Republicans

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      The Democrats are purposely boosting far-right Republicans. This will backfire | Hamilton Nolan

      by

      The Democrats are purposely boosting far-right Republicans. This will backfireHamilton NolanDemocratic strategists have spent millions of dollars to aid extremists, on the theory they’ll be easier to defeat in the general election. We will all live with the consequences An alarming number of people employed as professional political strategists by the Democratic party do not seem to understand what “politics” actually means. If this sounds too cute to be true, think of it another way: if all of the professional political strategists employed by the Democratic party do understand what “politics” actually means, they are negligent and willing to do harmful things for short-term gain. Either way, it ain’t good.The most glaring manifestation of this in the current election cycle is the fact that Democrats across the country spent millions of dollars to boost the candidacies of right-wing Maga candidates in the Republican primaries, on the theory that those extremists would be easier to defeat in the general election.The Washington Post found that Democrats had spent close to $20m in eight states on ads meant to elevate the profile of far-right candidates and election deniers running for governorships and for Congress. A number of those candidates, like the maniacal Christian zealots Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Darren Bailey in Illinois, did in fact win their primaries, setting up, in theory, easier races for the Democrats in those states to win, because, in theory, swing voters prefer not to vote for lunatics.The January 6 committee has its sights on Ginni Thomas. She should be worried | Kimberly WehleRead moreA common objection to this strategy is, “What if one of those lunatics wins? And you helped him? Wouldn’t you feel stupid?” Sure. But that objection, reasonable as it is, accepts the underlying premise that the rightness or wrongness of spending millions of dollars to boost the support of dangerous religious fascists within one of America’s two main political parties comes down to whether or not those dangerous religious fascists win the 2022 elections. The Democratic strategists who engineered this will say: “They won’t win, so the strategy was sound.” And that is where their blinkered view of the nature of politics begins to show its true futility.Because – my god, it’s hard to believe – politics is more than the next election. Yes! Time marches on endlessly into the future! And the things that we do today help to shape the things that happen next in an infinite and largely unpredictable chain of cause and effect! It’s crazy, I know. It is now accepted as conventional wisdom, for example, that perhaps it was not strategically wise for the United States to arm mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan fighting the USSR in the 80s, because later on some of those same people with those same weapons were fighting the US.But this same sort of elementary insight has not permeated the Democratic consulting world. If you help to make the Maga candidates stronger today, it is possible that that will have negative social and political consequences even if they do not win the election in November 2022. Reality, which is real, unfolds slower and longer than a political campaign, which is an artificial construct with an arbitrary timeline. Duh.Imagine for a moment the possibility that the goal of “politics” is not just winning the next election, but rather reshaping the deepest power arrangements of the world in a more just way. In this conception of politics, the important thing is not just bringing along a handful of high officials in order to engineer a 51% voting majority in Congress, but rather evolving the views of hundreds of millions of people in a way that will bring the officials along with them.Electoral politics follows social change, not vice versa. And “changing society,” rather than “targeting a narrow slice of swing voters,” requires deep and ongoing organizing – the sort of organizing that creates movements, not campaigns.When you take a moment to step back and view history as the endless stream of struggle that it is, it is not hard to see why it is dumb to dedicate resources to making Maga Republicans more visible and viable within their own party. You are promoting an awful ideology in hopes of winning votes – but in the long run, politics is a battle of ideology. The votes follow the ideology.The consultants are fighting on the wrong battleground, and no matter how many polls they have, they are not clever enough to predict the chaotic long-run effects of fueling a movement that is the opposite of the movement we should be trying to build.Part of wisdom is understanding your limitations. Neither you nor I nor the Democratic National Committee can predict the future with confidence. What we can do is to fight for justice today. We can do the hard work of organizing today and tomorrow. We can try to push society in the right direction. By changing society itself, we can make the ground more fertile for political candidates who will do the right thing.The historic figures who have done the most to promote justice did not do it by deviously clever manipulations of voter data. They did it by fighting for stuff that was right. Spending money to try to dupe hapless Republican voters into backing the goofiest fascist is not just stupid; it goes against justice. Tricking people is not part of organizing.These sophisticated Democratic strategists are pouring poison into the well that we all, sooner or later, will have to drink from.
      Hamilton Nolan is a writer based in New York
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionDemocratsRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans’ lawless leaders at odds with midterm law and order message

      by

      Republicans’ lawless leaders at odds with midterm law and order messageRepublicans running in next month’s elections cast their party as tough on crime, despite top party names’ legal scrapes “John Fetterman wants to release convicted murderers from prison,” warns the narrator, as a black-and-white photo of Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor is shown beside pictures of convicted killers. A caption adds darkly: “Socialist John Fetterman loves free stuff … but we can’t let him free murderers.”The campaign ad from Mehmet Oz, candidate for the US Senate in Pennsylvania, is vintage Republican strategy: casting a Democratic opponent as soft on crime. The party is zeroing in on fears over public safety ahead of November’s midterm elections in an effort to change the conversation from abortion, climate or democracy.But Republicans’ own claim to be the party of law and order is this time undermined, critics say, by the behavior of its party leaders. Former president Donald Trump, who is under myriad criminal, civil and congressional investigations, is not alone. Many senior Republicans have rallied to his defence or displayed their own contempt for the rule of law.“The Republican party is quickly becoming a party of anarchy and lawlessness,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “This is supposed to be the party of conservative principles, of tradition, of respect for customs and rules that make society governable.“The idea that the law does not apply to Republicans is something that has now become part of the mainstream of the Republican party. We see it in terms of the approach to elections. We see it in terms of the treatment of immigrants. Some of the actions with regard to abortion may approach that level. The Republican party appears to consider the law and the constitution to be optional and to have lost legitimacy.”Over seven years Trump has refashioned the party in ways obvious and subtle. That has included a willingness to defend conduct that, from any other politician, would have been seen as beyond the pale.US intelligence resumes national security review of Mar-a-Lago documents – as it happenedRead moreAfter FBI agents searched his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida in August and seized classified documents, including some marked top secret, Trump could be indicted for violating the Espionage Act, obstructing a federal investigation or mishandling sensitive government records. The former president also faces a state grand jury investigation in Georgia over efforts to subvert that state’s election result in 2020.Last month, Trump and his oldest three children were accused by New York’s top prosecutor of lying to tax collectors, lenders and insurers in a “staggering” fraud scheme that routinely misstated the value of his properties. Despite it all, Trump remains the frontrunner for the party’s presidential nomination in 2024.His chief rival, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, may have violated federal law recently by using more than $600,000 in taxpayer money to lure about 50 Venezuelan asylum seekers on to flights to the small, upmarket island of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, and transporting them across state lines with a false reason.Authorities in Massachusetts have requested that the justice department pursue a human trafficking investigation. A sheriff in Texas, where the flights originated, has also opened an investigation into whether DeSantis acted criminally under a Texas penal code that defines the crime of unlawful restraint.The rot goes deep in the party.Republicans won’t commit to honoring vote results this fall. That’s troubling | Robert ReichRead moreNumerous members of the House of Representatives and Senate, as well as midterm candidates seeking to join them, have refused to condemn or have actively supported Trump’s “big lie” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, siding with the violent mob on January 6 rather than the US Capitol police officers who resisted them.Steve Bannon, a former White House chief strategist, faces up to two years in prison after being convicted on contempt charges for defying a congressional subpoena from the House of Representatives committee investigating the insurrection. Rudy Giuliani, an ex-lawyer to Trump, had his law licence suspended after a court in New York ruled that he made “demonstrably false and misleading statements” while seeking to overturn the results of the election.In addition, Republicans have long been criticised for prioritising laws that protect gun owners over those that protect the victims of gun violence. And since the supreme court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, Republican-led states are accused of legal abuses: the justice department is suing Idaho over a near-total abortion ban.Critics believe that such examples make a mockery of Republican efforts to saddle Democrats with rising homicide rates in Atlanta, New Orleans, Philadelphia and other cities.Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “The rank hypocrisy of the Republican party trying to use these issues under the auspices of law and order when they continue to support a professional scofflaw in Donald Trump is laughable.“Republicans have turned a blind eye to Trump’s behavior before, during and after his presidency, which is giving a permission structure to other Republican presidential hopefuls like Ron DeSantis to act in potentially extrajudicial ways to accomplish their agenda of fearmongering and ‘owning the libs’.”Trivialising the rule of law extends to party cheerleaders. Last month, Tucker Carlson, a host on the conservative Fox News network, spoke at the funeral of Ralph “Sonny” Barger, the longtime president of the Hells Angels motorcycle club – deemed by the justice department to be linked to organised crime.Self-awareness in short supply as Trump calls for law and order in DCRead moreBrett Favre, an American football star who endorsed Trump for president in 2020, is embroiled in controversy after Mississippi spent millions of dollars in welfare money on his pet project, a university volleyball arena. The state’s then-governor, Republican Phil Bryant, texted Favre in 2019 that federal money for children and low-income adults is “tightly controlled” and “improper use could result in violation of Federal Law”.Yet Republicans have always been quick to accuse Democrats of flouting the law. In 2015 they argued that Barack Obama’s administration acted illegally when it hid a prisoner swap that freed the army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl from the Taliban. Ilya Shapiro, a former vice-president of the Cato Institute thinktank in Washington, wrote that “the Obama administration has been the most lawless in US history”.But Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, believes that such comparisons are disingenuous. “These are the same Republicans who ran around with their hair on fire, concerned with what President Obama was doing through executive orders on guns and on immigration. That was nowhere near as legally dubious as what Republicans are doing today.”It was 1968 when presidential candidate Richard Nixon claimed the mantle of “law and order” for the Republican party, promising to fix a nation in disarray: “As we look at America, we see cities enveloped in smoke and flame. We hear sirens in the night.” Six years later, Nixon was forced to resign after breaking the law in his efforts to cover up the Watergate break-in.But Republicans believed they had found a winning message. In 1988, a political action committee supporting George HW Bush’s election campaign funded an ad blaming Democratic rival Michael Dukakis for the case of Willie Horton, an African American convict who committed rape during a furlough from prison. Bush’s campaign manager, Lee Atwater, boasted that he would make Horton “Dukakis’s running mate”.Now, the familiar drumbeat is being heard again in midterm races from Oregon to Pennsylvania, from New Mexico to Washington state. House Republicans just launched a “Commitment to America” manifesto that blamed “defund the police” efforts for law enforcement officers’ tough working conditions, “to say nothing of the liberal prosecutors and district attorneys who fail to do their job and keep criminals off the streets”.Joe Biden and other Democrats have worked hard to disown the “defund the police” slogan, with many Democratic-led cities pouring money into police departments. But the issue remains a vulnerability: voters say they agree more with Republicans on crime and policing by a margin of 10 percentage points, a recent New York Times/ Siena College poll found.Donna Brazile, a former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, said: “The Republicans are basically using the same playbook that Richard Nixon used. Richard Nixon ran as the candidate of law and order and we all know what happened next: Watergate. This is the same playbook. The Republicans constantly go back to their old playbooks in order to find a new way to reach the electorate. I think voters are smarter.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022Donald TrumpRon DeSantisUS crimefeaturesReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Capitol attack officer Fanone hits out at ‘weasel’ McCarthy in startling interview

      by

      Capitol attack officer Fanone hits out at ‘weasel’ McCarthy in startling interviewMichael Fanone makes candid and profane remarks about Republicans in Rolling Stone interview as he promotes memoir In an extraordinarily candid and profane interview with Rolling Stone, Michael Fanone – the former Washington police officer who was seriously hurt at the US Capitol during the January 6 attack – called the Republican House leader, potentially the next speaker, a “fucking weasel bitch”.Oath Keepers to stand trial on charges of seditious conspiracyRead moreFanone said past Republican giants would be unimpressed with Kevin McCarthy.“I think at night, when the lights are turned off, Abe Lincoln and Ronald Reagan have some pretty choice words to say about the fact that they have to hang on Kevin McCarthy’s wall,” Fanone said.“They did some fucking above-average things. And they’ve got to adorn the wall of this fucking weasel bitch named Kevin McCarthy, with his fake fucking spray-on tan, whose fucking claim to fame, at least in my eyes, is the fact that he amassed a collection of Donald Trump’s favorite-flavored Starburst, put them in a Mason jar, and presented them to fucking Donald Trump.“What the fuck, dude?”Fanone’s remarks came as he promoted his memoir, Hold the Line, which will be published next week.The title refers to Fanone’s actions on 6 January 2021, when he, a DC Metropolitan officer, answered calls from Capitol police and rushed to confront Trump supporters storming Congress in an attempt to stop certification of the outgoing president’s defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.Fanone suffered a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury. He has since left the police and emerged, with other officers, as a key witness in hearings held by the House January 6 committee. The riot has been linked to nine deaths, including suicides among law enforcement officers. More than 900 rioters have been charged, some with seditious conspiracy.In his Rolling Stone interview, Fanone also had harsh words for far-right Republicans including Marjorie Taylor Greene (“Put her in the tinfoil-hat brigade”) and Josh Hawley.Of Hawley, the Missouri senator, Fanone said: “He comes down there, flashes the sign of solidarity, [and] riles up this fucking crowd.”Hawley was famously pictured raising a fist to protesters – a picture he has used for fundraising purposes.Fanone continued: “I would’ve had more respect for him if he said, ‘Charge,’ and fucking rushed the first fucking group of police officers that he could possibly fucking find. But he didn’t. He ran like a bitch as fast as he fucking could to the closest safe room in the fucking Capitol building.”Josh Hawley, senator who ran from Capitol mob, mocked by home paperRead moreAmong other startling footage from the Capitol on January 6, the House committee has shown security video in which Hawley is seen running through the Capitol as the mob breaks in.Fanone, now an analyst for CNN, said his new mission in life was to “wag[e] a one-man war against Donald Trump and the fucking people that refuse to accept reality”.Of Republicans under McCarthy and as high in the party as Trump who have sought to downplay the Capitol attack, he said: “You call [January 6] a ‘tourist day’, You say it was ‘hugs and kisses’. I’m going to be that fucking inconvenient motherfucker that pops his head up every time you say some stupid shit like that.”He also said he does not want to be thought of as an American hero, in part because “Motherfuckers think [former vice-president] Mike Pence is a goddamn hero” for resisting Trump’s scheme to stay in power, and “don’t lump me in with that fucking pathetic coward”.Discussing his work for CNN, Fanone described how he has had to moderate his language on air – and how he “did get in a lot of trouble for saying I thought history was going to shit on Mike Pence’s head”.“They thought that it was inciteful language,” Fanone also remarked. “I said, ‘Listen’ – this is an actual conversation I had – ‘if a person named History takes a shit on Mike Pence’s head, I will apologise for having incited that behavior. But until a person named History literally takes a shit on Mike Pence’s head, I’m not saying shit, nor do I regret what I said, because history is going to shit on Mike Pence’s head.’”He added: “History is going to be busy.”Fanone said he thought most of those who physically attacked the Capitol might eventually be brought to account but doubted that those who incited the riot, from Trump down, would face the consequences of their actions.Congressman Jamie Raskin: ‘I’ll never forget the terrible sound of them trying to barrel into the chamber’Read more“To me,” he said, “every last one of them should have been charged with sedition. These guys love 1776” – the year of the American revolution – “so much. They should be damned glad we’re not in 1776 because I’m pretty sure they would all end up on the fucking business end of a musket or the gallows.”Fanone did have kind words for one congressman: Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a Democrat on the January 6 committee. But Fanone said the professor of constitutional law, being a “super-intellectual type”, was “not designed for what lies ahead” in a divided America.Fanone also said he was publishing his memoir because he was going “broke” after resigning his job.“I’m pretty sure that’s why people do things like this,” he said. “I said the things that I said for free and fucking destroyed my career, made my job untenable, and then tried to make hard lemonade out of lemons.”TopicsBooksUS Capitol attackUS policingUS politicsPolitics booksRepublicansUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

    • 100 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Confidence Man review: Maggie Haberman takes down Trump

      by

      Confidence Man review: Maggie Haberman takes down Trump The New York Times reporter presents a forensic account of the damage he has done to AmericaMaggie Haberman, the New York Times’ Trump whisperer, delivers. Her latest book is much more than 600 pages of context, scoop and drama. It is a political epic, tracing Donald Trump’s journey from the streets of Queens to Manhattan’s Upper East Side, from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, his Elba. There, the 45th president holds court – and broods and plots his return.Kushner camping tale one of many bizarre scenes in latest Trump bookRead moreHaberman gives Trump and those close to him plenty of voice – and rope. The result is a cacophonous symphony. Confidence Man informs and entertains but is simultaneously absolutely not funny. Trumpworld presents a reptilian tableau – reality TV does Lord of the Flies.For just one example, Mark Meadows, Trump’s last White House chief of staff, is depicted as erratic and detestable. Then there’s the family. Haberman reports how, after the 2016 election, Melania Trump won a renegotiated pre-nuptial agreement. Haberman also describes Trump repeatedly dumping on his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. If only he looked like Tom Brady and spoke in a deeper register. If only Ivanka had not converted to Judaism.The abuse gets absurd – even a kind of baroque. According to Haberman, at one 2020 campaign strategy meeting Trump implied Kushner might be brutally attacked, even raped, if he ever went camping: “Can you imagine Jared and his skinny ass camping? It’d be like something out of Deliverance.”The reader, however, should not weep for Jared. In Haberman’s telling, he is the kid who was born on third base and mistakes his good fortune with hitting a triple. For his part, Kushner is shown trashing Steve Bannon, the far-right ideologue who was campaign chair and chief White House strategist but was forced out within months.Haberman catches Kushner gleefully asking a White House visitor: “Did you see I cut Bannon’s balls off?”To quote Peter Navarro, like Bannon now a former Trump official under indictment, “nepotism and excrement roll downhill”.As it happens, Bannon’s testicles grew back. Like Charlie Kushner, Jared’s father, he received a Trump pardon. Bannon also helped propagate the big lie that Trump won the election, stoking the Capitol attack.These days, Bannon awaits sentencing, convicted of contempt of Congress. He also faces felony fraud charges arising from an alleged border-wall charity scam. In Trump’s universe, there is always a grift.For Confidence Man, Haberman interviewed Trump three times. He confesses that he is drawn to her, like a moth to a flame.“I love being with her,” he says. “She’s like my psychiatrist”.The daughter of Clyde Haberman, a legendary New York Times reporter, is not flattered or amused. She sees through her subject.“The reality is that he treats everyone like they are his psychiatrists,” Haberman writes. “All present a chance for him to vent or test reactions or gauge how his statements are playing or discover how he is feeling.”Also, Trump and Haberman have not always had a rapport. When he was president, she would interview him and he would attack her. In April 2018, Trump tweeted that Haberman was a Clinton “flunkie” he didn’t know or speak with, a “third-rate reporter” at that. He called her “Maggot Haberman” and even contemplated obtaining her phone records to identify her sources.Trump is 76 but he remains the envious boy from a New York outer borough, face pressed against the Midtown glass. Haberman is not the only Manhattan reporter he has courted and attacked. In 2018, he threatened Michael Wolff for writing Fire and Fury, the Trump book that started it all. Later, he welcomed Wolff to Mar-a-Lago.Haberman vividly captures Trump’s lack of couth. For just one example, according to Haberman the president chose to enrich his first meeting with a foreign leader, Theresa May, by asking the British prime minister to “imagine if some animals with tattoos raped your daughter and she got pregnant”.Each of Trump’s three supreme court justices voted to overturn Roe v Wade. One might wonder how the young woman in Trump’s hypothetical would feel about that.Haberman also pierces Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns. All that talk about an “audit” was a simple dodge, birthed on a campaign plane.In the run-up to Super Tuesday, the crucial day of primaries in March 2016, aides confronted Trump about his taxes. The candidate, Haberman writes, “thought for a second about how to ‘get myself out of this’, as he said. He leaned back, before snapping up to a sudden thought.01:13“‘Well, you know my taxes are under audit. I always get audited … So what I mean is, well I could just say, ‘I’ll release them when I’m no longer under audit. ‘Cause I’ll never not be under audit.’”These days, the Trump Organization faces criminal tax fraud charges. Together with Ivanka, Don Jr and Eric, his children from his first marriage, Trump is also being sued for fraud by Letitia James, the New York attorney general.As a younger reporter, Haberman did two stints at the New York Post, Rupert Murdoch’s flagship US tabloid. Murdoch’s succession plans – it’s Lachlan, he told Trump – appear in Confidence Man. So does Tucker Carlson, the headline-making Fox News host and kindred spirit to Vladimir Putin.Trump made up audit excuse for not releasing tax returns on the fly, new book saysRead moreAccording to Haberman, Carlson met Kushner and demanded Trump commute Roger Stone’s conviction for perjury.“What happened to Roger Stone should never happen to anyone in this country of any political party,” Carlson reportedly thundered, threatening to go public.Stone has since emerged as a central figure in the January 6 insurrection. Apparently, he has a thing for violence. For some Republicans, a commitment to “law and order” is elastic.When it comes to the attempt to overturn the election and the Capitol attack it fueled, Trump’s fate rests with prosecutors in Washington DC and Fulton county, Georgia.That old campaign chant from 2016, “Lock her up”? It carries its own irony.
      Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America is published in the US by Penguin Random House
      TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsRepublicansUS elections 2016US elections 2020reviewsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Uvalde families stand with Beto O’Rourke amid Republican silence on gun reform

      by

      Uvalde families stand with Beto O’Rourke amid Republican silence on gun reformFamilies of those killed in May school shooting support Democrat in race against Texas governor Greg Abbott A small photo of Jacklyn Casarez, one of the children killed during the school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, in May, graced the front of a greeting card held by Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke, who visited a Rio Grande Valley park Friday morning before the one and only staged debate with incumbent governor Greg Abbott.“Maybe you don’t consider yourself a political person,” Kimberly Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter Lexi was also killed in the 24 May shooting at Robb elementary, said Friday during a pre-debate news conference.TopicsTexasBeto O’RourkeGreg AbbottTexas school shootingUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

    • 188 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Pelosi reportedly resisted Democrats’ effort to impeach Trump on January 6 – as it happened

      by

      On January 6, “Republican tempers were running so hot against Trump that forcing them to choose sides in the Senate that week could easily have resulted in his impeachment, conviction, and disqualification from any future run for the White House,” The Intercept reported, based on the forthcoming book “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump.”It would have been a massive break if it happened. GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate had generally grinned and beared it through the four years Trump had been in the White House, even when he said or did things that went against their stated beliefs. But the up-close violence of the insurrection changed things, according to the book written by two reporters from The Washington Post and Politico. Had the House gone through with impeaching Trump that very evening, a vote to convict may have won the two-thirds majority in the Senate needed to succeed, removing Trump from office and barring him from running again.Reality was much more tepid. The Democrat-controlled House did vote to impeach Trump a week after January 6, and a month later, when he had already left the White House, the Republican-held Senate took a vote on whether to convict him. While 57 senators, including seven Republicans and all Democrats, voted to do so, that was 10 votes short of the supermajority needed, meaning Trump escaped punishment for the insurrection – at least for now.The federal government once again avoided a shutdown hours before it was to start after the House passed a short-term funding bill, which now goes to Joe Biden’s desk. The president is back at the White House after attending the investiture of justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who joins a supreme court that a poll indicates is losing its public trust.Here’s what else happened today:
      Ginni Thomas spoke to the January 6 committee, but two of its members say the wife of conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas doesn’t appear to be involved in a wider plot to overturn the 2020 election.
      You might think Joe Manchin would enjoy all the power the 50-50 split in the Senate gives him, as a pivotal Democratic vote. You would be wrong, apparently.
      The White House hit back against Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions, describing it as illegal and announcing new sanctions.
      Nancy Pelosi nixed an effort to impeach Donald Trump the evening after the January 6 insurrection, according to a new book that suggests a more immediate effort could have resulted in his conviction by the requisite two-thirds of the Republican-held Senate.
      Barack Obama worried about the justice department under Trump, but was convinced the country could make it four years with him in the White House, according to a meeting transcript obtained by Bloomberg.
      For a fee of $3 million, Donald Trump hired a former Florida solicitor general to help him deal with the justice department’s investigation into government secrets at Mar-a-Lago, but has ended up squabbling with the attorney instead.That’s the conclusion reached by a piece in The Washington Post that looks into the work of Christopher Kise, whom since joining Trump’s legal team has counseled him that the justice department just wanted to make sure no classified documents were at his Florida resort, and he’d be wise to try to reach a deal with them.Kise has found himself frustrated, the Post reports, as other lawyers on Trump’s team advocate a more aggressive approach that may get all involved into trouble. Here’s more from the story:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}A Wednesday night court filing from Trump’s team was combative, with defense lawyers questioning the Justice Department’s truthfulness and motives. Kise, whose name was listed alongside other lawyers’ in previous filings over the past four weeks, did not sign that one — an absence that underscored the division among the lawyers. He remains part of the team and will continue assisting Trump in dealing with some of his other legal problems, said the people familiar with the conversations, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal private talks. But on the Mar-a-Lago issue, he is likely to have a less public role.
      It is a pattern that has repeated itself since the National Archives and Records Administration first alerted Trump’s team 16 months ago that it was missing documents from his term as president — and strongly urged their return. Well before the May 11 grand jury subpoena, and the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago by the FBI, multiple sets of lawyers and advisers suggested that Trump simply comply with government requests to return the papers and, in particular, to hand over any documents marked classified.
      Trump seems, at least for now, to be heeding advice from those who have indulged his desire to fight.Eight years of Trump would be bad, but four manageable. The justice department should be watched like “white on rice”. And despite his insults and bombast, Donald Trump had been nothing but polite to him in person.That was some of what Barack Obama told a group of columnists in an off-the-record conversation three days before he left the White House in 2017. Such conversations between an American president and the press are rare and intended never to be made public, but Bloomberg got their hands on a transcript through a Freedom of Information Act request, which they published today. The discussion touched on a number of topics. Here’s what Obama had to say about whether Trump would do lasting damage to the country:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I think that four years is okay. Take on some water, but we can kind of bail fast enough to be okay. Eight years would be a problem. I would be concerned about a sustained period in which some of these norms have broken down and started to corrode.Whether Trump would be inclined to start any new wars:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I think his basic view – his formative view of foreign policy is shaped by his interactions with Malaysian developers and Saudi princes, and I think his view is, I’m going to go around the world making deals and maybe suing people. But it’s not, let me launch big wars that tie me up. And that’s not what his base is looking from him anyway. I mean, it is not true that he initially opposed the war in Iraq. It is true that during the campaign he was not projecting a hawkish foreign policy, other than bombing the heck out of terrorists. And we’ll see what that means, but I don’t think he’s looking to get into these big foreign adventures.His fears for the justice department:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I would be like white on rice on the Justice Department. I’d be paying a lot of attention to that. And if there is even a hint of politically motivated investigations, prosecutions, et cetera, I think you guys have to really be on top of that.How Trump – who had promoted the lie that Obama was not born in the United States – had behaved around him since winning the 2016 election:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}His interactions with me are very different than they are with the public, or, for that matter, interactions with Barack Obama, the distant figure. He’s very polite to me, and has not stopped being so. I think where he sees a vulnerability he goes after it and he takes advantage of it.With hours remaining before the government would have shut down, the House of Representatives this afternoon approved a short-term spending bill that will keep it open through December 16.The measure was approved with 230 votes in favor and 201 against. All Democrats voted for it, along with 10 Republicans. The Senate passed the bill yesterday and it now heads to Joe Biden’s desk, where his signature is expected.Beyond just keeping the government open, the spending measure allocates another $12 billion or so in aid to Ukraine, as well as additional money for disaster relief in a swath of US states. Had Congress not reached an agreement, the federal government would have run out of money on Saturday.Ginni Thomas’s testimony before the January 6 committee was hotly anticipated amid a cascade of reports in recent months showing her efforts to pressure officials nationwide to take conspiracy theories about the outcome of the 2020 election seriously.As alarming as those reports were, considering they came from the wife of a sitting supreme court justice, Politico reports that committee members aren’t convinced she had much to do with the violence that unfolded at the Capitol or the legal effort to stop Joe Biden’s win. Bennie Thompson, the committee’s Democratic chair, said Thomas’s views were “typical” of those who believe, baselessly, that Biden had stolen the vote nearly two years ago. Jamie Raskin, another Democratic committee member, replied “I can’t say,” when asked if Thomas had given the panel any new leads. “She absolutely has a First Amendment right to take whatever positions she wants, and that means she can take as deranged a position she wants about the 2020 election,” he added.Ginni Thomas lobbied Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn 2020 election Read moreSpeaking of the January 6 committee, Fox News has some details of when it may hold its next public hearing, after one scheduled for this week was postponed due to Hurricane Ian’s approach:1/6 commitee Chairman Thompson says no hearing next week. But there will be a hearing before the election. Says interim report will come before November. No witnesses at next hearing— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) September 30, 2022
      Another factor fueling the decline in trust in the supreme court, at least among Democrats, may be Ginni Thomas, the wife of conservative justice Clarence Thomas and promoter of conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election. As Ed Pilkington reports, she stuck to those claims during an interview with the January 6 committee yesterday:Ginni Thomas, the hard-right conservative whose activities have raised conflict of interest concerns involving her husband, the US supreme court Justice Clarence Thomas, has told the committee investigating the January 6 insurrection that she still believes the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chair of the committee, told reporters following the almost five-hour private interview with Thomas that she held fast to her claim that massive fraud in the 2020 election had put Joe Biden in the White House. When asked by reporters if Thomas still believed that to be true, Thompson replied: “Yes.”The stolen election conspiracy theory – widely propagated by Trump – has never been substantiated with evidence and has been thoroughly debunked over the past two years.Ginni Thomas still believes Trump’s false claim the 2020 election was stolenRead moreCiting a US Supreme Court decision earlier this year, gun rights groups and firearms owners have launched another attempt to overturn Connecticut’s ban on certain semiautomatic rifles that was enacted in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.A new lawsuit was filed Thursday in federal court by three gun owners, the Connecticut Citizens Defense League and the Second Amendment Foundation. They are seeking to overturn the state prohibition on what they call “modern sporting arms” such as AR-15-style rifles like the one used to kill 20 first-graders and six educators at the Newtown school in 2012, The Associated Press reports..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We all deserve to live in safe communities, but denying ownership of the most commonly owned firearms in the country is not the way to achieve it. The recent US Supreme Court decision … has opened the door to this challenge, and we believe Connecticut will be hard pressed to prove its statutes are constitutional,” Holly Sullivan, president of the Connecticut Citizens Defense League, said in a statement.Connecticut attorney general William Tong hit back..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Connecticut’s gun laws save lives, and we are not going back. We will not allow weapons of war back into our schools, our houses of worship, our grocery stores, and our communities. I will vigorously defend our laws against any and every one of these baseless challenges,” Tong said.In June, the Supreme Court broadly expanded gun rights in a 6-3 ruling by the conservative majority that overturned a New York law restricting carrying guns in public and affected a half-dozen other states with similar laws.President Joe Biden has had a busy one, bouncing from the supreme court, where he attended the investiture of new justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, then back to the White House, where he celebrated the Jewish new year Rosh Hashanah and is set to give an update about the damage done by Hurricane Ian. While it was a day for ceremony at the supreme court, a new poll reaffirmed that the court’s rightward shift has taken a toll on public trust.Here’s what else happened today:
      You might think Joe Manchin would enjoy all the power the 50-50 split in the Senate gives him, as a pivotal Democratic vote. You would be wrong, apparently.
      The White House hit back against Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions, describing it as illegal and announcing new sanctions.
      Nancy Pelosi nixed an effort to impeach Donald Trump the evening after the January 6 insurrection, according to a new book that suggests a more immediate effort could have resulted in his conviction by two-thirds of the Republican-held Senate.
      The supreme court has released a photo of its new lineup, which includes Ketanji Brown Jackson:Here’s the new #SCOTUS. Photo Cred: Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States pic.twitter.com/J3bocuG5Y0— Nicole Ninh (@nicninh) September 30, 2022
      Speaking alongside vice-president Kamala Harris at a White House ceremony to celebrate the Jewish New Year Rosh Hashanah, Joe Biden made a prediction: Harris may be the first female vice president, but she won’t be the last, and a woman may succeed him in the presidency as well.The speech just wrapped up, and you can watch it here:The president changed his schedule up a bit, and decided to speak at the new year ceremony before his planned speech on Hurricane Ian.While Joe Biden didn’t speak publicly at Ketanji Brown Jackson’s investiture to the supreme court, he offered a brief comment about it on Twitter:This morning, I attended Justice Jackson’s investiture. She’s a brilliant legal mind, extraordinarily qualified, and is making history today.In fact, we’ve appointed 84 federal judges so far. No group of that many judges has been appointed as quickly, or been that diverse.— President Biden (@POTUS) September 30, 2022
      While running for president, Biden pledged to nominate a Black woman to the court, and Jackson satisfied that promise. As for the 84 federal judges appointed, that’s a nod to the rapid clip of judicial confirmations Democrats have achieved in the Senate, where they have prioritized leaving their mark on the federal judiciary.President Joe Biden will soon deliver remarks on Hurricane Ian, which did terrible damage to Florida earlier this week, and now threatens Georgia and South Carolina.Here’s the White House’s live stream of the speech:For the latest news on the devastating storm, check out The Guardian’s live blog:Hurricane Ian: death toll in Florida rises as storm bears down on South Carolina – liveRead more More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Pelosi reportedly resisted Democrats’ effort to impeach Trump on January 6 – live

      by

      On January 6, “Republican tempers were running so hot against Trump that forcing them to choose sides in the Senate that week could easily have resulted in his impeachment, conviction, and disqualification from any future run for the White House,” The Intercept reported, based on the forthcoming book “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump.”It would have been a massive break if it happened. GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate had generally grinned and beared it through the four years Trump had been in the White House, even when he said or did things that went against their stated beliefs. But the up-close violence of the insurrection changed things, according to the book written by two reporters from The Washington Post and Politico. Had the House gone through with impeaching Trump that very evening, a vote to convict may have won the two-thirds majority in the Senate needed to succeed, removing Trump from office and barring him from running again.Reality was much more tepid. The Democrat-controlled House did vote to impeach Trump a week after January 6, and a month later, when he had already left the White House, the Republican-held Senate took a vote on whether to convict him. While 57 senators, including seven Republicans and all Democrats, voted to do so, that was 10 votes short of the supermajority needed, meaning Trump escaped punishment for the insurrection – at least for now.The newest supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson had a star-studded investiture ceremony today, featuring president Joe Biden, who appointed her to the bench, vice-president Kamala Harris, attorney general Merrick Garland and the rest of the supreme court.The event was ceremonial, since Jackson had already been sworn in by Harris. It feature brief remarks from chief justice John Roberts, who administered an oath to Jackson. While cameras were not allowed inside the court during the ceremony, the pair later strolled down its front steps, where Jackson was greeted by her husband: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson photo following U.S. Supreme Court investiture ceremony. #SCOTUS pic.twitter.com/bAlmg6omgg— CSPAN (@cspan) September 30, 2022
      Jackson is expected to join the court’s three-member liberal bloc, which often ends up in the minority in decisions written by the six-member conservative majority.The White House has strongly condemned Russian president Vladimir Putin’s annexation of four regions of Ukraine, saying the move is “phony” and illegal under international law.Here’s the full statement from president Joe Biden:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The United States condemns Russia’s fraudulent attempt today to annex sovereign Ukrainian territory. Russia is violating international law, trampling on the United Nations Charter, and showing its contempt for peaceful nations everywhere. Make no mistake: these actions have no legitimacy. The United States will always honor Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders. We will continue to support Ukraine’s efforts to regain control of its territory by strengthening its hand militarily and diplomatically, including through the $1.1 billion in additional security assistance the United States announced this week. In response to Russia’s phony claims of annexation, the United States, together with our Allies and partners, are announcing new sanctions today. These sanctions will impose costs on individuals and entities — inside and outside of Russia — that provide political or economic support to illegal attempts to change the status of Ukrainian territory. We will rally the international community to both denounce these moves and to hold Russia accountable. We will continue to provide Ukraine with the equipment it needs to defend itself, undeterred by Russia’s brazen effort to redraw the borders of its neighbor. And I look forward to signing legislation from Congress that will provide an additional $12 billion to support Ukraine. I urge all members of the international community to reject Russia’s illegal attempts at annexation and to stand with the people of Ukraine for as long as it takes.Washington responded to the move with a fresh battery of sanctions targeting hundreds of people and companies. The Guardian’s live blog has the latest on Russia’s decision, and the ongoing war in Ukraine:Russia-Ukraine war live: Kyiv applies for Nato membership after Putin annexes Ukrainian regionsRead moreIf you paid even a slight amount of attention to American politics over the past two years or so, you probably heard one name come up repeatedly: Joe Manchin. The Democratic senator representing West Virginia has become a one-man chokepoint for much of the legislation proposed by his party, whose control of the Senate is so slim they can’t afford a single defection on bills that Republicans refused to support. One of the party’s most conservative senators, Manchin is known for his opposition to changing the filibuster to make it easier to pass legislation in the chamber – a stand on which he was joined by Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema – and for opposing several proposals to fight climate change, which earned him the ire of activists who said he was beholden to the fossil fuel industry.Democrats also control the House, but it is the even 50-50 split in the Senate that gives Manchin so much power. One might think he enjoys it, but NBC News reports today that is apparently not the case. “I’m just praying to God it’s not 50-50 again,” he told the network when they spoke to him in the run-up to the 8 November midterms, where voters could widen Democrats’ majority in the chamber, or return it to Republican control. “I’d like for Democrats to be 51-49. But whatever happens, I hope it’s not a 50-50.”Manchin didn’t open up much about why he felt this way, saying only, “It is what it is. You’ve got to do your job.”U-turn as Manchin agrees deal with Democrats on major tax and climate billRead moreSpeaking of the midterms, The Cook Political Report has a good summary of where things stand in the race for control of the House, which Republicans are generally seen as having a good chance of retaking:New @CookPolitical ratings (after #OH09 move): 212 seats at least Lean R, 193 at least Lean D and 30 Toss Ups. That means Rs only need to win 20% of Toss Ups to win control, Ds need to win 83% to hold the majority. pic.twitter.com/O85ruNfYxD— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) September 30, 2022
      The aftershocks from the January 6 insurrection extend far beyond Trump.In Arizona, Mark Finchem, a Republican running for the post of secretary of state overseeing elections, was on the defensive last night when his Democratic opponent accused him in a debate of being an insurrectionist for attending the rally preceding the January 6 attack on the Capitol.“The last time I checked, being at a place where something’s happening is not illegal,’’ replied Finchem, The East Valley Tribune reports. Finchem attended Trump’s speech before the crowd attacked the building, but there’s no proof he entered the Capitol itself. The Tribune reports that Finchem had earlier said he “went to Washington to deliver a ‘book of evidence’ to federal lawmakers about claimed irregularities in the 2020 vote in Arizona – material that came out of a hearing in Phoenix involving attorney Rudy Giuliani and other Trump supporters.” He also posted a photo of the Capitol rioters, writing, this is “what happens when people feel they have been ignored, and Congress refuses to acknowledge rampant fraud.’’His Democratic opponent Adrian Fontes rejected Finchem’s explanation, saying, “What he did is engage in a violent insurrection and try to overturn the very Constitution that holds this nation together.”Arizona voters will decide the race in the 8 November midterm elections.A judge appointed by Donald Trump delivered a ruling in his favor yesterday amid the ongoing investigation of government secrets found at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Hugo Lowell reports:A federal judge ruled on Thursday that Donald Trump would not have to provide a sworn declaration that the FBI supposedly “planted” some of the highly-sensitive documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago resort, as he has suggested, until his lawyers have reviewed the seized materials.The order from US district court judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the special master case and is a Trump appointee, also pushed back several key interim deadlines that consequently extends the review’s final date of completion from the end of November to mid-December.Cannon’s ruling means Trump does not have to confirm under oath his insinuations that the FBI manufactured evidence – one of several assertions he has made, without evidence, in recent weeks that could be used against him should he be charged over illegal retention of government documents.Trump not required to provide sworn declaration that FBI ‘planted’ evidenceRead moreHere’s a revelation from “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America”, another forthcoming book on his presidency, about how Trump came up with his reason for keeping his tax returns secret. Martin Pengelly reports:According to a new book, Donald Trump came up with his famous excuse for not releasing his tax returns on the fly – literally, while riding his campaign plane during the 2016 Republican primary.Every American president or nominee since Richard Nixon had released his or her tax returns. Trump refused to do so.In her eagerly awaited book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman describes the scene on Trump’s plane just before Super Tuesday, 1 March 2016.Trump, she says, was discussing the issue with aides including Corey Lewandowski, then his campaign manager, and his press secretary, Hope Hicks. The aides, Haberman says, pointed out that as Trump was about to be confirmed as the favourite for the Republican nomination, the problem needed to be addressed.Trump made up audit excuse for not releasing tax returns on the fly, new book saysRead moreOn January 6, “Republican tempers were running so hot against Trump that forcing them to choose sides in the Senate that week could easily have resulted in his impeachment, conviction, and disqualification from any future run for the White House,” The Intercept reported, based on the forthcoming book “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump.”It would have been a massive break if it happened. GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate had generally grinned and beared it through the four years Trump had been in the White House, even when he said or did things that went against their stated beliefs. But the up-close violence of the insurrection changed things, according to the book written by two reporters from The Washington Post and Politico. Had the House gone through with impeaching Trump that very evening, a vote to convict may have won the two-thirds majority in the Senate needed to succeed, removing Trump from office and barring him from running again.Reality was much more tepid. The Democrat-controlled House did vote to impeach Trump a week after January 6, and a month later, when he had already left the White House, the Republican-held Senate took a vote on whether to convict him. While 57 senators, including seven Republicans and all Democrats, voted to do so, that was 10 votes short of the supermajority needed, meaning Trump escaped punishment for the insurrection – at least for now.Good morning, US politics blog readers.Things could have gone very differently on January 6, a forthcoming book by journalists from Politico and the Washington Post reports. Enraged at Donald Trump’s apparent incitement of the mob that attacked the Capitol, a group of House Democrats moved to impeach him that very evening at a moment when enough Republicans in the Senate may have voted to convict and remove him from office.But according to a report in the Intercept, which obtained Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump before its release, House speaker Nancy Pelosi vetoed moving immediately against the then president, and the push to convict ultimately failed.The anecdote is the latest from the many books released since Trump left the White House exploring what went on behind closed doors during his presidency, but stands out for bringing to light a true turning point in American history, when one consequential course of action won out over another.Anyway, here’s what’s going on in politics today:
      Nancy Pelosi will hold her weekly press conference at 11am eastern time today in the Capitol, and you can bet she’ll be asked to comment on the Intercept’s report.
      Hurricane Ian is moving towards South Carolina after ravaging Florida. Follow the Guardian’s live blog for the latest on the storm.
      President Joe Biden is attending the investiture ceremony for supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson at 10 am eastern time, then will make a White House speech about the response to Hurricane Ian at 11.30am. More

    • 100 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans playing the migration card: Politics Weekly America

      by

      More ways to listen

      Apple Podcasts

      Google Podcasts

      Spotify

      RSS Feed

      Download

      Share on Facebook

      Share on Twitter

      Share via Email

      Ana Ceballos, a political reporter for the Miami Herald, tells Jonathan Freedland about the Republican party’s attempts to dramatise the question of migration ahead of November’s midterm elections

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      After Governor Ron DeSantis sent migrants in Florida on planes to Martha’s Vineyard – the predominantly Democratic enclave in Massachusetts – we look at Republican attempts to use the issue of migration as a vote winner. Will it work? Subscribe to The Guardian’s new six-part series Can I Tell You a Secret? on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to theguardian.com/supportpodcasts More