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      Anthony Fauci to step down as chief US medical adviser at end of year – as it happened

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      Anthony Fauci, the US government’s top doctor who became perhaps the most recognizable face of the White House’s response to Covid-19 during the Trump and Biden administrations, announced that he will step down from his post in December.“I am announcing today that I will be stepping down from the positions of Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation, as well as the position of Chief Medical Advisor to President Joe Biden. I will be leaving these positions in December of this year to pursue the next chapter of my career,” Fauci said in a statement.He highlighted his 38 years heading NIAID and his work combatting several diseases, including HIV/Aids, Zika and Ebola, in addition to Covid-19. While he appeared alongside Donald Trump in the news conferences during the pandemic’s early days, the president and his supporters soured on Fauci, and Trump at one point referred to him as “a disaster”.“I am particularly proud to have served as the Chief Medical Advisor to President Joe Biden since the very first day of his administration” Fauci wrote.In a statement, Biden said, “Because of Dr Fauci’s many contributions to public health, lives here in the United States and around the world have been saved. As he leaves his position in the US government, I know the American people and the entire world will continue to benefit from Dr Fauci’s expertise in whatever he does next. Whether you’ve met him personally or not, he has touched all Americans’ lives with his work. I extend my deepest thanks for his public service.”While Fauci had previewed a potential retirement last month, he clarified that he is “not retiring”.“After more than 50 years of government service, I plan to pursue the next phase of my career while I still have so much energy and passion for my field,” Fauci said.The United States’ top infectious disease doctor Anthony Fauci announced he would step down in December, ending his nearly four decades of service after becoming a national name during the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, a new poll showed Republicans coalescing around Donald Trump following the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, while Democratic voters showed surprising enthusiasm for the upcoming midterms.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Trump’s legal problems could actually hurt him among Republicans, The Washington Post posited, reasoning that other GOP candidates might offer voters the same policies with less political baggage.
      A federal magistrate judge now looks to be leaning against releasing much of the affidavit justifying the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago.
      Conservatives cheered Fauci’s departure announcement, while House Republicans signaled they expected answers from him if they retook the chamber following the midterms.
      Rusty Bowers, formerly a top Arizona Republican state lawmaker who was ousted by GOP voters for defying Trump, talked to The Guardian about his decision.
      In rural Texas, the climate for polling officials has become so bad the entire election department of a rural county resigned weeks before the midterm elections, the Associated Press reports.The officials said they’d been threatened and harassed for their work in Gillespie County, which is heavily Republican and overwhelmingly voted for Trump in the 2020 election, and didn’t want to relive the experience. Across the state, voters are struggling to cast valid ballots following the passage of a strict election law last year that led to thousands of mail-in ballot applications being rejected in recent polls.Here’s more from the AP:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Part of why Terry Hamilton says he abruptly left his job running elections deep in Texas wine country is by now a familiar story in America: He became fed up with the harassment that followed the 2020 election.
      But this was no ordinary exit.
      On the brink of November’s midterm elections, it was not just Hamilton who up and quit this month but also the only other full-time election worker in rural Gillespie County. The sudden emptying of an entire local elections department came less than 70 days before voters start casting ballots.
      By the middle of last week, no one was left at the darkened and locked elections office in a metal building annex off the main road in Fredericksburg. A “Your Vote Counts” poster hung in a window by the door.
      A scramble is now underway to train replacements and ground them in layers of new Texas voting laws that are among the strictest in the U.S. That includes assistance from the Texas Secretary of State, whose spokesperson could not recall a similar instance in which an elections office was racing to start over with a completely new staff. But the headaches don’t stop there.
      The resignations have more broadly made the county of roughly 27,000 residents — which overwhelmingly backed former President Donald Trump in 2020 — an extraordinary example of the fallout resulting from threats to election officials. Officials and voting experts worry that a new wave of harassment or worse will return in November, fueled by false claims of widespread fraud.
      Hamilton, who has clashed with poll watchers in Gillespie County in past elections, said he didn’t want to go through it again.
      “That’s the one thing we can’t understand. Their candidate won, heavily,” Hamilton said. “But there’s fraud here?”The top House Republican Kevin McCarthy has given the clearest indication yet that the GOP intends to call Anthony Fauci to testify, should they gain control following the November elections:Dr. Fauci lost the trust of the American people when his guidance unnecessarily kept schools closed and businesses shut while obscuring questions about his knowledge on the origins of COVID. He owes the American people answers. A @HouseGOP majority will hold him accountable.— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) August 22, 2022
      A magistrate judge indicates he may be leaning towards keeping the affidavit justifying the search warrant for Mar-a-Lago away from public eyes, HuffPost reports.Bruce Reinhart is the magistrate judge handling requests from news organizations and others to make public the affidavit justifying the FBI’s entry into Mar-a-Lago earlier this month, where they were investigating potentially unlawful keeping of government secrets by former president Donald Trump. At a court hearing last week, he sounded sympathetic towards at least partially releasing the document, but now seems to have changed his mind. Here’s more from HuffPost:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“Having carefully reviewed the affidavit before signing the warrant, I was — and am — satisfied that the facts sworn by the affiant are reliable,” Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart wrote in a 13-page order based on a hearing in his courtroom last week.
      Reinhart said during the hearing that he was leaning toward publicly releasing a redacted version of the affidavit — with names of FBI agents, witnesses and investigative details blacked out. He ordered prosecutors to provide him such redactions by Thursday, and said he would then decide whether to release that version or propose his own.
      On Monday, Reinhart said he may decide prosecutors were correct when they argued that the necessary redactions would make what was left lacking in both content and context.
      “I cannot say at this point that partial redactions will be so extensive that they will result in a meaningless disclosure, but I may ultimately reach that conclusion after hearing further from the government,” Reinhart wrote.
      Releasing the entire affidavit, the judge said, would hurt the ongoing criminal investigation by revealing names of witnesses and investigative techniques, which could lead to “obstruction of justice and witness intimidation or retaliation” in the first instance and damage prosecutors’ ability to continue gathering information in the second.
      Both of those arguments were laid out by Department of Justice lawyers in their written filing and during last week’s hearing. Reinhart added one new argument of his own: that releasing the affidavit would make public details about the physical layout of Mar-a-Lago, which would make the Secret Service’s job of protecting the former president more difficult.
      “This factor weighs in favor of sealing,” he wrote.Judge orders DoJ to prepare redacted Trump search affidavit for possible releaseRead moreThe Democratic-controlled Congress has in recent months managed to pass major legislation addressing health care costs, fighting climate change and boosting semiconductor production, on top of last year’s Covid-19 relief bill and overhaul of the nation’s infrastructure.So what will Democrats do when they return from recess to start what could be their final months controlling both chambers of Congress? According to Politico, the Senate will likely be stepping up the process of confirming federal judges, giving Joe Biden the chance to leave his mark on the nation’s judiciary. While the confirmations wouldn’t undo the conservative majority on the supreme court, appointing Democratic-aligned judges to the lower ranks of the federal judiciary improves the chances that laws and policies from across the country survive court challenges. It’s also a tacit recognition that high inflation and Biden’s low approval ratings mean the party could lose control of the chamber in a few months time, and the new Republican majority may stop confirming judges altogether.Here’s more from Politico:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}While President Joe Biden has seen more judges confirmed at this point in his presidency than his three White House predecessors, some Senate Democrats and progressive advocacy groups want the chamber to start picking up the pace. Judicial confirmations will come to a standstill if Republicans win back the Senate in the fall, they warn.
      Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) put it this way: “Democrats really need to step up on judges.”
      Warren added that she’s spoken to Majority Whip and Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), “who I know feels the urgency of this moment, and he was talking about how much we’re going to have to double down in September,” she said. “We need more days, more hearings, more everything but we need to get these judges through.”
      The prospect of a September dominated by judicial confirmations comes as the Senate continues to openly mull the rest of its fall legislative agenda. The chamber is expected to vote again on legislation to cap the cost of insulin and could take up a same-sex marriage bill. Government funding also runs out at the end of September. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Democratic leaders say they’ve reached an agreement to include permitting reform as part of a funding package to keep the government open.
      But the focus on judges, in addition to a boon for progressives who want to see a faster pace, is a clear sign that the legislative agenda is slowing down ahead of November. Nominees had to compete for summer floor time with Democrats’ other priorities, including their signature climate, prescription and tax package, legislation to increase semiconductor manufacturing and a veterans health care bill. With those bills now sent to Biden’s desk, the Senate can spend more floor time on confirmations.The top Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Congress are pressing the Biden administration to allow them access to documents seized from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound earlier this month, Politico reports.The request comes from the so-called “gang of eight”, which consists of the Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate, plus the heads of the chambers’ intelligence committees.Here’s more from the story:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Privately, Capitol Hill aides have expressed frustration about the fact that Congress has learned little about the investigation into the former president, especially since it reportedly involves matters of national security. The executive branch has historically resisted congressional inquiries about ongoing law-enforcement actions, arguing that it could compromise the investigation.
      The FBI search warrant unsealed earlier this month revealed that the Justice Department was investigating potential violations of the Espionage Act, the Presidential Records Act and obstruction of justice in relation to Trump’s storage of White House materials at his home.
      At a hearing last week in south Florida, the Justice Department’s top counterintelligence official, Jay Bratt, said the investigation is still in its “early stages.”James Comer, the Republican most likely to become the party’s top watchdog in the House of Representatives if the party takes the chamber in the upcoming midterms, has joined in the chorus threatening Fauci with investigations, even if he leaves his job:Retirement can’t shield Dr. Fauci from congressional oversight.The American people deserve transparency and accountability about how government officials used their taxpayer dollars, and @GOPoversight will deliver.Discussed this and more on @foxandfriends👇 pic.twitter.com/deZtP2RJ5a— Rep. James Comer (@RepJamesComer) August 22, 2022
      Republican senator Lindsey Graham has been fighting a subpoena compelling his appearance before a Georgia special grand jury, and over the weekend won a temporary reprieve.A judge hearing the case has given a timeline for both Graham and the district attorney in Fulton County, which is investigating the attempt by Donald Trump’s allies to disrupt the results of the 2020 election in Georgia, to settle the matter, Politico reports:BREAKING: Judge overseeing Lindsey Graham effort to quash Fulton County subpoena sets expedited schedule to resolve remaining dispute. pic.twitter.com/u3dn6INBtp— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 22, 2022
      Rand Paul threatens Fauci with investigationPerhaps to the surprise of no one, Kentucky senator Rand Paul greeted Anthony Fauci’s resignation news with a threat of investigation and a hefty dose of conspiracy theory as to Covid-19’s origins.He tweeted: “Fauci’s resignation will not prevent a full-throated investigation into the origins of the pandemic. He will be asked to testify under oath regarding any discussions he participated in concerning the lab leak.”Yet another Democrat has cast aspersions on Joe Biden’s plans to run for a second term. This time, it’s Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse.In an appearance on Fox News, he said he would “duck the question” of whether the president should stand again in 2024:Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) when asked Friday whether or not Biden should run in 2024:“I’m gonna duck that question, if you don’t mind. We don’t have any candidates yet for 2024, and I’m not picking amongst them.” pic.twitter.com/kX1ZzAFNzU— The Recount (@therecount) August 22, 2022
      Earlier this month, Democratic congresswoman Carolyn Maloney found herself in hot water for saying she didn’t think Biden would be back on the ballot: Democrat apologises for saying Biden won’t run in 2024 – then says it againRead moreMcConnell downplays Republican midterms expectationsThe art of politics is often as much about setting expectations as describing reality and so any predictions from people like senate minority leader Mitch McConnell should be taken with a pinch of salt.But the Republican party boss does seem to be tamping down ideas of an easy capture of the senate by his side this November. He told NBC News: “I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate,” McConnell said, according to NBC News. “Senate races are just different — they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”McConnell added: “Right now, we have a 50-50 Senate and a 50-50 country, but I think when all is said and done this fall, we’re likely to have an extremely close Senate, either our side up slightly or their side up slightly.”Read analysis of his remarks here on the Washington Post. The United States’ top infectious disease doctor Anthony Fauci announced he would step down in December, ending his nearly four decades of service after becoming a national name during the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, a new poll showed Republicans coalescing around Donald Trump following the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, while Democrats got a surprise enthusiasm boost.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Trump’s legal problems could actually hurt him among Republicans, The Washington Post posited, suggesting that other GOP candidates could offer their voters the same policies with less political baggage.
      Conservatives cheered Fauci’s departure announcement. He’d earned their enmity for breaking with Trump during his administration, as well for his policies meant to stop the spread of Covid-19.
      Rusty Bowers, formerly a top Arizona Republican state lawmaker who was ousted by GOP voters for defying Trump, talked to The Guardian about his decision.
      With Covid-19 less of a concern for many Americans, Anthony Fauci’s public profile has decreased recently, but that doesn’t mean conservative have let go of their issues with him.Many, in fact, cheered his departure. Here’s Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation:Commissar Fauci’s reign should have ended long ago. pic.twitter.com/udPyr5BmkU— Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) August 22, 2022
      Rightwing radio host Buck Sexton linked his decision to the upcoming midterms:Sociopathic liar and political hack Fauci is making a run for it before Republicans can take over the House https://t.co/90utmxYYxm— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) August 22, 2022
      Diamond and Silk, the erstwhile Fox News guests who are now with Newsmax, had one of the more outlandish reactions:Fauci doesn’t need to just step down, he should be arrested for Crimes Against Humanity!— Diamond and Silk® (@DiamondandSilk) August 22, 2022 More

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      Cheney vows to fight other Republicans who embrace Trump’s election lie

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      Cheney vows to fight other Republicans who embrace Trump’s election lieCheney says two Republican US senators – Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley – have both made themselves ‘unfit for future office’ The former top Republican Liz Cheney, who lost her Wyoming seat in Congress last week when she was beaten in a primary by a Donald Trump-endorsed challenger, is threatening to turn her political muscle against other prominent politicians in her party who have embraced the former president’s attack on democracy.In an interview with ABC News aired on Sunday, she said that some of the best known Republican figures are now within her sights. She name-checked Kevin McCarthy, Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley – all of whom have openly supported Trump’s lie that electoral fraudsters stole the 2020 presidential race from him and handed it to his Democratic rival, Joe Biden.In the wake of her Wyoming defeat, Cheney has announced plans to set up a new political organization and has indicated that she is considering a 2024 presidential run designed to stop Trump from re-entering the White House.Her comments on Sunday suggest that her plans to confront election deniers go much wider than Trump himself.“I’m going to be very focused on working to ensure that we can do everything we can [to] not … elect election deniers,” she said. “I’m going to work against those people, I’m going to work to support their opponents.”Cheney said that two Republican US senators – Cruz from Texas and Hawley from Missouri – have both made themselves “unfit for future office”. She said that “both know what the role of Congress is with respect to presidential elections and yet both took steps that fundamentally threatened the constitutional order”.Cruz was seminal in the Senate in devising a plot to block certification of Biden’s 2020 victory in six battleground states. Hawley was the first senator to object to Biden’s victory and famously raised his clenched fist to protesters outside the US Capitol on 6 January shortly before the violence erupted. He was later revealed to have fled the Capitol building running once the insurrection started.Cheney also had tough words in the ABC News interview for DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and McCarthy, the current House minority leader. McCarthy is a leading candidate to become Speaker should the Republicans take back the House of Representatives in November.McCarthy was initially critical of Trump’s role in unleashing the violent storming of the Capitol, privately telling fellow party leaders “I’ve had it with this guy”. But since then he has swung behind Trump’s anti-democratic movement.“My views on Kevin McCarthy are very clear,” Cheney said. “He’s been completely unfaithful to the constitution. … I don’t believe he should be the Speaker of the House.”She also accused DeSantis of campaigning for election deniers. “This is something that people have got to have real pause about,” Cheney said.The Wyoming congresswoman is vice-chairperson of the House committee which has been investigating the January 6 Capitol attack. She was also one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the breach of the Capitol compound – eight of whom will not be returning to Congress in January.The fact that those who stood up against Trump’s attempt to subvert American democracy have been almost universally forced from the party was revealing, she said, adding: “It says people continue to believe the lie, they continue to believe what [Trump] is saying which is very dangerous.”She continued: “It also tells you that large portions of our party, including the leadership of our party both at a state level in Wyoming as well as a national level with the RNC [Republican National Committee], is very sick.”Cheney would not specify whether or not she would run for the presidency in two years’ time. Nor would she say, in that case, whether she would run as a Republican or independent.She did say that if she ran it would be to win.Cheney’s direct threat to Trump and his most senior coterie of Republicans in Congress comes at a time of gathering peril for the former president. The FBI search of his home in Mar-a-Lago in Florida has riled up his supporters but has also heightened risk of prosecution for harboring confidential documents that could endanger national security.Earlier this month Trump invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination in response to questions when he was deposed in a lawsuit brought by the attorney general of New York over his company’s financial statements. Last week Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was called before a special grand jury in Atlanta, Georgia, investigating efforts to overturn the election results in that state.On Sunday Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina who was involved in Trump’s pressure campaign on Georgia officials to overturn the state’s election results, was granted a temporary reprieve by an appeals court from having to testify before the same grand jury in Fulton county.TopicsRepublicansLiz CheneyUS politicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Appeals court pauses order for Graham to testify before Atlanta grand jury

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      Appeals court pauses order for Graham to testify before Atlanta grand juryRepublican senator was ordered on Friday to appear before grand jury investigating efforts to overturn 2020 election A federal appeals court on Sunday temporarily blocked a judge’s order requiring Republican senator Lindsey Graham to testify before a Georgia grand jury investigating efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in that state.The judge who ordered Graham’s appearance in front of the grand jury – Leigh Martin May – should determine whether the subpoena requiring the South Carolina senator testify before the panel should be quashed or modified in accordance with the US constitution’s speech or debate clause.Generally, scholars interpret the clause as shielding federal lawmakers from being compelled to face questioning from law enforcement in certain cases, and Graham had cited the provision in challenging a subpoena calling for him to testify before the Atlanta-based grand jury in question.May last week had ruled that prosecutors demonstrated “a special need for Mr Graham’s testimony on issues relating to alleged attempts to influence or disrupt the law administration of Georgia’s 2020 elections” despite the senator’s challenge. But Graham, who had been ordered to testify in the grand jury investigation on Tuesday, had indicated he would appeal on May’s ruling to a higher court.Judges Charles Wilson, Kevin Newsom and Britt Grant of the 11th US circuit court of appeals then ruled on Sunday that it would send the case back to May for her to determine whether Graham’s subpoena should at least be changed.May should solicit briefs on the issue from both sides on an expedited schedule, and after she rules again, the case would return to the appellate court, Sunday’s order said.All told, the order almost certainly means it could be a significant while before Graham appears in front of grand jurors – and even then, it may only be in a limited way, University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias said to the Guardian on Sunday.Graham drew the grand jury investigation’s interest because he placed two calls to the Georgia’s top election official in 2020 and asked about ways to invalidate certain mail-in votes that helped buoy Joe Biden to victory over Donald Trump in that year’s presidential race.The senator and prominent Trump supporter is considered a subject – rather than a target – of the investigation being conducted by the grand jury in Atlanta. That panel is weighing the filing of criminal charges against the former Republican president and his allies for their alleged attempts to deny Georgia voters’ rejection of Trump in 2020 amid a desperate effort to keep him in the Oval Office despite Biden’s electoral college victory over him.Targets of the investigation include Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former attorney.The Georgia grand jury investigation has applied considerable legal pressure on Trump, who is also facing a US justice department investigation over his unlawful retention of government documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort as well as an inquiry by New York state officials into his business practices there.Trump on Sunday went on his Truth Social platform and sought to persuade his followers that his multi-front legal struggle illustrated Democrats’ fear that he would again clinch the Republican presidential nomination for the 2024 election and challenge their leader Biden.Trump, who as of Sunday had not yet officially declared that he would once more pursue the White House in 2024, added: “I … may just have to [run] again.”TopicsGeorgiaUS politicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2020RepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Ousted Republican reflects on Trump, democracy and America: ‘The place has lost its mind’

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      InterviewOusted Republican reflects on Trump, democracy and America: ‘The place has lost its mind’ Ed Pilkington in Mesa, Arizona Rusty Bowers was speaker of Arizona’s house of representatives when he stood up to the former president’s demand that he overturn the election result. He paid the price but has no regretsRusty Bowers is headed for the exit. After 18 years as an Arizona lawmaker, the past four as speaker of the state’s house of representatives, he has been unceremoniously shown the door by his own Republican party.Arizona Republican who defied Trump and lost primary: ‘I’d do it again in a heartbeat’Read moreLast month he lost his bid to stay in the Arizona legislature in a primary contest in which his opponent was endorsed by Donald Trump. The rival, David Farnsworth, made an unusual pitch to voters: the 2020 presidential election had not only been stolen from Trump, he said, it was satanically snatched by the “devil himself”.Bowers was ousted as punishment. The Trump acolytes who over the past two years have gained control of the state’s Republican party wanted revenge for the powerful testimony he gave in June to the January 6 hearings in which he revealed the pressure he was put under to overturn Arizona’s election result.This is a very Arizonan story. But it is also an American story that carries an ominous warning for the entire nation.Six hours after the Guardian interviewed Bowers, Liz Cheney was similarly ousted in a primary for her congressional seat in Wyoming. The formerly third most powerful Republican leader in the US Congress had been punished too.In Bowers’s case, his assailants in the Arizona Republican party wanted to punish him because he had steadfastly refused to do their, and Trump’s, bidding. He had declined to use his power as leader of the house to invoke an “arcane Arizonan law” – whose text has never been found – that would allow the legislature to cast out the will of 3.4 million voters who had handed victory to Joe Biden and switch the outcome unilaterally to Trump.Bowers has a word for that kind of thinking. “The thought that if you don’t do what we like, then we will just get rid of you and march on and do it ourselves – that to me is fascism.”Come January, Bowers will no longer be an Arizona politician. He can now speak his mind. He did just that, for more than two hours in an interview with the Guardian this week.He spoke his mind about the phone conversations he had with Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani at the height of the stolen election mayhem in 2020. He spoke about the “clown circus” of Trump loyalists who tried to bully him into subverting the election, and about the “emotional violence” that has been embraced by increasingly powerful sections of the Republican party in Arizona and nationally.He spoke his mind too about the very real danger facing democracy in America today – to his astonishment, at the hands of his own party.“The constitution is hanging by a thread,” he told me. “The funny thing is, I always thought it would be the other guys. And it’s my side. That just rips at my heart: that we would be the people who would surrender the constitution in order to win an election. That just blows my mind.”‘I’m not a man of means’Bowers will talk about all that, and much more. But first, he wants to show me around his spiritual home. He arranged to meet me at his family’s ranch, “so you can see a bit of why I think the way I do”.The ranch is nestled in a hollow among desert hills about 90 minutes’ drive east of Phoenix, at the end of five miles of dramatically snaking dirt road. Fifteen months ago a wildfire swept through the area, destroying majestic cottonwoods and sycamores and sending flames high up above the hills. The main house came within 10 feet of being destroyed and his art studio, replete with many of his landscape paintings and a large portion of his legislative papers, were burnt to ashes.I ask him what this extraordinarily beautiful and harsh landscape reveals about his political character. “Well, I’m not a man of means,” he said. “We pay for things as we go. We are compelled to work, to do things with our hands. That gives you a different appreciation of life. Things have a bigger meaning.”Bowers said that his core values were instilled in him as a child growing up within a conservative Republican tradition. He is the father of seven children, one of whom, Kacey, died last year. “Family, faith, community – these are values at a very core level. You don’t survive out here, on land like this, alone.”A fourth-generation Arizonan, Bowers, 69, grew up within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, better known as the Mormon church. His faith, along with his other great passion for art – he is a painter and sculptor – is visible all around. The front of the main house is lined with three large bronzes depicting the epic 1,100-mile journey across America that the Mormons undertook in 1846-47.From the beginning, conservatism and the Republican party were interchangeable for Bowers. “Belief in God, that you should be held accountable for how you treat other people, those were very conservative thoughts and the bedrock of my politics.”He identifies as “pro-life”, sees the US constitution as being inspired by God, and voted for Trump in the 2020 election. “I campaigned for Trump, I went to his rallies, I stood up on the stage with him,” he said.Somewhere along the line, though, things started to come unstuck. A rift opened up between his old-school Republican values and those of a new cadre of activists who were energized by Trump and his embrace of conspiracy theories and strongman politics.In hindsight, Bowers now recognizes that the opening shots of the conflict were fired not around the 2020 presidential election but earlier in the year, in the initial days of Covid. Trump-fanatical Republicans in the Arizona house displayed in their anti-mask antics the same disdain for the rules, the same bullying style, that was later to erupt in the stolen election furor.“It was like a prep show,” he said.Then came the first signs of Trump’s refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 election. Bowers himself always expected that the presidential race in Arizona would be close. “We were very much aware that a demographic of women, 18 to 40, college-educated, professional, with small children, were not voting for Donald Trump,” he said.When the results were confirmed, and Biden had won by 10,457 votes, the slimmest margin of any state, Bowers was unsurprised. But such was the brouhaha as armed Trump supporters protested outside counting centers in Maricopa county demanding “audits” that he decided to take a look for himself.He gathered a group of trusted lawyers and went to investigate the counting process close up. “I saw incredible amounts of protocols that were followed and signed off by volunteers – Democrats, Republicans, independents. Yes, Republicans for crying out loud! And they did it by the book.”On 22 November 2020, two weeks after Biden had been declared the next president of the United States, Bowers received a call from the White House. Trump and Giuliani were on the line.After exchanging niceties, they got down to business. Giuliani said they had found 200,000 illegal immigrants and 6,000 dead people who had voted in Arizona. “We need to fix that,” Giuliani told him, cajoling him to call a special committee of the Arizona legislature to look into the supposed fraud.Bowers remembers vividly how Trump and Giuliani played good cop and bad cop on that call. “Trump, you know, he wasn’t angry. He wasn’t threatening. He never said to me, ‘I’m going to get you if you don’t do this.’ Giuliani, he was the bulldog.”In return, Bowers was polite but firm. He told the duo that they had to provide hard evidence. “I said, ‘I’m not doing anything like this until you bring me something. Let’s see it. I’m not going to have circus time at the house of representatives.’”That’s when Trump and Giuliani unveiled their second, even more incendiary, proposal. They had heard that there was an “arcane Arizona law” that would allow the Republican-controlled legislature under Bowers to throw out Biden’s electors and send Trump alternatives to Congress in their place.It took a moment for the penny to drop. Bowers was being asked to overturn the election through diktat.“I’m not a professor of constitutional law, but I get the idea. They want me to throw out the vote of my own people,” he recalls thinking. “I said, ‘Oh, wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. So now, you’re asking me to overthrow the vote of the people of Arizona?”Bowers’s response to the good cop, bad cop routine was categoric. He told them: “I took an oath to the American constitution, the state constitution and its laws. Which one of those am I supposed to break?”It didn’t stop there. Bowers was pounded by wave after wave of demands that he subvert the election, some coming from the White House, some from “America First” politicians closer to home.The speaker continued to be lobbied right up to the eve of January 6 when John Eastman, the conservative law professor advising Trump on his attempted electoral coup, rang him and exhorted him to “decertify” the electors. “Just do it and let the courts figure it all out,” Eastman said.Bowers was direct on that occasion too. “No,” he said.As January 6 approached, and the cries of stolen election reached fever pitch, the attacks on Bowers became personal. A “Trump train” of angry fanatics blaring their horns in pickup trucks festooned with Maga flags turned up at his home in Mesa, some bearing digital boards proclaiming him to be a pedophile.To protect his family, he would step outside the house and confront the protesters. One man had three bars on his chest, signalling he was a member of the far-right militia group the Three Percenters. The man was screaming obscenities and carrying a pistol. “I had to get as close to him as I could to defend myself if he went for the gun.”The worst of it was that during several of these menacing protests, his daughter Kacey was inside the house mortally ill in bed with liver failure. “She would say, ‘What are they doing out there?’ She was emotional. She told me, ‘I’m going to die.’ I said, ‘Honey, you’re not going to die.’ So she had feelings, we were trying to keep her positive.”Kacey Bowers did die, on 28 January, three weeks after the insurrection at the US Capitol.I asked Bowers whether, through all this, he had ever doubted his strength to stand up to the onslaught. Were his values tested?“I never had the thought of giving up,” he said. “No way. I don’t like bullies. That’s one constant in my life: I. Do. Not. Like. Bullies.”Primary defeatIn July, the executive committee of the Arizona Republican party censured Bowers. Its chairwoman, Kelli Ward, a Trump devotee, said that he was “no longer a Republican in good standing”.Then on 28 July, Bowers was effectively turfed out of the Arizona legislature when he was defeated in the primary by the Satan-evoking Farnsworth. That same night, the slate of election deniers standing for statewide positions won a clean sweep.Republican nominations for governor, a US Senate seat, state attorney general and secretary of state all went to enthusiastic backers of Trump and his 2020 attempted coup. They included Mark Finchem, who was present at the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 and who continues to try to decertify Biden’s presidency to this day.Finchem is now the Republican candidate for secretary of state. Should he win in November, he would be in charge of Arizona’s election administration through the 2024 presidential contest, in which Trump has indicated he is likely to be competing.The ascent of election deniers across the board marks the final transformation of the Republican party in the state. Trump’s grip is now complete; the strain of constitutional conservatism epitomized by Bowers is in the wilderness.“I think it’s a shame,” was his rueful reflection on that transition. “The suite of candidates that we now have representing what used to be a principled party is just like, wow … It’s like being the first colonizer on Jupiter.”In February, a mega “election integrity” bill was introduced into the Arizona legislature that was the culmination of the anti-democratic drift of the party. House bill 2596 would have given the Republican-controlled legislature the power to reject any election result that the majority group didn’t like.Bowers resoundingly killed off that bill by sending it to languish not in just one house committee, but in all 12 of them. “I was trying to send a definitive message: this is hogwash. Taking away the fundamental right to vote, the idea that the legislature could nullify your election, that’s not conservative. That’s fascist. And I’m not a fascist.”Bowers said he remains optimistic that the party will one day find its way back on to the rails. He draws succor from the many people who have come up to him since his defeat telling him – quietly, so that nobody can hear – that they admire him and back him.“It’s not like I’m alone in the wilderness. There’s a lot of people from all over the United States thanking me.”But for now, he accepts that things are likely to get much worse before they get better. I ask him, at this moment, is the Republican party in Arizona lost?“Yeah,” he said. “They’ve invented a new way. It’s a party that doesn’t have any thought. It’s all emotional, it’s all revenge. It’s all anger. That’s all it is.”He held the thumb and digit finger of his right hand so close together that they were almost touching. “The veneer of civilization is this thin,” he said. “It still exists – I haven’t been hanged yet. But holy moly, this is just crazy. The place has lost its mind.”TopicsUS politicsRepublicansArizonaUS elections 2020Donald TrumpinterviewsReuse this content More

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      Liz Cheney is the leader of the anti-Trump Republican resistance – where does it go now?

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      Liz Cheney is the leader of the anti-Trump Republican resistance – where does it go now?The January 6 co-chair has been anointed the valiant leader of the Never Trump movement. But does that make her a general without an army? She knew the price of defying Donald Trump but did it anyway. Liz Cheney, crushed in a primary election in Wyoming, was anointed by supporters and commentators as leader of the Republican resistance to the former US president.But that invited a question: what resistance? Admirers of the three-term congresswoman who lost her House seat to a Trump-backed challenger warn that she could now find herself a general without an army.In her concession speech in Jackson, Wyoming, on Tuesday, Cheney pointed out that if she had been willing to parrot Trump’s election lies, she would have remained in Congress. Instead she voted to impeach him and, as vice-chair of the January 6 committee, eviscerated him on primetime TV.Now, having transferred leftover campaign funds into a new entity, The Great Task, and hinted at a presidential run, she seems determined to embrace her status as the face of the Never Trump movement.“She set herself up to be that, to be the force that is going to stand up and fight because very few people have come forward and taken such a powerful stance,” said Monika McDermott, a political science professor at Fordham University in New York.“It helps that she lost so she’s able to do that. That’s what she’s hoping to be.”The Great Task, however, may be an understatement of the challenge ahead. Trump’s Republican critics did appear to have the wind at their backs just couple of months ago as his poll ratings sank, he was pummeled by the January 6 committee and candidates he endorsed lost primaries in Georgia and elsewhere.But the 76-year-old managed to turn an FBI search for government secrets at his home in Florida into a public relations triumph with his base. Donations poured in and Republicans rallied. Even potential 2024 rivals such as Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, felt obliged to question the justice department’s motives.Meanwhile, Trump-favoured candidates surged in states such as Arizona, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Of the 10 House Republicans, including Cheney, who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the January 6 insurrection, only two remain up for re-election.McDermott said: “It seemed like he was fading from the public eye and a lot of people, especially Republicans, were glad about that. But his base is being riled up again. The FBI search was one source of that. The primary wins have been another.“He has bounced back. He’s rebounded quite a bit from where he was post-presidency. At this point he is the titular head of the Republican party, whether people want him to be or not.”Frank Luntz, a pollster who has advised many Republican campaigns, agreed that the primary wins are significant. He said: “Trump’s probably stronger with the GOP right now because of the Mar-a-Lago raid than in any time in the last six months.“He’s turned himself into a victim and that unites Republicans around him. So they [the US justice department] better have something, because he has a new life within the GOP.”‘Whatever it takes’Anti-Trump forces remain scattered. Some Republican senators, such as Mitt Romney of Utah, and governors, such as Larry Hogan of Maryland, remain willing to speak out. Disaffected conservatives have set up ventures such as the Lincoln Project, Principles First, the Republican Accountability Project and the Bulwark website.Adam Kinzinger, Cheney’s sole Republican colleague on the January 6 committee, created a group called Country First to recruit and back anti-Trump candidates. But Kinzinger himself is retiring.With her storied name – her father, Dick Cheney, was vice-president under George W Bush – Cheney could emerge as the de facto resistance leader, touring the country and TV studios, prosecuting the case against Trump as an existential threat to democracy. Her work on the January 6 committee will continue until she relinquishes her seat in January. More televised hearings are promised.On Wednesday she told NBC: “I will be doing whatever it takes to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office.”She added that running for president “is something I’m thinking about and I’ll make a decision in the coming months”.It would be tough. Cheney would have almost no chance of winning a primary and could expect the Republican National Committee to look for reasons to keep her off the debate stage. Few know the pitfalls better than Joe Walsh, a former congressman from Illinois who took on Trump in 2020.Walsh said: “There is no anti-Trump movement in the Republican party. I love Liz and she’s a hero for what she did and God bless her but, as I realised two years ago, there’s no room in that party for me. There’s no room in this party for her. She knows that. She’s got a bigger name so she’ll leverage it but she’s got no army to lead.”So where do anti-Trump Republicans go from here?“What Liz Cheney is going to find is this is a difficult road because, if you play this road out all the way, you have to do what I do, which is temporarily be on Team Democrat, which is weird for a Tea Party guy like me.“I know Liz believes the Republican party right now is a threat to our democracy. If you believe that then you have to support people who will defeat Republicans and right now the only people who will defeat Republicans are Democrats. I think Liz is getting close to that point.”Walsh admitted that being on “Team Democrat” is still a strange sensation.“It’s fucking bizarre. Once a week, I pinch myself and think, ‘How the hell did I get here?’ I mean, I’m out there trying to help Tim Ryan win in Ohio but this is where we are because my former party has become what they’ve become.“I don’t know what Liz will do. Again, she’s a different animal because she’s a Cheney and she can stay in that party and raise hell, but to what end? It can’t be changed.”‘A big mistake’If Trump is the Republican nominee, Cheney could stand as an independent in a general election. But that would run the “spoiler” risk of peeling off anti-Trump Republicans from the Democrat, presumably Joe Biden, and inadvertently giving Trump a path to the White House.Luntz predicted: “She actually would take away more Biden votes than Trump votes.”Cheney has won the admiration of Democrats and independents but some observers detect hubris. In her concession speech, she raised eyebrows by drawing parallels with Abraham Lincoln, the president who steered the union through the civil war.Cheney said: “The great and original champion of our party, Abraham Lincoln, was defeated in elections for the Senate and the House before he won the most important election of all. Lincoln ultimately prevailed, he saved our union, and he defined our obligation as Americans for all of history.”Luntz said: “Some Republicans who admire her tenacity and her convictions became annoyed that she compared herself to Abraham Lincoln. That was a big mistake. Whoever wrote that line really should be fired because instead of it being about Trump it became about her. And that did her irreparable damage.”The Cheneys have been players in Washington for half a century, from the time Dick Cheney first ran for Congress to the arrival of Liz Cheney in 2017. She rose to the same position as her father, No 3 Republican in the House, only to be ousted as punishment for her dissent.Then, on Tuesday, after the highest turnout of any Republican primary in Wyoming’s 132-year history, Cheney lost to the conservative lawyer Harriet Hageman by 36 points. Trump acolytes gloated that it signified the final purge of the Bush-Cheney era, surpassed by his populist brand of “America first” and baseless conspiracy theories. The Never Trumpers were in retreat once more.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “Liz Cheney certainly won the hearts of many Democrats and independents but her power in the Republican party doesn’t hold a candle to Donald Trump.“We have to just be honest about that. She’s not a real threat to Donald Trump. She sees herself as kind of saviour but it’s in a party that’s not really looking for a saviour.”TopicsRepublicansLiz CheneyDonald TrumpUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Americans should focus on Biden’s accomplishments, says chief of staff – as it happened

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      Here’s the meat of White House chief of staff Ron Klain’s argument to American voters, as he put it to Politico:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“Elections are choices, and the choice just couldn’t be any clearer right now. Democrats have stood up to the big special interests. They stood up to the big corporations and insisted that all corporations pay minimum taxes, stood up to the big oil companies and passed climate change legislation. They stood up to Big Pharma and passed prescription drug legislation. They stood up to the gun industry and passed gun control legislation. Things that this city [was] unable to deliver on for decades because the special interests had things locked down, Joe Biden and his allies in Congress have been able to deliver on.”The point of interviews like these is to get the administration’s message out ahead of November’s midterms, when voters will get a chance to decide which lawmakers they want representing them, and ultimately which party controls Congress. Considering Biden’s low approval ratings, the base case now is that Republicans have a good shot at taking the House, while Democrats seem favored to narrowly keep the Senate, though anything could happen.The White House would, of course, prefer Democrats hold onto both chambers. If one falls into the hands of the GOP, the prospects for any major legislation getting through Congress become dramatically slimmer for the next two years. Klain and others seem to be hoping that two things will happen: either enough voters change their minds about Biden, or they divorce their dislike of the president from their opinions of Democrats on the ballot. It may be premature to say whether the latter is happening, but when it comes to the former, polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight does show the president’s approval rating recovering from something of a nadir reached in mid-July.In closing, Klain offered this comment on Biden’s public profile, as compared to the previous White House occupant:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“I don’t think it’s true he’s out there less than his predecessors. I just think Donald Trump created an expectation of a president creating a shitstorm every single day.”The Biden administration took advantage of a quiet week in Washington to lay the groundwork for the roughly two months of campaigning before the November midterm elections, when Democrats will have to fight for control of Congress.Here’s what else happened today:
      White House chief of staff Ron Klain gave an interview to Politico, where he promoted Biden’s legislative accomplishments and previewed Democrats’ message to voters.
      A Georgia judge blocked senator Lindsey Graham’s attempt to quash a subpoena compelling his appearance before the special grand jury investigating election meddling in the state.
      Democrats attacked Mike Pence’s trip to Iowa, as the former vice president continues exploring whether to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
      An Ohio House Democrat criticized Biden in a television advertisement. She is fighting to keep her seat representing a district whose boundaries have been redrawn to include more Republican voters.
      More LGBTQ politicians are holding elected office in America than ever before, according to a new survey.
      The supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade may be causing a surge in women registering to vote, a political data firm has found.
      “Joe Biden’s letting Ohio solar manufacturers be undercut by China.” Sounds like a Republican campaign advertisement. It’s not – instead, it’s a television spot from an Ohio House Democrat fighting for her seat in a newly redrawn district that’s become much more friendly to the GOP.The New York Times reports that Marcy Kaptur has become the latest and most prominent Democratic lawmakers to publicly break with Biden with an ad that also highlights her collaboration with Rob Portman, Ohio’s retiring Republican senator. It’s a reversal from just last month, when she greeted the president at the airport in Cleveland during his visit to the city. However, such conduct is not unheard of for Democrats this election cycle. Maine representative Jared Golden aired an ad where he described himself as an “independent voice” that voted against “trillions of dollars of President Biden’s agenda because I knew it would make inflation worse,” according to the Times.Then there are the somewhat bizarre actions of Carolyn Maloney of New York, who is fighting to keep her House seat against a challenge from Jerry Nadler, a fellow Democrat. She had to apologize after saying Biden wasn’t planning to stand for reelection in 2024, only to make the same comment again. Democrat apologises for saying Biden won’t run in 2024 – then says it againRead moreRepublican House candidates who are facing close races are being advised not to talk too much about Donald Trump, but rather try to concentrate voters’ attention on the issues where they see an advantage over Democrats, CNN reports.“I don’t say his name, ever. I just avoid saying his name generally,” a Republican lawmaker in a tight race told the network. “I talk about the policies of his that I like.”The advice comes from Tom Emmer, a GOP House representative and chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is tasked with reclaiming Congress’ lower chamber in the November elections. While a spokesman for Emmer didn’t address the report about Trump, he told CNN, “Candidates know their districts best,” and “public and private polls show the midterms will be a referendum on Joe Biden and Democrats’ failed agenda that’s left voters paying record prices, dealing with soaring violent crime and facing billions in middle-class tax hikes.”As the report notes, this strategy could become complicated if Trump opts to announce another campaign for the presidency before the November midterms. Earlier this week, The Guardian reported he was being counseled to do so to avoid an indictment by the justice department over his handling of classified material.Trump should announce run for 2024 soon to avoid indictment, source saysRead moreThe investigation into Donald Trump’s ties to Russia was one of the earliest and most intense scandals of his presidency, and the legal wrangling over it still hasn’t finished.The Associated Press reports that a federal court of appeals panel has found that William Barr, Trump’s attorney general in 2019, wrongly withheld a memo that he cited to say that Trump did not obstruct justice during in the investigation into his ties with Moscow.Here’s more from the AP:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}At issue in the case is a March 24, 2019, memorandum from the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, or OLC, and another senior department official that was prepared for Barr to evaluate whether evidence in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation could support prosecution of the president for obstruction of justice.
      Barr has said he looked to that opinion in concluding that Trump did not illegally obstruct the Russia probe, which was an investigation of whether his campaign had colluded with Russia to tip the 2016 election.
      The Justice Department turned over other documents to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington as part of the group’s lawsuit, but declined to give it the memo. Government lawyers said they were entitled under public records law to withhold the memo because it reflected internal deliberations among lawyers before any formal decision had been reached on what Mueller’s evidence showed.
      But U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said last year that those arguments were disingenuous because the memo was prepared for Barr at about the same time as a separate Justice Department letter informing Congress and the public that Barr and other senior department leaders concluded that Trump had not obstructed justice.
      The memo noted that “Mueller had declined to accuse President Trump of obstructing justice but also had declined to exonerate him” and “recommended that Barr ‘reach a judgment’ on whether the evidence constituted obstruction of justice,” the panel wrote Friday. The memo also noted that “the Report’s failure to take a definitive position could be read to imply an accusation against President Trump” if the confidential report were released to the public, the court wrote.Busy day for courts in Georgia. A federal judge in the state has just rejected another bid by Republican senator Lindsey Graham to quash a subpoena compelling his appearance before a special grand jury probing attempts to meddle in the 2020 elections by Donald Trump’s allies.“Senator Graham raises a number of arguments as to why he is likely to succeed on the merits, but they are all unpersuasive, not least because they largely misconstrue the Court’s holdings,” judge Leigh Martin May wrote in denying the senator’s motion.“A stay is not justified even assuming for the sake of argument that Senator Graham has shown ‘a substantial case on the merits.’”Earlier this week, Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani appeared before the panel, which has informed him he is a target of their investigation.Rudy Giuliani informed he is target of criminal investigation in GeorgiaRead moreHowever in Georgia, a judge will allow a state law provision that bans giving food and water to voters standing in line to go into effect for the November midterm elections, though it is still subject to further legal challenges, the Associated Press reports. The law, passed last year, was part of a Republican-backed effort to reform the state’s election system, which Democrats attacked as an attempt to make it harder for the poor and racial minorities to vote. But as the AP notes, the legal battle isn’t over:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee said the voting rights groups may ultimately prevail on part of their challenge, but he agreed with the state that it’s too close to the election to block any part of the provision. He noted that requiring different rules for the general election than those in place for the primaries earlier this year could cause confusion for election workers.
      Boulee said that voting rights groups had failed to show that prohibiting the distribution of food and drinks within 150 feet (45 meters) of a polling place violates their constitutional rights. But he said that another part of the provision that bars people from offering food and drink within 25 feet (7.6 meters) of any person in line is probably unconstitutional because that zone is tied to the location of voters and could stretch thousands of feet from the polling place. More

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      Republican says comment Garland should be executed was ‘facetious’

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      Republican says comment Garland should be executed was ‘facetious’Carl Paladino, a Republican candidate for Congress in New York, recently caused controversy when he praised Adolf Hitler A Republican candidate for Congress in New York said he was “being facetious” when, in the same interview, he said the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, should be executed for authorising the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Florida home.The candidate, Carl Paladino, recently caused controversy when he praised Adolf Hitler, as “the kind of leader we need today”.Paladino made his remark about the attorney general in an interview with the far-right site Breitbart. Paladino said: “So we have a couple of unelected people who are running our government, in an administration of people like Garland, who should be not only impeached, he probably should be executed.“The guy is just lost. He’s a lost soul. He’s trying to get an image, and his image, his methodology is just terrible. To raid the home of a former president is just – people are scratching their heads and they’re saying, ‘What is wrong with this guy?’”Asked to explain his “executed” remark, Paladino said: “I’m just being facetious. The man should be removed from office.”The FBI and Department of Justice have faced violent threats since agents searched Mar-a-Lago for classified White House records, under the Espionage Act.In Ohio, a man who said on social media federal agents should be killed was shot dead after trying to get inside an FBI office with a semiautomatic rifle.Paladino, a real-estate developer, has courted controversy before.As the Republican nominee for governor of New York in 2010, he was criticised for forwarding emails containing racist jokes and pornography.He also said children were being “brainwashed” to make them think being gay was equivalent to being heterosexual.In 2016, he told a newspaper he hoped Barack Obama would die from mad cow disease and said Michelle Obama should “return to being a male” and be sent to live with a gorilla in a cave.The following year, Paladino was removed from Buffalo’s school board. He contended the Obama comments were the reason for his removal.This year, Paladino shared a Facebook post suggesting a racist mass shooting in Buffalo was part of a conspiracy to take away guns. The same month, he apologised for saying Hitler was “the kind of leader we need today”, supposedly because of his ability to rally crowds.In a close primary fight with Nick Langworthy, a state Republican politician, Paladino has been endorsed by Elise Stefanik, the No 3 Republican in the US House and a prominent Trump supporter.When Paladino praised Hitler, Stefanik said she “condemn[ed] any statement, but don’t take it out of context”.The justice department did not immediately comment on Paladino’s remarks about Garland.TopicsUS politicsRepublicansUS CongressMerrick GarlandNew YorknewsReuse this content More