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      Republicans throw support behind Herschel Walker after abortion denial

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      Republicans throw support behind Herschel Walker after abortion denialThe Georgia senate candidate has garnered support from Donald Trump to Lindsey Graham Republicans and anti-abortion groups across the country have been flocking to Herschel Walker’s defense despite accusations that the Republican candidate for Georgia’s senate paid for a woman’s abortion in 2009.After the accusation from an alleged ex-girlfriend was first reported in the Daily Beast, some of the country’s most influential Republicans have been either echoing Walker’s denial of the abortion or remaining in deafening silence, in turn revealing a clear hypocrisy towards the issue of abortion rights.Walker, ostensibly a staunch anti-abortion candidate, is currently in a tight race against the state’s Democratic senator Raphael Warnock in hopes of winning a Senate seat in less than five weeks and reclaiming control of the chamber. As part of his campaign, Walker has stated that he wants a total ban on abortions, saying “there’s no exception in my mind … Like I say, I believe in life. I believe in life.”On Monday, a bombshell report emerged that a woman who asked not to be identified underwent an abortion that Walker paid for after the former couple discovered that they had conceived a child.In response, Walker denied paying for the abortion, telling the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, “Had that happened, I would have said it, because it’s nothing to be ashamed of there. You know, people have done that, but I know nothing about it. And if I knew about it, I would be honest and talk about it, but I know nothing about that.”He has since doubled down on his denial, accusing Democrats of sabotaging his campaign. “I know why you’re here,” he told reporters this week after his first campaign address since the reports emerged. “You’re here because the Democrats are desperate to hold on to this seat here, and they’re desperate to make this race about my family.”Republicans have been echoing Walker’s defense, with many claiming the story is a fraudulent attack launched by Democrats. Others have gone as far as to express no interest in the truth of the allegation as they reaffirm the priority of regaining control.“What I’m about to say is in no means a contradiction or a compromise of a principle. And please keep in mind that I am concerned about one thing, and one thing only at this point. I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate,” said Dana Loesch, a conservative radio host and former spokesperson of the National Rifle Association.Florida’s Republican senator Rick Scott accused Democrats of launching a smear campaign. Scott, who previously said that “abortion ends a life. It is abhorrent and has no place in our society,” defended Walker earlier this week in a public statement.As the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Scott wrote, “When the Democrats are losing, as they are right now, they lie and cheat and smear their opponents … They know that Herschel Walker is winning, so they have cranked up the smear machine.”Former president Donald Trump, who once called himself “strongly pro-life” and said that women who get abortions should face “some form of punishment”, also came to Walker’s defense.“Walker is being slandered and maligned by the ‘fake news media’ and obviously, the Democrats,” Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social. “It’s very important for our county and the great state of Georgia that Herschel Walker wins this election,” he added.Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC), tweeted: “Georgia could decide the Senate majority, so desperate Democrats and liberal media have turned to anonymous sources and character assassination.”McDaniel, who responded with “Life wins!” earlier this year when the supreme court stripped away federal abortion protections, added, “Herschel Walker will deliver a safer and more prosperous Georgia, and the RNC will continue to invest in the Senate race.”South Carolina’s Republican senator Lindsey Graham defended Walker on Twitter, saying, “[Walker] has adamantly denied these allegations and he will be the next senator from Georgia because people are going to vote for what is best for their family.”Graham last month proposed a nationwide 15-week abortion ban.The National Right to Life Committee, the country’s oldest and largest national anti-abortion organization, also released a statement in support of Walker, calling the report a “series of attempted Democratic character assassinations”.“National Right to Life stands behind its endorsement of Herschel Walker … Herschel Walker wants to protect unborn children while Raphael Warnock wants to see them die through unlimited abortion. The Democratic party knows it cannot win on the issues, so we once again see an attempted character assassination, a tactic that is sadly all too often encouraged by a compliant and willing media.”Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, another anti-abortion organization, also stood behind Walker amid the reports by saying, “Herschel Walker has denied these allegations in the strongest possible terms and we stand firmly alongside him.”One prominent anti-abortion Republican, the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, has remained unusually quiet since the reports emerged.Earlier this year, McConnell expressed support towards Walker’s candidacy, saying: “Herschel is the only one who can unite the party, defeat Senator Warnock and help us take back the Senate. I look forward to working with Herschel in Washington to get the job done.”However, since the reports, McConnell, who has one of the staunchest anti-abortion voices on Capitol Hill and has previously voted for anti-abortion bills and against the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, has yet to publicly comment.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsAbortionRepublicansGeorgianewsReuse this content More

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      Biden pardons all federal offenses of simple marijuana possession – as it happened

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      President Joe Biden has announced a pardon of all prior federal offenses of simple possession of marijuana..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“There are thousands of people who have prior Federal convictions for marijuana possession, who may be denied employment, housing, or educational opportunities as a result. My action will help relieve the collateral consequences arising from these convictions,” Biden said in a statement released on Thursday afternoon.He went on to urge all governors to do the same with regards to state offenses, saying, “Just as no one should be in a Federal prison solely due to the possession of marijuana, no one should be in a local jail or state prison for that reason, either.”The president also called on the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General to begin the administrative process to review how marijuana is scheduled under federal law.Marijuana is currently classified in Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act under federal law. This classification puts marijuana in the same schedule as for heroin and LSD and even higher than the classification of fentanyl and methamphetamine, two drugs that are fueling the ongoing overdose epidemic across the country. It’s nearly 4pm in Washington DC. Here’s where things stand:
      Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes told a member of the extremist group before the 2020 election that he had a contact in the Secret Service, a witness testified Thursday in Rhodes’ Capitol riot trial. John Zimmerman, who was part of the North Carolina chapter, said Rhodes told him that Rhodes had a Secret Service agent’s telephone number.
      Joe Biden has announced a pardon of all prior federal offenses of simple possession of marijuana. “There are thousands of people who have prior Federal convictions for marijuana possession, who may be denied employment, housing, or educational opportunities as a result. My action will help relieve the collateral consequences arising from these convictions,” Biden said in a statement released on Thursday afternoon.
      Biden addressed workers at the IBM manufacturing plant in Poughkeepsie, New York on Thursday afternoon where he spoke of the Chips and Science Act that includes over $52bn in federal subsidies. The $280bn package seeks to boost the US’s semiconductor industry and scientific research in attempts to create more high-tech jobs across the country while also help it compete better with international rivals such as China.
      The federal government on Thursday expressed support for New York City’s lawsuit seeking to halt the spread of “ghost guns” as city and state officials try to hold sellers of the largely untraceable firearms accountable. In a “statement of interest” filed in Manhattan federal court, the Department of Justice expressed “serious concerns” about the proliferation of ghost guns, and said kits containing the weapons’ components are classified as firearms under federal gun control law.
      A federal judge has temporarily blocked parts of New York state’s new gun law, in order to allow the Gun Owners of America, an advocacy group, to pursue a lawsuit challenging the legislation. The law came into effect on 1 September, creating new requirements for obtaining a license, including submitting social media accounts for review, and creating a list of public and private places where having a gun became a felony crime, even for license holders.
      The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a health advisory, regarding an outbreak of Ebola in Uganda. The alert summarises “recommendations for public health departments and clinicians, case identification and testing, and clinical laboratory biosafety considerations.”
      Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes told a member of the extremist group before the 2020 election that he had a contact in the Secret Service, a witness testified Thursday in Rhodes’ Capitol riot trial.Associated Press reports: John Zimmerman, who was part of the North Carolina chapter, said Rhodes told him that Rhodes had a Secret Service agent’s telephone number. Zimmerman said he believed Rhodes spoke on the phone with the agent about the logistics of a September 2020 rally that then-President Donald Trump held in Fayetteville, North Carolina.The claim came on the third day of testimony in the case against Rhodes and four others charged with seditious conspiracy for what authorities have described as a detailed, drawn-out plot to use force to stop the transfer of presidential power from Trump to Democrat Joe Biden, who won the election.Prosecutor Kathryn Rakoczy had asked Zimmerman whether Rhodes ever told him about having any kind of connection to Trump.Zimmerman could not say for sure that Rhodes was speaking to someone with the Secret Service — only that Rhodes told him he was — and it was not clear what they were discussing. Zimmerman said Rhodes wanted to find out the “parameters” that the Oath Keepers could operate under during the election-year rally.The significance of the detail in the government’s case is unclear. Trump’s potential ties to extremist groups have been a focus of the House committee investigating the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Another Oath Keeper expected to testify against Rhodes has claimed that after the riot, Rhodes phoned someone seemingly close to Trump and made a request: tell Trump to call on militia groups to fight to keep him in power. Authorities have not identified that person; Rhodes’ lawyer says the call never happened.Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said it is not uncommon for “protest groups” to contact the agency with logistical questions about rallies. He noted that firearms are always prohibited within restricted areas being secured by the agency.“The Oath Keepers are certainly a known demonstration group.” he said.Guglielmi said he is not aware of any contact between Rhodes and an agency representative but would not be surprised if Rhodes said he had contacted the secret Service before the North Carolina event..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“I don’t have any way to track that down without some more information,” the spokesman said.Rhodes, from Granbury Texas, and four associates are being tried on a Civil War-era charge. President Joe Biden has announced a pardon of all prior federal offenses of simple possession of marijuana..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“There are thousands of people who have prior Federal convictions for marijuana possession, who may be denied employment, housing, or educational opportunities as a result. My action will help relieve the collateral consequences arising from these convictions,” Biden said in a statement released on Thursday afternoon.He went on to urge all governors to do the same with regards to state offenses, saying, “Just as no one should be in a Federal prison solely due to the possession of marijuana, no one should be in a local jail or state prison for that reason, either.”The president also called on the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General to begin the administrative process to review how marijuana is scheduled under federal law.Marijuana is currently classified in Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act under federal law. This classification puts marijuana in the same schedule as for heroin and LSD and even higher than the classification of fentanyl and methamphetamine, two drugs that are fueling the ongoing overdose epidemic across the country. President Joe Biden addressed workers at the IBM manufacturing plant in Poughkeepsie, New York on Thursday afternoon where he spoke of the CHIPS and Science Act that includes over $52 billion in federal subsidies. .css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“Since we’ve been elected, we’ve created 678,000 new manufacturing jobs where, And we’re just getting started. Where is it written that we can’t lead manufacturing in the world? I don’t know where that’s written. And that’s one of the things that CHIPS Act is going to change – the law that’s going build the future in a proud, proud legacy, not only for IBM but for the country,” Biden said. The $280 billion package seeks to boost the US’s semiconductor industry and scientific research in attempts to create more high-tech jobs across the country while also help it compete better with international rivals such as China. .css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“American manufacturing – the backbone of our economy got hollowed out because companies began to move jobs and production overseas. And as a result, today, we’re down to barely 10% of the world’s chips, despite leading in chip research and design,” Biden said.
      “We need [these chips] in conductors, not only to make Javelin missiles, but also the weapon systems, the future that is going to rely even more on advanced chips, Unfortunately we produce 0% of these advanced chips today…China is trying to move ahead of us in manufacturing them,” he added. “The United States has to lead the world in producing these advanced chips,” Biden said, adding that “some of our friends” on the Republican side bought into China’s lobbying in Congress against the act. .css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“The CHIPS and Science Act is not handing out blank checks to companies… I’ve directed my administration… to be laser focused on the guard rails that’s gonna protect taxpayers dollars.”
      “We’ll make sure the companies partner with unions, community colleges, technical schools, and offer training and apprenticeships. We’re going to make sure…small and minority owned businesses get to participate. We’re gonna make sure the companies do not take these taxpayers dollars, do not turn around and make investments in China, investments that undermine our supply chains and natural security. That’s a guarantee.” “It’s about economic security…it’s about national security…and that’s what we’re going to see in this factory, in the Hudson Valley,” Biden added. “We have the best and most productive workers in the world. We have the best research universities in the world… We wrote and passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law…and we finally decided that we’re going to move up from number 13 in the world on infrastructure to number one,” Biden said. “The Chips and Science Act is not handing out blank checks to…companies…we’re going to make sure that small and minority-owned businesses get to participate,” Biden said. “In this law, I have the power to take back federal funding if companies are not meeting the requirements,” he added. “The future of the chips industry is going to be made in America…and many of these good paying jobs don’t require a set of college degrees,” Biden said. “The largest American investment of its kind,” Biden said in his address as he celebrates this summer’s passage of a $280 billion legislative package intended to boost the US semiconductor industry and scientific research.Joe Biden is set to deliver remarks at around 2pm ET at the IBM site in Poughkeepsie, New York.Biden is expected to speak on creating jobs in the Hudson Valley and lowering costs, among other topics.We will bring you the latest updates on his address so do stay tuned.The Biden administration announced that the US will start screening travelers from Uganda for Ebola as an additional precaution aimed at trying to prevent an outbreak in the African country from spreading, the Associated Press reports.The federal government on Thursday expressed support for New York City’s lawsuit seeking to halt the spread of “ghost guns,” as city and state officials try to hold sellers of the largely untraceable firearms accountable.In a “statement of interest” filed in Manhattan federal court, the Department of Justice expressed “serious concerns” about the proliferation of ghost guns, and said kits containing the weapons’ components are classified as firearms under federal gun control law.“Ghost guns are a major contributor to the ongoing plague of gun violence,” US Attorney Breon Peace in Brooklyn said in a statement accompanying the filing, which US Attorney Damian Williams in Manhattan also signed..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“The United States will continue to employ every means available, including civil tools, to keep ghost guns and other illegal firearms out of the hands of criminals and reduce the risk of gun violence. The United States filed a Statement of Interest in this important litigation to ensure that the Court is informed of the federal government’s views of pertinent firearms statutes and regulations,” he added. New York City and state Attorney General Letitia James on June 29 filed two lawsuits accusing 10 out-of-state distributors of creating a public nuisance by selling unfinished frames and receivers to buyers within the state.Ghost guns do not have serial numbers and can be acquired without background checks, potentially letting people otherwise ineligible to buy firearms to construct finished guns..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“We are not going to let gun companies turn New York into a city of mail-order murder,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said when announcing the city’s lawsuit.Both lawsuits were filed six days after the supreme court struck down a century-old New York law that strictly limited the carrying of guns outside the home.Federal law largely shields gun makers from lawsuits over shootings. There is an exception for when sellers knowingly violate statutes governing firearms sales and marketing.Three of the five defendants in the city’s lawsuit have settled, and agreed to stop sales to city residents.Steven Donziger, a human rights lawyer, environmental justice advocate and Guardian US columnist, writes today about a ‘terrifying case’ about to be heard by the US supreme court…It is well-known that intense competition between democracy, authoritarianism, and fascism is playing out across the globe in a variety of ways – including in the United States. This year’s supreme court term, which started this week, is a vivid illustration of how the situation is actually worse than most people understand.A supermajority of six unelected ultraconservatives justices – five put on the bench by presidents who did not win the popular vote – haveaggressively grabbed yet another batch of cases that will allow them to move American law to the extreme right and threaten US democracy. The leading example of this disturbing shift is a little-known case called Moore v Harper, which could lock in rightwing control of the United States for generations.The heart of the Moore case is a formerly fringe legal notion called the Independent State Legislature (ISL) theory. This theory posits that an obscure provision in the US constitution allowing state legislatures to set “time, place, and manner” rules for federal elections should not be subject to judicial oversight. In other words, state legislatures should have the absolute power to determine how federal elections are run without court interference.Think about this theory in the context of the last US election. After Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump resoundingly in both the popular vote and in the electoral college, Trump tried to organize a massive intimidation campaign to steal the election which played out in the storming of the Capitol building on 6 January. But behind the scenes, the legal core of this attempt was to convince the many Republican-controlled state legislatures (30 out of 50 states) to send slates of fake Trump electors from states like Arizona, Georgia and Michigan where Trump lost the popular vote.If Trump had succeeded, he would have “won” the election via the electoral college (itself an anti-democratic relic) and been able to stay in office. If the supreme court buys the theory in the Moore case, this could easily happen in 2024 and beyond. In fact, it is possible Republicans will never lose another election again if this theory is adopted as law. Or put another way, whether Republicans win or lose elections via the popular vote will not matter because they will be able to maintain power regardless.That’s not democracy.The most terrifying case of all is about to be heard by the US supreme court | Steven DonzigerRead moreA federal judge has temporarily blocked parts of New York state’s new gun law, in order to allow the Gun Owners of America, an advocacy group, to pursue a lawsuit challenging the legislation.Reuters has the report:“The law came into effect on 1 September, creating new requirements for obtaining a license, including submitting social media accounts for review, and creating a list of public and private places where having a gun became a felony crime, even for license holders.Lawmakers in New York’s Democratic-controlled legislature passed the law during an emergency session in July after the US supreme court found the state’s licensing regime for firearms to be unconstitutional following a challenge by the New York affiliate of the National Rifle Association, a powerful gun-owners’ rights group.On Thursday, Glenn Suddaby, chief judge of the US district court in Syracuse, agreed to issue the order at the request of six New York- resident members of Gun Owners of America, which competes with the National Rifle Association in political influence. Suddaby said his order would not take effect for three days, to allow the New York government to appeal.Suddaby last month ruled that much of the new law was unconstitutional in dismissing an earlier lawsuit by Gun Owners of America in which he found neither the group nor an individual member of it had standing to sue before the law came into effect.” Background:New York enacts new gun restrictions in response to supreme court decisionRead moreThe Florida mayor to whom Joe Biden uttered a profanity captured by a live microphone, sparking a minor viral fuss, said the presidential f-bomb did not bother him in the slightest.The two men met on Wednesday, as Biden visited areas of Florida hit by Hurricane Ian. The president was heard to say: “Nobody fucks with a Biden.”The incident set off a minor media storm. The White House did not comment.Ray Murphy, the mayor of Fort Myers Beach, told NBC: “It was not directed at anybody. It was just two guys talking. It didn’t faze me one bit. That’s just the way two guys talk to each other from our respective backgrounds.”We have video of the moment:00:31Murphy told NBC he and the president quickly discovered they had a lot in common.“We’re both Irish Catholics,” he said. “We’re both devout Catholics. But every once [in] a while a little salty language comes out.”Biden has had brushes with hot mics and salty language before. Most famously, in 2010 he enlivened the signing ceremony for the Affordable Care Act by telling his then boss, Barack Obama: “This is a big fucking deal.”Biden later told NPR: “Thank God my mother wasn’t around to hear.”In January this year, Biden appeared to think his microphone was off when he called a Fox News reporter, Peter Doocy, “a stupid son of a bitch” for asking a question about inflation. The president said sorry.Florida mayor not offended by Biden’s ‘salty language’ on live microphoneRead moreThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a health advisory, regarding an outbreak of Ebola in Uganda.The alert summarises “recommendations for public health departments and clinicians, case identification and testing, and clinical laboratory biosafety considerations”.The federal agency emphasises that the alert is a precaution, as “no suspected, probable, or confirmed EVD cases related to this outbreak have yet been reported in the United States”.Its aim, it says, is to raise awareness among clinicians.Reuters, meanwhile, reports that the Biden administration “will begin redirecting US-bound travelers who have been to Uganda within the previous 21 days to five major American airports to be screened for Ebola”..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The change is expected to take effect within the coming week or so, a source said. The travelers will need to arrive at New York-JFK, Newark, Atlanta, Chicago O’Hare or Washington Dulles. There is no vaccine for the Sudan strain of the disease behind the latest Uganda infections.The Biden White House does contain experience in dealing with Ebola. Ron Klain, the president’s chief of staff, was Barack Obama’s Ebola tsar during an outbreak in 2014.In 2020, during the darkest days of the Covid pandemic, Klain wrote for the Guardian: “Of the many hard days I spent coordinating the US fight against Ebola in 2014-15, none was more painful than 29 November 2014, when I spoke at the funeral of Martin Salia, a doctor who left Maryland to return to his native Sierra Leone to help cope with the devastating death toll among healthcare workers during that epidemic.“Dr Salia contracted Ebola while performing surgery; by the time he was airlifted back to the US for treatment, he was too ill to be saved. At his funeral, I noted that while history is filled with all sorts of accidental heroes and unwilling heroes, ‘the greatest heroes are people who choose to face danger, who voluntarily put themselves at risk to help others.’”Here’s Klain’s full piece:I was Obama’s Ebola tsar. US healthcare workers are dying at a shameful rate | Ronald A KlainRead moreDemocrats are seething over Saudi Arabia’s push for Opec+ to cut oil production, potentially driving up US gas prices just as voters head to the midterm elections. Meanwhile, Joe Biden has embarked on a long day of travel that will see him tout the Chips bill to boost semiconductor production, and also attend two Democratic fundraisers as the party prepares to defend its slim holds on both the House and Senate.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate for Senate in Georgia, said he knew “nothing about” a woman’s claim he paid for her to have an abortion – and then had a child with him.
      Republicans may decide to impeach homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas if they win a majority in the House.
      Election deniers appear poised to win many races in the upcoming midterms, no matter what happens, The Washington Post found. More

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      US justice department granted expedited appeal in Trump Mar-a-Lago case – as it happened

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      A US appeals court on Wednesday granted the justice department’s request to expedite its appeal of a lower court order appointing a special master to review records the FBI seized from former president Donald Trump’s Florida estate in August.The decision by the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit to fast-track the government’s appeal represents a setback for Trump, who had opposed the request, Reuters reports.Last week, the Department of Justice (DoJ) had asked the 11th circuit to address concerns it still has with US district judge Aileen Cannon’s appointment of senior judge Raymond Dearie, who is tasked with reviewing more than 11,000 records the FBI found inside Mar-a-Lago, in order to weed out anything that may be privileged.Cannon’s order blocks the justice department from relying on those records for its ongoing criminal investigation until Dearie’s review is complete.In its filing, the justice department said this prohibition is hampering its investigation, and that it needs to be able to examine non-classified records that may have been stored in close proximity to classified ones.Those non-classified records, the department said, “may shed light” on how the documents were transferred to, or stored at, the Mar-a-Lago estate, and who might have accessed them.Separately, yesterday, Trump asked the US supreme court to partially reverse an appellate court decision that prevented the special master, reviewing the seized materials for privilege protections, from examining 100 documents with classification markings.Joe Biden traveled to Florida to survey the destruction wrought by Hurricane Ian alongside Republican governor and White House critic, Ron DeSantis, with whom a temporary political truce had been declared. But bad news came from abroad, when the Opec+ grouping of oil producers agreed to slash production, potentially driving gas prices higher just as American voters cast ballots in the midterms.Here’s more about what happened today:
      The Opec+ production cut comes as the oil cartel’s leader Saudi Arabia appears to be cultivating warmer ties with Russia, in spite of Riyadh’s alliances with many western countries.
      Gas prices may indeed rise, but not necessarily by a huge amount.
      The justice department won yet another legal battle over the Mar-a-Lago documents, though the case is far from over.
      One of the unanswered questions of the January 6 insurrection was whether senator Ron Johnson, a conservative Republican representing Wisconsin, was involved in the plot to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s win.In the fourth hearing of the congressional committee investigating the attack held in June, it was revealed that a staff member for the senator contacted vice-president Mike Pence’s legislative affairs director, asking how to get fake slates of electors from Johnson to Pence, who was to preside over the certification of Biden’s election victory that day. The documents never got to the vice-president, but the January 6 committee detailed the attempt during a hearing dedicated to exploring the legal efforts made by Donald Trump’s allies to interfere with Biden taking office.NBC News reports that Johnson told his side of the story during an appearance in Wisconsin on Tuesday, where he’s in a tough re-election battle against Democrat Mandela Barnes. Here’s what he had to say:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Of the electors scheme, Johnson said he communicated with Jim Troupis, a Wisconsin-based attorney who led legal efforts for Donald Trump in a recount of the state’s 2020 results.
      “What would you do if you got a text from the attorney for the president of the United States?” Johnson said. “You respond to it.
      “I got a text from the president’s lawyer asking if we could deliver something to the vice president and if I could have a staff member handle it,” Johnson said. Asked whether he knew what it was he was being asked to deliver, he said: “No. I had no idea.”
      Johnson said he turned it over to his chief of staff, who was new at the time. “Next thing I know he’s letting me know the vice president’s not accepting anything, so I just texted back ‘no, we’re not delivering it,’ end of story. Nothing happened. I had no idea there were even an alternate slate of electors.”Trump campaign knew ‘fake electors’ scheme was fraudulent, panel arguesRead moreThat Biden even brought up climate change is bound to infuriate some Republican elected officials and conservative commentators, who see any mention of the scientific reality as cover for a wider liberal agenda.DeSantis may be among them. “What I’ve found is, people when they start talking about things like global warming, they typically use that as a pretext to do a bunch of left-wing things that they would want to do anyways. We’re not doing any left-wing stuff,” the governor said at a speech last year, according to Florida Phoenix. DeSantis has grown popular among Republicans for standing up to Democrats and their perceived ideologies, and those comments may be seen as a classic example of his success. But as governor, DeSantis has backed some efforts to help his famously low-lying state deal with the climate crisis. Last year, he signed a bill to strengthen Florida’s resiliency against sea level rise, and has also publicly uttered the words “climate change” – a break from his Republican predecessor Rick Scott, who reportedly banned some state employees from using the terms. More

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      James Brown’s cape and Rudy gone wild: key takeaways from Haberman’s Trump book

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      James Brown’s cape and Rudy gone wild: key takeaways from Haberman’s Trump bookThe former president really doesn’t like Mitch McConnell – and other notable things we’ve learned from Confidence Man Maggie Haberman’s new book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, was published in the US on Tuesday. As is now customary for books about the 45th president, its revelations have been widely reported.‘She say anything about me?’ Trump raised Ghislaine Maxwell link with aidesRead moreBut thanks to the New York Times reporter’s dominance of the Trump beat – before his time in power, through it and after – the intensity of interest has perhaps outweighed that for any other such book.Here are the key takeaways.Trump’s Waterloo?Trump was long said to be in the habit of ripping up notes from White House meetings and throwing them in the toilet. Haberman published photos. Trump is also in all sorts of legal trouble for taking classified material to Mar-a-Lago, prompting an FBI search. He admitted such to Haberman – perhaps as a result of his comfort talking to a reporter he called “my psychiatrist”. She also shows him being cavalier with national security concerns regarding Iran and Russia.Jared who?Haberman shows Trump relentlessly mocking Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and adviser, for his voice and manner; wishing Ivanka had married the NFL star Tom Brady instead; deciding to fire both of them then chickening out; ranting about Kushner’s Jewish religious observance; and predicting that Kushner would be attacked, even raped, were he ever to choose to go camping. Kushner, meanwhile, is shown as a White House turf warrior who gloried in having “cut [Steve] Bannon’s balls off” – as the Guardian’s Lloyd Green pointed out, they grew back – and tried to inflate poll numbers so as not to anger his father-in-law.Ghislaine Maxwell was a worryTrump fell out with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and denies wrongdoing associated with him – but nonetheless worried aloud that Epstein’s former girlfriend might talk about him after her own arrest. Trump, who denies allegations of sexual misconduct or assault from more than 20 accusers, also predicted that “the women” would be the source of most trouble once he entered politics. Melania Trump seems to have agreed – Haberman says she renegotiated her prenuptial agreement.Trump was racist and transphobicHaberman’s reporting here is not particularly surprising but it is routinely horrific. Trump thought Black political staffers were waiters. He said he couldn’t afford to alienate white supremacists, because they tended to vote. He persisted in asking if a notional transgender debate questioner was “cocked or de-cocked”.He was also dangerously ignorantWrong-footed by a health official’s uniform, Trump thought the confused apparatchik could organise bombing raids on drug labs in Mexico. “The response from White House aides,” Haberman writes, “was not to try to change Trump’s view, but to consider asking [Adm Brett] Giroir not to wear his uniform to the Oval Office anymore.”Taxes dodge was made up on the flyTrump pulled his “I can’t, I’m being audited” excuse for not releasing his tax returns out of thin air on his campaign plane – and rolled it out to reporters apparently without legal advice. Those who knew Trump in New York pre-politics suspected his returns would show he wasn’t as rich as he said. Haberman also reports alleged dodgy practices including a parking garage lease payment made with a box of gold bars.Trump was no diplomatAmong multiple diplomatic faux pas, Haberman shows Trump asking Theresa May why her mortal rival Boris Johnson wasn’t prime minister instead and speaking crudely about abortion, and calling the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, “that bitch”. Trump’s apparent affinity with or interest in Nazi Germany – widely reported but now at issue in a lawsuit against CNN – contributed to one chief of staff, John Kelly, deciding the president was a fascist years before Joe Biden said the same. In terms of delicate domestic situations, Haberman shows Trump sarcastically praying for the health of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the liberal supreme court justice who died in late 2020.Trump hates MitchTrump’s disdain for the Senate minority leader is no secret, but he gave it pungent expression in interviews with Haberman. McConnell said Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the Capitol attack, though he voted to acquit at Trump’s second impeachment trial. Trump told Haberman: “The Old Crow’s a piece of shit.”Foiled Covid Superman stunt was inspired by James BrownThis bit is as weird as the subhead suggests. Haberman recounts familiar aspects of Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic but also thickens out the tale of how Trump wanted to present his own recovery. She writes: “He came up with a plan he told associates was inspired by the singer James Brown, whom he loved watching toss off his cape while onstage, but it was in line with his love of professional wrestling as well. [Trump] would be wheeled out of Walter Reed in a chair … dramatically stand up, then open his button-down dress shirt to reveal [a] Superman logo beneath it. (Trump was so serious about it that he … instruct[ed] an aide, Max Miller, to procure the Superman shirts; Miller was sent to a Virginia big-box store.)”Capitol attack officer Fanone hits out at ‘weasel’ McCarthy in startling interviewRead moreTrump wanted to refuse to leaveTrump denied to Haberman that he spent most of 6 January watching the Capitol attack on TV and refusing to stop it, as congressional witnesses have described. Slightly more surprisingly, Haberman reports that Trump told aides – including the guy who brought the Diet Cokes – he simply wouldn’t cede power. In his quasi-legalistic efforts to overturn the 2020 election, he also told his personal attorney: “OK, Rudy, you’re in charge. Go wild, do anything you want. I don’t care.” Giuliani proceeded to go wild.Some aides tried to rein Trump inHaberman says William Barr, Trump’s second attorney general, told his president: “People are tired of the fucking drama.” But it seems the publishing industry is not – Haberman has followed Baker and Glasser, Woodward and Costa, Rucker and Leonnig and many, many other authors to the top of the bestseller charts.TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsRepublicansPolitics booksNew York TimesfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Republican Herschel Walker pledges to sue over report he paid for abortion – as it happened

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      Herschel Walker, the controversial Republican candidate in Georgia for a vital US Senate seat, is attempting to weather the latest tempest that has tossed his midterm election campaign from turbulent into full-blown crisis.The news broke last night that the former NFL football player turned political candidate, who is campaigning on a hard anti-abortion line, had paid for an abortion for a former girlfriend in 2009, according to a report by the Daily Beast.As the Beast puts it in the strap below the headline to its report: “The woman has receipts – and a ‘get well’ card she says the football star, now a Senate candidate, sent her.”Walker blasted out a top-line denial via Twitter, calling the story overall a flat-out lie, also calling it a “Democrat attack”, while the Beast insists its article is backed up to the hilt. Walker says he’ll sue the Beast today.Regarding the latest Democrat attack: pic.twitter.com/OjrDcGak95— Herschel Walker (@HerschelWalker) October 3, 2022
      He also appeared on Fox News to blame politics, saying: “Now everyone knows how important this seat is and they [Democrats] will do anything to win this seat. They wanted to make it about anything except inflation, crime and the border being wide open.”But Walker’s son, 23-year-old Christian Walker, then responded on Twitter. Yikes.I know my mom and I would really appreciate if my father Herschel Walker stopped lying and making a mockery of us. You’re not a “family man” when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence.— Christian Walker (@ChristianWalk1r) October 4, 2022
      And:I don’t care about someone who has a bad past and takes accountability. But how DARE YOU LIE and act as though you’re some “moral, Christian, upright man.” You’ve lived a life of DESTROYING other peoples lives. How dare you.— Christian Walker (@ChristianWalk1r) October 4, 2022
      The sitting Senator from Georgia whom Herschel Walker is challenging, Democrat Raphael Warnock, is striving to stay above the fray – maybe hoping the former running back will be hoisted by his own petard?US politics live blog readers, it’s been a vigorous day of news. There will be more from us tomorrow, following events as they happen. Joe Biden is going to Florida to review the aftermath of Hurricane Ian. He’ll meet with the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, during the visit.For now, we’re closing this blog. There is a great selection of news and other stories on our front page and our blog of the war in Ukraine is here.Here’s how the day went:
      Lawyers for DonaldTrump have asked the US supreme court today to step into the legal fight over the classified documents seized during an FBI search of his Florida estate.
      Kamala Harris condemned the June decision by the rightdominated US supreme court to overturn Roe v Wade, as part of the pivotal Mississippi case Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and tear up half a century of constitutional abortion rights in the US. “The Dobbs decision created a healthcare crisis in America,” she said at a White House event 100 days after the ruling.
      National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman Rick Scott and other prominent Republicans are still behind Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker amid the scandal that’s blown his already-rocky midterm election campaign sideways.
      Joe Biden told the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, earlier today that Washington will provide Kyiv with $625m in new security assistance, including High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers, the White House said.
      Giant tents for temporarily housing asylum seekers arriving in New York City after crossing the US-Mexico border are being moved to an island off Manhattan from a remote corner of the Bronx, after storms raised concerns over flooding at the original site.
      There is no sign of a lawsuit (yet) from Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker against the Daily Beast following the latest chapter of Walker’s tumultuous campaign for the Senate unfolded last night.
      US climate envoy John Kerry said today some western government ministers avoided a so-called “family photo” of participants at climate talks in Kinshasa because they were uncomfortable with the presence of Russia’s representative.
      Lawyers for former president DonaldTrump asked the US supreme court today to step into the legal fight over the classified documents seized during an FBI search of his Florida estate.The Trump team asked the court to overturn a lower court ruling and permit an independent arbiter, or special master, to review the roughly 100 documents with classified markings that were taken in the 8 August search at his Mar-a-Lago private club, resort and residence in Palm Beach, Florida, The Associated Press reports.A three-judge panel last month limited the special master’s review to the much larger tranche of non-classified documents.Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are convening the second meeting at the White House of the administration’s Task Force on Reproductive Healthcare Access.The vice-president condemned the June decision by the right-dominated US Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade, as part of the pivotal Mississippi case Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization and tear up half a century of constitutional abortion rights across the US.“The Dobbs decision created a healthcare crisis in America,” Harris said.She added: “A woman should have the freedom to make decisions about her own body. The government should not be making these decisions for the women of America.”Harris noted that if the US Congress could codify the right to abortion previously afforded under Roe, rightwing leaders “could not ban abortion and they could not criminalize providers, so it’s important for everyone to know what’s at stake. To stop these attacks on women, we need to pass this law,” she said.The vice-president also reminded people that ultra-conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, at the time of the June ruling, appeared to offer a preview of the court’s potential future rulings, and that they may return to the issues of curtailing contraception access and marriage equality, threatening LGBTQ+ rights, on the basis of constitutional privacy rights such as those just ripped up in the overturning of Roe v Wade.At the same event, the president said that he created the task force in the aftermath of the Scotus decision “which most people would acknowledge is a pretty extreme decision,” in order to take a “whole of government approach” to addressing “the damage” of that ruling.“The court got Roe right nerarly 50 years ago. Congress should codify the protections of Roe and do it once and for all. But right now we are short a handful of votes, so the only way it’s going to happen is if the American people make it happen.“Meanwhile, congressional Republicans are doubling down on their extreme position with the proposal for a national ban. Let me be clear what that means. It means that even if you live in a state where extremist Republican officials aren’t running the show, your right to choose will still be at risk.”National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman Rick Scott is still behind Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker amid the scandal that’s blown a new hole in his midterm election campaign.NRSC Chairman Rick Scott sticks by Herschel Walker:”When the Democrats are losing, as they are right now, they lie and cheat and smear their opponents. That’s what’s happening right now.” pic.twitter.com/fC59lVFzen— Julie Tsirkin (@JulieNBCNews) October 4, 2022
      Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, last noticed by national and international audiences when the House January 6 committee showed the tape of him fleeing the Trumpist insurrectionists that he had previously publicly egged on, is also still walking the Walker walk. “You have done enough, have you no sense of decency?” @HawleyMO Hawley affirms support for Herschel Walker after report Georgia Republican paid for abortionhttps://t.co/zu8zWKvO0v pic.twitter.com/9V2WJd6oVM— Jewel Kelly For Missouri (@JewelCommittee) October 4, 2022
      The mother of the late congresswoman Jackie Walorski told Joe Biden that her daughter was in “heaven with Jesus” after the president apologized for mistakenly calling for Walorski during public remarks last week, despite her death in August.During a private meeting in the Oval Office with the Walorski family on Friday, Biden apologized, the New York Post first reported, for a gaffe he made during a summit on food insecurity on 28 September, when he called into the audience to see if Walorski was in attendance, as the Republican representative from Indiana had served as co-chairperson of the House Hunger Caucus.“Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie? She must not be here,” Biden said, seeming to forget, or be unaware, that Walorski had died. The congresswoman was killed in an August car accident in Indiana.When asked about Biden’s confusion, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, downplayed the president’s mistake, calling his comments “not all that unusual”.Jean-Pierre added that Biden was acknowledging the congresswoman’s work and keeping her “top of mind” because he would be meeting with her family later that week.While speaking to the president, the late congresswoman’s mother, Martha “Mert” Walorski, told Biden that her daughter was in heaven when he asked for her.Jackie’s father Keith Walorski said Biden and his staff were “very, very good” to his family but they do not plan on voting for him in 2024 because they strongly disagree with his policy.“Most of the Biden agenda is not what you would call a conservative Christian agenda,” Keith Walorski said. “That’s who we are.” The rest of that article is here.At an Oval Office meeting in July 2020, Donald Trump asked aides if Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of the financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein who had been arrested on sex trafficking charges, had named him among influential contacts she might count upon to protect her.According to a new book by Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, Trump asked “campaign advisers … ‘You see that article in the [New York] Post today that mentioned me?’“He kept going, to silence. ‘She say anything about me?’”Epstein was convicted and sentenced in Florida in 2008, on state prostitution charges. He was arrested again in July 2019, on sex-trafficking charges. He killed himself in prison in New York a month later.Links between Epstein, Maxwell and prominent associates including Trump and Prince Andrew have stoked press speculation ever since.Maxwell, the daughter of the British press baron Robert Maxwell, was arrested in New Hampshire on 2 July 2020.The story which seemed to worry Trump, according to Haberman, appeared in the celebrity-focused Page Six section of the New York tabloid on 4 July 2020.It quoted Steve Hoffenberg, an Epstein associate, as saying: “Ghislaine thought she was untouchable – that she’d be protected by the intelligence communities she and Jeffrey helped with information: the Israeli intelligence services, and Les Wexner, who has given millions to Israel; by Prince Andrew, President Clinton and even by President Trump, who was well-known to be an acquaintance of her and Epstein’s.”Maxwell was ultimately convicted in New York in December 2021, on five of six charges relating to the sex-trafficking of minors. In July 2022, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison.Haberman’s eagerly awaited book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, is published in the US on Tuesday. Check out the whole report here.In February this year, Prince Andrew settled a civil case brought by an Epstein victim who alleged she was forced to have sex with the royal. Andrew vehemently denies wrongdoing but has suffered a collapse of his standing in public and private.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is emphasizing how much Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want the US Congress to enshrine the right to an abortion in the US into national legislation.It’s 100 days today since the now firmly right-leaning US Supreme Court in late June overturned Roe v Wade and ripped up half a century of a constitutional, federal rights to seek an abortion in the US.Jean-Pierre said the court “took away nearly 50 years of protections and we have seen women respond and Americans respond…they have made their voices loud and clear and I expect we will continue to see that type of reaction.”She added, of services such as abortion and contraception: “These are difficult decisions that women should be making for themselves with their health care provider, no-one else should be making that decision for them, not Republican officials…”Reuters adds in this report that 13 US states have begun enforcing abortion bans since the court decision, a swift and dramatic change after nearly 50 years of federal abortion protections.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has begun today’s media briefing and is reminding everyone that Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden are going to Fort Myers, Florida, tomorrow, in the aftermath of the devastating Hurricane Ian.Yesterday, the US president and first lady were in Puerto Rico to announce funding in the wake of Hurricane Fiona that smashed into the island territory last month just before Ian howled in from the Atlantic.Biden admitted that aid and assistance to Puerto Rico in the five years since Hurricane Maria hit there and now Hurricane Fiona has not been timely or sufficient.Jean-Pierre says Biden will meet Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis while he’s in the state tomorrow.Here’s our colleague Martin Pengelly on the governor last week:Ron DeSantis changes with the wind as Hurricane Ian prompts flip-flop on aidRead moreIt has been called a textbook example of discrimination against Black voters in the US. And a ruling on it from the supreme court is expected any day.It isn’t the kind of explicit voting discrimination, like poll taxes and literacy tests, that kept voters from the polls in the south during the Jim Crow era. Instead, it is more subtle.Let us walk you through the case with our visual explainer.The case focuses on Alabama, where the Republican-controlled legislature, like states across the US, recently completed the once-a-decade process of redrawing the boundaries of congressional maps. If partisan politicians exert too much control over the redistricting process, they can effectively engineer their own victories, or blunt the advantages of the other side, by allocating voters of particular political persuasions and backgrounds to particular districts.Under the new districts, Black people make up 25% of the Alabama’s population, but comprise a majority in just one of the state’s seven districts.In late January, a panel of three federal judges issued a 225-page opinion explaining how the state was discriminating against Black voters.“Black voters have less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress,” the panel wrote. The judges gave Alabama 14 days to come up with a new plan and said the state had to draw two districts where Black voters comprise a majority.Check out the whole terrific interactive here, from Guardian US colleagues Sam Levine and Andrew Witherspoon.The US supreme court today has been hearing a hugely important case that could ultimately gut one of the most powerful remaining provisions of the Voting Rights Act, the 1965 law that is one of America’s most powerful anti-discrimination measures.The case deals with the seven new congressional districts that Alabama adopted last year. Six of those districts are represented by a Republican in Congress and one is represented by a Democrat. That Democratic district is 55% Black, the only Black majority district in the state.The plaintiffs in the case argue that Alabama Republicans who control the state legislature packed as many Black voters as possible into the one Democratic district to weaken the influence of Black voters overall in the state. Black people make up about a quarter of Alabama’s population, but only are a majority in one district. The central question in the case is how much mapmakers are required to take race into account when drawing districts. The plaintiffs argue that the Voting Rights Act requires Alabama to draw a second district where Black people make up a majority.But Alabama argues that doing so would require the state to sort voters based on race, which is unconstitutional.If the court, which has been extremely hostile to voting rights and the Voting Rights Act in particular, were to embrace that latter view, it would make it enormously difficult to challenge districts in the future.A three judge panel agreed with the plaintiffs and ordered the state to redraw the map. But the US supreme court stepped in earlier this year and halted that order. Hello US politics live blog readers, it’s a lively day for news and there’s much more to come in the next few hours, but here’s where things stand right now:
      Joe Biden told Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy earlier today that Washington will provide Kyiv with $625 million in new security assistance, including High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers, the White House said.
      Giant tents for temporarily housing asylum seekers arriving in New York City after crossing the US-Mexico border are being moved to an island off Manhattan from a remote corner of the Bronx, after storms raised concerns over flooding at the original site.
      There is no sign of a lawsuit (yet) from Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker against the Daily Beast following the latest chapter of Walker’s tumultuous campaign for the Senate unfolded last night.
      US climate envoy John Kerry said today some western government ministers avoided a so-called “family photo” of participants at climate talks in Kinshasa because they were uncomfortable with the presence of Russia’s representative.
      Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign is in crisis in Georgia after the latest twist in the abortion row became very personal and turns the heat up further in the furious midterms battle for control of the US Senate. More

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      Senate rival accuses Dr Oz of killing over 300 dogs as medical researcher

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      Senate rival accuses Dr Oz of killing over 300 dogs as medical researcherRepublican condemned by John Fetterman as ‘puppy killer’ after reports allege Oz oversaw animal deaths between 1989 and 2010 An already over-the-top and acrimonious US Senate race in Pennsylvania has escalated after John Fetterman – the Democratic candidate – accused his Republican opponent, the celebrity physician Dr Oz, of having killed more than 300 dogs.Biden apologizes after mistakenly calling on late congresswomanRead moreCalling his rival “sick” and a “puppy killer”, Fetterman cited reporting published on Monday alleging that Mehmet Oz oversaw numerous animal deaths while conducting medical research at Columbia University.“[A] review of 75 studies published by Mehmet Oz between 1989 and 2010 reveals the Republican Senate candidate’s research killed over 300 dogs and inflicted significant suffering on them and the other animals used in experiments,” Jezebel, the publication that broke the story, wrote.The research also harmed pigs, rabbits and small rodents, according to Jezebel.Oz’s political staff have denied the allegation. When asked about it by Newsweek, a spokesperson for the Oz campaign said: “Only the idiots at Newsweek believe what they read at Jezebel.”A veterinarian who worked with Columbia, Catherine Dell’Orto, previously accused Oz’s research team of violating the Animal Welfare Act. Among other allegations, she said that the team was euthanizing dogs without sedation using expired drugs and, in other cases, failing to euthanize dogs who were suffering.Dell’Orto said that Oz did not personally euthanize the dogs but that his research methods contributed to their mistreatment and benefited from their exploitation.Oz and Fetterman have been locked in a highly negative and unusually personal political race marked by frequent Twitter sparring and meme warfare. Fetterman, the lieutenant governor, has painted Oz as a rich and out-of-touch non-Pennsylvanian, while Oz has accused Fetterman – who had a stroke earlier this year and reportedly has trouble talking – of hiding from public appearances.Earlier in his campaign, Fetterman had a strong edge over Oz, but polls have shown that advantage shrinking, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. The race is now tight, and Fetterman’s campaign has wasted no time in making hay with the latest Oz controversy.“BREAKING: Dr Oz is a puppy killer,” Fetterman tweeted on Monday. Later he posted a picture with his two dogs and wrote: “Hugging them extra tight tonight.”TopicsUS politicsPennsylvaniaRepublicansDemocratsUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

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      Democracy, poisoned: America’s elections are being attacked at every level

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      Democracy, poisoned: America’s elections are being attacked at every level In the first of a new series, we look at how November’s midterm elections could be an inflection point as election deniers seek to take control of the vote counting processItem number 28 on the agenda for the March meeting of the county commission in rural southern Nevada seemed benign enough. But by the end of the hour-and-45-minute presentation Sandra Merlino, the longtime local clerk, felt sickened.About The Fight for Democracy – a Guardian seriesRead moreOne by one, a band of activists took to the podium to argue that Nye county should switch from electronic ballots to paper ones in forthcoming elections. They were led by Jim Marchant, a Las Vegas businessman who lost a 2020 House race but refused to concede, alleging fraud. He argued that the county couldn’t trust its electronic election equipment and that it should switch to a system in which it only used paper ballots and counted those ballots by hand.Three other speakers offered a flurry of complex-sounding analyses purporting to prove that the county’s voting equipment was vulnerable to hacking. They included Russell Ramsland, a Texas man who helped Donald Trump and allies push outlandish theories about fraud after the 2020 race, and Phil Waldron, a former army colonel who produced a 38-slide PowerPoint presentation after the 2020 race, urging Trump to seize control of voting equipment.Merlino was alarmed. She knew that what they were saying was bogus – the county’s election systems aren’t connected to the internet and there’s no evidence they were not secure. Counting ballots by hand was costly, not reliable, and would take a long time after the election to complete. “It’s so prone to error,” she said. “It just is a nightmare as far as I’m concerned.”A longer count could also leave more time for chaos after election day, said Jessica Marsden, a lawyer for Protect Democracy, a government watchdog group. “That’s exactly the kind of change that would slow down the count, giving you time to sow confusion and cry about fraud – all the mayhem we saw in 2020,” Marsden said.The episode in Nye county is just one example of a new poison that has seeped deep into the bloodstream of American politics since the 2020 election. While there have long been fights in America over who gets to vote, this new toxin is focused on how the vote is counted and on undermining confidence in results. Its prevalence has raised an alarming possibility that once seemed unfathomable in one of the world’s leading democracies – that the result of a valid election could be overturned.“People need to stop fooling themselves. This is unlike anything that’s happened in American history,” said Sean Wilentz, a Princeton professor who was among a group of historians that met with Biden earlier this year to discuss the threat to democracy. “It is continuing and it is grave. And I think the country needs to wake up.”The movement threatens American elections from the top down and the bottom up at the same time. At the top, there is a push to install statewide officials who would have no reservations about making baseless claims of fraud and overturning an election result. From the bottom, it seeks to harass, threaten and ultimately remove non-partisan local election officials and make it harder for them to administer elections. If there is an overarching strategy to the movement – and it’s not clear there is one – it seems to be to cause as much chaos, as much confusion, and as much uncertainty, as possible.Since the 2020 election, this movement has enjoyed a once unimaginable amount of success. Candidates who questioned the 2020 election performed remarkably in the GOP primaries this year, advancing to the November ballot in 27 states. Facing unrelenting pressure and harassment, election officials are retiring from their jobs. And to work the polls this fall Republicans are recruiting people who believe the 2020 election was stolen.The 2022 midterm elections offer an inflection point unlike any America has seen before. Election deniers are on the verge of winning their campaigns for offices with oversight of elections. What happens in November will determine whether people who have spread lies about the 2020 election will be in charge of overseeing future contests.This is why today the Guardian is launching The Fight for Democracy, a series focused on investigating the threats facing the democratic system in one of its supposed bastions. Building off an impactful series on US voting rights, it will scrutinize the movement to undermine election legitimacy, weaken voting rights and target election officials – a movement that ultimately seeks to codify a system of minority rule fundamentally opposed to the promise of a multiracial, multicultural, representative, constitutional democracy.The county commission eventually voted 5-0 to ask Merlino to consider switching to hand-counting paper ballots. She resigned from her role shortly after and has since been replaced by Mark Kampf, a retired financial executive, who has falsely said Trump won the 2020 election. He is moving ahead with a plan to use hand-counted paper ballots in the election this fall.Merlino doesn’t want anyone to fail in their job, but she said the change was concerning.“Even though I’m conservative or whatever, I treat everybody the same. I’m a non-partisan when it comes to my office,” she said. “I think what’s eventually going to happen is you’re going to get people in office, good people, who feel that way, that they serve everybody, that don’t want to do it any more. So what’s going to happen is you’re going to get these people that are conspiracy theorists.”Election deniersA recent analysis by FiveThirtyEight estimated that 60% of Americans will have election deniers on the ballot in November.The threat posed by individuals prepared to throw out legitimate election results is especially pronounced in the handful of key battleground states that were decisive in 2020.That suggests a concerted effort to target roles with the goal of possibly overturning valid election results, a phenomenon that has come to be called election subversion. “It’s not just the number of election deniers who are running, worrying though that is. It’s the way these candidates have focused on the very positions that are most pivotal in determining the outcome of state and presidential elections,” said Jessica Marsden, a lawyer with Protect Democracy.Among the Republican candidates are four extreme election deniers running for governor in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Doug Mastriano, competing in Pennsylvania, was a central figure behind the plot to send fake Trump electors to Congress on January 6 even though Biden won the state by 80,000 votes.There are also three extreme election deniers running for secretary of state – the top election administrator post – in Arizona, Michigan and Nevada. In Arizona, state representative Mark Finchem actively lobbied to overturn Biden’s victory and hand the state’s 11 electors to Trump; he has been involved with the far-right Oath Keepers militia and was at the Capitol on January 6. In Michigan, Kristina Karamo first came to prominence when she falsely claimed a miscount in Detroit based upon a basic misunderstanding of election procedures.In Nevada, Marchant, who led the presentation in Nye county, is now the Republican nominee to be the state’s top election official.Marchant, who is closely linked to the QAnon movement, is also leading a nationwide group of election deniers vying for secretary of state positions; should he win in November, he told the Guardian he plans to scrap all electronic voting machines and switch to paper-only counts.Out-of-state fundingThese candidates are being supported by a flood of money that’s unprecedented for secretary of state races, which have long drawn little attention.In six states with competitive secretary of state races this year, candidates raised $16.3m overall as of the beginning of August, more than double the amount raised at the same point in 2018, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Not accounting for incumbents, who have a significant fundraising advantage, election denier candidates have far outpaced those who have not questioned the election results.Much of the money is coming from outside the states where the candidates are running. Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock.com CEO, who has been one of the most prolific financial backers of election denialism, has been a major donor. So has Richard Uihlein, a GOP mega-donor.“In years past, a lot of people wouldn’t have been able to name their own secretary of state, never mind one of another state. So the idea that a candidate could raise a majority of their money, as some of these are, from out of state, is very surprising,” said Ian Vandewalker, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, who has been tracking funding in these races.One of the most successful fundraisers has been Finchem, in Arizona, who had raised $1.2m in his race, 59% of which came from out-of-state donors. In Nevada, candidates have raised more than five times the amount of money raised at the comparable point in past cycles.“To some extent, it’s the usual suspects. People who have been involved in election challenges, including to one degree or another, January 6, who are either directly supporting candidates or are spending in ways that help them or their message,” Vandewalker said. “At the same time, there clearly is some degree of a broad base of financial support for these candidates.”Eyes and earsThere is a long US tradition of politicians alleging voter fraud, a specter that in recent years has been used to justify sweeping new voter restrictions, including polling place closures, aggressive voter purging and limits on mail-in voting.Making matters worse, in 2013 the US supreme court gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, a historic piece of legislation from the civil rights era that was supposed to ensure equal access to the polls. As a result, the legal system’s power to protect minority voters from unfair restrictions has been blunted.The push to put election deniers in control of statewide elections has been complemented by an equally forceful push to exert more influence over election administration at the local level.One part is an aggressive effort to recruit poll observers and poll workers to be eyes and ears in the polling place.Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who was closely linked to Trump’s effort to overturn the election, is playing a leading role. Working through the Conservative Partnership Institute, which is linked to Trump’s political apparatus, she’s held a series of events across the country encouraging people who doubt the 2020 election results to sign up to be poll workers. The group encourages attendees to become embedded in their election offices and to become a “permanent presence” in every election office and to determine whether government officials are “friend or foe”.A second part of this effort appears to involve putting as much pressure as possible on local election officials, making it harder for them to run elections and seeding the ground for more chaos. Since the 2020 election, election officials have faced an unprecedented wave of harassment and many are choosing to leave the field. Nearly one in five officials surveyed by the Brennan Center earlier this year said they were “very” or “somewhat likely” to leave the field by 2024.Already beefing up security in their office, election officials are now being swarmed with voluminous records requests related to the 2020 election, forcing them to reallocate resources to fulfill them that would otherwise be going towards getting ready to run the elections.Lynn Constabile recently stepped down as the elections director in Yavapai county in Arizona after working there for nearly two decades. Trump handily won Yavapai county, but that didn’t stop false claims about the election from spreading.“After the 2020 election, we just had to put up with kind of a barrage of garbage that came our way. Every day a new conspiracy theory – taking up time that I needed to plan the 2022 election. So probably around last fall I decided I really wasn’t being effective any more in my county,” she said.“People would call us on the phone and yell at us. I’ve been called a communist. And you know, it gets old. We got a barrage of records requests. I would get 10-page records requests. Just threatening that if I didn’t fulfill it, they were gonna sue us. You’re trying to do your job but there’s not enough hours in the day,” she added.She didn’t get explicit death threats, but she did get menacing messages that said things like “watch your back” and “you should be nervous”. She installed security cameras around her house – not something she thought she would ever have to do. It also became hard to find people to fill both full-time and seasonal jobs.“The people that were applying, they didn’t really want to work for us, they wanted to watch us,” she said.Perfect stormThe multiple pressures bearing down on US elections could come to a crunch when Americans choose their next president in 2024. “We face a perfect storm,” Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of the new book Power Politics: Trump and the Assault on American Democracy, told the Guardian.“There are restrictions on voting rights, a toxic information ecosystem, political violence – there’s lots of mischief that could take place.”With Trump hinting strongly that he plans to run again, the conditions for West’s perfect storm are all too conceivable: Trump stands, Trump loses in the same swing states that defeated him in 2020, Trump launches a false “stolen election” plot 2.0.Only this time the forces of subversion are far more organized, sophisticated and powerful. Which is one reason so much is at stake in the midterm elections in November.At state level, should election deniers win governor or secretary of state positions they would be empowered to wreak havoc around the 2024 presidential election on a scale that will make Trump’s first “stolen election” effort look like a tea party.Take Finchem in Arizona. He has already made several unsuccessful attempts to overturn Biden’s 2020 win by decertifying results in pockets of the state. As secretary of state, the top election administrator in Arizona, his fraudulent ploys would carry much more weight.In Pennsylvania, Mastriano, should he manage to win his increasingly beleaguered campaign and become governor, would have the power to select the secretary of state who in turn would hold sway over how the count is conducted in critical parts of the commonwealth. The Finchems and Mastrianos would be well placed to throw out just enough votes on fake grounds of mass fraud to swing the result in their states to Trump.“The way election subversion would most likely play out in 2024 is that the secretary of state would refuse to count a certain segment of votes, claiming they were tainted by fraud, and that would lead to a different slate of electors being sent to Congress,” Marsden said.At that point, the crisis would switch to Congress itself. Here too the stakes couldn’t be higher in November.Should the Republicans take control of the House of Representatives, elevating Kevin McCarthy, an avid backer of Trump’s stolen election lie, to the role of speaker, they would be in a strong position to accept the electors sent to Congress fraudulently by election deniers in the states.Potentially the only person left who could stave off democratic disaster would be Kamala Harris, the vice-president, who under the US constitution will preside over certification just as Mike Pence did in 2020. But should she attempt to block the Republicans from certifying Trump as president on the back of fraudulent state actions, she could trigger a confrontation between the executive branch in the form of the vice-president and the legislative branch in Congress.“It’s all about power now,” West said. “If you have power, you can use it to your own advantage – we’re seeing a lot of that in American politics these days.”TopicsUS newsThe fight for democracyUS elections 2024US midterm elections 2022US politicsRepublicansUS voting rightsfeaturesReuse this content More