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      ‘Hatred has a great grip on the heart’: election denialism lives on in US battleground

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      ‘Hatred has a great grip on the heart’: election denialism lives on in US battleground Arizona voters rejected key election deniers, but false conspiracy theories have maintained their powerThe lead-up to Arizona’s midterms saw tactics designed to disrupt the American democratic process in a battleground state where election denialism ran rampant. Though voters broadly rejected election deniers, the grip of their ideas remains strong among large portions of the right in the state, which is now at the forefront of the fight over democracy in the US.“Voters in swing states sent a message that they were not receptive to election denialism. They didn’t send that message everywhere,” said Daniel I Weiner, director of the Brennan Center’s elections and government program.Weiner added: “There is going to continue to have to be built a greater consensus amongst Americans across the ideological spectrum that this is out of bounds. This election was reassuring. It certainly doesn’t mean the election denialism has gone away, though.”As soon as voters started dropping off their ballots, people in tactical gear with guns started monitoring them. One rural Arizona county kicked off, then backed away from, plans to hand count all ballots. Arizona’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, Kari Lake, said she wouldn’t concede if she lost.After election day brought printer problems in Maricopa county, the state’s largest by population, the bluster and election denialism grew. The county has said those problems did not prevent voters from casting a ballot and that they will be investigated, but still some Republicans want a “re-vote,” a new election, and some statewide candidates who lost have refused to concede their races.Rural Arizona county certifies midterm results after judge orders voteRead moreOthers are filing or preparing to file lawsuits, as legal letters fly from the state attorney general’s office and the Republican party. One county refused to certify its results, only doing so under court order. Maricopa county supervisors faced a vengeful crowd, some part of a traveling group in a “QAnon-themed Scooby Doo van” that invoked God and country to condemn this year’s election.“I never could have imagined in county government that we’d see this kind of vitriol towards us, but I think that these people have been sold a story, a narrative, and they believe that very strongly,” said Bill Gates, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa county board of supervisors. “And that narrative is that we are traitors, that we have violated the law, that we’re Rinos [Republicans In Name Only]. They didn’t come up with it on their own.”In this closely watched, tightly divided state that will help decide the 2024 election, skepticism of election results has found an audience with some Republican leaders, as the state has shifted away from Republicans in the past decade.While other states have embraced election conspiracy theories as well, Republicans in the Arizona senate encouraged such claims when the chamber initiated a so-called audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa county by a group called the Cyber Ninjas. Their practices and results were widely criticized by elections experts and actual auditors, but they set Arizona at the forefront of a growing anti-democratic movement.Some of the movement’s biggest names receive extensive fundraising hauls and social media attention by casting doubt on elections. The Arizona Republican party, led by Kelli Ward, has embraced Trumpism and election lies, casting out moderate Republicans like those who typically win statewide elections and setting the tone for an adversarial relationship between the state party and some elected Republicans who have defended elections.“It has nothing to do with patriotism. It’s a machine, a money-making effort,” said Rusty Bowers, the Arizona House speaker who was voted out in his Republican primary. “They found how to do it. The formula works … It would seem obvious to somebody with rational thinking that I am being played for my wallet.”While Republicans lost key positions statewide, they still hold one-vote majorities in both chambers of the Arizona legislature, and many moderate Republican votes were driven out of the legislature during their primaries. State government will be divided, with a Democratic governor and Republican-led legislature, so extreme election laws are unlikely to become law – but the forthcoming session should see lots of election-related fireworks.Already, one incoming Republican lawmaker has vowed not to vote for anything until the state redoes the 2022 election. The elections committee in the Arizona senate will be chaired by Wendy Rogers, one of the most vehement election deniers in the state, who is fundraising on the idea of redoing the election.Election deniers faced consequencesThe fever hasn’t yet broken, but the signs of slowing have started to appear. Certainly, losing big offices – Democrats won the races for governor, US Senate, secretary of state and attorney general in Arizona, and generally outperformed midterm expectations nationwide – show that there are consequences for alienating moderate voters who swing elections here. Such consequences, elections experts say, are critical for hindering the spread of election denialism.Ousted Republican reflects on Trump, democracy and America: ‘The place has lost its mind’ Read more“The only way out of this situation, this morass that we seem to find ourselves in, is if there’s accountability for those who are undermining our elections and who are attacking the legitimacy and the integrity of the process,” said Tammy Patrick, a former Maricopa county elections officer.The courts can also send a message that refusing to follow election law – as in Cochise county, which initially refused to certify its votes – will not be tolerated.A federal judge sent such a message on 1 December, in response to a lawsuit filed by Lake, the GOP governor candidate, and the Republican secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, which sought to prevent the use of machines to tabulate votes. The US district court judge John Tuchi approved sanctions against Lake and Finchem’s attorneys, sought by Maricopa county, calling the lawsuit “baseless” and “frivolous”.Some, including former prosecutors in Arizona, want to see criminal charges against the Cochise supervisors for abdicating their duty as elected officials.“I’m not a big fan of criminalizing a bunch of stuff,” said Alex Gulotta, the Arizona director for the voting rights group All Voting is Local. “On the other hand, if people are willing to break the law and break the law and break the law and continue to break the law when they’re told they’re breaking the law and break the law again, then at some point, you have to hold those people accountable.”Will it get better or worse?Those grappling with threats to democracy since 2020 see some signs that the movement is petering out, though they acknowledge 2024 could see more activity given the high stakes of the presidential election.The protests leading up to election certification in Arizona were small – one traveling protester, David Clements, said he was heading back to New Mexico after several days of protests because “it doesn’t seem like the people of Arizona cared”.The courts stepped in and made it clear, in multiple instances, that election shenanigans wouldn’t be tolerated.The Arizona Republican party is seeing efforts from some moderates, including the former Republican gubernatorial candidate Karrin Taylor Robson, who lost in the primary, to realign the party under a broader tent that could start to win elections again. Taylor Robson called on Ward to resign, saying Ward and Lake were the “megaphones” of the false election narratives that sunk the party in 2022.The state party, though, is full of Republican foot soldiers who are closely aligned with Ward. It has often run farther to the right than the state itself and censured moderate Republicans, including the current governor, Doug Ducey. Getting the party’s activists to choose a mainstream, moderate Republican to run the party is a tall order. Ward is not expected to run again, though her Maga allies are sure to seek the leadership position.Gates, the Maricopa supervisors chairman, said he didn’t know for sure if the noise would die down. Candidates and outside parties still could and would file lawsuits, as was their right, he said. If, after that, people continued to question the results, then he would know the narrative continued.‘Extremists didn’t make it’: why Republicans flopped in once-red ArizonaRead more“If the thought is to re-create a so-called audit on the lines of what happened in 2021, I think that’s not in the best interest of the state and could lead to even more election denialism in 2024,” Gates said.Bowers, the outgoing Arizona House speaker and one of the few vocal Republican defenders of elections inthe state, said he didn’t know how to break through the propaganda his party members have been fed. They seem to have “surrendered rationality”. He said many friends had been driven to vote Democratic for the first time. He himself didn’t vote for any election deniers and instead “wrote in some good people”.The party, though, seems stuck on the 2020 election, and he thinks it will only get worse. People had found success, at least in growing their social media followings and raising money, by leaning into fear and blaming others for their losses, he said.“Hatred has a great grip on the heart. And when you feed it, it gets tighter and tighter,” Bowers said.TopicsUS politicsThe fight for democracyUS midterm elections 2022RepublicansArizonafeaturesReuse this content More

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      Republican moderate refuses to disown Trump over constitution threat

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      Republican moderate refuses to disown Trump over constitution threatDave Joyce of Ohio, chair of the Republican Governance Group, says he will vote for Trump if he is nominee in 2024 A leader of moderate Republicans in the US House repeatedly refused to condemn Donald Trump on Sunday, even after the former president, running for re-election in 2024, said the US constitution should be “terminated” to allow him to return to power.DeSantis and Pence lead Republican wave – of presidential campaign booksRead more“Whoever the Republicans end up picking, I’ll fall in behind” them, Dave Joyce of Ohio told ABC’s This Week, adding that he thought Americans did not want to look back to the 2020 election, the subject of Trump’s lies about electoral fraud and demand for extra-constitutional action.Joyce’s host, George Stephanopoulos, said: “I don’t see how you can move forward if your candidate is for suspending the constitution but thank you for your time.”Trump maintains the lie that the 2020 election, which Joe Biden won by more than 7m votes and a clear margin in the electoral college, was subject to widespread voter fraud. In messages on his Truth Social account on Saturday, Trump said the constitution should therefore be “terminated”.The former president was condemned by Biden, Democrats and political commentators. On CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday another Ohio Republican, Mike Turner, said he “absolutely” did so too.“There is a political process that has to go forward before anybody is a frontrunner or anybody is even the candidate for the party,” Turner said. “I believe people certainly are going to take into consideration a statement like this as they evaluate a candidate.”Like Turner, Joyce was not among the 147 Republicans who objected to results in key states in the 2020 election, even after Trump supporters mounted their deadly attack on the Capitol, seeking to stop certification. But Stephanopoulos could not persuade Joyce to say he would not vote for Trump four years later.Joyce said: “Well, you know, when President Trump was in office, I didn’t make a habit of speaking out on his tweet du jour.“I don’t know what came out on … whatever his new social platform is. But, you know, people were not interested in looking backwards. The people who gave us the majority [in the midterm elections last month] … they gave us an opportunity, and we need to perform.”Ohioans, Joyce said, were more concerned about household budgets in a time of steep inflation.Stephanopoulos said: “But Donald Trump was your nominee in 2016 and 2020. You voted for him in 2016 and 2020. Now he’s talking about suspending the constitution. Can you support a candidate in 2024 who’s for suspending the constitution?”Joyce said: “Well, again, it’s early. I think there’s going to be a lot of people in the primary. I think, at the end of the day, whoever the Republicans end up picking, I’ll fall in behind because that’s – ”Stephanopoulos said: “Even if it’s Donald Trump and he’s called for suspending the constitution?”Joyce said: “Well, again, I think it’s going to be a big field. I don’t think Donald Trump’s going to clear out the field like he did in ’16.”Stephanopoulos said: “That’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking you, ‘If he’s the nominee, will you support him?’”Joyce said: “I will support whoever the Republican nominee is. And I just don’t think that at this point [Trump] will be able to get there because I think there’s a lot of other good quality candidates out there.”To the host, that was “a remarkable statement. You’d support a candidate who’s come out for suspending the constitution?”Joyce said: “Well, you know, [Trump] says a lot of things. You have to take him in context. And right now I have to worry about making sure the Republican Governance Group and the Republican majority make things work for the American people. And I can’t be really chasing every one of these crazy statements that come out … from any of these candidates.”‘It’s on the tape’: Bob Woodward on Donald Trump’s ‘criminal behavior’Read moreStephanopoulos said: “But that’s an extraordinary statement. You can’t come out against someone who’s for suspending the constitution?”Joyce said: “Well, first off, he has no ability to suspend the constitution. Secondly, I don’t –”Stephanapolous pointed out that Trump said he wanted to take that step.Joyce said: “Well, you know, he says a lot of things but that doesn’t mean that it’s ever going to happen. So you’ve got to accept exact fact from fantasy. And fantasy is that we’re going to suspend the constitution and go backwards. We’re moving forward and we’re going to continue to move forward as a Republican majority and as a Republican conference.”With that, Stephanopoulos closed the interview.“Thank you for having me,” Joyce said.TopicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2024RepublicansUS CongressUS constitution and civil libertiesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden rebukes Trump for saying constitution should be ‘terminated’

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      Biden rebukes Trump for saying constitution should be ‘terminated’Former president must be ‘universally condemned’ for comments, says White House The Biden White House rebuked Donald Trump after the former president said the US constitution should be “terminated” over his lie that the 2020 election was stolen.DeSantis and Pence lead Republican wave – of presidential campaign booksRead moreAndrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, said: “Attacking the constitution and all it stands for is anathema to the soul of our nation and should be universally condemned.”Bates called the constitution a “sacrosanct document”, saying: “You cannot only love America when you win.”Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020, by more than 7m votes and by 306-232 in the electoral college, a result he called a landslide when it was in his favour in 2016, against Hillary Clinton.Trump continues to claim that Biden won key states through electoral fraud, a lie that fuelled the deadly attack on the US Capitol by his supporters on 6 January 2021. Nine deaths have been linked to the riot, including suicides among law enforcement. More than 950 people have been charged. This week, two members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia were convicted of seditious conspiracy. Other members of far-right, pro-Trump groups face similar charges.Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter after the Capitol attack. He has not yet returned to the latter, despite its new owner, Elon Musk, saying he is free to do so. On Saturday, Trump used his own social media platform, Truth Social, to say of the 2020 election: “A massive fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the constitution.”Trump also said an “unprecedented fraud requires an unprecedented cure”.He was writing after Musk claimed he would show that Twitter was guilty of “free speech suppression” by releasing evidence of how the platform responded to requests from campaigns in the 2020 election.Trump is the only declared candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 but he has faced increased criticism from Republicans and Republican-supporting media since midterm elections in which many of his endorsed candidates were defeated, including election deniers running for governor and key elections roles in battleground states. Republicans took the House, but only by a narrow majority, and failed to retake the Senate.On Saturday, Trump also criticised the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, and “all of the weak Republicans who couldn’t get the presidential election of 2020 approved and out of the way fast enough”. Even after the Capitol riot, 147 Republicans in Congress objected to results in key states.Senior Republicans have recently criticised Trump over his decision to have dinner at his home in Florida with Nick Fuentes, a known white supremacist and antisemite. But though the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, has surged in polls regarding possible 2024 contenders, few in the party have broken decisively with Trump and those who have have largely been forced out.On Saturday, Brian Schatz, a Democratic US senator from Hawaii, pointed to such hard political reality, saying: “Trump just called for the suspension of the constitution and it is the final straw for zero Republicans, especially the ones who call themselves ‘constitutional conservatives’.”One such conservative is Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader battling to become House speaker. Not long before Trump said the constitution should be terminated, McCarthy said that when his party took control in January, it would demonstrate its constitutionalist bona fides by reading “every single word” of the hallowed document on the floor of the House.On Sunday, Hakeem Jeffries, the newly elected Democratic leader in the House, told ABC’s This Week Trump had made “a strange statement, but the Republicans are going to have to work out their issues with the former president and decide whether they’re going to break from him and return to some semblance of reasonableness or continue to lean in to the extremism, not just of Trump, but of Trumpism”.‘It’s on the tape’: Bob Woodward on Donald Trump’s ‘criminal behavior’Read moreTrump and Trumpism are becoming more and more of a headache for McCarthy, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and other senior Republicans.On Saturday, Mehdi Hasan, who hosts a show on the TV channel MSNBC, tweeted: “Do you support Donald Trump’s demand to ‘terminate’ the constitution? Doesn’t his demand disqualify him for running for the presidency? Two questions that every single Republican member of the House and Senate needs to be asked, again and again, in the coming days.”Hasan also pointed to Trump’s dinner at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, with Nick Fuentes, saying that in just two weeks the former president had “said or done things that would be lifelong scandals for other politicians … he truly knows how to flood the zone”. Trump critics on the political right did condemn the remark.John Bolton, George W Bush’s UN ambassador who became Trump’s third national security adviser, said: “No American conservative can agree with Donald Trump’s call to suspend the constitution because of the results of the 2020 election. And all real conservatives must oppose his 2024 campaign for president.”TopicsDonald TrumpJoe BidenUS politicsUS elections 2020US elections 2024RepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      DeSantis and Pence lead Republican wave – of presidential campaign books

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      DeSantis and Pence lead Republican wave – of presidential campaign books The GOP flopped in the midterms but its White House hopefuls still hope to find readers – and conservative group bulk-buyersIn one of the clearest signs that the 2024 Republican presidential primary will feature rivals to Donald Trump, a host of likely candidates have released or will soon release books purporting to outline their political visions.‘It’s on the tape’: Bob Woodward on Donald Trump’s ‘criminal behavior’Read moreSuch books often sell poorly, but that is rarely their point. They are markers of ambition. To judge from the political bookshelves, after midterm elections in which many Trump-endorsed candidates suffered humiliating losses, the former president will not be the only declared candidate for long.Among the first rank of likely challengers, Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, released a memoir last month and Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, will follow suit in February.Other possible candidates include the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo (book out next year); the Missouri senator Josh Hawley (one book done, another coming); the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley (two books out already); and the South Carolina senator Tim Scott (book published in August, including an inadvertent admission that he is going to run). Even Marco Rubio, the GOP’s great slight hope until Trump took him to the cleaners in 2016, has another book coming.Matt Dallek, a professor of political management at George Washington University, said: “These books serve as a way to generate free media and a way to put one’s name and platform, to an extent that it exists, in the eyes of voters you’re looking to reach.“It gives TV producers a hook. And so even though most of these books are, to be generous, pablum – filled with aphorisms and cliché – from the perspective of the candidate, it allows them to get their story out there, to put themselves before the public and to take a free media ride.”In short, these are not works of great literature, or even the sort of thing the great essayist Christopher Hitchens produced via “the junky energy that scotch can provide, and the intense short-term concentration that nicotine can help supply … crouched over a book or keyboard [in] mingled reverie and alertness”.It’s hard to picture evangelical hero Pence or culture warrior DeSantis like that, hunched over a desk, hammering out passages of memoir and policy to meet a publishing deadline. But perhaps their ghostwriters did.01:41The announcement this week of DeSantis’s book – The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Renewal – made the biggest splash. After all, the governor who won re-election in a landslide and declared his state “where woke goes to die” is Trump’s only serious polling rival.DeSantis has released a campaign book before, namely Dreams From Our Founding Fathers: First Principles in the Age of Obama, published in 2011 when he was aiming for Congress. According to his publisher, HarperCollins, the Ivy League-educated ex-navy lawyer will now offer “a first-hand account from the blue-collar boy who grew up to take on Disney and Dr Fauci”. True to DeSantis’s success in pursuing distinctly Trumpist policies, the announcement was replete with such culture-war themes.How to beat a book ban: students, parents and librarians fight backRead moreDaniel Uhlfelder, a former Democratic candidate for Florida attorney general, tweeted: “Ron DeSantis, who has led a statewide effort to ban books, is writing a book called The Courage to be Free. This is not a joke.”Trump books are a publishing phenomenon but books about what the agent Howard Yoon recently called the “milquetoast” Biden administration have not sold so well. Neither, it seems safe to say, will the flood of Republican books.Asked if she was eager to read DeSantis’s book, Molly Jong-Fast, host of the Fast Politics podcast, laughed and said, “Are you kidding me?” She also pointed to the common fate of such books: bulk sales to political groups rather than bookstore crowds.“The DeSantis book is something the Heritage Foundation gives people at a lunch, and then goes on a shelf. This is book that is swag. When the Kochs have their big shindig with donors, it’ll be given away. Of course, that means publishers at least know it will earn out the advance.”In sales terms, Pence has an advantage. His campaign book, So Help Me God, is also in large part a Trump book. Pence has refused to testify to the House January 6 committee but on the page he provides detailed if partial testimony, written from the rooms where it happened. The result was a New York Times bestseller.Jong-Fast said: “The reason to read his book is because he’s such a liar. I think if you went through with a fine-tooth comb, you could find a lot of inconsistencies. But … at least Pence is charismatic. The irony is he’s probably more charismatic than Ron DeSantis.”So Help Me God review: Mike Pence’s tortured bid for Republican relevanceRead moreIt is possible to write a good campaign book. Barack Obama wrote two. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance was published in 1995, as he set out for the Illinois senate. The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, came two years before the presidential run of 2008.“And he probably read them,” Jong-Fast said. “And also he knows good writing. So many people don’t. The constant problem with conservatives is that you’ve alienated most of the writers. Remember, Trumpworld didn’t have any intellectuals because they couldn’t find any. The thought leader was Newt Gingrich.”Asked what Guardian readers might glean from the new campaign books, and from DeSantis in particular, Dallek said: “If you know nothing or little about him, you could probably learn about the biggest political fights he’s had, you could get a sense of the soundbites he likes to use, you know, his war against so-called woke culture. Probably some sense of a why he thinks Florida is the greatest place on Earth, some of the attacks he’s going to use against Joe Biden, if he were to run.“But it will not be the most informative place to go if you want to learn about Ron DeSantis. There are many other places, including profiles in the Guardian, that would probably be much more fruitful.”TopicsBooksUS politicsUS elections 2024RepublicansRon DeSantisMike PenceMike PompeonewsReuse this content More

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      Georgia candidates’ starkly divergent views on race could be key in runoff

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      Georgia candidates’ starkly divergent views on race could be key in runoffSenate hopefuls Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker’s contrasting beliefs will influence how voters turn out As senator Raphael Warnock faces off against Republican challenger Herschel Walker in the most expensive race of the 2022 midterms, they also encounter a historic moment: it’s the first time in modern Georgia history that two Black candidates were nominated by both party’s voters to vie for a US Senate seat in the deep south state.Warnock and Walker both had experiences with poverty and Christianity during their upbringings yet their views on race and racism in society are now in stark contrast.In campaign speeches and previous remarks, Walker, who has been endorsed by former president Donald Trump, has argued racism in America doesn’t exist, asking supporters at an event earlier this year: “Where is this racism thing coming from?” Warnock, meanwhile, has spent years decrying racism, including lambasting Republican efforts at voting restrictions on the Senate floor as “Jim Crow in new clothes”.The pastor v the football player: can Raphael Warnock tackle Herschel Walker?Read morePolitical scientists and historians say that the contrasting views – Walker’s belief of an America “full of generous people” without racism, as he declared in one ad; Warnock’s belief in America dealing with racism as an “old sin” – influence how voters, specifically Black voters, will turn out and who they will support.Exit polling from November’s race showed that Black, Latino and Asian voters supported Warnock while Walker captured 70% of white voters.“When Walker is talking about racism doesn’t exist any more, for most Black people, that’s a non-starter,” said Andra Gillespie, associate professor of politics at Emory University. “On top of it, they look at his lack of qualifications. That is what would give them pause to say that they just put up any old Black person to try to run to this office. He was famous. That could be perceived as a sign of disrespect.”Gillespie says that the racial split in voting “maps on to party identification in the state” – meaning that in Georgia, those who align with the Republican and Democratic parties are “racially polarized”. She noted that Walker’s messaging tactics during the campaign to decry “woke” culture and arguing Warnock believes America is a “bad country full of racist people” shows he isn’t talking to Black voters, an influential voting bloc in a state that’s 30% Black.“When Walker uses Republican talking points and wants to talk about Democrats being divisive when talking about race, he is also signalling to white supporters that he’s not going to upset the applecart if you will,” she said. “The hope is that by hitting on personal issues and saying the same things that other folks would say, you hope to engage and mobilize and excite his supporters, the majority of whom are white.”Warnock and Walker’s life experiences shaped their views on race. Long before he became the senior pastor at Dr Martin Luther King’s Ebenezer Baptist church, Warnock grew up in a public housing complex in Savannah, Georgia, and immersed himself at a young age in the speeches of civil rights figures at his local library. Warnock eventually graduated from Morehouse College, a historically Black institution in Atlanta, in 1991.Before he became a wildly popular running back at the University of Georgia, Walker, who grew up in Wrightsville, more than 140 miles south-east of Atlanta, defied pleas from civil rights leaders who called for him to join racial justice protests in his community in 1980, which saw a group of whites beat Black protesters at the local courthouse, among other acts of racist violence. Walker chose not to get involved.Leah Wright Rigueur, a political historian at Johns Hopkins University, said Walker and Warnock’s contrasting views reflect “a common experience for those coming out of the immediate civil rights era: you either put your head down and shut up or you speak out and you fight”.Even so, Walker’s denial of racism does not reflect what a majority of even Black conservatives believe: a recent Pew Research Center study found that more than half of Black conservatives saw racism and police brutality as “extremely big problems” for Black people in the US. In her book The Loneliness of the Black Republican, Rigueur noted that research found that even conservative Black voters would not support candidates who they believe did not have their best interests at heart.Rigueur argues that the Republican party’s choice to back Walker, whose views are in contrast to even a majority of Black Republicans, represents an attempt to “pull a higher number of Black voters and/or disrupt the solidarity that was coalescing around Warnock”.‘Death by a thousand cuts’: Georgia’s new voting restrictions threaten midterm electionRead more“Walker does none of the things required to garner Black support: he’s not well-spoken, not well-versed in policy. He denies racism is an issue. He marches in lockstep with whatever the party line is,” she said, adding that Walker had alienated some white voters as well, particularly white women, who typically vote Republican.The scandals surrounding him, including that he paid for abortions for women, dismantle the “veneer of respectability of what it means to be a Republican”, Rigueur said. His lack of outreach and his decision not to campaign over Thanksgiving during a crucial early voting period, paired with his denial of racism’s existence, also relegates potential Black voters, who Republicans need to win in a changing electorate like Georgia. Rigueur added: “There has been no indication that he respects Black voters or that he actually is interested.“He is precisely the kind of candidate you don’t want to run in a place like Georgia,” she added. “You can no longer delude yourself or the public of these ideas that he’s a hometown hero with great conservative values and happens to be Black. You can’t buy into any of those things because he doesn’t live it and practice it.”What’s unique in the Warnock and Walker case isn’t so much that two Black men are facing off. That often happens in mayoral and state elections, and even at the federal level, just six years ago, South Carolina’s Tim Scott won re-election against Thomas Dixon, a Democratic Black pastor from north Charleston.But in Georgia, where Black voters often overwhelmingly vote Democrat, Warnock’s opponent is a Black Republican at a time when a record number of Black Republican candidates – 28 – ran for office during this year’s midterms and as there are three Black Republicans in Congress, the most since the Reconstruction era. Historically, when it comes to elections to national office, Black candidates have struggled to obtain the institutional backing from national parties and the financial investment needed to run successful national campaigns, Rigueur said.Recent efforts from grassroots, Black women-led civil rights groups in Georgia such as the New Georgia Project and Black Voters Matter who have been able to build an influential voting bloc through registration and outreach campaigns but also national investment in Black candidates from donors who see that growing influence.Republicans’ efforts to invest in Black candidates speaks to efforts to persuade a demographically changing electorate but the endorsement of Walker by Donald Trump “doesn’t negate the rest” of Trump’s “racially divisive presidency” nor does it negate Republican party’s “record on race in the last half century”, Gillespie said.“Herschel’s African American, yes, he is a revered native son of the state. But he’s also really inexperienced,” Gillespie said. “He has a lot of political baggage that in an earlier era would have been disqualifying right off the bat. To nominate somebody like that because he shares an identity with the other opponent, to some people, that looks like tokenism. It is something that a lot of voters are going to be turned off by.”Since 1870, just 11 Black Americans have served in the US Senate. If either Warnock or Walker win in Tuesday’s runoff, they would join the Democratic senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Republican senator Tim Scott as the only current Black members of the 100-person US Senate.“The fact that we’ve only ever had three at any given point still demonstrates that there’s a long way to go in terms of proportional representation by race,” Gillespie said.TopicsGeorgiaUS midterm elections 2022US politicsRaceDemocratsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Newt Gingrich warns Republicans that Joe Biden is winning the fight

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      Newt Gingrich warns Republicans that Joe Biden is winning the fightFormer speaker who led charge against Bill Clinton raises eyebrows with column heralding Democrat’s first-term success Republicans must “quit underestimating” Joe Biden, the former US House speaker Newt Gingrich said, because the president is winning the fight.Biden tells Democrats to revise primary calendar to boost Black voters’ voicesRead moreWriting on his own website, Gingrich said: “Conservatives’ hostility to the Biden administration on our terms tends to blind us to just how effective Biden has been on his terms.“… We dislike Biden so much, we pettily focus on his speaking difficulties, sometimes strange behavior, clear lapses of memory and other personal flaws. Our aversion to him and his policies makes us underestimate him and the Democrats.”Gingrich’s words pleased the White House – Ron Klain, Joe Biden’s chief of staff, tweeted a link with the message: “You don’t have to take my word for it, any more.”The column also caused consternation among Washington commentators, in part because, as Axios put it, “a leader of the GOP’s ’90s-era New Right [is] arguing that Joe Biden is not just a winner – but a role model”.Gingrich has been a fierce partisan warrior ever since he entered Congress, in 1979, then as speaker led the charge against Bill Clinton, culminating in a failed attempt to remove the Democrat via impeachment. In the conclusion to his column, he used the term “Defeat Big Government Socialism” – a version of the title of his latest book.Gingrich told Axios: “I was thinking about football and the clarity of winning and losing. It hit me that, measured by his goals, Biden has been much more successful than we have been willing to credit.”Biden recently turned 80. He has said he will use the Christmas holiday to decide if he will run for re-election.Gingrich, 79, compared Biden to Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, the latter previously the oldest president ever in office, having been 77 when he left the White House in 1989.Reagan and Eisenhower, Gingrich said, “preferred to be underestimated” and “wanted people to think of them as pleasant – but not dangerous”, and thereby enjoyed great success.“Biden has achieved something similar,” Gingrich continued, by taking “an amazingly narrow four-vote majority in the US House and a 50-50 tie in the Senate and turn[ing] it into trillions of dollars in spending – and a series of radical bills”.Gingrich also accused Biden of pursuing “a strategy of polarizing Americans against Donald Trump supporters” – more than 950 of whom have been charged over the deadly Capitol riot they staged after the former president’s defeat in 2020 – and “grossly exaggerat[ing] the threat to abortion rights”, after the supreme court removed the right this year.But Gingrich also gave Biden credit on the chief foreign policy challenge of his first term in power. The president, the former speaker said, had “carefully and cautiously waged war in Ukraine with no American troops … US weapons and financial aid [helping] cripple what most thought would be an easy victory for Russian president Vladimir Putin”.The result, Gingrich said, was that last month “the Biden team had one of the best first-term off-year elections in history. They were not repudiated.”Gingrich advised Republicans “to look much more deeply at what worked and what did not work in 2020 and 2022”, as they prepare to face “almost inevitable second-time Democrat presidential nominee Biden”.According to Axios, Biden is thought likely to run. Friends of the first couple, the site said, “think only two things could stop him: health or Jill”, the first lady.TopicsJoe BidenBiden administrationNewt GingrichDemocratsRepublicansUS midterm elections 2022US elections 2024newsReuse this content More

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      Matt Gaetz friend handed 11-year prison term in US sex trafficking case

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      Matt Gaetz friend handed 11-year prison term in US sex trafficking case Former tax collector Joel Greenberg apologizes in court for ‘shameful conduct’ after pleading guilty to six federal crimes A former Florida tax collector whose arrest led to a federal investigation into the US congressman Matt Gaetz has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for sex trafficking of a minor and other offenses.Joel Greenberg, former tax collector for Seminole county, was accused of stalking a political opponent, public corruption, making fake licenses and scheming to submit false claims for a federal loan.He pleaded guilty to six federal crimes, including identity theft, stalking, wire fraud and conspiracy to bribe a public official. Prosecutors said he paid at least one girl to have sex with him and other men.Trump had dinner with two avowed antisemites. Let’s call this what it is | Francine ProseRead more“Nothing justifies my actions. My conduct is so shameful. I feel remorse for what I’ve done,” Greenberg said on Thursday before US district judge Gregory Presnell sentenced him in an Orlando courtroom.Greenberg also directly apologized to the residents of Seminole county, his family and a schoolteacher he smeared when the educator decided to run against him.Presnell said that in his 22 years as a federal judge, he had never experienced a case like Greenberg’s and “a defendant who has committed so many different types of crimes in such a short period of time”.Greenberg’s attorney had asked for leniency, saying that his client had assisted in investigations of 24 people, including eight for sex crimes. Defense attorney Fritz Scheller said that Greenberg’s cooperation had led to four federal indictments, and that he believed additional ones were expected in the coming month.Greenberg’s cooperation could play a role in an investigation into his friend Gaetz over whether he paid a 17-year-old girl for sex. Gaetz has denied the allegations and previously said they were part of an extortion plot. No charges have been brought against the Republican congressman, who represents a large part of the Florida Panhandle.Greenberg has been linked to other Florida politicians and their associates. So far, none has been implicated in the sex trafficking investigation.After the hearing, Scheller called Greenberg’s sentence just.Scheller said he was shocked that Greenberg’s cooperation had not yet resulted in more prosecutions and that Greenberg had been in communication with federal investigators in the past three months. When asked whether he thought others would be charged with sex crimes, the defense attorney said, “I do.”“There should be, and I think part of my frustration is that I have a pretty good insight into the evidence in this case,” Scheller said.TopicsFloridaUS politicsUS CongressRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden ‘working with Macron’ to hold Russia accountable for ‘brutal’ Ukraine war – as it happened

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      Joe Biden says he’s working with French president Emmanuel Macron to hold Russia accountable for its aggression in Ukraine.Speaking at the White House following their summit this morning, Biden says the two leaders “talked a lot” about the war:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’re continuing to strong support people in Ukraine as they defend their homes and their families, and their sovereignty and territorial integrity, against Russian aggression, which is incredibly brutal.
      We’re going to stand together against this brutality. And we’ll continue the strong support for the Ukrainian people as they defend their homes and their families, nurseries their hospitals, their sovereignty, their integrity, against Russian aggression.
      [Russian president Vladimir] Putin thinks that he can crush the will of all those oppose his imperial ambitions by attacking civilian infrastructures and Ukraine, choking off energy to Europe to drive up prices, exasperating food through the food crisis, that’s hurting very vulnerable people, not just in Ukraine but around the world.
      He’s not going to succeed. President Macron and I have resolved that we’re going to continue working together to hold Russia accountable for their actions and to mitigate the global impacts of Putin’s war.We’re closing our US politics blog now after a day dominated by French president Emmanuel Macron’s state visit to Washington DC, the first of Joe Biden’s presidency. Thanks for joining us.Several significant talking points emerged:
      Joe Biden says he’ll speak with Vladimir Putin, but only if the Russian president is serious about wanting to end the war in Ukraine.
      Biden and Macron appeared at a joint press conference to condemn the brutality of Putin’s aggression against civilians in Ukraine, and promised to jointly hold Russia accountable.
      The US president acknowledged there were “glitches” in the climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that European countries, including France, say disadvantages their companies. Biden says they can be “tweaked” to favor allies.
      We’ve also been following these developments:
      A national rail strike has been averted after the US Senate voted 80-15 to impose a labor deal on workers. The bill heads for Biden’s signature after the House of Representatives approved the measure on Wednesday.
      Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina, an ally of outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House majority leader Steny Hoyer, was elected assistant leader of the Democratic House caucus.
      Please join us again tomorrow.Meanwhile, take a read of my colleague David Smith’s report on Biden’s meeting with Macron, and how it has helped heal the rift in their relationship:Biden and Macron seek to heal trade rift and present united front on UkraineRead moreThe Senate has voted 80-15 to implement a labor deal and avert a national rail strike on 9 December that the Biden administration and business leaders warned would have had devastating consequences for the nation’s economy.The Senate passed a bill to bind rail companies and workers to a proposed settlement that was reached between the rail companies and union leaders in September. That settlement had been rejected by some of the 12 unions involved, creating the possibility of a strike next week.BREAKING: The Senate votes to avert a rail strike that the Biden administration and business leaders warned would have had devastating consequences for the nation’s economy. https://t.co/EOFNdq2lud— The Associated Press (@AP) December 1, 2022
      The Senate vote came one day after the House voted to impose the agreement. The measure now goes to Joe Biden’s desk for his signature.“I’m very glad that the two sides got together to avoid a shutdown, which would have been devastating for the American people, to the American economy and so many workers across the country,” Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer told reporters.The Senate is moving quickly to hold a series of votes Thursday afternoon that could stave off a national rail strike that the Biden administration and business leaders say would greatly damage the economy.Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer announced a deal to hold three votes related to the rail negotiations, the Associated Press reports, with the final vote on whether to bind rail companies and workers to a proposed settlement that was reached in September.That settlement had been rejected by some of the 12 unions involved, creating the possibility of a strike. The House has already voted to impose that agreement anyway.“I’m very glad that the two sides got together to avoid a shutdown, which would have been devastating for the American people, to the American economy and so many workers across the country,” Schumer told reporters.Joe Biden who had urged Congress to intervene earlier this week, defended the contract that four of the unions had rejected, noting the wage increases it contains.“I negotiated a contract no one else could negotiate,” Biden said at a news briefing with French President Emmanuel Macron. “What was negotiated was so much better than anything they ever had.”Read more:US Senate votes on bill to avoid railroad strike and give sick leave to workersRead moreThe US Supreme Court will hear Joe Biden’s bid to reinstate his plan to cancel billions of dollars in student debt, after it was blocked by a lower court in a challenge by six states that accused his administration of exceeding its authority.According to Reuters, justices deferred taking action on Biden’s request to immediately lift an injunction issued on 14 November by the St Louis-based 8th US circuit court of appeals, but said in a brief order that they would hear oral arguments in their session from late February to early March.The challenge to Biden policy was brought by Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and South Carolina. Five are Republican governed while the other, Kansas, has a Republican attorney general.The policy faces another hurdle as the administration contests a separate 10 November ruling by a federal judge in Texas deeming the program unlawful. A federal appeals court on Wednesday declined to put that decision on hold, and the administration said it plans to ask the Supreme Court to intervene.Read more:US student debt relief: borrowers in limbo as lawsuits halt cancellation programRead moreLawyers for the Trump Organization were admonished in court Thursday for showing jurors in the company’s criminal tax fraud trial portions of witness testimony that had not been entered into evidence.Judge Juan Manuel Merchan halted closing arguments in the case in New York after prosecutors objected to Trump Org attorney Susan Necheles presenting in a slideshow testimony that the jurors hadn’t previously heard, the Associated Press reports.The trial continued after a half-hour break and admonishment for Necheles from Merchan.Necheles insisted she had not intended to show any testimony that had been stricken. “Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for that error,” she told jurors at the resumption.The transcript kerfuffle was, the AP says, just the latest dust-up involving Trump Organization lawyers. Earlier this week, Merchan scolded the defense for submitting hundreds of pages of court papers just before midnight Sunday.The company, through which Donald Trump manages his real estate holdings and other ventures, is accused of helping some top executives avoid paying income taxes on company-paid perks, such as apartments and luxury cars.The tax fraud case is the only trial to arise from the Manhattan district attorney’s three-year investigation of Trump and his business practices.One significant moment of note towards the end of the Biden-Macron press briefing, the US president says he’s willing to talk with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, but only if he’s willing to discuss ending his country’s war in Ukraine.Biden repeated his often-heard line that he has no plans to contact Putin, whom he and French president Emmanuel Macron condemned unequivocally today for the brutality of the Russian assault on Ukraine’s civilian population.But he said he would be open to listening to what Putin had to say:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}There’s one way for this war to end rationally, Putin to pull out of Ukraine, and it appears he’s not going to do that. It’s sick, what he’s doing.
      I’ll choose my words very carefully. I’m prepared to speak with Mr Putin, if in fact there is an interest in him deciding he’s looking for a way to end the war. He hasn’t done that yet.
      If that’s the case, in consultation with my French and my Nato friends, I’ll be happy to sit down with Putin to see what he has in mind.
      I’m prepared, if he’s willing to talk, to find out what he’s willing to do, but I’ll only do it in consultation with my Nato allies. I’m not going to do it on my own.Answering questions from the media, Joe Biden conceded there were “glitches” in clean energy provisions in the inflation reduction act that angered many in Europe, but said there were “tweaks we can make” to satisfy allies.Macron was among the European leaders who felt the $430bn US law would put European companies at a disadvantage.“The United States makes no apology, and I make no apologies since I wrote the legislation you’re talking about,” Biden told the reporter.“But there are occasions when you write a massive piece of legislation for the largest investment in climate change in all of history, there’s obviously going to be glitches in it, and a need to reconcile changes.”Macron has made clear that he and other European leaders are concerned about incentives in the law that favor American-made climate technology, including electric vehicles.Biden added: “There’s tweaks we can make that can fundamentally make it easier for European countries to participate… that is something to be worked out. It was never intended when I wrote the legislation to exclude folks who were cooperating with us.”Read more:The Guardian view on Biden’s ‘Buy America’ strategy: a wake-up call for Europe | EditorialRead moreIn his remarks, Emmanuel Macron spoke at length about the importance of supporting Ukraine, its military and people with financial support and other humanitarian aid, and praised the US commitment to that cause.He reiterated that it would be Ukraine’s decision when it was ready to pursue peace:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We always agreed to help Ukraine resist, never giving up on anything in the United Nations charter, to prevent any risk of escalation of this conflict, and make sure that when the time comes, on the basis of conditions to be set by Ukrainians themselves, help build peace.In an apparent dig at Donald Trump, and the former president’s decision – rescinded by Biden – to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, Macron praised Biden’s commitment to environmental issues..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The fact that you’re back, on major international challenges such as health and climate, it is really a new deal.
      We’ve been resisting for a number of years, and now we’re being able to engage with you. I would like to say how much has been achieved by both our countries.Macron said France and the US would be exploring ways to assist developing countries financially:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We want to promote solutions on climate change, but we also very acknowledge a number of initiatives in this respect. It is about finding a new financing means for the most fragile countries, emerging countries to support them on both development and climate change.Biden said he and Macron were also committed to “reaching our goal of ending the Aids epidemic by 2030”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We just have to make finishing this fight a top priority for not just the two of us, but for other nations as well. And that’s why I’m proud to take the baton from you President Macron, and host the global fund’s seventh replenishment conference this year.
      Building on France’s strong record of leadership, we raised $15.7bn with the US and France as the two largest contributors to the global fund. And it’s good to save millions, literally millions of lives.Biden said if he went on to list all the ways the US and France were in partnership, “we’d be here until dinnertime”, so he closed his prepared remarks with praise for a student exchange program with France, and told Macron the floor was his…Joe Biden praised France for taking in 100,000 Ukraine refugees, and commended efforts by Europe to move away from energy dependence on Russia.“I welcome the progress we’ve already made in many of these issues through the US-EU task force on energy security, and today we also committed to deepening cooperation between France and the United States on civil nuclear energy through our bilateral clean energy partnership,” Biden said.Other topics discussed, the US president said, included the Middle East, where Biden recognized Macron for helping to broker a maritime boundaries deal between Israel and Lebanon; human rights abuses; and efforts “to ensure that Iran does not, emphasize does not, ever acquire nuclear weapons”.He said the two countries were committed to working together for peace in the Middle East and Afghanistan:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Our partnership also extends to cooperating in outer space, coordinating defense of our space activities, to strengthening scientific efforts to monitor Earth’s changing climate.
      And we had a detailed discussion of inflation reduction. We did talk about [how] the US and and Europe share the goal of making bold investments in clean energy.Joe Biden says he’s working with French president Emmanuel Macron to hold Russia accountable for its aggression in Ukraine.Speaking at the White House following their summit this morning, Biden says the two leaders “talked a lot” about the war:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’re continuing to strong support people in Ukraine as they defend their homes and their families, and their sovereignty and territorial integrity, against Russian aggression, which is incredibly brutal.
      We’re going to stand together against this brutality. And we’ll continue the strong support for the Ukrainian people as they defend their homes and their families, nurseries their hospitals, their sovereignty, their integrity, against Russian aggression.
      [Russian president Vladimir] Putin thinks that he can crush the will of all those oppose his imperial ambitions by attacking civilian infrastructures and Ukraine, choking off energy to Europe to drive up prices, exasperating food through the food crisis, that’s hurting very vulnerable people, not just in Ukraine but around the world.
      He’s not going to succeed. President Macron and I have resolved that we’re going to continue working together to hold Russia accountable for their actions and to mitigate the global impacts of Putin’s war.A joint press conference by Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron is under way at the White House following bilateral talks at the White House this morning.The US president says he and his French counterpart had “a great conversation”.“France is one of our strongest partners and most capable allies. We share the same values,” Biden says.He says the leaders “talked a lot” about the war in Ukraine. We’ll bring you their comments as they speak.The US economy would face a severe economic shock if senators don’t pass legislation this week to avert a freight rail workers’ strike, Democrats in the chamber are hearing today, according to the Associated Press.Senators held a closed-door session with Biden administration officials Thursday, following a House vote last night approving a deal to avert such a nationwide strike. They are being urged to quickly vote the deal through.But the Senate often works at a slower pace, and the timing of final votes on the measure is unclear.Labor secretary Marty Walsh and transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg met the Democratic senators to underscore that rail companies will begin shuttering operations well before a potential strike begins on 9 December.“If there’s even the possibility of a shutdown, about five days in advance of that, the railroads would have to begin winding down their acceptance of things like hazardous material shipments that you can’t allow to get stranded,” Buttigieg said in a CNBC interview.“So my goal today speaking to the senators will be to make sure they understand the implications of a shutdown or even getting close to a shutdown,” he said. “It wouldn’t just bring down our rail system. It would really shut down our economy.”Railways say that halting rail service would cause a devastating $2bn-per-day hit to the economy. A freight rail strike also would have a big potential impact on passenger rail, with Amtrak and many commuter railroads relying on tracks owned by the freight railroads.The rail companies and 12 unions have been negotiating. The Biden administration helped broker deals between the railroads and union leaders in September, but four of the unions rejected the deals. Eight others approved five-year deals and are getting back pay for their workers for the 24% raises that are retroactive to 2020.On Monday, with the strike looming, Biden called on Congress to impose the tentative agreement reached in September. Read more:US House approves bill to block rail strike and mandate paid sick leaveRead moreWhile we wait for Biden and Macron to appear, here’s Hamilton Nolan on a domestic issue facing the US president: his move to stop a rail strike and how many in the union movement have been left feeling betrayed …It’s sad, really. Beleaguered US labor unions thought that they had finally found a true friend. In Joe Biden, they had a man who was the most pro-union president in my lifetime – a low bar to clear, but something. Yet this week we found out that when the fight got difficult, Biden had the same thing to say to working people that his Democratic predecessors have said for decades: “You’ll never get anything you want if I don’t win; but once I win, I can’t do the things you need, because then I wouldn’t be able to win again.”At the same time that thousands of union members are fanned out across the state of Georgia knocking on doors to get Raphael Warnock elected and solidify Democratic control of the Senate – to save the working class, of course! – Biden decided to sell out workers in the single biggest labor battle of his administration. Rather than allowing the nation’s railroad workers to exercise their right to strike, he used his power to intervene and force them to accept a deal that a majority of those workers found to be unacceptable.His ability to do this rests on the vagaries of the Railway Labor Act, but all you really need to understand is this: nobody forced him to side with the railroad companies over the workers. That was a choice. The White House just weighed the political damage it anticipated from Republicans screaming about a Christmas-season rail strike against the fact that railroad workers have inhuman working conditions and would need to go on strike to change that, and chose the easier political route. This was a “Which side are you on?” moment, and Biden made his position clear.Read on:Biden just knifed labor unions in the back. They shouldn’t forget it | Hamilton NolanRead more More