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      The Lincoln Miracle review: how Republicans chose their great redeemer

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      ReviewThe Lincoln Miracle review: how Republicans chose their great redeemer As the Republican Party marches right, Edward Achorn’s second book on the 16th president makes instructive readingThe party of Lincoln is dead. A half century after the civil rights backlash begat Richard Nixon’s southern strategy, Donald Trump announced on Fox News that his accomplishments may have surpassed those of the 16th president.Why Abraham Lincoln’s meetings with Black Americans matterRead more“So, I think I’ve done more for the black community than any other president, and let’s take a pass on Abraham Lincoln, ’cause he did good, although it’s always questionable.”Descendants of those freed from slavery under Lincoln? They would probably differ.Trump grew up in Queens, a New York borough, but his heart belongs to Dixie. He called the Confederate Robert E Lee one of the greatest US generals and said there were good people on both sides in Charlottesville, Virginia, when white supremacists marched in August 2017 and a counter-protester was murdered. Truly, Trump has cast the Republican party in his own image.Against this bleak backdrop, Edward Achorn delivers The Lincoln Miracle, an in-depth examination of Abraham Lincoln’s successful quest for the Republican presidential nomination at the convention of 1860.Achorn is Pulitzer finalist, particularly interested in the 19th century and baseball. The Lincoln Miracle is Achorn’s fourth book but second on Lincoln, after Every Drop of Blood, about the second inaugural address of 1864. The Lincoln Miracle is beautifully written, filled with vivid and easily digested prose.The reader knows Lincoln will prevail, the US will shortly be at war with itself and the Union will triumph at great cost. Foreknowledge does not detract. The Lincoln Miracle’s themes are timeless, its subtitle apt: Inside the Republican Convention that Changed History.Achorn deftly lays out the personas, demographics and rivalries that shaped the nominating contest and the 1860 election. The Whig party was spent, riven by slavery and nativism. Anti-Catholicism was a force. Anti-German sentiment too. The nation was buffeted by the competing pulls of abolitionism and preservation of the Union. Republicans were divided, Democrats fractured. The Democratic convention was an abject failure. Compromise was not in the air.Three years earlier, the supreme court had issued its infamous Dred Scott decision, reading slavery into the constitution. Short of constitutional amendment or war, there was little to be done. Slavery had morphed into a right.At the Illinois Republican convention in 1858, Lincoln delivered what would come to be known as the House Divided speech. “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” he quoted from the Book of Matthew, his Baptist upbringing manifest. Lincoln may have been a deist but he appreciated Scripture. According to Achorn, he believed “pain and failure were endemic to human life”. People could only do so much. The rest was in the hands of an “inscrutable” God.“I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half-slave and half-free,” Lincoln said. “I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.”Lincoln had served one term in Congress, back in the 1840s. His antipathy to slavery was well known. So was his opposition to popular sovereignty, the notion that new states could decide for themselves if slavery would be legal within their borders. In 1858, Lincoln was running for a US Senate seat. He battled the Democrat Stephen Douglas on that very point. Lincoln won the debates but lost the election. In 1859, John Brown seized the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in an attempt to arm the enslaved. He was put to death for treason. The glue that held the country together was quickly coming undone.Lincoln had a rematch with Douglas. In the fall of 1860, in a four-way election, both men vied for the White House. Lincoln had been an underdog for the Republican nomination, never mind the presidency. How he won the first prize before he won the second is a tale worth telling. His political march signaled how he would govern, how he would impose his vision and will on the country.Lincoln respected the foundational documents, wedding his opposition to slavery to the founders’ stated ideals.“He was acceptable,” writes Achorn, “because he celebrated the founding fathers and Declaration of Independence. Lincoln believed intensely that the founders had opposed slavery as an obvious contradiction of the values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and had set it on the road to extinction.”Nowadays, the 1619 Project takes a different view. The issue is live once more.Lincoln knew patience could be a virtue, that he could bend time to his side. At the Republican convention, in a huge wooden “wigwam” in Chicago, he was the darkest of dark horses. With each round of balloting, his odds improved. After the first round, Lincoln was more than 70 votes behind William Seward, the New York senator and favorite to be the nominee. After the second ballot, Seward’s margin collapsed. Lincoln’s victory, in the third round, was inevitable. Seward became Lincoln’s secretary of state.Every Drop of Blood review: how Lincoln’s Second Inaugural bound America’s woundsRead moreThe Lincoln Miracle describes political battles on a stage long vanished. The book lands in an America transformed. The last president from Lincoln’s party demands the constitution be terminated. He considers a return to the White House – and dines with an anti-Semite and a white supremacist.But 19th-century dynamics have not completely vanished. On the right, John C Calhoun, father of the filibuster, proponent of white supremacy and secession, is praised. Into the Republican presidential race strides Nikki Haley, a Trump appointee turned rival who once told the Sons of Confederate Veterans states had the right to secede. There’s more. The civil war the Confederacy fought to maintain slavery? A matter, in Haley’s weasel words, of “tradition versus change”.More than 150 years after Lincoln’s assassination, the embers of civil war still glow. The Lincoln Miracle is relevant reading indeed.
      The Lincoln Miracle: Inside the Republican Convention that Changed History is published in the US by Grove Atlantic
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      Ron DeSantis sees ‘freedom’ in Florida – thanks to Republican supermajority

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      Ron DeSantis sees ‘freedom’ in Florida – thanks to Republican supermajorityThe governor – believed by many to mount a 2024 presidential campaign – is ramping up an ‘anti-woke’ crusade with a veto-proof supermajority in state legislature If there’s one word Floridians have heard plenty of since their Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, was sworn in for a second term last month, it is “freedom”. The rightwing politician, expected by many to seek his party’s 2024 presidential nomination, sprinkles the word freely as he ramps up the “anti-woke” crusade he believes can propel him to the White House.Nikki Haley says Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ law does not go ‘far enough’Read moreIt turns out, following a special legislative session last week that handed DeSantis victory after victory in his culture wars against big corporations, the transgender community, students, migrants and racial minorities, the person with the greatest freedom in Florida to do exactly as he pleases is the governor himself.In November, voters granted DeSantis’s wish of a veto-proof Republican supermajority in the state legislature. In a five-day session, those politicians validated every one of his demands.They granted DeSantis total control of the board governing Disney, the theme park giant with whom he feuded over his anti-LGBTQ+ “don’t say gay” law.They gave him permission to fly migrants from anywhere in the US to destinations of his choosing, for political purposes, then send the bill to Florida’s taxpayers.And they handed unprecedented prosecutorial powers to his newly created, hand-picked office of election “integrity”, pursuing supposed cases of voter fraud.The special session is over but DeSantis’s devotion to seeking retribution against those who disagree with him is not.Last week, after a backlash, the Florida High School Athletic Association backed away from forcing female students to chronicle their menstrual histories on medical forms, a requirement seen by many as a thinly-veiled attempt to keep transgender athletes out of girls’ sports.Exactly one week later, a Republican House committee proposed allowing DeSantis to turf out those who made the decision and replace them with his own appointments.It’s a familiar playbook: the Disney legislation allows the governor to supplant sitting officials on its governing tax authority with his own picks; his “hostile takeover” of the liberal New College of Florida last month was accomplished by swamping its board of trustees with hand-picked allies and conservative Christians.In what critics say was a particularly petty act earlier this month, DeSantis moved to strip the liquor license from the non-profit Orlando Philharmonic Plaza Foundation because it hosted a drag show, which some children attended with parents.The threats keep coming. The notoriously thin-skinned DeSantis wants to cut state ties with the College Board, which criticised him for a “PR stunt and posturing” when he demanded it revise an advanced placement college course on African American studies he said “lacked educational value”.“No politician should silence the stories of Black and brown people who helped create our country. Our democracy and constitutional values must transcend such hateful and callous political agendas,” said Tiffani Lemon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.Others accuse DeSantis of fascism, among them the progressive Democratic congressman Maxwell Frost, whose vocal criticism of the governor long predated his election in November.“If you disagree with Ron DeSantis he’ll abuse his power to close down your business, take over your school, remove your classes and unconstitutionally fire you,” Frost said in a tweet. “I encourage folks to look up the definition of fascism then read these headlines.”Other Florida Democrats see the DeSantis-ordered special legislative session as his “get out jail free card”, sweeping away legal obstacles and other hurdles that threatened to stall his policy objectives.His original plan to abolish the Disney authority would have saddled residents with $1bn in bond debt, so instead he asked the legislature to rename and restructure it.Judges threw out charges against several ex-felons the governor said voted illegally because his state office lacked prosecutorial authority, so a new law was drafted to give it.DeSantis’s administration was sued for flying migrants from Texas to Massachusetts in a “vile political stunt” stunt last year, because the existing law restricted migrant removals to those physically in Florida. So he changed the law.“It’s just a clear example of DeSantis changing the law because he broke the law,” said Anna Eskamani, a Democratic state congresswoman who voted against the new measure to allow the governor to fly migrants anywhere.“Republicans like Ron DeSantis don’t care about the rules. If they don’t like the rules, they change them. And if they can’t change them they try to destroy them, as we saw with the [January 6] insurrection.”Gregory Koger, chair of political science at the University of Miami, said the issues the legislature addressed suggested “speed over thought” when the DeSantis administration was planning its strategies.“It’s not unusual at all to see legislators and executives fixing problems in the laws that they have passed,” he said.DeSantis wins new power over Disney World in ‘don’t say gay’ culture warRead more“You could have had a slow, bipartisan, well-thought-out approach to changing the relationship between Florida and Disney, but that isn’t what we observed. We saw a law being drafted and passed as an act of retribution, and now they have to come back and say, ‘Well, when we passed our act of retribution, here’s what we actually meant.’“Same with changing the guidelines for Florida to fly migrants. That seems like an effort to back out of a legal challenge to their behavior by retroactively saying the legislature is actually OK tricking people into getting on a plane in Texas and flying them from there, rather than finding actual undocumented people in Florida.”In an email to the Guardian, DeSantis’s press secretary, Bryan Griffin, defended the governor, saying he was bringing “a new era of accountability and transparency” to Disney, Florida’s biggest employer.“Businesses in Florida should operate on a level playing field,” Griffin said. “In 1967, the Florida legislature created the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which gifted extraordinary special privileges to a single corporation.“Until Governor DeSantis acted, the Walt Disney Company maintained sole control over the district. This power amounted to an unaccountable corporate kingdom.”TopicsRon DeSantisRepublicansFloridaUS politicsUS elections 2024US domestic policyfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Nikki Haley says Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ law does not go ‘far enough’

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      Nikki Haley says Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ law does not go ‘far enough’Republican presidential candidate makes comments in New Hampshire on controversial law signed by governor Ron DeSantis02:41Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley told a New Hampshire audience the controversial “don’t say gay” education law signed by the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, does not go “far enough”.DeSantis wins new power over Disney World in ‘don’t say gay’ culture warRead more“Basically what it said was you shouldn’t be able to talk about gender before third grade,” Haley said. “I’m sorry. I don’t think that goes far enough.”DeSantis’s law bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity through third grade, in which children are eight or nine years old. The law has proved hugely controversial, stoking confrontation with progressives but also corporations key to the Florida economy, Disney prominent among them.Some pediatric psychologists say the law could harm the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth already more likely to face bullying and attempt suicide than other children.Haley, a former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, this week became the second declared major candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024, after Donald Trump.Widely expected to run, DeSantis is the only candidate who challenges Trump in polling. Surveys have shown Haley in third place, with the potential to split the anti-Trump vote and hand the nomination to the former president.New Hampshire will stage the first primary of the Republican race. In Exeter on Thursday, Haley said: “There was all this talk about the Florida bill – the ‘don’t Say gay bill’. Basically what it said was you shouldn’t be able to talk about gender before third grade. I’m sorry. I don’t think that goes far enough.“When I was in school you didn’t have sex ed until seventh grade. And even then, your parents had to sign whether you could take the class. That’s a decision for parents to make.”As reported by Fox News, Haley also said Republicans should “focus on new generational leadership” by putting “a badass woman in the White House”.Speaking to Fox News, Haley was asked about DeSantis and the “don’t say gay” law and she doubled down on her comments.She said: “I think Ron’s been a good governor. I just think that third grade’s too young. We should not be talking to kids in elementary school about gender, period.Nikki Haley: video shows Republican candidate saying US states can secedeRead more“And if you are going to talk to kids about it, you need to get the parents’ permission to do that. That is something between a parent and a child. That is not something that schools need to be teaching. Schools need to be teaching reading and math and science. They don’t need to be teaching whether they think you’re a boy or a girl.”Haley also claimed to be focused not on Republican rivals but on “running against Joe Biden”, adding: “I’m not kicking sideways. I’m kicking forward.”Haley, 51, has also attracted attention by controversially proposing mental competency tests for politicians over the age of 75.She said: “This is not hard. Just like we go and we turn over our tax returns … why can’t you turn over a mental competency test right when you run for office? Why can’t we have that?”Biden is 80. Trump is 76.TopicsNikki HaleyUS politicsRepublicansRon DeSantisFloridaNew HampshireLGBTQ+ rightsnewsReuse this content More

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      How big a threat does the hard right pose to US support for Ukraine?

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      AnalysisHow big a threat does the hard right pose to US support for Ukraine?Julian Borger in WashingtonA year after the conflict began, the consensus against Russian aggression has held but alarm bells are ringing in Congress Vladimir Putin has proven adept at exploiting the US political divide, so the solid bipartisan consensus behind arming Ukraine over the past year may well have come as a surprise to him. The question one year into the war is: how long can that consensus last?Two weeks before the first anniversary of the full-scale invasion on 24 February, a group of Trump-supporting Republicans led by Matt Gaetz introduced a “Ukraine fatigue” resolution that, if passed, would “express through the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States must end its military and financial aid to Ukraine, and urges all combatants to reach a peace agreement”.The resolution is sponsored by 11 Republican members of Congress on the far right Freedom Caucus faction, and is highly unlikely to pass. But it marks a shot across the bows of the leadership, which has mostly vowed to stay the course in supporting Ukraine.Justifying the resolution, Gaetz pointed to the risks of escalation of the Ukraine war into a wider global conflict and to the economic cost to the US.“President Joe Biden must have forgotten his prediction from March 2022, suggesting that arming Ukraine with military equipment will escalate the conflict to ‘World War III’,” the Florida Republican said. “America is in a state of managed decline, and it will exacerbate if we continue to haemorrhage taxpayer dollars toward a foreign war.”The influence of this faction is heightened by the fact that the Republicans have a slim nine-seat majority in the House, and the new speaker, Kevin McCarthy, only scraped into the job after 15 rounds of voting among Republican members, during which he gave promises to listen to the concerns of hard-right holdouts like Gaetz.“I’ve been sounding the alarms on Republican opposition to Ukraine aid for the last 12 months,” the Democratic senator Chris Murphy said. “Right now, there are enough Republicans in the Senate who support Ukraine aid along with all of the Democrats, so we can continue to deliver support, but I don’t know what’s going to happen in the House.”“I think there’s going to be tremendous pressure on Speaker McCarthy to abandon Ukraine … and it’s possible he could wilt under the pressure,” Murphy said. “We know the Russians see this as a real opportunity.”European diplomats have been lobbying Republicans, underlining the importance of maintaining western solidarity in the face of Russian aggression and arguing that support for Ukraine is an extremely inexpensive way to degrade the military of a hostile power seen by the Pentagon as an “acute threat”.The diplomats report reassuring noises from the party leadership, but unwavering resistance from the rightwingers, many of whom follow the lead of the Trump camp, particularly the former president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, who has railed against western backing for Ukraine, and ridiculed its president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.“The divide in the US is now more tangible than in Europe. The Republican leadership is absolutely adamant that there will be no lessening of support for Ukraine, but it’s just words,” one European diplomat said. “With such a narrow Republican majority in the House, the Freedom Caucus has a lot of influence. And you don’t need to cut off help overnight. You just need to slow it down with procedure. That’s the danger.”Some of Washington’s European allies are less concerned. One noted how upbeat McCarthy was on the issue, and the commitment to Ukraine of the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.Frank Luntz, a Republican political consultant, also argued the pro-Russian lobby in the party had been permanently diminished.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Trump used to call Putin a genius. You don’t hear him saying that anymore,” Luntz said. “Most of these people have backed down because they realise they were completely wrong. Donald Trump blew it in Ukraine and there are people who hold it against him to this day.”“You have a few dozen members who are hostile now and that will increase, and could even double. But I don’t expect our support for Ukraine to ebb,” he added.However, a recent opinion poll has shown support softening for the continued arming of Ukraine as the war approached its one-year milestone. In the survey by the Associated Press and the National Opinion Research Center, 48% of those questioned said they were in favour of providing weapons, with 29% opposed. Last May, 60% of Americans surveyed supported arming Ukraine.It is against that backdrop that Biden will fly to Poland on Monday to mark the approach of the anniversary and to restate the case for western solidarity with Ukraine.Murphy predicted that the House speaker, who has himself warned that there would no longer be a “blank cheque” for Ukraine with a Republican majority, might seek a compromise with the right of the party that could eventually prove devastating.“I worry that McCarthy will try to split the baby and support funding for hard military infrastructure but not support economic and humanitarian aid,” the Democratic senator said. “If that’s the direction that US funding goes, it’s a recipe for the slow death of Ukraine.”TopicsUS politicsA year of war in UkraineUkraineEuropeUS foreign policyRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Sarah Palin says Ron DeSantis ‘should stay governor’ and not run for president

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      Sarah Palin says Ron DeSantis ‘should stay governor’ and not run for presidentPalin, who quit as Alaska governor in 2009 amid talk of a run for president, envisions DeSantis running one day ‘but not now’ Ron DeSantis of Florida should stay as governor “a bit longer” and not run for president in 2024, said Sarah Palin – the former Alaska governor who was John McCain’s running mate in 2008 but resigned rather than complete her term after Republican defeat.Nikki Haley calls for ‘new generation’ of leaders in presidential campaign launchRead moreDeSantis, 44, has not declared a run but is widely expected to do so as the only strong challenger to Donald Trump in polling regarding the forming field.Palin, a Trump supporter, told Newsmax: “DeSantis doesn’t need to [run]. I envision him as our president someday but not right now.“He should stay governor for a bit longer. He’s young, you know. He has decades ahead of him where he can be our president.”The field of declared candidates is now two-strong, with the entry of Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador. One recent poll showed Haley splitting the anti-Trump vote with DeSantis and thereby handing the nomination to the legally embattled, electorally unpopular former president.In office, DeSantis has aped Trump with hardline and often theatrically cruel policies, focusing on culture war issues including education and the Covid pandemic. But he stormed to re-election last year and is the party establishment favourite. He is widely reported to be readying a run.Palin, 59, said she was “all about healthy, competitive primaries. That makes everybody debate more articulately and work harder and let the people know what records are and visions for this country are.“… But when you talk about the specific people, the individual people who are looking at putting their hat in the ring … they got a lot of guts thinking they’re gonna go up against Trump.”Asked if she would be willing to be Trump’s pick for vice-president, Palin said: “What President Trump and I have talked about is kind of the same thing that we’re talking about.”Palin was plucked from relative obscurity to be McCain’s running mate against Barack Obama in 2008, a risky choice McCain reportedly made by miming rolling a dice and saying: “Fuck it. Let’s do it.”Palin proved a hit with the Republican base – many see her selection as the birth moment of the populist far right which now dominates the party – but not with the electorate at large.She quit as Alaska governor in July 2009, prompting widespread criticism for walking away from the job before her term was up. Many suspected she would run for president. That prospect never materialised but Palin has remained prominent on the US far right.Last year, an attempt to win a seat in Congress fell short despite Trump’s support, with Alaska sending the Democrat Mary Peltola to Washington instead.Palin also fell short in court, when she sued the New York Times for libel.TopicsSarah PalinRon DeSantisDonald TrumpUS elections 2024US politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Pompeo says Israel has biblical claim to Palestine and is ‘not an occupying nation’

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      Pompeo says Israel has biblical claim to Palestine and is ‘not an occupying nation’Trump’s secretary of state makes comments on podcast to defend former administration siding more openly with Israel Mike Pompeo, the former US secretary of state, has defended Israel’s decades-long control of the Palestinian territories by claiming that the Jewish state has a biblical claim to the land and is therefore not occupying it.Pompeo told the One Decision podcast that his religious beliefs, US strategic interests and his view of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, as a “known terrorist” underpinned his support as the Trump administration’s top diplomat for the shift in US policy away from mediating a two-state solution and toward more openly siding with Israel.Democrats’ Ilhan Omar defence weakened by party’s own attacks over IsraelRead more“[Israel] is not an occupying nation. As an evangelical Christian, I am convinced by my reading of the Bible that 3,000 years on now, in spite of the denial of so many, [this land] is the rightful homeland of the Jewish people,” he said.Pompeo, who referred to the occupied West Bank by its Israeli name of Judea and Samaria, declined to support a two-state solution of an independent Palestine alongside Israel – an increasingly diminishing prospect after years of failed negotiations and the rise to power of politicians in Israel who advocate annexing the occupied territories.“I’m for an outcome that guarantees Israeli security and makes the lives better for everyone in the region,” he said.Pompeo, who once suggested that God sent Trump to save Israel, was speaking ahead of publication of a book, Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love, that has fuelled speculation he is laying the groundwork for a presidential run.As secretary of state he reversed a number of longstanding US policies, including overturning legal advice from 1978 that declared Israel’s settlements in the West Bank “inconsistent with international law”. Most western governments, such as the UK, say the settlements and Israel’s annexation of occupied East Jerusalem are a breach of the Geneva conventions and are therefore illegal.Pompeo was Trump’s CIA director before his appointment as secretary of state in 2018. He played an instrumental role in an administration thatrecognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the US embassy to that city from Tel Aviv. The move was widely criticised, including by Washington’s allies, as pre-empting a final agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.Pompeo said it is in the US’s interests to back Israel whatever its policies, and he blamed the Palestinians for the failure of peace negotiations.“What’s in America’s best interest? Is it to sit and wait for Abu Mazen [Abbas], a known terrorist who’s killed lots and lots of people, including Americans … to draw a line on a map? That’s what the state department would do,” he said.“The previous secretary of state ran back and forth from Tel Aviv to Ramallah and tried to draw lines on a map. We said: ‘That’s not in America’s best interest. Let’s go create peace,’ and we did.”Pompeo was part of the Trump administration team that negotiated the Abraham accords normalisation agreements between Israel and several formerly hostile countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Sudan. At the time he said the accords were part of the administration’s efforts to ensure that “that this Jewish state remains”.“I am confident that the Lord is at work here,” he said.TopicsMike PompeoIsraelRepublicansPalestinian territoriesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Matt Gaetz says sex trafficking case against him closed without charges

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      Matt Gaetz says sex trafficking case against him closed without chargesProvocative congressman, who long claimed his innocence, was focus of long-running investigation by justice department Representative Matt Gaetz, a Republican known for his strong support of former president Donald Trump and membership in the archconservative Freedom Caucus in the House, said on Wednesday that the justice department has ended a sex trafficking case with no charges against him.George Santos insists he won’t be forced out of Congress: ‘I’m NOT backing down’Read moreThe lawmaker, who represents much of the Florida panhandle, issued a statement through his congressional office that the long-running investigation was over. Gaetz had insisted throughout he was innocent of any wrongdoing.“The Department of Justice has confirmed to Congressman Gaetz’s attorneys that their investigation has concluded and that he will not be charged with any crimes,” the statement said.A justice department spokesman declined to comment. The development was first reported by CNN.While he is a relatively junior member of Congress, Gaetz has gained national attention through his frequent cable news appearances in recent years in which he offered an unvarnished defense of Trump. But few Republicans had rushed to support him as the investigation unfolded and shadowed his career, and some treated him like a pariah.Just last month, Gaetz again ran afoul of his fellow Republicans, when he was among a group of hard-right conservatives who opposed GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s bid for the House speakership and forced McCarthy to a record 15 ballots. At one point, Alabama representative Mike Rogers, a Republican ally of McCarthy, angrily confronted Gaetz on the House floor, telling him that he would regret his decision. Lawmakers yelled in disbelief as Rogers was held back by a colleague. McCarthy eventually prevailed in the speaker’s race.TopicsRepublicansHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      US could default on debt in July unless Congress raises ceiling, CBO warns – as it happened

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      Congress’s budget analysts estimate the United States will exhaust its bank accounts and could default on its obligations for the first time in history sometime between July and September, unless lawmakers agree to increase the debt limit.In a just-released report, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) notes that “the projected exhaustion date is uncertain because the timing and amount of revenue collections and outlays over the intervening months could differ from CBO’s projection.” They point to the amount of tax revenue brought in by the April filing deadline as particularly important in determining when the US government will exhaust its cash on hand.The United States is one of the few countries with a legal limit on how much debt the government can accrue, and that ceiling was hit last month. The Treasury then began taking “extraordinary measures” to allow the government to pay its bills without issuing new debt. The CBO report warns that if tax revenue ends up being less than expected, “the extraordinary measures could be exhausted sooner, and the Treasury could run out of funds before July.”“If the debt limit is not raised or suspended before the extraordinary measures are exhausted, the government would be unable to pay its obligations fully. As a result, the government would have to delay making payments for some activities, default on its debt obligations, or both,” the CBO wrote.The estimate is further out than one given by the Treasury last month, when it announced the debt limit had been reached and the government’s cash could be exhausted in June.In separate forecasts released today, the CBO estimates that economic growth will weaken this year but rebound beginning in 2024, hitting a peak of 2.7% in 2025 before averaging 1.8% from 2028 to 2033. However it warns America is on a trajectory for the national debt to hit more than $46.4tn by 2033, equivalent to 118 percent of GDP and the highest level ever recorded.Nikki Haley officially kicked off her presidential campaign with a South Carolina speech in which she quipped about imposing “mental competency tests” for elderly politicians (think Donald Trump and Joe Biden) and won a few interesting endorsements. Kamala Harris was meanwhile heading to Germany for a meeting with some of Washington’s top allies, while downplaying the impact of the spy balloon saga on the relationship with China. In the afternoon, Congress’s budget analysts were out with sober new reports that estimated when the US government will run out of cash, and warning that the country is on track to hit a level of debt never seen before.Here’s what else happened today:
      The justice department will not charge rightwing congressman Matt Gaetz following his investigation over sex-trafficking allegations.
      Biden is considering a national address about the three still-mysterious UFOs shot down over North America in recent days, and the Chinese spy balloon.
      Democrats were doing all they can to make sure the public doesn’t forget Haley’s ties to Trump, whom she served as United Nations ambassador.
      Despite all the lies, George Santos may run for re-election in 2024.
      House Republicans have issued a new wave of subpoenas, this time targeting America’s biggest tech companies.
      California is hoping to enshrine the right to same-sex marriage in its constitution by repealing a proposition voters approved in 2008 that banned such unions, the Associated Press reports.If the legislature repeals Proposition 8 with the required two-thirds majority vote, the issue will then go to voters, according to the AP. The effort is a response by the state’s Democrats, who dominate control the legislature and governor’s mansion, to conservative US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas’s suggestion last year that its decision allowing same-sex marriage nationwide should be revisited.Thomas’s comment spurred Congress to in December approve the Respect for Marriage act, which protected same-sex and interracial marriage rights nationwide. The legislation doesn’t require states to allow same-sex unions, but instead prevents them from rejecting marriage licenses issued in other states. California’s lawmakers fear that if the supreme court decision is overturned while Proposition 8 remains part of its constitution, same-sex marriage could end up banned in the state.Governor Gavin Newsom supports the effort, as does at least one Republican lawmaker, the AP reports.In the latest move in its investigation campaign against the Biden administration, the House judiciary committee has subpoenaed the leaders of five of America’s biggest tech companies for “documents and communications relating to the federal government’s reported collusion with Big Tech to suppress free speech,” according to a statement.“Congress has an important role in protecting and advancing fundamental free speech principles, including by examining how private actors coordinate with the government to … suppress First Amendment-protected speech. These subpoenas are the first step in holding Big Tech accountable,” said the statement from the committee’s Republican chair Jim Jordan.Jordan noted that his office had attempted to get information from the tech firms last December, before he officially took over as the committee leader, but received no response. In his letters to the CEOs of Meta, Amazon, Google, Alphabet and Microsoft, Jordan wrote, “Big Tech is out to get conservatives, and is increasingly willing to undermine First Amendment values by complying with the Biden Administration’s directives that suppress freedom of speech online.”“This approach undermines fundamental American principles and allows powerful government actors to silence political opponents and stifle opposing viewpoints. Publicly available information suggests that your companies’ treatment of certain speakers and content may stem from government directives or guidance designed to suppress dissenting views.”Those who watched last week’s State of the Union address will remember an unusual moment when Joe Biden engaged with Republican hecklers, and came out with what looked like a promise not to cut Social Security or Medicare in exchange for their votes to raise the debt ceiling.He referred back to that interaction today in his speech before Maryland union members as he accused Republicans of pursuing policies that would drive the national debt higher.Republican say they want “to reduce the deficit, but their plans are going to increase the deficit by $3tn, based on what they introduced so far,” the president said. “So where are they going to cut? They’re gonna cut Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, they’re going to cut Social Security or Medicare, veterans benefits, aid to farmers. At the State of the Union they seemed to say they’re not going to cut Social Security and Medicare. OK, great. I hope that’s true. But how are they going to make these numbers add up?”Then came a pledge familiar to anyone who has heard Biden speak in the past: “If Republicans try to take away people’s healthcare, increase costs for middle class families or push Americans into poverty, I’m going to stop them.”Joe Biden hasn’t made any news yet in his speech before union members, but the Guardian’s Lauren Aratani reported earlier today that his administration is teaming up with Tesla on a step that could help more Americans drive electric cars:The White House is partnering with Tesla to expand electric vehicle charging infrastructure in the US, with the company opening at least 7,500 of its chargers to all electric vehicles (EVs) by the end of 2024, the White House announced Wednesday.Tesla charging stations currently use a certain power connector that require non-Tesla EV to use an adapter. The White House said that Tesla will work to include at least 3,500 new and existing 250 kW superchargers along highways and level 2 destination chargers at locations like hotels and restaurants across the country. Tesla is also planning to double its network of Superchargers.The Biden administration in 2021 set goals of having 50% of new vehicle sales in the country to be EVs and 500,000 EV chargers along highways by 2030. The US currently has around 3m electric vehicles on the road and about 60,000 charging stations across the country.The administration’s goals “have spurred network operators to accelerate the buildout of coast-to-coast EV charging networks”, the White House said in a statement. “Public dollars will supplement private investment by filling gaps, serving rural and hard to reach locations and building capacity in communities.”Tesla to expand supercharger stations to all electric vehicles, White House saysRead moreJoe Biden has just kicked off his speech about the economy at a union hall in Maryland, where he could touch on the new debt limit and economic growth forecasts from the Congressional Budget Office.The White House has said Biden will use the speech to accuse Republicans of wanting to drive the US national debt higher. This blog will keep an eye on the address for any news the president might make.Congress’s budget analysts estimate the United States will exhaust its bank accounts and could default on its obligations for the first time in history sometime between July and September, unless lawmakers agree to increase the debt limit.In a just-released report, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) notes that “the projected exhaustion date is uncertain because the timing and amount of revenue collections and outlays over the intervening months could differ from CBO’s projection.” They point to the amount of tax revenue brought in by the April filing deadline as particularly important in determining when the US government will exhaust its cash on hand.The United States is one of the few countries with a legal limit on how much debt the government can accrue, and that ceiling was hit last month. The Treasury then began taking “extraordinary measures” to allow the government to pay its bills without issuing new debt. The CBO report warns that if tax revenue ends up being less than expected, “the extraordinary measures could be exhausted sooner, and the Treasury could run out of funds before July.”“If the debt limit is not raised or suspended before the extraordinary measures are exhausted, the government would be unable to pay its obligations fully. As a result, the government would have to delay making payments for some activities, default on its debt obligations, or both,” the CBO wrote.The estimate is further out than one given by the Treasury last month, when it announced the debt limit had been reached and the government’s cash could be exhausted in June.In separate forecasts released today, the CBO estimates that economic growth will weaken this year but rebound beginning in 2024, hitting a peak of 2.7% in 2025 before averaging 1.8% from 2028 to 2033. However it warns America is on a trajectory for the national debt to hit more than $46.4tn by 2033, equivalent to 118 percent of GDP and the highest level ever recorded.The Guardian’s Lauren Aratani reports on news out of the White House today that the Biden administration is partnering with Tesla to expand electric vehicle charging infrastructure nationwide, Elon Musk’s company agreeing to open at least 7,500 of its chargers to all electric vehicles by the end of next year…Tesla charging stations currently use a certain power connector that require non-Tesla EV to use an adapter. The White House said that Tesla will work to include at least 3,500 new and existing 250 kW superchargers along highways and level 2 destination chargers at locations like hotels and restaurants across the country. Tesla is also planning to double its network of Superchargers.The Biden administration in 2021 set goals of having 50% of new vehicle sales in the country to be EVs and 500,000 EV chargers along highways by 2030. The US currently has around 3m electric vehicles on the road and about 60,000 charging stations across the country.The administration’s goals “have spurred network operators to accelerate the buildout of coast-to-coast EV charging networks”, the White House said in a statement. “Public dollars will supplement private investment by filling gaps, serving rural and hard to reach locations and building capacity in communities.”Along with its partnership with Tesla, the White House is working with other companies, including car manufacturers like General Motors, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo, to build out more chargers. The rental car company Hertz is working with BP to bring chargers to locations in major cities. Hertz is planning to make a quarter of its fleet electric by 2024.Funding for the EV charging network expansion comes largely from the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed in 2021.The bill allocates $7.5bn for charging infrastructure, including a $2.5bn community grant program. In September, the White House said all 50 states have plans to build chargers using funding from the bill.Full story:Tesla to expand supercharger stations to all electric vehicles, White House saysRead moreA setback for Donald Trump in New York, where a judge today rejected a gambit that might have delayed the looming trial over the writer E Jean Carroll’s claim the former president raped her in the city in the mid-1990s. The Associated Press has the following report:Donald Trump missed his chance to use his DNA to try to prove he did not rape the writer E Jean Carroll, a federal judge said on Wednesday, clearing a potential roadblock to an April trial.The judge, Lewis A Kaplan, rejected the 11th-hour offer by Trump’s legal team to provide a DNA sample to rebut claims Carroll first made publicly in a 2019 book.Kaplan said lawyers for Trump and Carroll had more than three years to make DNA an issue in the case and both chose not to do so.He said it would almost surely delay the trial scheduled to start on 25 April to reopen the DNA issue four months after the deadline passed to litigate concerns over trial evidence and weeks before trial.Trump’s lawyers did not immediately comment. Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, declined to comment.Carroll’s lawyers have sought Trump’s DNA for three years to compare it with stains found on the dress Carroll wore the day she says Trump raped her in a department store dressing room in late 1995 or early 1996. Analysis of DNA on the dress concluded it did contain traces of an unknown man’s DNA.Trump has denied knowing Carroll, saying repeatedly he never raped her and accusing her of making the claim to stoke sales of her book. She has sued him for defamation and under a New York law which allows alleged victims of sexual assault to sue over alleged crimes outside the usual statute of limitations.Full story:Judge rejects Trump DNA offer in E Jean Carroll rape defamation caseRead moreJamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee, has sent a letter to Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law who was Trump’s chief White House adviser, renewing a request for documents related to a $2bn deal with Saudi Arabia Kushner secured shortly after the end of the Trump administration.The benefits to Kushner and Trump of their closeness to Saudi Arabia while in power have been the subject of extensive reporting and speculation, not least given Kushner’s closeness to Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince who US intelligence said was behind the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident resident in the US who wrote for the Washington Post.Raskin writes: “Your efforts to protect the crown prince may have allowed him to maintain his position at the top of the Saudi government and, thus, his ability to deliver significant financial benefits to you and your father-in-law after the end of the Trump administration.“Abdullah Alaoudh, the director for the Gulf at Democracy for the Arab World Now, has stated that ‘[w]ithout the absolute protection of Trump and Kushner, MBS would definitely have fallen’.“President Trump expressed an explicit awareness of the crown prince’s debt: when Secretary [of state Mike] Pompeo embarked on a state visit to the Middle East to visit the crown prince, he wrote that President Trump told him, ‘My Mike, go and have a good time. Tell him he owes us.’”Here’s more about Pompeo’s view of the Khashoggi affair … and the Post’s condemnation of it.Raskin goes on to say Kushner and his investment firm, A Fin Management, LLC (Affinity), have “failed to cooperate with the Committee Democrats’ investigation”, which was launched last summer, when Democrats held the House.What’s Raskin after? “Documents, including communications between Mr Kushner and Saudi government officials, and documents sufficient to show the identity of all foreign investors in Affinity”.When does he want it? “By 1 March 2023.”Will he get it? Seems unlikely.Raskin also noted that though the new Republican oversight chairman, James Comer of Kentucky, had “acknowledg[ed] the unresolved conflicts-of-interests crisis left by the Trump administration”, he had declined to sign the letter to Kushner.The scandal-blasted New York Republican congressman George Santos is reportedly contemplating running for re-election in 2024, despite being at the centre of an extraordinary rolling political controversy since his election last November.CNN reported the change in Santos’s thinking today.Yesterday, Santos tweeted his defiance, writing: “Let me be very clear, I’m not leaving, I’m not hiding and I am NOT backing down. I will continue to work for New York’s third district and no amount of Twitter trolling will stop me. I’m looking forward to getting what needs to be done, DONE!”Santos’s résumé has been shown to be largely made up, his claims about family heritage debunked, his past scoured for alleged criminal behaviour and his campaign finances investigated amid questions over missing money and the source of his personal wealth.Santos’s very identity has been questioned, given past activities under a different name, Anthony Devolder.Republicans have joined Democrats in calling for Santos to resign but though he has admitted embellishing his résumé he denies wrongdoing.Republican leaders have stuck by him. Santos supported the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, through 15 rounds of voting for the position. McCarthy must now work with a very slim majority, making Santos’s seat all the more valuable.Santos has raised sufficient funds to have to announce whether he will run again by a deadline in mid-March. Two other New York Republican freshmen told CNN Santos would lose a primary if he chose to contest it.“George Santos will not be on any ticket in 2024,” said Marc Molinaro, adding that he would support a resolution to expel Santos from Congress if it made it to a vote.Democrats have introduced such a resolution but only five members of the House have ever been expelled – three for fighting for the Confederacy in the civil war.Anthony D’Esposito, who represents a neighbouring district, told CNN: “I am confident that George Santos will not be on any ticket come 2024. I am confident that we’ll do everything in our power to make sure we have the right candidate, the honest candidate, the truthful candidate, and the one who was honest about his entire being.”Two anonymous but senior Republicans, meanwhile, pointed to hard political realities.One, asked about House ethics investigations said: “I think he’ll be indicted before we get to him.”Another, described as a “senior GOP member”, pointed to the party’s need to avoid a new election in a district Joe Biden won with ease.“We don’t want a special,” he said.Nikki Haley officially kicked off her presidential campaign with a South Carolina speech in which she quipped about imposing “mental competency tests” for elderly politicians (think Donald Trump and Joe Biden) and won a few interesting endorsements. Kamala Harris was meanwhile heading to Germany for a meeting with some of Washington’s top allies, while downplaying the impact of the spy balloon saga on the relationship with China. Later this afternoon, Biden will launch a counterattack against the GOP and their demands for spending cuts with a speech intended to convince voters that Republicans are the real money wasters.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      The justice department will not charge rightwing congressman Matt Gaetz following his investigation over sex-trafficking allegations.
      Biden is considering a national address about the three still-mysterious UFOs shot down over North America in recent days, and the Chinese spy balloon.
      Democrats were doing all they can to make sure the public doesn’t forget Haley’s ties to Trump, whom she served as United Nations ambassador.
      The justice department will not charge rightwing congressman Matt Gaetz after investigating him on sex trafficking allegations, CNN reports:BREAKING: DOJ formally decides not to charge Congressman Matt Gaetz in sex-trafficking probe. Prosecutors have been informing witnesses today of final decision by DOJ leadership after investigators recommended not moving forward back in the fall. More to come on @CNN— Paula Reid (@PaulaReidCNN) February 15, 2023
      Federal agents had been looking into whether the Republican representing part of northwestern Florida in the House of Representatives paid a 17-year-old girl for sex. In December, an ex-tax collector and friend of Gaetz whose arrest sparked the investigation of the congressman was sentenced to 11 years in jail for offenses including the sex trafficking of a minor.As the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino reports, Nikki Haley would like to see “mental competency tests” implemented for politicians of a certain age:Haley just vowed that in her America she would make voter ID the law of the land, institute term limits for Congress and implement “mental competency tests” for politicians over 75— Lauren Gambino (@laurenegambino) February 15, 2023
      Who could she be referring to? Likely Joe Biden, who is 80, but perhaps also Donald Trump, who is 76.At her presidential campaign launch event in South Carolina, Nikki Haley has received the endorsement of Cindy Warmbier, whose son Otto died after his release from a North Korean prison, the Washington Post reports:Cindy Warmbier, mother of Otto Warmbier (who died after being released from North Korean prison), is speaking now. She calls Haley “a glimmer of light” during the darkest period of her life.— Dylan Wells (@dylanewells) February 15, 2023
      Donald Trump succeeded in getting Otto Warmbier returned to the United States in 2017. The then president later implied that he didn’t think North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un knew about Warmbier’s torture while in custody – a comment that his family rebuked. More