led House oversight committee today sent subpoenas to the president’s son Hunter Biden, his brother James Biden and family associate Rob Walker, prompting a furious response for the White House.The subpoenas, which compel the three men to appear for depositions, come as House Republicans press forward with an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden that centers on unproven allegations that he benefited from corrupt business dealings by his family members.“The House Oversight Committee has followed the money and built a record of evidence revealing how Joe Biden knew, was involved, and benefited from his family’s influence peddling schemes. Now, the House Oversight Committee is going to bring in members of the Biden family and their associates to question them on this record of evidence,” the committee’s chair James Comer said in a statement.In addition to the three subpoenas, Comer requested that five other members of the Biden family and their associates appear for interviews.In a statement, White House spokesman Ian Sams condemned the GOP for dragging the president’s relatives into their long-running investigations:Joe Biden will meet this evening with a groups of Democratic and Republican senators who just returned from a trip to the Middle East, Punchbowl News reports, as his administration navigates the ongoing fallout from Israel’s invasion of Gaza following Hamas’s terrorist attack last month:Biden traveled to Israel shortly after the 7 October terrorist attack, and his secretary of state Antony Blinken in recent days visited the country, including the West Bank, as well as Iraq. However the president’s policy has attracted criticism from some Democrats as well as many Arab American voters, who see Biden as enabling the thousands of civilian deaths reported in Gaza since Israel’s counterattack against Hamas began.It’s a big news day in New York City, where Ivanka Trump just departed the witness stand in the ongoing civil fraud trial against Donald Trump and his family.The former president’s daughter kept her testimony in line with her two brothers, who already testified, while repeatedly saying she did not recall details of correspondences about loans – a plank of the case against the family, which centers on a judge’s finding that the Trump Organization for years inflated the value of its assets to secure better loan terms and other benefits.We have a separate live blog that will tell you all about Ivanka’s time on the witness stand today, and you can read it here:The Republican-led House oversight committee today sent subpoenas to the president’s son Hunter Biden, his brother James Biden and family associate Rob Walker, prompting a furious response for the White House.The subpoenas, which compel the three men to appear for depositions, come as House Republicans press forward with an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden that centers on unproven allegations that he benefited from corrupt business dealings by his family members.“The House Oversight Committee has followed the money and built a record of evidence revealing how Joe Biden knew, was involved, and benefited from his family’s influence peddling schemes. Now, the House Oversight Committee is going to bring in members of the Biden family and their associates to question them on this record of evidence,” the committee’s chair James Comer said in a statement.In addition to the three subpoenas, Comer requested that five other members of the Biden family and their associates appear for interviews.In a statement, White House spokesman Ian Sams condemned the GOP for dragging the president’s relatives into their long-running investigations:Indeed, what to make of yesterday’s off-year election victories by Democrats and their causes, particularly if you are somebody worried about Joe Biden’s poll numbers?Tuesday’s election came just days after the New York Times and Siena College released a survey that found Biden was trailing the Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump in five of the six swing states expected to decide the winner. Democrats’ strong electoral performance yesterday seems to contradict that grim conclusion, but, in an analysis, the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics says the result is actually not as surprising as it appears.“Off-year elections feature smaller electorates and don’t feature presidential candidates at the top of the ballot,” the center writes.All signs point to next year’s race being a close contest between Biden and Trump. Here’s more from the Center for Politics’s piece:
      Last night’s results have given Democrats a shot in the arm and have confounded the recent narrative about Democrats being in deep trouble next year. But it’s also true that these races in many respects differ from the election coming up next year. It may be the case that President Biden is in fact uniquely vulnerable, and that even former President Trump – himself dragged down by plenty of vulnerabilities that likely are not getting the kind of attention now that they will if he is renominated – could beat Biden. It may also be the case that polling a year out from an election is not predictive (and it often is not). Maybe the Democrats do just have an advantage now in smaller turnout, off-year elections as their base has absorbed many higher-turnout, college-educated voters while shedding lower-turnout voters who don’t have a four-year degree. Maybe the presidential year turnout will bring out more Trump voters and give the Republicans a clearer shot. About all we feel comfortable saying is that we should continue to expect the presidential race to be close and competitive – a boring statement, we know, but probably true.
      Kentucky has not supported a Democratic president in more than 25 years, but last night, voters in the Bluegrass State decided to give Democratic governor Andy Beshear a second term.In an interview with CNN, Beshear was asked if his victory in the strongly Republican state offered any lessons for beleaguered Democrats elsewhere. Here’s what he had to say:Speaking at the White House, Kamala Harris told reporters yesterday was a “good night” after voters in Ohio and Virginia handed victories to advocates of reproductive rights:The bigger question that is undoubtedly on her mind – and, of course, on Joe Biden’s – is whether the momentum Democrats have seen at the state-level since Roe v Wade was overturned will remain in a year, when the presidential elections are held.The Council on American-Islamic Relations has denounced the Republican-led House of Representatives’ decision to censure Rashida Tlaib over her criticisms of Israel.In a statement released on Wednesday, CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad said:
      The American Muslim community stands against this hypocritical and racist targeting of representative Rashida Tlaib, whose voice is indispensable in representing the concerns of millions of Americans who are horrified by the war crimes our government supports against the Palestinian people. She should wear this cowardly censure as a badge of honor. We will not be cowed by those attempting to muzzle our voices.
      Both Republicans and Democrats in the House of Representatives who orchestrated the suppression and censure of the only Muslim Palestinian voice in Congress under the cover of darkness while ignoring the openly racist, bigoted and violent remarks that members of Congress have made about Muslims and Palestinians, should be deeply ashamed of their actions. They are on the wrong side of history.
      Speaking to reporters, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called last night’s Democratic victories across the country an “important night for the American people.”
      “They rejected these extreme, extreme policies that we’re seeing from the Republican party and they also lifted up the president’s agenda, the president’s values.”
      In response to a follow-up question on Joe Biden’s low approval ratings, Jean-Pierre said:
      “You have to take these polls with a grain of salt… I talked about 2020…what we saw is a president that was able to bring an incredibly strong, diverse coalition to win in 2020. We saw the same thing in 2022…we kept on hearing about a ‘Red Wave’ that didn’t materialize…
      We don’t put much stock in polls. The president’s going to focus on delivering for the American people. He has an agenda that is incredibly popular and that matters.”
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said “we strongly disagree” with Democratic representative Rashida Tlaib’s support for the controversial pro-Palestinian phrase “from the river to the sea”, for which the sole Palestinian congresswoman was censured by the Republican-controlled House on Tuesday night.“We strongly disagree with using that phrase – it’s been said by many people at the White House. I do not have any conversations to read out to you with the congresswomen,” Jean-Pierre said after being asked if Joe Biden has spoken to Tlaib about the matter.But Jean-Pierre added: “We have been very, very clear how it is important to be mindful about the language that we use at this time, and we will continue to speak out on that.”Tlaib, who is the only Palestinian American in the US Congress, on Tuesday defended her criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza and urged US lawmakers to join in calling for a ceasefire.Tlaib has long criticized Joe Biden’s support of Israel, but received intense backlash after her defense of the slogan “from the river to the sea”.In a social media post on Friday, Tlaib defended the phrase as “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate”.The full slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, references the land that sits between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. While many recognize the slogan as a call for Palestinian liberation, others argue that the term has been used to call for the destruction of Israel and the persecution of Jewish people.White House national security spokesman John Kirby was just asked at the daily press briefing how long is a humanitarian pause – in the sense of something being characterized as such.Is, for example, a 72 hour humanitarian pause different from a ceasefire, Kirby was asked by one of the gathered journalists.Kirby said a humanitarian pause was “as long as it needed to be”, eg to get aid in to Gaza or people out of the Palestinian territory, and was something different from “a general ceasefire” that stands as a “cessation of hostilities” between both sides as they seek to negotiate towards an end game in a war, he said.“We do not support that at this time,” Kirby said. He said the White House regarded at ceasefire as currently being to the benefit of Hamas, as opposed to Israel, in military and propaganda terms.A humanitarian pause, in contrast, is something “temporary, localized and for specific purposes,” Kirby said.White House national security spokesman John Kirby adds, at the press briefing now ongoing in the west wing, that it could take “more than one pause” in the fighting in Gaza to get all hostages out of the territory.That is not to say there is any sign today that an opportunity has yet been created for them to be released.Israel’s military is currently reiterating that there will be no ceasefire in Gaza – but the military will allow for “humanitarian pauses,” Reuters notes.The White House reckons such pauses could “last hours or days.”Kirby says the US continues to urge Israel to minimize civilian deaths in Gaza, especially putting people who are currently trying to flee to the south of the territory or out of it altogether “in harm’s way”.He acknowledged that “most Palestinians don’t want to leave” and there are around a million people internally displaced within Gaza right now.The White House is holding its press briefing and national security spokesman John Kirby is reiterating a point he made yesterday, that the notion of Israel occupying Gaza is “not a long term solution to post-conflict governance.”This follows Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration earlier this week that Israel would take control of security in Gaza for an indefinite period, adding to the sense of uncertainty over the future of the Palestinian territory even as it is currently gripped by war and humanitarian crisis.Kirby said, meanwhile, that there are still between 500 and 600 Americans that the US is trying to get out of Gaza. And, asked by journalists about what the militant group Hamas, that controls Gaza, is demanding to release the more than 200 hostages that its fighters snatched when they attacked southern Israel on October 7 and killed at least 1,400 people, Kirby would not give details. The hostages include Americans.“We have a way to communicate with Hamas, we are using that way. We are doing everything we can to get those folks back with their families,” he said.Bernie Sanders has also hit back at the Republican-led House’s decision to censure Rashida Tlaib over her criticisms of Israel amid its deadly bombing campaign that has killed over 10,000 Palestinians, saying:
      “The House should pass desperately needed aid for Gaza, work to stop the conflict in the Middle East, and address the pressing needs of the American people.
      Instead they voted to censure my friend Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American in Congress. Pathetic and shameful!” the Independent Vermont senator said.
      MPower Change, a Muslim-led grassroots organization, has thrown its support behind Rashida Tlaib following her censure by the Republican-led House of Representatives.In a post on Instagram, the group said:
      “Shame on those who voted to silence the only Palestinian voice in Congress. Rep. Rashida Tlaib has been censured for defending the rights of Palestinians to live free of Israeli occupation and siege and for demanding an end to the bloodshed in Gaza.
      Rashida has always been on the side of humanity and she will continue to do that regardless of those who try to stop her.”
      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has spoken out against the House’s censure of Rashida Tlaib over her criticisms of Israel amid its deadly bombing campaign across Gaza that has killed over 10,000 Palestinians in reponse to the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.
      “It is not lost on anyone how many offensive, violent, and racist things people regularly hear members of Congress say, yet virtually the only one that gets censured for her political speech also happens to be the only Palestinian American.
      It does not reflect well. At all,” the New York Democratic representative said.
      The Republican-led House of Representatives has voted to censure Rashida Tlaib, Michigan’s Democratic representative and Congress’s only Palestinian-American.The Guardian’s Chris Stein reports:The 234-188 tally came after enough Democrats joined with Republicans to censure Tlaib, a punishment one step below expulsion from the House. The three-term congresswoman has long been a target of criticism for her views on the decades-long conflict in the Middle East.The debate on the censure resolution on Tuesday afternoon was emotional and intense. The Republican representative Rich McCormick of Georgia pushed the censure measure in response to what he called Tlaib’s promotion of antisemitic rhetoric. He said she had “levied unbelievable falsehoods about our greatest ally, Israel, and the attack on October 7”.Tlaib provoked criticism last week by defending the controversial slogan “from the river to the sea”.In remarks on the House floor, Tlaib defended her criticism of the country and urged lawmakers to join in calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.“I will not be silenced and I will not let you distort my words,” Tlaib said. “No government is beyond criticism. The idea that criticizing the government of Israel is antisemitic sets a very dangerous precedent, and it’s been used to silence diverse voices speaking up for human rights across our nation.”She also said she had condemned the Hamas attacks on Israeli citizens several times.For further details, click here:Following a series of Democratic wins across the country, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said that “it’s time to recognize Maga extremism is the wrong answer.”In an address on Wednesday, the New York senator said:
      “There is no possible takeaway from last night other than this: Americans fiercely opposed Maga extremism, fiercely opposed total abortion bans and want bipartisan leaders who can put America’s needs first.
      After last night’s results, I have a message to my Republican colleagues:
      When the Maga agenda can’t win in deep-red Kentucky or in Ohio or help you in Virginia, it’s time to recognize Maga extremism is the wrong answer, not just for the country but even for the GOP.”
      Here is more from the Guardian’s staff and agencies on Yusef Salaam, one of the exonerated ‘“Central Park Five” members who won a New York City council seat following yesterday’s election:Salaam, a Democrat, will represent a central Harlem district on the city council, having run unopposed for the seat in one of many local elections playing out across New York state on Tuesday. He won his primary election in a landslide.The victory comes more than two decades after DNA evidence was used to overturn the convictions of Salaam and four other Black and Latino men in the 1989 rape and beating of a white jogger in Central Park. Salaam was imprisoned for almost seven years.“For me, this means that we can really become our ancestors’ wildest dreams,” Salaam said in an interview before the election.Elsewhere in New York City, voters were deciding whether to re-elect the Queens district attorney and cast ballots in other city council races. The council, which passes legislation and has some oversight powers over city agencies, has long been dominated by Democrats and the party is certain to retain firm control after the election.Local elections on Long Island could offer clues about how the city’s suburbs could vote in next year’s congressional elections.For the full story, click here: More

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      House Republicans subpoena Hunter Biden and president’s brother James

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      House Republicans issued subpoenas on Wednesday to members of Joe Biden’s family, taking their most aggressive step yet in an impeachment inquiry bitterly opposed by Democrats that is testing the reach of congressional oversight powers.The long-awaited move by Representative James Comer, the chairman of the House oversight committee, to subpoena the president’s son Hunter and his brother James comes as Republicans hope to gain ground in their nearly year-long investigation. So far, they have failed to uncover evidence directly implicating the president in any wrongdoing.But Republicans say the evidence trail they have uncovered paints a troubling picture of “influence peddling” by Biden’s family in their business dealings, particularly with clients overseas.“Now, the House oversight committee is going to bring in members of the Biden family and their associates to question them on this record of evidence,” Comer, of Kentucky, said in a statement.The stakes are exceedingly high, as the inquiry could result in Republicans bringing impeachment charges against Biden, the ultimate penalty for what the US constitution describes as “high crimes and misdemeanors”.The subpoenas demand that Hunter Biden and James Biden, as well as former business associate Rob Walker, appear before the oversight committee for a deposition. Lawmakers also requested that James Biden’s wife, Sara Biden, and Hallie Biden, the wife of the president’s deceased son Beau, appear voluntarily for transcribed interviews.Requests for comment from Hunter Biden, who lives in California, and James Biden, who is from Royal Oak, Maryland, were not immediately returned.Both the White House and the Biden family’s personal lawyers have dismissed the investigation as a political ploy aimed at hurting the Democratic president. They say the inquiry is a blatant attempt to help former president Donald Trump, the early frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, as he runs again for the White House.Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell said the investigation has been full of “worn-out, false, baseless or debunked claims”. In a letter to the House speaker, Mike Johnson, on Wednesday morning, Lowell urged the new speaker to rein in the “partisan political games”.Johnson, now settling into the speakership after replacing Kevin McCarthy as the top Republican in the House, has given his blessing to the inquiry and has hinted that a decision could come soon on whether to pursue articles of impeachment against Biden.“I think we have a constitutional responsibility to follow this truth where it leads,” Johnson told Fox News Channel recently. He also said in a separate Fox interview that he would support Comer’s decision to subpoena the president’s son, saying “desperate times call for desperate measures, and that perhaps is overdue”.Since January, Republicans have been investigating the Biden family for what they claim is a pattern of “influence peddling” spanning back to when Biden was Barack Obama’s vice-president. Comer claimed the committee had “uncovered a mountain of evidence” that he said would show how Biden abused his power and repeatedly lied about a “wall” between his political position and his son’s private business dealings.While questions have arisen about the ethics surrounding the Biden family’s international business, no evidence has emerged to prove that Joe Biden, in his current or previous office, abused his role or accepted bribes. More

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      ‘Oversold’ parents’ rights issues failed Republican candidates in Virginia

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      Loudoun county, Virginia, attracted national headlines in 2021, when parents outraged over the alleged instruction of critical race theory and policies regarding transgender students shouted down officials at school board meetings.Republican Glenn Youngkin made the issue a central focus of his gubernatorial campaign in the months after, accusing Democrats of politicizing education to the detriment of students’ learning and blaming them for pandemic-related school closures. And he had hoped it would continue to work in Tuesday’s general election.“No more are we going to make parents stand outside of the room,” Youngkin told a crowd in Leesburg, part of Loudon county, on Monday. “We are going to put them at the head of the table in charge of our children’s lives.”But that message failed on Tuesday, as Democratic-endorsed candidates won a majority on the Loudoun county school board.The elections, in which every school board seat was up for grabs on Tuesday, had been framed as a test of the resiliency of parents’ rights as a campaign issue. Republicans had hoped to replicate Youngkin’s success in Loudoun county, which serves more than 80,000 students in a wealthy area located about an hour outside Washington. Instead, Loudoun county voters delivered a six-seat majority for Democratic-backed candidates on the nine-seat school board.The Democrats’ wins reflected their broader success on Tuesday, as they maintained their majority in the state senate and flipped control of the house of delegates. Despite Youngkin’s hopes that Republicans would take full control of the legislature, he will instead finish his gubernatorial term with a statehouse led by Democrats.Over the first two years of his governorship, Youngkin had pushed a series of controversial policies in schools to amplify his support of parents’ rights. On the day that he took office in 2022, Youngkin signed an executive order to “restore excellence in education by ending the use of divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory, in public education”. Another order signed on the same day eliminated mask mandates for students in Virginia’s schools.“No day will be more vividly held in my mind than when I sat on those steps in our capitol, and I signed that bill that said that parents will decide if your child wears a mask in school,” Youngkin said on Monday. “Folks, children belong to parents, not to the state.”Republican-backed candidates championed a similar message in Loudoun county ahead of this year’s elections, pointing to the school board’s mismanagement of sexual assault allegations as evidence of the need for a change in leadership.The new Loudoun county school board will be composed solely of new members, as the two incumbents who ran on Tuesday both lost, and Republicans fell short in their efforts to take the majority.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs Democrats took a victory lap on Tuesday, some of them pointed to the results in Loudoun county as evidence that Youngkin’s message of parents’ rights no longer resonates with Virginia voters.“It’s always been obvious to those who paid attention that Republicans oversold their political advantage by weaponizing school board meetings with culture war issues,” the Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Glenn Youngkin’s politics have never been popular in Loudoun.”The disappointing results could spell trouble for Republicans as they look ahead to the 2024 elections, when control of the White House and Congress will be on the ballot. As one of the only states holding off-year elections, Virginia generally serves as a test of each party’s messaging before a presidential race.The results in Loudoun county and across the state of Virginia indicate that Republicans may need a new message. More

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      Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the House, is a gender extremist | Moira Donegan

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      Late last month, when House Republicans ended their chaotic, weeks-long search for a new speaker by elevating Louisiana’s Mike Johnson, a curious trend of stories began appearing in national media. Democratic operatives (and perhaps a few of Johnson’s Republican adversaries, too) had begun leaking what’s known in Washington as “oppo”, or opposition research – unflattering truths about political rivals – about the new speaker.For many politicians, the embarrassing secrets revealed in an oppo dump are somewhat oblique; usually, they’re about money. Maybe the candidate, as a young lawyer, represented a bank in a case where he aimed to repossess the home of a poor widow; maybe the candidate’s husband or daughter was appointed to a job they did not seem quite qualified for, raising questions about nepotism or access trading. The aim of such stories is to make a politician appear corrupt, or unscrupulous – like someone beholden to greed and not to principle.But the picture that has emerged instead of the once-obscure Louisiana congressmen has not been that of the typically cynical climber, maneuvering corporate heights in pursuit of their own ambition without regard to ethics. Instead, the revelations that have emerged about Mike Johnson since his ascent to the speakership paint a picture of a fevered zealot: in thrall of baroque and morbid religious fantasies; beholden to a regressive, bigoted and morbid worldview; and above all, obsessed – with a lurid and creepy enthusiasm – with sex, and how he thinks it should be done.The enforcement of a Christian sexual morality and a strict gender hierarchy of men over women have not been incidental or minor themes of Johnson’s career: they have been its primary goal, one he pursued doggedly through his pre-congressional life. As a lawyer, he worked against gay marriage, and to uphold Louisiana’s criminal ban on gay sex, writing briefs that described homosexuality as “inherently unnatural” and “a dangerous lifestyle” which he compared to pedophilia and bestiality. He still opposes marriage equality, and led efforts to squash the speakership candidacy of Tom Emmer last month in part because of Emmer’s support for gay marriage rights. Along the way, Johnson has authored a national version of Florida’s so-called “don’t say gay” bill, which would outlaw mentions of homosexuality at schools, hospitals and other federally funded facilities. He opposes access to transition-related healthcare for adolescents and adults alike, and both he and his wife have worked to advance so-called “conversion therapy”, an abusive, homophobic practice that has been outlawed in several states.It probably goes without saying that Johnson, like many Republicans and nearly all of the party’s luminaries, favors a national ban on abortion, which he calls a “holocaust.” While more savvy Republicans like Glenn Youngkin have attempted to frame themselves as “moderates” by placing their preferred abortion bans at supposedly more amenable points in pregnancy, like 15 weeks, Johnson has made no such effort: he has sponsored legislation that would ban abortion nationwide at all stages of pregnancy, establishing a “right to life” for fertilized eggs that supersedes women’s rights to dignity and self-determination.His sweeping antagonism to abortion rights has extended to several kinds of birth control, such as IUDs, implants and many birth control pills. In his career as a lawyer for the Alliance Defending Freedom – a rightwing legal shop spearheading efforts to advance Christian gender conservatism through litigation – he argued that the most popular kinds of hormonal birth control, and those that are controlled by women, are equivalent to abortion and should therefore be banned. When the House advanced a bill to codify the right to contraception after the US supreme court’s Dobbs ruling in 2022, Johnson voted against it. He has since played dumb on the issue, claiming he does not remember his opposition to birth control in an interview with Shannon Bream of Fox News.In light of his aggressively misogynist and anti-gay views on public policy, it is likely not surprising that Johnson also advances a disturbing and sexist view of the private sphere. He has condemned no-fault divorce, the liberalized regime of divorce law that was won by feminists in the 20th century, and which allowed women to initiate divorce and to exit marriages without having to prove either infidelity or abuse to a court. Johnson says that women’s freedom to leave marriages, along with their freedom to elect out of motherhood when they choose, is responsible for mass shootings.He and his own wife have a so-called “covenant marriage”, a religious arrangement that formalizes men’s superiority and constricts women’s freedom to leave, designed for conservative straight couples who feel that no-fault divorce and gay marriage rights somehow degrade their own unions. He has also spoken of being in a bizarre arrangement of mutual masturbation monitoring with his son, with whom Johnson installed family surveillance technology that reports users’ pornography consumption habits to one another.It would be easy to see Johnson’s wildly regressive gender politics as a personal quirk – his beliefs that gay people are sinful and inferior; that women should not be able to live freely from men or use their bodies in ways that are counter to wishes of the men close to them; that marriage should act, for men, as an entitlement to absolute control, and for women, as a prison. But these ideas are not quirks; they are part of a powerful constituency in the Republican party, one that has now found its way into the speakership, second in line for the presidency.Gender conservatism does not tend to attract as much notice as the other pillars of the far-right ideology: it is less distinct than the far right’s avowed white supremacy, less flashy than its hostility to democracy. But the convictions shared by Johnson – about women’s inferiority and men’s right to control them, about gay people’s moral transgression, and about the ways that the sexed body at birth can, and must, be used to determine the outcomes of a person’s life – have become the foundation upon which the Republican party’s warring factions are set to unite.The notion that the Christian right tradition that Johnson represents would be uncomfortable with Trumpism was always overstated; in America, Christian conservatives have always had more moral vanity than moral conviction. But now, Johnson’s ascent to the head of the thoroughly Trumpist House Republican caucus marks the groundbreaking for a new party order. The Republican party is rebuilding itself: it’s building on misogyny.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Democrats gain control of Virginia state legislature in blow to Republican plans

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      Democrats have secured full control of the Virginia state legislature, winning a majority in the house of delegates and depriving the Republican governor Glenn Youngkin of the opportunity to enact a 15-week abortion ban.Democrats maintained their majority in the state senate and flipped control of the house of delegates, where Republicans previously held a narrow advantage. Democrats’ victories quashed Youngkin’s hopes of securing a Republican-controlled legislature that would be able to advance his policy agenda, casting doubt upon his prospects as a potential presidential candidate.“Governor Youngkin and Virginia Republicans did everything they could to take total control of state government, but the people of the Commonwealth rejected them,” Susan Swecker, chair of the Democratic party of Virginia, said in a statement. “Virginians won’t go backwards. Instead of extremism and culture wars, people voted for common sense leadership and problem solvers.”As one of the only states holding off-year elections, the Virginia results could serve as a bellwether for the presidential race next year. Democrats also secured key victories on Tuesday in Kentucky, where incumbent governor Andy Beshear won re-election, and Ohio, where voters approved a measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.Virginia Democrats’ success will spell doom for Youngkin’s proposed 15-week “limit” on abortion, which would ban the procedure after 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest and medical emergencies. Democratic legislators in Virginia have previously used their senate majority to block bills restricting abortion access and they had promised to do so again if they maintained control of the chamber.The possibility of curtailing access to abortion had become a galvanizing issue in Virginia, which is now the last remaining state in the US South without severe restrictions on the procedure. Virginia Democrats correctly predicted that voters’ continued displeasure with the reversal of Roe v Wade would help them flip control of the house of delegates.“[Republicans] called their plan to ban abortion in Virginia a plan to keep abortion legal in the state and claimed it was just a ‘limit’,” Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, said in a statement. “Well, tonight, Virginians showed the GOP and Glenn Youngkin exactly what voters have to say about it: We don’t want abortion bans, and we don’t want leaders who do.”The Virginia results may serve as an indication of where swing voters in battleground states stand ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Virginia has been trending toward Democrats in recent years, as Joe Biden carried the state by 10 points in 2020. But Youngkin’s victory in 2021 proved Virginia remains a battleground state, and Republicans had hoped the governor’s success would deliver them a legislative trifecta in Richmond, but that failed to materialize.The Biden campaign reveled in Democrats’ wins on Tuesday, pointing to them as evidence that the president would similarly succeed when he is on the ballot again next year.“Voters across the political spectrum once again showed up and voted for our agenda and rejected the dangerous Maga extremism that has come to define today’s Republican Party at every level,” said Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager. “That same choice will be before voters again next November and we are confident the American people will send President Biden and Vice President Harris back to the White House to keep working for them.”Republicans’ failure to take full control of the legislature may throw cold water on speculation over Youngkin’s national ambitions, as the governor had been named as a potential presidential candidate for 2024. As polls closed on Tuesday, Youngkin deflected questions over his future plans.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’ve been asked this so much, so many times over the course of the last year,” Youngkin told CNN. “I’m humbled by it. I’m focused on Virginia; we’ve got a lot of work to do.”With Democrats in control of the state senate and able to block much of Youngkin’s agenda, it will be much harder for the governor to make a pitch for the White House. Given that Virginia governors are limited to serving a single term, Democrats’ victories on Tuesday guarantee that Youngkin will never have the opportunity to govern with a Republican-controlled legislature.Youngkin’s critics celebrated his party’s defeats, suggesting the disappointing performance would bring an end to any presidential aspirations.Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, joked on X, “CLEARANCE SALE: all ‘Youngkin for President 2024’ merchandise.” More

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      Tate Reeves beats Brandon Presley in race for Mississippi governor’s office

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      Brandon Presley conceded to the incumbent governor Tate Reeves on Tuesday night after the Republican managed to hold on to his position.During the state’s only gubernatorial debate this season, Reeves and Presley, who is related to Elvis Presley, had exchanged verbal blows, with Reeves alleging that Presley had been bought by out-of-state, liberal political interest groups. Presley hammered Reeves on his and his family’s alleged involvement in the state’s ongoing corruption scandal.Corruption, the state’s ongoing healthcare crisis and education were at the forefront of voters’ minds this election season. In commercials and during his 82-county campaign, Presley missed no opportunities to reference Reeves’s alleged involvement in the TANF fund corruption scandal, the largest such scandal in state history, or to remind voters of Reeves’s refusal to expand Medicaid.Though pointedly asked about it twice during the debate, Reeves refused to say whether or not he would support the efforts of the state attorney general, Lynn Fitch, to receive information about women who travel out of state to receive abortions.After Presley pushed the issue of the state’s collapsing healthcare system, including closing hospitals and blamed the collapse on Reeves’s refusal to expand Medicaid access, Reeves announced plans to solve the hospital crisis, just months before the election, despite him and his team saying a similar plan would not work earlier this year.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe night before the gubernatorial debate, Reeves received an 11th-hour endorsement from Donald Trump. With his victory over Presley, Reeves continues his streak of not having lost a statewide election since he entered Mississippi politics two decades ago. More

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      Furious Trump heaped scorn on own lawyer over trial date, book says

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      The extent of Donald Trump’s frustrations over the timing of his multiple scheduled court appearances in the thick of the 2024 presidential race, as well as the disdain with which he treats his own lawyers, is laid bare in a new book by Jonathan Karl.The Washington correspondent for ABC News reveals Trump’s furious reaction when told by a Manhattan judge earlier this year that his criminal trial in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case would start on 25 March 2024. That places it right in the middle of the Republican primaries, and just 20 days before the all-important Super Tuesday in which 15 states decide their preferred candidate.Karl relates in his new book, Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party, how the former president responded angrily as he heard the date virtually as he sat in his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago.He turned to one of his key lawyers, Todd Blanche, and yelled: “That’s in the middle of the primaries! If I lose the presidency, you are going to be the reason!”Trump’s tantrum lasted almost half an hour, Karl reports, based on an anonymous source present in the room. When the court hearing was over, and the cameras were turned off, the former president launched what Karl describes as “a withering attack on perhaps the most highly regarded lawyer on Trump’s troubled legal team”.“You little fucker!” Trump shouted in Blanche’s face. “You are going to cost me the presidency!” He went on to rant against other lawyers in his team, saying: “They want me to be indicted!”Tired of Winning is the third of a series of Trump books by Karl. The previous volumes – Front Row at the Trump Show and Betrayal – have both been bestsellers.The latest book will go on sale in the US on 14 November. The Guardian obtained a copy.Karl’s book lands in a week in which the highs and lows of Trump’s current fortunes are in plain sight. On Monday he was forced to testify, tetchily, in the New York fraud trial that threatens to derail his entire business empire.On a happier note for him, a New York Times/Siena College poll puts Trump ahead of Joe Biden in five of the six critical swing states where the 2024 presidential election, now a year away, will be won. The survey underlines how Trump appears so far to be unscathed by the historic 91 felony charges he faces, though it also provides a warning that if he is convicted and sentenced, voters in the battleground states could punish him by switching to Biden.Tired of Winning recounts how those close to Trump have consciously embraced the paradox that the indictments appear to have strengthened his standing within the Republican party. Karl relates that days before he was indicted in the Daniels case, in which Trump is accused of making illegal payments to an adult movie star to cover up an alleged affair, his former senior adviser in the White House Steve Bannon mused that Trump could turn his legal plight to political advantage.“This week, Trump could lock down the nomination if he played his cards right,” Karl says Bannon told him. “‘They’re crucifying me,’ you know, ‘I’m a martyr.’ All that. You get everybody so riled up that they just say, ‘Fuck it. I hate Trump, but we’ve got to stand up against this.’”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe harsh words that Trump had for Blanche at a time when he arguably most needed his lawyer’s counsel goes some way to explain the umpteen fallings-out he has had with his inner circle. Karl writes that Hope Hicks, a former top adviser in Trump’s White House, had sharp words after she testified behind closed doors to the House committee investigating the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol.“Later, Hicks would tell friends she hoped Trump would read the transcript of her testimony once it was published. If he did, she said he’d hopefully never want to talk to her again.”The book also contains a priceless anecdote about an exchange between then president Trump and the former German chancellor Angela Merkel. Following the engagement, he bragged to a Republican congressman, who promptly shared the story with Karl, that Merkel had gone out of her way to compliment Trump over the large crowds he attracted at his rallies.“She said she could never get crowds like that,” Trump is reported to have gloated. “In fact, she told me that there was only one other political leader who ever got crowds as big as mine.”Karl notes drily that the congressman was left wondering whether Trump had any idea of the individual to whom Merkel was alluding. “Which would be more unsettling: that he didn’t or that he did?” the author writes. More

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      Tommy Tuberville is not acting: he really is Trump’s useful idiot | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Tommy Tuberville plays the fool with such conviction that he makes it difficult to imagine a motive behind his idiocy. He is really, truly, actually not acting. In ordinary times others might qualify as the stupidest member of the Senate, but none have matched his performance at a moment of profound and precarious international crisis. Tuberville’s freeze on promotions of general staff officers unless the federal government denies reproductive health services – abortions – to women in the military has significantly disrupted readiness, upended the chain of command and otherwise endangered national security. Of 852 general and flag officers, he has placed 387 holds so far. By the end of the year, 90% of generals and admirals will be out of position. The chief of naval operations, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, says it will take two or three years to fix. One hundred and twenty officers are now being forced to perform two jobs.When General Eric Smith, the commandant of the Marine Corps, who was performing several jobs at once, suffered a heart attack, Tuberville cavalierly dismissed any responsibility. “Come on, give me a break. This guy is going to work 18-20 hours a day no matter what. That’s what we do. I did that for years,” he said.Tuberville was a football coach before he was elected the senator from Alabama. Denigrating the marine commandant, Tuberville suggested that coaching a game was as hard as running the Marine Corps. “Coach” is his identity. “Email Coach” reads the contact information on his Senate website.Donald Trump first gave Tuberville his seal of approval in Tuberville’s fight against the former attorney general Jeff Sessions. Trump had fired Sessions for recusing himself instead of suppressing the justice department investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Sessions attempted a comeback in 2020, running for his old Senate seat from Alabama; Tuberville, with Trump’s support, won the GOP nomination. The Coach had no qualifications for public service other than fame as Coach: he just happened to be the lucky dummy in one of Trump’s grudge matches.By freezing military appointments, Tuberville keeps the cameras focused on himself as he struts up and down the field. He is not up for re-election until 2026, but since he has placed his hold on military officers his campaign contributions have rocketed from a negligible amount at the beginning of this year to nearly half a million dollars by July. His hold has turned into his sweet spot for a Trumpian grift. Every day is game day.But Tuberville’s gain is more than the military’s defeat; it is the Republican party’s loss, at both ends of Tuberville’s play. He is wilfully and enthusiastically hammering national security while inflaming the abortion issue. Since the Dobbs decision Republicans have been desperately seeking to escape the political consequences of their decades-long crusade culminating in the supreme court decision overturning Roe v Wade. Tuberville has contrived a unique formula to wage the culture war by undermining the military, or, more likely, had that formula engineered for him.Idiots can still be useful idiots. There are larger purposes involved in his scam kulturkampf. His subversion of the military is not just collateral damage. It is not the unintended consequence, but the overriding motive. His abortion ban is both context and pretext. Tuberville has opened Trump’s strategy for a second term to replace the professional class of officers pledged to the constitution with a collection of flunkies who will salute his command, legal or not. Tuberville is a blunt instrument, but, however crude, he is the available tool.The Heritage Foundation – which has produced a blueprint for a Trump second term, the 2025 Transition Project, which includes firing the entire federal civil service and replacing it with Trump loyalists, and invoking the Insurrection Act on day one of Trump II to deploy the military against political dissidents – has evidently been behind Tuberville’s attack on the military. It circulated a letter of several far-right ex-military figures to Senate leaders demanding that they “Support Senator Tuberville’s Fight Against Woke Military”, which they denounced for “advancing the leftwing social agenda”.Heritage published an article by one of its fellows claiming that Tuberville is the “one man” standing in the way of a dastardly conspiracy led by Biden: “Replacing the officer class of police and military ranks with politicized ideologues who will bend to a transformative dogma is a strategy that has worked in places like the Soviet Union, Cuba and Venezuela … Tuberville, thus, is stopping the promotion of woke apparatchiks.” Like Trump, the Heritage cadres project their own scheme on to their enemies.For months, the leaders of the Senate of both parties allowed Tuberville to stand on the rule that gives every senator the right to put a hold on an appointment. They tolerated Tuberville’s stupidity in order not to alter the sacrosanct rule, an anachronism that makes every senator a king. Behind the scenes, they importuned him to relent. Some Republicans suggested that if he lifted his hold on the entire military officer corps, they wouldn’t care if he chewed on a smaller bone. Perhaps he might put a hold on Derek Chollet, the highly competent and experienced counselor in the state department, who has been nominated to be the under-secretary of defense for policy, or maybe other worthy appointees. Their broader cynicism fell before his dim-witted cynicism. No dice.Coach is not team friendly. He is not clubbable in the most exclusive club in the country. Tuberville was unembarrassed when a group of military spouses, the Secure Families Initiative, blasted his “political showmanship” and urged him to stop using “military families as leverage”. He was unashamed when veterans’ groups pointed out that he had failed to donate his Senate salary to veterans’ charities as he had promised. He did not care when the Veterans of Foreign Wars begged him to stop. He was indifferent when the secretaries of the army, navy and air force asked him to end his blockade. “Just another example of woke propaganda,” Tuberville tweeted.The former CIA director Michael Hayden, a retired air force general, tweeted in response to a question about whether Tuberville should be removed from the armed services committee: “How about the human race?” Tuberville, in faux alarm, called the sarcastic remark a “politically motivated assassination” and reported Hayden to the Capitol police – a good basis for another fundraising plea to the yahoos. Hayden replied: “I was surprised to wake up this morning and discover that many Maganuts had lost their minds over my suggestion that ‘Coach’ Tuberville not be considered a member of the human race. I stand by that view. I’m wishing you all a nice day even the intransigent Tommy Tuberville.”Finally, on 1 November, several Republican senators, all veterans, vented their wrath in an extraordinary display of exasperation. They blew away Tuberville’s excuse that he wasn’t damaging readiness as “ridiculous”.“We are going to look back at this episode and just be stunned at what a national-security suicide mission this became,” said Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska. “I do not respect men who do not honor their word,” said Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa.The Senate rule may now be amended. With the approval of the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, Senator Jack Reed, the chairman of the armed services committee, has introduced a bill to allow a vote on military nominations in batches without unanimous consent. The Reed bill would pass if nine Republicans joined the Democrats.Tuberville remains unyielding despite the equivalent of his blackball from the club. His communications director, Steven Stafford, a longtime Republican operative, sent an email to anti-abortion groups to mobilize them, so “that any Republican who votes for this will be primaried. In my view, if enough mushy middle Republicans come out in opposition, then this is over. But they only need nine squishes. And they will get there if we don’t act.”The email violated Senate ethics rules prohibiting “official resources” for being used for campaign purposes. Republican senators were enraged at the threat. “I have some words and they’re not polite so I’m not going to say them,” said Senator Ernst. The chairman of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, Senator Steve Daines of Montana, issued a statement calling for Stafford’s “termination”.Tuberville instinctively reacted with abject cowardice. “That was not me,” he said, blaming his staffer. “He did a ‘no no.’ It wasn’t my statement. I totally disagree with that. We’re teammates here.” He wanted back in the good graces of the club. Stafford was compelled to make a Soviet purge-trial like confession: “It is not the opinion of Coach, it was not on behalf of Coach.” Coach left his wounded behind. Think Ted Lasso as moronic and malignant.Tuberville’s stupidity is both vain and in vain. By his damage to others he invariably damages himself. He projects his stupidity through blind arrogance and compounds it through pride in his presumption of superior knowledge. “Our government wasn’t set up for one group to have all three branches of government – wasn’t set up that way,” Tuberville has said. “You know, the House, the Senate and the executive.”Defending his hold on military promotions, Tuberville treated an interview on CNN in July as a teaching opportunity. “I’m totally against anything to do with racism,” he began, before instantly going off the rails. “But the thing about being a white nationalist is just a cover word, for the Democrats, now, where they can use it, to try to make people mad across the country. Identity politics. I’m totally against that. But I’m for the American people. I’m for military.” When the interviewer told him that white nationalists believe in white supremacy, he replied, “Well, that’s some people’s opinion … My opinion of a white nationalist, if somebody wants to call them a white nationalist, to me, is an American … Well, that’s just a name that it’s been given.” When the interviewer raised “real concerns about extremism”, Tuberville answered: “So, if you’re going to do away with most white people in this country, out of the military, we got huge problems.”In his stupidity, Tuberville confuses his ignorance with ingenuity. He is scornful when challenged. His stupidity may appear to be a brand of fanaticism, but that would mistake his mule-like stubbornness for a leap of faith. On his mission from God, Coach thinks he is the highest authority. His smugness protects against doubt. Nobody can fool the fool who fools himself. He plays three-card monte tricking himself that wrecking the military is owning the libs. His malice is a defense mechanism. The greater the outrage against him, the greater his certainty, if not celebrity and fundraising. Coach wants to be seen as the hero. The greater his apparent futility, the more he believes he is a giant among men. He is fourth and goal, calling the play for a touchdown. Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war!Before the 2020 election, even though he was not yet elected to the Senate, Tuberville plotted the rejection of electoral college certification of the results. “You’ll see what’s coming,” he said. “You’ve been reading about it in the House. We’re going to have to do it in the Senate.”On January 6, as the mob rampaged through the Capitol, approaching the Senate chamber, Tuberville, sworn in as a senator three days before, played a sycophantic Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern bit role. Trump phoned Tuberville. At first, he misdialed Senator Mike Lee of Utah, who handed Tuberville his phone. Tuberville informed Trump that the Secret Service had just evacuated Mike Pence, who Trump was pressuring to reject certification. “They’ve taken the vice-president out,” Tuberville told Trump. “They want me to get off the phone, I gotta go.” Later, Tuberville had lapses of memory of the time of the call and what Trump said to him. “I don’t remember, because they were dragging me. They had me by the arm.” Tuberville was one of eight Republican senators to vote against certification.One obscure aspect of Trump’s coup was his foiled attempt to place his loyalists within the CIA and the Pentagon. He was resisted by the CIA director Gina Haspel, the secretary of defense Mark Esper and chairman of the joint chiefs, General Mark Milley. Trump had come into the presidency thinking of the senior military as “my generals”, a personal palace guard, but one by one he forced them out. “A bunch of dopes and babies,” he called them. “Some of the dumbest people I’ve ever met in my life,” he said. He has been especially hostile to former chairman of the joint chiefs, Milley, who resisted Trump’s idea to bomb Iran after he lost the election to foster a crisis before the electoral college vote on January 6. “If you do this, you’re gonna have a fucking war,” Milley told him.Milley believed that Trump might stage a coup, a “Reichstag” moment to precipitate the suspension of the constitution, and he told the congressional leadership about the military: “Our loyalty is to the US constitution.” After January 6, Trump felt “my generals” had betrayed him. Where was his Mike Flynn?When Milley’s thwarting of Trump’s secret plan to strike Iran was exposed in an article by Susan Glasser in the New Yorker in July 2021, Trump was furious. He had brought the memo he had ordered Milley to produce to Mar-a-Lago along with other national security documents. Agitated by the revelation, he waved the papers before some supporters at his Florida estate, saying of Milley and the military “these are bad, sick people”. He falsely claimed that it was Milley who was pushing him to attack Iran. “This was him. They presented me this – this is off the record but – they presented me this. This was him. This was the defense department and him … This was done by the military and given to me.” This incident at Mar-a-Lago now figures in the federal indictment of Trump for mishandling classified documents.At his retirement on 29 September, Milley pointed said: “We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen or to a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.” Trump responded by trashing him as a “Woke train wreck,” whose treason was “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”Now, Tuberville is performing Trump’s early retribution against a military that he believes confounded his coup and preparing the groundwork for his takeover in 2025, which will include replacing the nation’s top military command with his lackeys to impose the Insurrection Act against opponents – “my generals”, at last. It doesn’t matter whether Tuberville fully understands the play. He just has to run his pattern.
      Sidney Blumenthal is the author of The Permanent Campaign, published in 1980, and All the Power of the Earth: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1856-1860, the third of a projected five volumes. He is the former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and senior adviser to Hillary Clinton More