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      Democrats need to realize that there is no alternative to Biden – and buck up | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Now ends our summer of discontent. Nearly half of Democrats fretfully tell pollsters that President Biden is “too old”. Fifty-eight percent of all Americans, including 30% of Democrats, do not approve of his handling of the economy. Twenty-one percent of Democrats rate him unfavorably. If these discontented were to change their opinion, his favorability would be near or above 50%. Depressed Democrats hold down his standing.Biden returns from the G20 economic conference in India triumphant, conducting complex diplomacy edging out China, and heralding a host of deliverables, notably a deal to build a rail and shipping network from India to Europe and the Middle East, running through Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, a “game-changing regional investment”, he declares. He follows with an unprecedented pact with Vietnam as a strategic partner. Then at his press conference he wanders into a monologue about a John Wayne western and one of Biden’s favored expressions, “a lying dog-faced pony soldier”, to refer to disbelievers in the climate crisis.Biden gets no credit for his accomplishments. The Axios newsletter reports that he and Trump “are running dueling basement campaigns that make them look like they are in the witness protection program”. Actual events and policies are dismissed. The formulaic repetition of false equivalence, put forward as “balance”, prevails as conventional wisdom.All summer, the Biden administration touts his extraordinary achievements – his infrastructure bill, his Inflation Reduction Act, his Chips and Science Act. Political action committees launch a $13m advertising campaign documenting the revival of manufacturing. Yet the poll numbers are unmoved. “These are DARK DAYS in the life of America!” posts Donald Trump on his Truth Social account. He is more or less even with Biden. With every indictment, he rises further above his inconsequential rivals for the Republican nomination.On their panoply of “weaponization” of committees of the House of Representatives, Republicans play Inspector Clouseau as Javert, pursuing Biden as the diabolic boss of a crime family, his son Hunter Biden and his peccadilloes an instrument for prying the door to reveal the hidden Godfather. The fantasy gangster, Trump’s doppelganger, distracts from the indicted one. On Fox News, Biden is also the enfeebled, doddering and senile fool on his last legs. Which is the ruse? Fifty-five percent of Republicans in swing House districts believe Biden should be impeached even if there is “no evidence”. The poll did not offer the category of spectral evidence that was accepted in the Salem witch trials. Under pressure from the far-right House caucus that holds the Sword of Damocles over his head, speaker Kevin McCarthy announced the opening of an impeachment panel to conjure the works of the devil’s magic.But it is the Democrats who pull Biden underwater. They see his physical faults and shudder at his political fall. He is 80, his hair thinned, his gait slower and more careful. He is not eloquent. The slight hesitation of the stutter he overcame as a child seems occasionally to return. He is not Mick Jagger strutting at 80. The intensity of concern among Democrats about Biden is in direct proportion to their panic about Trump. They see in his fragility their own predicament. He is the screen on which they project their anxiety, insecurity and fear. They suffer from a crisis of bad nerves.The Democrats’ withholding creates a self-fulfilling prophesy. Spooked by the shadow of Trump, they react with disapproval of Biden, whose numbers are stagnant, flashing the sign that makes them more frightened. They do not censure Biden or dislike him. But they hope for a counter-factual scenario. There is none.Asked to name a specific person they would prefer to Biden, 18% of Democrats replied with a scattering of names. Bernie Sanders, 82, received the highest support at 3%. Sanders, who has twice run for the nomination, this time has early endorsed Biden. It has taken the democratic socialist to remind that perfect should not be the enemy of the good.If Biden were not to run, the counter-factual dream of a Hollywood ending with Michael Douglas from The American President materializing would be replaced with a ferocious primary of centrifugal force exposing the party’s fractured divides and the survivor most likely at no better rating than Biden at the current fraught moment. Biden’s presence leaves that bloodsport to another day.Rather than the counter-factual hypothesis, there are a number of factual realities. This older Biden, to those who have known him over the decades, is a more capable Biden than the younger Biden. That earlier incarnation was more impetuous, garrulous and conventional. He was always, though, a natural tactile politician, the senator from a state like a congressional district, with an open and caring touch, appearing at a 1001 gatherings.But he also carried a streak of insecurity, of being a son of the middle class, a middling student from the University of Delaware, and not from an Ivy League school. That self-doubt flared in self-undermining displays, abruptly ending his first campaign when he plagiarized speeches from Robert F Kennedy and British Labour leader Neil Kinnock.Biden’s judgment is not attributable to an abstract and amorphous category called “experience,” but rather particular concrete experiences, beyond bearing the weight of his unimaginable personal tragedies. His defeats and missteps, slights and belittlement, have accumulated onto the years of committee chairmanships, a lifetime in the Senate like no other president since Lyndon Johnson and the whole range of being vice-president involved in every major decision of the executive during the Obama administration.In the Senate, Biden surrounded himself with the most talented staff. He was not that insecure. As president, at the head of a vast government, his cabinet is an array of highly effective people. There has not been a single major scandal among them after the most corrupt administration in American history. The paradox of Biden’s poll numbers among Democrats is that there is no complaint about how he runs the government.The further paradox is that there is no movement to supplant Biden. There is no faction of the party that seeks to remove him. There is no group within the Congress that seeks to topple him. There is no credible person running against him or contemplating a campaign against him. There is no king across the sea. There is no Bonnie Prince Charlie ready to invade. There are no pretenders to the throne. There is none of that. The poll numbers as a party matter are hollow.And there is no rightful Kennedy succession to overthrow the second Irish Catholic president. After President John F Kennedy’s assassination, two Kennedys ran against incumbent Democratic presidents whom they somehow regarded as interlopers, Robert F Kennedy against Lyndon Johnson and Edward M Kennedy against Jimmy Carter. Robert F Kennedy Jr’s entry now is not a case of the first time as tragedy, the second as farce, but simply pathos.Of Robert F Kennedy Jr, a subject Democrats fervently do not want to discuss, in truth the feeling is the opposite of loathing for his spiraling descent into ever more baroque conspiracy theories, but instead profound sadness at the public display of his affliction. He rattles off barrages of science fiction and prejudice with an air of mastery of arcane knowledge that only persuades listeners that he is the sufferer of a disorder. For example, he offered, “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”There are no actual Democrats who view Kennedy as a political figure, representing a valid position that must be heard within the party, but a collateral victim of the tragedy of his father and uncle. His shoulder-rubbing with the Trump scum, Bannon and Flynn and Stone, his pocketing of funds from the Silicon Valley PayPal Mafia that also finances Ron DeSantis, and his insults hurled at Biden arouse a mixture of horror and sorrow. He states his identity is that of a recovering addict, claiming, “I was born an addict,” but his “candidacy” is less a campaign than a breakout from recovery. His wretchedness is a continual sight of dreadful infirmity. He threatens only himself. He inspires dismay and grief. His family members are beside themselves. Democrats wish to avert their gaze.The counter-factual scenario the Republicans originally pressed about Biden is the return of a cycle of failure. Four months into his administration, Congressman Jim Jordan, the Republican from Ohio, tweeted, “Joe Biden is the new Jimmy Carter.” The Wall Street Journal editorial page has periodically revived the trope, laying out its dream that another Ronald Reagan will appear as in 1980. “Will Mr. Biden suffer a similar fate?” wrote one of its columnists. “His agenda is creating a similar backlash. … The conservative movement has another chance to recapture the imagination of a malaise-beset public.”When Carter entered office in 1977, the inflation rate was 6.5%. Under the energy shocks of ruthless OPEC oil price rises and the Iranian revolution, from January 1979 to December 1980, inflation in that period spiked 23% to a 13.5% rate total. In the summer of 1979, a gasoline shortage caused long lines at the pumps. On 15 July, Carter delivered a speech proclaiming a “crisis of confidence”, the need for “sacrifice”, and a “rebirth” of “our common faith”. Two days later, he scuttled his message, firing five cabinet members, which appeared to prove the lack of confidence in the government. By October, his favorability fell to 29%.The Democratic leadership in the Congress disliked the cold technocrat in the White House. Their favorite son, Ted Kennedy, topped Carter by 59% to 19% in an October poll in New Hampshire, the first primary state. Kennedy declared his candidacy on 7 November, three days after US diplomats were seized as hostages in Tehran. Carter defeated Kennedy in New Hampshire by 11 points. The split party served the cause of Reagan and encouraged the entrance of a third candidate, liberal Republican John Anderson.The inflation that stoked those politics is not comparable to the inflation today. Driven largely by the distortions of supply and demand caused by the Covid crisis, recent inflation at its peak was less than half that of the Carter presidency. This year, from January to July, inflation went up only 1.9%, a greatly slowed rate, now hovering at around 3% total, and declining. Unlike in the 1970s, inflationary expectations are shifting strongly downward. Economic conditions that underlay the fall of Carter and rise of Reagan are fast receding. The analogy does not hold. Only a reflexively sado-monetarist Federal Reserve that insists on continuing to raise interest rates in order to slam the brakes on growth could create a moral hazard.Yet the political value of Biden’s successes remains diminished for another reason. His team attempts to persuade by operating on the tried-and-true premise that the election is a referendum on the incumbent. But in public perception Biden is not the only incumbent running. Sixty-nine percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents believe that Trump won the 2020 election and Biden is an illegitimate president, according to an August CNN poll. Trump will be the Republican candidate running as the true incumbent in the eyes of the majority of his party.The only previous cases of defeated presidents running again for the office were Grover Cleveland, who won in 1888, Martin Van Buren, losing in 1848 on the Free Soil Party, and Millard Fillmore, losing in 1856 on the Know Nothing or American Party. Cleveland never claimed to have really won when he was defeated in 1884; nor did Van Buren in 1840. Vice-president Fillmore had acceded to the presidency in 1850 after the death of Zachary Taylor. He was not his party’s nominee in 1852. Trump again has no precedent.The election of 2024 will be the second referendum on Trump, but the first held on the attempted coup of January 6t. Just as the 2004 election, which President George W Bush won, was in effect a referendum on the terrorist attack on September 11, the only election since 1988 in which the Republican won the popular vote, January 6 is the overwhelming political factor that establishes Trump’s assertion to his party’s nomination by means of incumbency. His forthcoming trials are not peripheral, but central to his claim.When the illusion of a counter-factual alternative fades, and the choice is between the incumbent and the false incumbent, then Democrats may consider something other than the age of Biden and whether they wish to contribute to a new political age of Trump.
      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

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      ‘Authoritarian regimes ban books’: Democrats raise alarm at Senate hearing

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      A Senate hearing on book bans and censorship on Tuesday spotlighted the growing phenomenon in America and highlighted a partisan split on the issue, with Democrats decrying censorship as Republicans and rightwing activists push for many works to be taken out of schools and libraries, claiming it should be parents’ rights to do so.Many of the most commonly banned books deal with topics such as racism, sexuality and gender identity. Conservatives also argue that some books, many exploring queer identity and LGBTQ+ themes, include sexually explicit content inappropriate for students. School librarians opposing such book bans have been attacked and harassed.Other books that have long been parts of school curriculums have also been challenged after complaints that they contained racist stereotypes, such as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird, which also includes a depiction of rape.Between July and December 2022, the non-profit PEN America recorded nearly 1,500 instances of individual book bans, which it broadly defines as when books are deemed “off-limits” for students in school libraries or classrooms, or when books are removed during an investigation to determine if there should be any restrictions.“Instead of inheriting a debate over what more can be done with and for our libraries, I was confronted with a book-banning movement upon taking office,” testified Alexi Giannoulias, Illinois’s secretary of state since January who also serves as the state librarian, on Tuesday.“Our libraries have become targets by a movement that disingenuously claims to pursue freedom, but is instead promoting authoritarianism. Authoritarian regimes ban books, not democracies,” Giannoulias said.Democratic lawmakers and education experts raised alarm bells over the rise in banned books.“Let’s be clear, efforts to ban books are wrong, whether they come from the right or the left,” said Dick Durbin, the judiciary committee chair and Democratic senator of Illinois. “In the name of protecting students, we’re instead denying these students an opportunity to learn about different people and difficult subjects.”Meanwhile, Republicans have widely backed the growing number of conservative activists seeking more control over school curriculums, including books – but also policies such as transgender students’ eligibility to use bathrooms – in the name of “parents’ rights”.“To all the parents out there who believe there’s a bunch of stuff in our schools being pushed on your children that go over the line, you’re absolutely right,” said Lindsey Graham, the committee’s top Republican.Graham briefly derailed the hearing, diverting the conversation to border security and migration, saying that fixing “Biden’s border crisis” should be the committee’s biggest priority.“The book issue is a parental awareness issue. It is not partisan to assert that children do better when their families know what’s going on in their lives,” testified Nicole Neily, the president of the conservative non-profit Parents Defending Education.According to its website, the group opposes “activists” who have sought to “impose ideologically driven curriculum with a concerning and often divisive emphasis on students’ group identities: race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and gender”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionArguing that parents and institutions should have the right to ban books containing sexually explicit content, Max Eden, a research fellow at the conservative thinktank American Enterprise Institute, read aloud a short passage recounting the author’s experience with child molestation from the book All Boys Aren’t Blue, a memoir about growing up Black and queer that is one of the most banned books.The Louisiana senator John Kennedy also read aloud explicit passages from two of the most-banned books, All Boys Aren’t Blue and Gender Queer, during the hearing.“Is this OK for kids?” said Eden. “Judging by the thoughts made by the media, NGOs and some Democratic politicians, it seems there is a politically significant contingent that believes this is all actually very good for kids. But personally, I’m not at all troubled by the fact that some moms believe that this isn’t appropriate, and that some school boards agree.”But Democratic lawmakers maintain that banning books restricts children’s ability to think for themselves, and the information access researcher Emily Knox, an associate professor at the University of Illinois, testified that books can help change a reader’s attitude toward difference, adding that campaigns to censor books were unconstitutional.“Of course there are books that are not age appropriate. But that’s what being a parent is all about – doing your best to keep an eye on what your children read and what they consume,” said Giannoulias.“No one is advocating for sexually explicit content to be available in an elementary school library or in the children’s section of a library,” said Durbin. “But no parent should have the right to tell another parent’s child what they can and cannot read in school or at home. Every student deserves access to books that reflect their experiences and help them better understand who they are.” More

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      McCarthy ‘doing Trump’s bidding’ by backing Biden impeachment inquiry, president’s campaign spokesperson says – live

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      From 3h agoA spokesperson for the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign released a statement in response to House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announcement backing a formal impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.McCarthy has “cemented his role as the Trump campaign’s super-surrogate by turning the House of Representatives into an arm of his presidential campaign”, the statement by Ammar Moussa reads.
      11 days ago, McCarthy unequivocally said he would not move forward with an impeachment inquiry without holding a vote on the House floor. What has changed since then?
      The Biden-Harris campaign added:
      Several members of the Speaker’s own conference have come out and publicly panned impeachment as a political stunt, pointing out there is no evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden as Republicans litigate the same debunked conspiracy theories they’ve investigated for over four years.

      The speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, announced that Republicans would open an impeachment investigation into Joe Biden over unproven allegations of corruption in his family’s business dealings. House Republicans have so far have not produced hard evidence linking the business dealings of Hunter Biden and his father.
      The announcement by McCarthy kicks off what are expected to be weeks of Republican-led hearings intended to convince Americans that the president profited from the business dealings of his son Hunter Biden and other family members. While impeachment can be the first step to removing a president from office, that appears unlikely to happen.
      A spokesperson for the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign said McCarthy has “cemented his role as the Trump campaign’s super-surrogate by turning the House of Representatives into an arm of his presidential campaign”. Donald Trump has been weighing in behind the scenes in support of the House GOP push to impeach his successor, according to a report.
      Ian Sams, the White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations, described McCarthy’s announcement as “extreme politics at its worst”, adding that House GOP members had uncovered “no evidence of wrongdoing” in the months-long investigation into Joe Biden.
      It is unclear if the GOP has the evidence to substantiate the long-running claims, or even the votes for impeachment. McCarthy plans to convene House GOP members behind closed doors this week to discuss the Biden impeachment.
      James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee leading the impeachment inquiry into Biden, spent “eight months of abject failure” in trying to prove the president guilty of wrongdoing, a watchdog released earlier this week said. The report by the Congressional Integrity Project offers an anatomy of a fake scandal, detailing a series of exaggerated assertions that have shriveled under scrutiny.
      Vladimir Putin described the recent indictments of Donald Trump as “political persecution” as the Russian leader waded back into a US presidential campaign for the third consecutive election cycle. “I believe that everything happening at the moment is good. Because it demonstrates the rottenness of the American political system,” Putin remarked during an economic forum in the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok.
      The tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, has “had conversations” with No Labels, a group considering launching a third-party candidate in the 2024 election. Names linked to a No Labels candidacy have included Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, and Larry Hogan, a former Republican governor of Maryland.You can read the full report on the impeachment inquiry here:
      Almost all the Republicans running for the presidential nomination have endorsed the impeachment inquiry.Donald Trump is notably the only one who’s called impeachment outright. Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy have all expressed support for the inquiry.Meanwhile, Chris Christie said he supports investigations, but noted, “I think we’re cheapening impeachment by doing that kind of thing.”Will Hurd, meanwhile said an investigation was warranted, but warned that if no evidence is found “I worry Republicans are walking into a political trap.”Women who say they were denied abortions in medical emergencies have taken legal action in Idaho, Oklahoma and Tennessee, in the latest attempt to challenge abortion bans that, abortion patients and doctors say, prevent people from getting care even when their health is in danger.The lawsuits in Idaho and Tennessee, along with a federal complaint against a hospital in Oklahoma, were filed on Tuesday by the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed a similar lawsuit on behalf of women in Texas earlier this year. Tuesday’s filings were first reported by the Washington Post.“I can’t stop bad things from happening to people’s pregnancies,” Jennifer Adkins, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit filed in Idaho, told the Post. “But I want other Idahoans to feel safe and cared for.”After the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year, states across the south and midwest enacted near-total abortion bans, many of which only allow abortions in cases of medical emergencies. However, doctors have repeatedly said that these bans, which contain non-medical language drafted by politicians, are too vague for medical providers to interpret. Instead, they are forced to wait until their patients get sick enough for them to intervene.Read more:It’s been a busy Tuesday so far. Here’s where things stand:
      The speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, announced that Republicans would open an impeachment investigation into Joe Biden over unproven allegations of corruption in his family’s business dealings. House Republicans have so far have not produced hard evidence linking the business dealings of Hunter Biden and his father.
      The announcement by McCarthy kicks off what are expected to be weeks of Republican-led hearings intended to convince Americans that the president profited from the business dealings of his son Hunter Biden and other family members. While impeachment can be the first step to removing a president from office, that appears unlikely to happen.
      A spokesperson for the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign said McCarthy has “cemented his role as the Trump campaign’s super-surrogate by turning the House of Representatives into an arm of his presidential campaign”. Donald Trump has been weighing in behind the scenes in support of the House GOP push to impeach his successor, according to a report.
      Ian Sams, the White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations, described McCarthy’s announcement as “extreme politics at its worst”, adding that House GOP members had uncovered “no evidence of wrongdoing” in the months-long investigation into Joe Biden.
      It is unclear if the GOP has the evidence to substantiate the long-running claims, or even the votes for impeachment. McCarthy plans to convene House GOP members behind closed doors this week to discuss the Biden impeachment.
      James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee leading the impeachment inquiry into Biden, spent “eight months of abject failure” in trying to prove the president guilty of wrongdoing, a watchdog released earlier this week said. The report by the Congressional Integrity Project offers an anatomy of a fake scandal, detailing a series of exaggerated assertions that have shriveled under scrutiny.
      Vladimir Putin described the recent indictments of Donald Trump as “political persecution” as the Russian leader waded back into a US presidential campaign for the third consecutive election cycle. “I believe that everything happening at the moment is good. Because it demonstrates the rottenness of the American political system,” Putin remarked during an economic forum in the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok.
      The tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, has “had conversations” with No Labels, a group considering launching a third-party candidate in the 2024 election. Names linked to a No Labels candidacy have included Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, and Larry Hogan, a former Republican governor of Maryland.
      Donald Trump has been weighing in behind the scenes in support of the House GOP push to impeach Joe Biden, including regularly speaking with a member of leadership in the lead up to Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announcement on Tuesday, according to a Politico report. Trump has been speaking on a weekly basis with House GOP conference chair Elise Stefanik, who was the first member of Republican leadership to come out in support of impeachment, the report says.The former president had dinner on Sunday night with the far-right congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where the topic of impeachment was discussed, the report says.Two Ron DeSantis hats put up for auction at a Republican dinner in Florida at the weekend received precisely no bids, according to local party officials, suggesting his presidential campaign in his home state is going as badly as it is nationwide.Details come in this story by Newsweek, which says nobody signed up to bid on either of the red and white caps at the St Johns county GOP founders dinner in Ponte Vedra Beach on Saturday. St Johns is where the Florida governor was born.A photo of the barren sign-up sheets was posted to X, formerly Twitter, by Republican fundraiser Caroline Wren, the image taken two and a half hours after the event began.Blake Paterson, chair of the county’s Republican party, confirmed to Newsweek that the hats had attracted no bidders, though he characterized the event as a giveaway in exchange for donations rather than an auction.Those in attendance at the dinner appeared to be overwhelmingly supporters of Donald Trump, DeSantis’s rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. They included Florida congressman Byron Donalds, a vocal Trump acolyte, and extremist conspiracy theorist Kari Lake, failed candidate for governor of Arizona in last year’s election.Speaker Kevin McCarthy plans to convene House GOP members behind closed doors this week to discuss the Biden impeachment, amid uncertainty over whether he even has the support of rank-and-file Republicans behind him.McCarthy is launching the impeachment inquiry on his own and without a House floor vote, as he may not have enough support from his slim GOP majority, AP reported.Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has warned House Republicans off the effort, but on Tuesday he said:
      I don’t think Speaker McCarthy needs advice from the Senate.
      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer called the impeachment inquiry “absurd”. He told reporters:
      The American people want us to do something that will make their lives better, not go off on these chases and witch hunts.
      House GOP members have found an “overwhelming” amount of evidence showing Joe Biden “lied to the American people about his knowledge and participation in his family’s influence peddling schemes”, according to a joint statement by James Comer, Jim Jordan and Jason Smith.Comer, Jordan and Smith chair the three committees expected to take the lead in the impeachment inquiry into the president. They are: the House committee on oversight and accountability, committee on the judiciary, and the committee on ways and means.The statement says the investigation into Biden uncovered “bank records, suspicious activity reports, emails, texts, and witness testimony” that showed the president “allowed his family to sell him as ‘the brand’ around the world”.
      Based on the evidence, we support the opening of an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. The House Committees on Oversight and Accountability, Judiciary, and Ways and Means, will continue to work to follow the facts to ensure President Biden is held accountable for abusing public office for his family’s financial gain. The American people demand and deserve answers, transparency, and accountability for this blatant abuse of public office.
      House Republicans have so far have not produced hard evidence linking the business dealings of Hunter Biden and the president.Senate Republicans are unhappy with House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s decision to open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden and concerned that it will backfire on the party, according to the Hill.A Senate Republican, speaking on condition on anonymity, told the newspaper that even if the House did vote to impeach Biden after an inquiry, there is no way the Democrat-controlled Senate would vote to convict. Reports indicate McCarthy does not yet have enough votes in support of impeaching Biden.“It’s a waste of time. It’s a fool’s errand,” the GOP senator was quoted as saying.
      We know how this is going to end. It just creates tumult within the conference. I can see it already how people are going to react when they send a message over if they go that far.
      They noted that all the internal polling they had seen suggested GOP primary voters do not see impeachment as a priority. The senator added:
      It seems like we’re spending a lot of time on things that matter to them that don’t matter to the people I want to have a positive opinion of Republicans next November … This is not driving [general election] turnout.
      “They’re all acting like children,” the GOP senator added.Here’s a statement from Jamaal Bowman, a Democratic congressman from New York, who accused House speaker Kevin McCarthy of announcing a “sham” impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden in order to “bring attention away from the failures of House Republicans to be able to pass a budget and avoid a government shutdown”.The statement reads:
      Speaker McCarthy and the dysfunctional Republican party are wasting time with their comical impeachment inquiry into President Biden instead of focusing on passing appropriations bills. We’re just 3 weeks away from a government shutdown where millions of government employees won’t get paid, small businesses won’t be able to apply for federal loans, the NIH has to shut down most medical research, and more. We should be focused on doing our job by helping the American people & funding critical services, not forcing a shutdown & plotting baseless impeachment inquiries.
      It goes on:
      This is yet another example of Republican dysfunction and continues to show why many across the country do not want to trust or participate in our government.
      Ken Buck, a Republican congressman for Colorado and House Freedom caucus member, has previously expressed skepticism about an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.On Sunday, Buck said any evidence linking the president to any high crime or misdemeanor “doesn’t exist right now”. His recent comments against the House GOP’s investigative efforts and track record of bucking his own party have put a target on his back, according to a CNN report.A serious effort is now under way to find a candidate to mount a primary challenge against Buck in his eastern Colorado seat, the news channel reported, citing sources.Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right congresswoman from Georgia and ally of House speaker Kevin McCarthy, told the channel there is an “unbelievable” level of frustration with Buck inside the House GOP. Greene added that she didn’t think he should remain in his role on the House judiciary committee or the GOP whip’s team.“This is the same guy that wrote a book called ‘Drain the Swamp’, who is now arguing against an impeachment inquiry,” Greene said.
      I really don’t see how we can have a member on Judiciary that is flat out refusing to impeach … It seems like, can he even be trusted to do his job at this point?
      A spokesperson for the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign released a statement in response to House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announcement backing a formal impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.McCarthy has “cemented his role as the Trump campaign’s super-surrogate by turning the House of Representatives into an arm of his presidential campaign”, the statement by Ammar Moussa reads.
      11 days ago, McCarthy unequivocally said he would not move forward with an impeachment inquiry without holding a vote on the House floor. What has changed since then?
      The Biden-Harris campaign added:
      Several members of the Speaker’s own conference have come out and publicly panned impeachment as a political stunt, pointing out there is no evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden as Republicans litigate the same debunked conspiracy theories they’ve investigated for over four years.
      A Virginia Democrat running in a closely contested legislative election has denounced reports that she and her husband engaged in sex acts livestreamed on an online platform in exchange for “tips”.Susanna Gibson, a nurse practitioner and a first-time candidate seeking a seat in Virginia’s house of delegates, shared the videos on a platform called Chaturbate.The videos, which were first reported by the Washington Post and then confirmed by the Associated Press, show Gibson urging viewers to provide tips in the form of Chaturbate tokens in exchange for her performance of specific sex acts with her husband. The videos were archived in 2022, though it is unclear when the live streams occurred.According to the Post’s report, a Republican operative first alerted the newspaper to the existence of the videos, which had been archived on another site. In a statement, Gibson denounced the report as a form of “gutter politics” and “an illegal invasion of my privacy designed to humiliate me and my family”.“It won’t intimidate me and it won’t silence me,” Gibson said.
      My political opponents and their Republican allies have proven they’re willing to commit a sex crime to attack me and my family because there’s no line they won’t cross to silence women when they speak up.
      A lawyer representing Gibson, Daniel P Watkins, told the Post that the videos may have violated Virginia’s revenge porn law, adding: “We are working closely with state and federal law enforcement.”Gibson’s district, located just north-west of Richmond, is considered one of just a handful of competitive seats in the race to control Virginia’s house of delegates. In the last legislative session, Republicans narrowly controlled the chamber, while Democrats maintained a slim majority in the state senate.Peter Navarro’s contempt of Congress conviction has “everybody in that frigging White House” feeling as if they are grappling with “massive legal bills and … prison time”, the ex-Donald Trump administration official said on Monday.Navarro’s remarks came in an interview with the far-right media outlet Newsmax in which he used the term “SOBs” – short for sons of bitches – to refer to the US justice department prosecutors who secured a guilty verdict against him last week.Lamenting that prosecutors had pushed to “stick me in leg irons … [and] with half a million dollars of legal bills”, Navarro pledged to seek a reversal of his conviction from an appellate court. Navarro told the host Eric Bolling:
      We’re gonna win this fight – that’s why God created the appeals court.
      Navarro served as a senior trade adviser during Trump’s presidency, which ended in the Republican’s defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Congress subpoenaed him in February 2022 to answer questions about why Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, temporarily delaying certification of Biden’s electoral victory.A House committee convened to investigate the attack suspected Navarro had more information about any connection between false claims of voter fraud in that election which Trump allies had pushed and the assault on the Capitol. But Navarro refused to testify while also declining to turn over any emails, reports or notes.Navarro’s attorney argued that the defendant asked the committee to talk to Trump to see what information he wanted protected under executive privilege, which never happened. Prosecutors countered that Navarro should have handed over the materials he had while labeling those he believed were privileged.On Thursday, a jury convicted Navarro of two misdemeanor charges of contempt of Congress, each of which is punishable by between 30 days and a year in prison. His sentencing has tentatively been scheduled for 12 January. More

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      House speaker Kevin McCarthy announces impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden

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      The speaker of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, on Tuesday announced that Republicans would open an impeachment investigation into Joe Biden over unproven allegations of corruption in his family’s business dealings.The announcement by McCarthy kicks off what are expected to be weeks of Republican-led hearings intended to convince Americans that the president profited from the business dealings of his son Hunter Biden and other family members, but it is unclear if the GOP has the evidence to substantiate the long-running claims, or even the votes for impeachment.The campaign comes as McCarthy tries to hang on to his position as leader of Congress’s lower chamber, despite a mere four-seat Republican majority and rising discontent among its most extreme conservative lawmakers, who are upset over a deal McCarthy reached with Biden to raise the debt ceiling while cutting some government spending, and have demanded recompense in the form of an impeachment inquiry.“House Republicans have uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct. Taken together, these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption,” McCarthy announced as lawmakers in Congress’s lower chamber resumed work following a month-long recess in August.“I am directing our House committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. This logical next step will give our committees the full power to gather all the facts and answers for the American public. That’s exactly what we want to know – the answers. I believe the president would want to answer these questions and allegations as well,” McCarthy said.While impeachment can be the first step to removing a president from office, that appears unlikely to happen. If the House impeaches Biden, the matter would then go to the Senate, which would have to support his conviction with a two-thirds majority – a high bar to clear in a chamber currently controlled by Democrats. The White House spokesman Ian Sams called McCarthy’s announcement “extreme politics at its worst”.“House Republicans have been investigating the President for 9 months, and they’ve turned up no evidence of wrongdoing[.] His own GOP members have said so[.] He vowed to hold a vote to open impeachment, now he flip flopped because he doesn’t have support,” Sams wrote on Twitter.The impeachment inquiry will be handled by the oversight, judiciary and ways and means committees, all of which are controlled by McCarthy allies and since the start of the year have spent much of their time trying to make corruption allegations against the president stick.In a sign of the paucity of the results of their efforts, reports indicate McCarthy does not yet have enough votes in support of impeaching Biden. Earlier this month, the speaker told Breitbart News, “If we move forward with an impeachment inquiry, it would occur through a vote on the floor of the People’s House and not through a declaration by one person,” but backtracked on Tuesday, making no mention of holding a vote to start the investigation.The corruption allegations against the president have generally focused on his son Hunter, who has been under federal investigation since 2018. In July, the collapse of a plea agreement he reached with prosecutors to resolve charges related to failing to pay his income taxes for two years and lying about using drugs when buying a gun. Last week, prosecutors said Hunter Biden could be indicted on the gun charge by the end of the month.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRepublicans insist that Joe Biden illicitly profited from his son’s business dealings overseas, but have yet to turn up proof. In July, Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer spoke behind closed doors to the House oversight committee, and said the younger Biden would sometimes put his father on speakerphone during meetings.But the former vice-president “never once spoke about any business dealings”, Archer said, adding that he felt Hunter was trying to create an “illusion of access” to his father as he pursued deals in Ukraine.
      This article was amended on 12 September 2023 to correct the number of seats that make up the Republican majority in the US House. More

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      Rudy Giuliani ‘mob scene’ turned Elon Musk off seeking advice, new book says

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      Elon Musk backed away from a plan to recruit Rudy Giuliani as a political fixer to help him turn PayPal into a bank in 2001 after he and an associate found the then New York mayor “surrounded by goonish confidantes” in an office that felt “like a mob scene”.“This guy occupies a different planet,” Musk, who would become the world’s richest man, said of Giuliani, then approaching the peak of his fame.Giuliani left office at the end of 2001 after leading New York through the 9/11 attacks, then ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2008, a campaign which soon collapsed.He became an attorney and ally to Donald Trump but missed out on a cabinet appointment when Trump won the presidency in 2016.Trump’s first impeachment was fueled by Giuliani’s work in Ukraine, seeking political dirt on opponents. Now 79, Giuliani has pleaded not guilty to 13 criminal charges of racketeering and conspiracy, regarding his work to advance Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.The irony of the former mayor and New York US attorney being indicted on charges often used against figures in organised crime has been widely remarked. As a prosecutor, Giuliani made his name chasing down mafia kingpins.The latest picture of Giuliani as gangster is included in Elon Musk, a new biography of the 52-year-old Tesla, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter) owner and sometime world’s richest man, by Walter Isaacson, whose other subjects include Leonardo Da Vinci and Steve Jobs.Isaacson’s book was widely excerpted in the US media before publication on Tuesday.The brief meeting between Musk and Giuliani came about, Isaacson writes, as Musk sought to turn PayPal, the online payments company he co-founded, into “a social network that would disrupt the whole banking industry” – a vision he now harbours for Twitter, which he bought in October 2022 and renamed as X this year.“We have to decide whether we are going to aim big,” Musk told those who worked for him, Isaacson writes, adding that some “believed Musk’s framing was flawed”.Describing stymied attempts to rebrand, Isaacson writes: “Focus groups showed that the name X.com … conjured up visions of a seedy site you would not talk about in polite company. But Musk was unwavering and remains so to this day.”Such discussions, Isaacson reports, led Musk and an investor, Michael Moritz, to go to New York, “to see if they could recruit Rudy Giuliani, who was just ending his tenure as mayor, to be a political fixer and guide them through the policy intricacies of being a bank.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“But as soon as they walked into his office, they knew it would not work.“It was like walking into a mob scene,” Moritz says. Giuliani “was surrounded by goonish confidantes. He didn’t have any idea whatsoever about Silicon Valley, but he and his henchmen were eager to line their pockets.”“They asked for 10% of the company, and that was the end of the meeting. ‘This guy occupies a different planet,’ Musk told Moritz.”Giuliani succeeded in lining his pockets after leaving city hall, making millions as a lawyer and consultant and giving paid speeches around the world.That picture has also changed. Faced with spiraling legal costs arising from his work for Trump and other cases including a $10m lawsuit from a former associate who alleges sexual assault, lawyers for Giuliani have said he is struggling to pay his bills. In New York, his luxury apartment was put up for sale. More

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      Trump files for judge in federal election interference trial to be taken off case – live

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      From 53m agoIn a court filing on Monday, former president Donald Trump moved to recuse federal judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the 2020 election subversion case, citing her previous comments about his culpability.“Judge Chutkan has, in connection with other cases, suggested that President Trump should be prosecuted and imprisoned,” the motion for recusal reads. “Such statements, made before this case began and without due process, are inherently disqualifying.”The filing includes a reference to a statement Chutkan made during cases in 2022 before the special counsel issued findings:
      This was nothing less than an attempt to violently overthrow the government, the legally, lawfully, peacefully elected government by individuals who were mad that their guy lost. I see the videotapes. I see the footage of the flags and the signs that people were carrying and the hats they were wearing and the garb. And the people who mobbed that Capitol were there in fealty, in loyalty, to one man – not to the constitution, of which most of the people who come before me seem woefully ignorant; not to the ideals of this country; and not to the principles of democracy. It’s a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.”
      “Fairness and impartiality are the central tenets of our criminal justice system,” Trump’s legal team wrote in the filing. “Both a defendant and the public are entitled to a full hearing, on all relevant issues, by a Court that has not prejudged the guilt of the defendant, and whose neutrality cannot be reasonably questioned.”Though the filing only surfaced Monday, conservative calls for Chutkan to step down have been mounting in recent weeks. Republican congressman and Trump-loyalist Matt Gaetz filed a resolution to condemn and censure the federal judge for her comments in recent weeks.Just last night, Mark Levin, a conservative pundit and Fox News show host, took aim at Judge Chutkan on his program.Making the case that she is “unqualified” to preside over the case against Trump, Levin cited an investigation on Real Clear Politics, a right-leaning website largely funded by pro-Trump conservatives, that outlines many of the arguments used by the former president’s legal team to call for Chutkan’s recusal.But for all the crying-foul coming from conservatives, it will be difficult for the Trump legal team to succeed in getting her off the case. As New York University professor of law Stephen Gillers told Real Clear Politics: “Almost never will a judge be recused for opinions she forms as a judge – in hearing cases and motions. Judges are expected to form opinions based on these ‘intrajudicial’ sources. It’s what judges do.”Ultimately, Chutkan will be the one to rule on whether she is too biased to preside over the case. If she denies the recusal, Trump’s lawyers could petition an appeals court, but it’s still a long shot.This also isn’t the first time Trump has tried to get a new judge. He previously failed to get a new judge to preside over his New York State court case and also attempted to get the case moved to federal court.Trump has challenged the judge or jurisdiction in three of his four criminal cases this year, CBS News reports, excluding only Aileen Cannon – presiding over the 40 felony counts charged for “willful retention of national security information” – who he appointed.In a court filing on Monday, former president Donald Trump moved to recuse federal judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the 2020 election subversion case, citing her previous comments about his culpability.“Judge Chutkan has, in connection with other cases, suggested that President Trump should be prosecuted and imprisoned,” the motion for recusal reads. “Such statements, made before this case began and without due process, are inherently disqualifying.”The filing includes a reference to a statement Chutkan made during cases in 2022 before the special counsel issued findings:
      This was nothing less than an attempt to violently overthrow the government, the legally, lawfully, peacefully elected government by individuals who were mad that their guy lost. I see the videotapes. I see the footage of the flags and the signs that people were carrying and the hats they were wearing and the garb. And the people who mobbed that Capitol were there in fealty, in loyalty, to one man – not to the constitution, of which most of the people who come before me seem woefully ignorant; not to the ideals of this country; and not to the principles of democracy. It’s a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.”
      “Fairness and impartiality are the central tenets of our criminal justice system,” Trump’s legal team wrote in the filing. “Both a defendant and the public are entitled to a full hearing, on all relevant issues, by a Court that has not prejudged the guilt of the defendant, and whose neutrality cannot be reasonably questioned.”President Biden marked the anniversary of 9/11 by speaking to service members, first responders, and their families in Anchorage, Alaska.Standing before an enormous American flag the president recounted memories of that tragic day while championing the acts of patriotism and courage performed in response.“Those terrorists could never touch the soul of America,” the President said resolutely. “Heroes, like all of you,” he added, “never faltered to defend our nation, our people an dour values in times of trial”.He used the speech to tell the gathered troops that his administration is working to ensure broader support for service members when they return home. Outlining the ways in which the US has fought terrorist foes over the last two decades, and noting that Osama Bin Laden was sent “to the gates of hell,” Biden turned toward the battles the country is still fighting – the deep-seated divisions that continue to threaten its future.To drive home the point, the President ended with an anecdote about his late friend, Senator John McCain.“John and I were friends. Like a lot of us we had differences,” he said, adding that the two, “disagreed like hell,” on the Senate floor but would always find time to lunch afterward.On their last meeting, Biden shared, McCain pulled him close, said he loved him, and asked Biden to perform his eulogy.“He put duty to country first,” Biden said. “Above party, above politics, above his own person.” The president invoked the American people, including the military members in attendance, to reflect on that during this day of remembrance.“We must never lose that sense of national unity,” he said. “Let that be the common cause of our time.”Five American prisoners being detained in Iran could soon be freed, thanks to a new deal the countries reached today. In exchange for the 5 US citizens, 5 Iranians held in the US will be released and the US will allow the transfer of $6bn in frozen Iranian funds from South Korea to Qatar without sanctions, the Associated Press reports.Congress was notified of the deal today, after it was signed off by the Biden Administration late last week. AP reports that significant sum cleared for use by Iran was a key aspect to the deal, encouraging foreign banks to perform the transfer intended to be used to purchase humanitarian supplies. The cnetral bank of Qatar will hold the funds, which will be controlled by Qatar’s government, to ensure its use is dedicated to aid, including medicine and food for the people of Iran.The American prisoners have also been transferred out of Iranian jails and are now in house arrest.The deal is the result of more than two years of negotiations between the two countries, according to the The New York Times, which reported on the tentative agreement in August.“This is just the beginning of a process that I hope and expect will lead to their return home to the United States,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told reporters at the time. “There’s more work to be done to actually bring them home. My belief is that this is the beginning of the end of their nightmare.”The Biden administration is close to approving the shipment of longer-range missiles packed with cluster bombs to Ukraine, Reuters is reporting, citing four US officials.The US is considering shipping either or both Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) that can fly up to 190 miles (306 km), or Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) missiles with a 45-mile range packed with cluster bombs, the report says.If approved, either option would be available for rapid shipment to Kyiv, giving Ukraine the ability to cause significant damage deeper within Russian-occupied territory.The decision to send ATACMS or GMLRS, or both, is not final and could still fall through, according to the sources.The US has approved a series of Covid-19 booster vaccines amid rising cases of coronavirus around the country, the Food and Drug Administration said.The FDA said it had approved Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, which can be administered even to people who never previously received a Covid-19 vaccination.As with earlier vaccinations, the new round of shots are cleared for adults and children as young as age 6 months.Starting at age five, most people can get a single dose even if they have never had a prior Covid-19 shot, per the FDA. Younger children might need additional doses depending on their history of Covid-19 infections and vaccinations.Hospitalizations from Covid-19 have crept up in recent weeks, although the rise is lower than the same time last year. In the week ending 26 August just over 17,400 people were hospitalized from Covid-19, NBC reported, up 16% from the week before.In August, two hospitals in New York state re-introduced mandatory masking after an increase in Covid-19 cases, while the Lionsgate film studio reinstated a mask mandate for half its employees in its flagship Los Angeles offices.That same month, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that it had discovered a new Covid-19 variant and warned high-risk individuals to resume wearing masks.The variant, BA 2.86, was detected during monitoring of wastewater, the CDC said. It said it was too soon to tell if BA 2.86 could lead to more severe illness than other variants, but reported “reassuring” results of early research which showed that existing antibodies work against the BA 2.86 variant.Donald Trump urged supporters they need to “fight like hell” or risk losing their country during a speech at a South Dakota rally in which the former president used language resonant of the run-up to the January 6 US Capitol attack, according to a CNN report. “I don’t think there’s ever been a darkness around our nation like there is now,” Trump said on Friday, as he accused Democrats of allowing an “invasion” of migrants over the southern border and of trying to restart Covid “hysteria”, the report says.
      The Republican front-runner’s stark speech raised the prospect of a second presidency that would be even more extreme and challenging to the rule of law than his first. His view that the Oval Office confers unfettered powers suggests Trump would indulge in similar conduct as that for which he is awaiting trial, including intimidating local officials in an alleged bid to overturn his 2020 defeat.
      Here are some images from the news wires of how the US has been marking the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, which took the lives of nearly 3,000 people.Several people were arrested after entering the office of Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House, during a protest for HIV/Aids funding on Monday.The US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), a widely bipartisan program, has since been reauthorized three times, and Joe Biden earlier this year indicated that he would work with Congress to extend it a fourth.But the program’s latest extension has been caught up in a partisan fight over abortion and is under threat amid Congress’s negotiations over a government shutdown.Some Republicans are opposing Pepfar’s reauthorization, arguing that current restrictions do not sufficiently prevent the funds from being used to support abortions, according to an August report by the Federation of American Scientists.New Jersey Republican Representative Chris Smith, who chairs the House foreign affairs subcommittee, in a letter to colleagues in June:
      Any multi-year PEPFAR reauthorizing legislation must ensure that Biden’s hijacking of PEPFAR to promote abortion be halted.
      The program was first established in 2003 by President George W Bush to prevent and treat HIV/Aids in developing countries worldwide, and it is overseen by the US Department of State.About 20 million people depend on the program globally, according to a White House statement in January.Smith was a co-sponsor of the 2018 bill extending Pepfar for five years but is now seeking to block its renewal after Biden in 2021 lifted Trump-era restrictions that barred Pepfar and other global programs receiving US funding from performing or promoting abortions.The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave the green light to updated Covid-19 vaccine shots from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, but it is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that recommends who should get the shot, according to a Washington Post report. The CDC is leaning toward a broad recommendation that covers almost all ages, mirroring the FDA approach, the paper writes, citing federal officials.
      But it is possible that some on the agency’s panel of outside experts, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, will push for a targeted recommendation focused on those at greatest risk — older Americans or people with weakened immune systems or other illnesses.
      Experts interviewed by the paper said they would get the coronavirus shot as soon as possible amid a late-summer uptick in Covid cases across the USUpdated Covid-19 vaccinations could begin later this week, and the US hopes to ramp up protection against the latest coronavirus strains amid steadily increasing cases.The newest shots target an omicron variant named XBB.1.5, replacing combination vaccines that mixed protection against the original coronavirus strain and even older omicron variants.“Vaccination remains critical to public health and continued protection against serious consequences of COVID-19, including hospitalization and death,” said Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s center for biologics evaluation and research.
      The public can be assured that these updated vaccines have met the agency’s rigorous scientific standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality. We very much encourage those who are eligible to consider getting vaccinated.
      There has been a late-summer uptick in Covid cases across the US.Experts are closely watching two new variants, EG.5, now the dominant strain, and BA.2.86, which has attracted attention from scientists because of its high number of mutations.Experts have said that the US is not facing a threat like it did in 2020 and 2021. “We’re in a different place,” Mandy Cohen, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told NBC News last month.
      I think we’re the most prepared that we’ve ever been.
      Updated Covid-19 vaccine shots made by Pfizer and Moderna are expected to be available in the coming days, according to Moderna. A third shot, by the vaccine maker Novavax, is still under review by the FDA, according to the company.Advisers from the US centers for disease and protection (CDC) are due to meet on Tuesday to recommend who should receive the shot. An endorsement by the CDC’s director should clear the way for millions of doses to be shipped nationwide within days.As part of the FDA’s update, the original Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines are no longer authorized for use in the US.The US health regulator on Monday authorized updated Covid-19 vaccines that closely match the Omicron variants that are circulating, starting the process to deploy the shots this month, Reuters reports.The Food and Drug Administration authorized the shots, which target the XBB.1.5 subvariant, from manufacturers Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech SE, and US pharma company Moderna.More details to follow.A trial began Monday over a sweeping Texas voting law that sparked a 38-day walkout by Democrats in 2021 and were among the strictest changes passed by Republicans nationwide following former US president Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, the Associated Press reports.The AP further notes:
      The lawsuit was brought by a coalition of voting rights groups after Republican governor Greg Abbott signed the changes into law. The trial in San Antonio federal court could last weeks and it is unclear when US district judge Xavier Rodriguez might rule. Potentially at stake are voting rules Texas will use for the 2024 elections, although any decision is likely to be appealed.
      The challenge, from the American Civil Liberties Union, (ACLU) the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund and others, has not stopped the measures from taking effect, including a ban on 24-hour polling places and drive-thru voting.
      Many changes targeted Harris county, which includes Houston and is where a slate of Republican candidates are challenging their defeats last year.
      During the hurried rollout of the law last year, more than 23,000 mail ballots in Texas were rejected during the March 2022 primary elections as voters struggled to navigate the new rules. By November’s general election, the rejection rate fell significantly, but was still higher than what experts consider normal.
      In August, Rodriguez separately struck down a requirement that mail voters provide the same identification number they used when they registered to vote.”
      Joe Biden is up in the air literally and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s future as House Speaker is likewise, but metaphorically. It’s been a busy day in Vietnam for the US president post-G20, but he’s now on his way back to the US and is due to address the public during a stopover in Alaska en route to Washington, DC.Here’s where things stand:
      Mark Meadows, the former Trump White House chief of staff, appealed a judge’s ruling last Friday denying his bid to transfer his Georgia 2020 election interference case from state to federal court.
      Jury deliberations for the impeachment trial of the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, could start late Thursday or Friday, according to the presiding officer Dan Patrick.
      Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House, reportedly doesn’t have the votes to move forward with an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden being clamored for by the right wing of his House caucus.
      Ken Buck, a Colorado Republican congressman, said that there was a “perfect storm” brewing in the House over government spending and on impeachment of the president that could pose a threat to Kevin McCarthy’s speakership. More on this by Politico.
      Joe Biden will address the nation late on Monday afternoon on the 22nd anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the US on September 11, 2001. On Monday morning, US vice president Kamala Harris attended the annual memorial ceremony in New York at the spot where the al-Qaeda hijackers destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
      In the months before the supreme court handed down Citizens United, the 2010 ruling which unleashed a flood of dark money into American politics, the wife of a conservative justice worked with a prominent rightwing activist and a mega-donor closely linked to her husband to form a group to exploit the decision.So said a blockbuster report from Politico, detailing moves by Ginni Thomas – wife of Justice Clarence Thomas – and Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society chief who has worked to stock the court with rightwingers, leading to a series of epochal decisions, including the removal of the federal right to abortion.Half a million dollars in seed money, Politico said, came from Harlan Crow, the Nazi memorabilia-collecting billionaire whose extensive and mostly undeclared gifts to Clarence Thomas have fueled a spiraling supreme court ethics scandal.Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator from Rhode Island and champion of ethics reform, said the report laid out “the creepy intermingling of dark billionaire money, phoney front groups, far-right extremists and the United States supreme court”.Politico noted that the ruling in Citizens United was widely expected after justices “took the unusual step of asking for re-arguments based on a sweeping question – whether they should overrule prior decisions approving laws that limited spending on political campaigns”.Noting that conservative groups moved to capitalise faster than others, the site quoted an anonymous source as saying Ginni Thomas “really wanted to build an organisation and be a movement leader. Leonard was going to be the conduit of that.”The justice department has dropped its five-year-old criminal case against Bijan Rafiekian, a one-time business partner of the former national security adviser Michael Flynn who had been charged with illegally lobbying for Turkey during the 2016 US presidential election.Rafiekian, who also goes by the name Bijan Kian, was indicted in 2018 on charges including failing to register as a foreign agent. Prosecutors had accused Rafiekian of illegally lobbying to have the cleric Fethullah Gülen extradited from the US to Turkey.The move wraps up a long-running tangent of the Mueller-era Russia investigation that originally had been used as leverage to pressure Flynn, CNN reported. Prosecutors had planned on calling Flynn to testify against Rafiekian at his trial to solidify their evidence of a connection between Flynn’s lobbying group and the government of Turkey.In 2019, a jury convicted Rafiekian on charges of conspiracy and acting as a foreign agent. But the judge who presided over the trial later set aside the verdicts, citing insufficient evidence. The case then went into appeals, hanging in the criminal justice system for years.In a court filing on Monday, the justice department said it sought to dismiss the charges against Rafiekian. Prosecutors wrote:
      After carefully considering the Fourth Circuit’s recent decision in this case and the principles of federal prosecution, the United States believes it is not in the public interest to pursue the case against defendant Bijan Rafiekian further.
      After defending the integrity of US elections from an onslaught of threats over the last several years, secretaries of state across the US are now turning to a new high-stakes question: is Donald Trump eligible to run for president?Several secretaries are already working with attorneys general in their states and studying whether Trump is disqualified under a provision of the 14th amendment that bars anyone from holding public office if they have previously taken an oath to the United States and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same”.That language clearly disqualifies Trump from running in 2024, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, two prominent conservative scholars, concluded in a lengthy forthcoming law review article. They write in the article:
      If the public record is accurate, the case is not even close. He is no longer eligible to the office of Presidency, or any other state or federal office covered by the Constitution. All who are committed to the Constitution should take note and say so.
      A flurry of challenges to Trump’s candidacy are expected – one was filed in Colorado on Wednesday – but the legal issues at play are largely untested. Never before has the provision been used to try to disqualify a presidential candidate from office and the issue is likely to quickly come to a head as soon as officials make their official certifications about who can appear on primary ballots.Secretaries are studying who has the authority to remove Trump from the ballot and what process needs to occur before they do so. They also recognize that the issue is likely to be ultimately settled by the courts, including the US supreme court.Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat in her second term as Michigan’s secretary of state, said she had spoken with another secretary of state about the 14th amendment issue “nearly every day”.
      The north star for me is always: ‘What is the law? What does the constitution require?’ To keep politics and partisan considerations out of it. And simply just look at this from a sense of ‘what does the 14th amendment say?’ We’re in unprecedented, uncharted territory.
      Read my colleague Sam Levin’s full report. More

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      Ginni Thomas and rightwing activists exploited supreme court ruling – report

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      In the months before the US supreme court handed down Citizens United, the 2010 ruling which unleashed a flood of dark money into American politics, the wife of a conservative justice worked with a prominent rightwing activist and a mega-donor closely linked to her husband to form a group to exploit the decision.So said a blockbuster report from Politico, detailing moves by Ginni Thomas – wife of Justice Clarence Thomas – and Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society chief who has worked to stock the court with rightwingers, leading to a series of epochal decisions, including the removal of the federal right to abortion.Half a million dollars in seed money, Politico said, came from Harlan Crow, the Nazi memorabilia-collecting billionaire whose extensive and mostly undeclared gifts to Clarence Thomas have fueled a spiraling supreme court ethics scandal.Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator from Rhode Island and champion of ethics reform, said the report laid out “the creepy intermingling of dark billionaire money, phoney front groups, far-right extremists and the United States supreme court”.Politico noted that the ruling in Citizens United was widely expected after justices “took the unusual step of asking for re-arguments based on a sweeping question – whether they should overrule prior decisions approving laws that limited spending on political campaigns”.Noting that conservative groups moved to capitalise faster than others, the site quoted an anonymous source as saying Ginni Thomas “really wanted to build an organisation and be a movement leader. Leonard was going to be the conduit of that.”It also published a timeline of Thomas and Leo’s moves.A nonprofit, Liberty Central, was incorporated with $500,000 from Crow on 31 December 2009, three and a half months after the close of oral arguments in Citizens United.The Citizens United decision was handed down on 21 January 2010, with Clarence Thomas objecting to disclosure rules.On 18 February 2010, Ginni Thomas told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) she had been “called to the frontlines”.Ginni Thomas’s work on the hard right of US politics has already contributed to controversy surrounding her husband, not least through her support for Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election and Clarence Thomas’s refusal to recuse himself when investigations reached the supreme court.Politico also noted how a Leo-linked group, the Judicial Education Project, paid Ginni Thomas up to $100,000 before transforming into a generator of amicus briefs to the court and becoming involved in the push to overturn Trump’s defeat as he sought a second term as president in 2020.Connections between Leo and Ginni Thomas have made headlines before. The Washington Post reported how, in January 2012, Leo told the political strategist Kellyanne Conway – later White House counselor to Trump – to direct money to Ginni Thomas while urging: “No mention of Ginni, of course.”Politico also noted that Ginni Thomas’s current entity, Liberty Consulting, is “a focus of interest from congressional committees”, with Senate Democrats demanding “Leo and Crow provide a list of ‘gifts, payments, or other items of value’ they’ve given Thomas and her husband”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionClarence Thomas has said he did not declare gifts from Crow, including holidays, travel, school fees and a property purchase, because he was advised he did not have to. Crow has said he did not discuss politics or business before the court with his friend.Leo and Crow have resisted congressional disclosure demands. The chief justice, John Roberts, has rebuffed requests to testify about ethics matters. Supreme court justices are nominally subject to the same ethics regulations as all federal judges but in practice govern themselves. Senate Democrats have advanced supreme court ethics reform but it has next to no chance of passing, given Republican opposition.Leo, Crow and Ginni Thomas did not comment to Politico. Lawyers for Leo have complained of harassment by Congress and dismissed a reported investigation of his work by the attorney general of Washington DC as politically biased.Receiving business and funds from groups connected to Leo would be legal if Ginni Thomas provided services commensurate with such payments. Laura Solomon, a tax attorney for charitable groups and donors, told Politico: “The real question then is, ‘What is Ginni Thomas qualified to do, what did they pay her to do, and was it fair market value?’”Politico’s report made a splash among court watchers.Norman Ornstein, emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said: “This stinks to high heaven. We need the Internal Revenue Service and the justice department to investigate. It looks like tax offenses, criminal ones, not to mention the sheer corruption. Leonard Leo and Ginni Thomas are despicable.”The New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer – co-author of Strange Justice, a biography of Clarence Thomas, and author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right – simply posted a fire emoji. More

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      Kevin McCarthy faces battle with hard-right Republicans as shutdown looms

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      Kevin McCarthy will return from his August recess on Tuesday facing the latest in a long series of conundrums for the Republican House leader: should he force a government shutdown, leaving hundreds of thousands of government workers without a paycheck, or burn more bridges with the hard-right flank of his conference, risking his speakership in the process?With just 12 legislative days left before the end of the fiscal year, the Republican-controlled House must quickly pass some kind of spending package to keep the federal government open after 30 September. If the chamber does not approve a spending bill, the government will shut down for the first time in nearly five years, furloughing federal employees and stalling many crucial programs.McCarthy has indicated his preference to pass a continuing resolution, which would keep the government funded at its current levels for a short period of time as lawmakers continue to negotiate over a longer-term deal. But members of the hard-right House freedom caucus, who are still furious over the deal that McCarthy and President Joe Biden struck to suspend the debt ceiling earlier this year, insist they will not back a continuing resolution unless the speaker agrees to several significant policy concessions, such as increased border security and an impeachment inquiry into Biden.Given House Republicans’ narrow majority and a new rule allowing any single member of the chamber to force a vote on removing the speaker, McCarthy’s handling of this fraught situation could determine whether he loses his gavel after just eight months in power.The trouble for McCarthy started in the spring, after the House passed the compromise debt ceiling bill, known as the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Seventy-one members of the House Republican conference opposed the legislation over concerns that it did not go far enough to reduce government spending, and they sharply criticized McCarthy for agreeing to the inadequate deal.Gordon Gray, vice-president for economic policy at the center-right thinktank American Action Forum, said he had been bracing for a potential shutdown ever since the debt ceiling showdown concluded.“Since the debt limit grenade was diffused, there’s a big chunk of House Republicans who just want to break something,” Gray said. “That’s just how some of these folks define governing. It’s how their constituents define success.”Now House Republicans have reneged on the debt ceiling deal, instead choosing to advance appropriations bills with spending levels below those agreed to in the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Democrats warn that the proposed cuts could deal a devastating financial blow to early education programs, climate initiatives and housing assistance.“The deal in the Fiscal Responsibility Act was roughly a freeze. It could be worse, but a freeze effectively is a cut in purchasing power because costs go up every year,” said David Reich, senior fellow at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “So what was agreed to was a reasonably tight level, and now come the House Republicans marking up their bills.”House Republicans’ strategy in the spending talks has been met with exasperation in the Senate, which returned from its recess on Tuesday. Before the upper chamber adjourned at the end of July, the Senate appropriations committee advanced all 12 spending bills for fiscal year 2024 with bipartisan support. The Democratic Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has implored the House to take a similar approach to the budget process.“Both parties, in both chambers, will have to work together if we are to avoid a shutdown,” Schumer said on Wednesday in a floor speech. “When the House returns next week, I implore – I implore – my Republican colleagues in the House to recognize that time is short to keep the government open, and the only way to avoid a shutdown is through bipartisanship.”Even the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, offered a mild rebuke of his colleagues in the House when asked about the spending fight last week.“Speaker McCarthy agreed to certain spending levels in the debt limit deal he reached with President Biden earlier this year,” McConnell said. “The House then turned around and passed spending levels that were below that level. Without saying an opinion about that, that’s not going to be replicated in the Senate.”McConnell indicated that the most likely outcome at this point would be the approval of a short-term continuing resolution to buy more time in the budget talks. But members of the House freedom caucus, who abhor the idea of extending funding at levels previously approved by a Democratic Congress, have already outlined a litany of demands in exchange for their support on a continuing resolution.In a statement released late last month, the caucus said its members would only back a continuing resolution if it included a Republican proposal on border security and addressed “the unprecedented weaponization of the justice department and FBI”, an implicit reference to the four criminal cases against Donald Trump. The caucus also demanded an end to the so-called “woke” policies at the department of defense, which has faced rightwing criticism for providing funding to servicemembers and their family members who need to travel to access abortion care.Hard-right Republicans have now added another item to their list of demands: the launch of an impeachment inquiry against Biden.“I’ve already decided I will not vote to fund the government unless we have passed an impeachment inquiry on Joe Biden,” Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican congresswoman from Georgia, said last week.Another hard-right House member, Matt Gaetz of Florida, has warned that McCarthy’s failure to act on impeaching Biden could cost him his speakership.“I worked very hard in January to develop a toolkit for House Republicans to use in a productive and positive way. I don’t believe we’ve used those tools as effectively as we should have,” Gaetz said on Tuesday. “We’ve got to seize the initiative. That means forcing votes on impeachment. And if Speaker McCarthy stands in our way, he may not have the job long.”But the possibility of an impeachment inquiry has failed to gain widespread favor among Senate Republicans, several of whom have acknowledged that Greene and her allies have presented no valid evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors on Biden’s part.With the likelihood of a shutdown increasing by the day, the White House has attacked hard-right Republicans’ demands as a political stunt that could reap devastating consequences for millions of Americans.“Lives are at stake across a wide range of urgent, bipartisan priorities for the American people,” Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, said on Thursday. “Like Senate Republicans, Speaker McCarthy should keep his word about government funding. And he should do so in a way that acts on these pressing issues – including fentanyl, national security and disaster response – rather than break his promise and cave to the most extreme members of his conference agitating for a baseless impeachment stunt and shutdown.”Past shutdowns prove the widespread upheaval caused by lapses in government funding. During the last partial shutdown, which ended in January 2019, roughly 800,000 federal workers went without a paycheck. The Trump administration tried to keep national parks open with limited staff, resulting in damage to the grounds. Loan programs overseen by the Small Business Administration and federally funded research projects were also halted or delayed.“It’s very disruptive. Federal agencies spend a whole lot of time trying to figure out what they’re allowed to do and not allowed to do,” Reich said. “It’s a total waste of effort and energy.”Even though history shows the fallout of government shutdowns, Gray still anticipates a lapse in funding – if not in October then later this year.“I could envision a brief [continuing resolution] – like two weeks – with some disaster supplemental funding in it,” Gray said. “My expectation is that we’ll still have a shutdown this fall.” More