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      Trump’s worst toadies hold degrees from Harvard and Yale. Did they learn anything? | Robert Reich

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      Trump’s worst toadies hold degrees from Harvard and Yale. Did they learn anything?Robert ReichPoliticians educated at some of the US’s most elite universities are spreading conspiracy theories that they surely know are untrue. What happened to ‘service and stewardship’? The original justification for elite higher education in the United States was to train the future leaders of American democracy. As Charles W Eliot, who became president of Harvard in 1869, noted, Harvard existed to inculcate the ideals of “service and stewardship”.Since then, Harvard has produced eight US presidents; Yale, five. (Stanford can boast Herbert Hoover, if it feels compelled to do so.)Elite universities have also produced a disproportionate number of senators and representatives from both parties. In fact, Republicans elected to the Senate over the last decade are more likely than their Democratic counterparts to have attended Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Stanford.So how to explain Elise Stefanik, Harvard class of 2006, now the third-ranking House Republican, who recently called the January 6 hearings a “partisan witch-hunt”, voted to invalidate the 2020 election, and has repeated Trump’s big lie of election fraud?Or Josh Hawley, Stanford class of 2002 and Yale law class of 2006, now senator from Missouri, who in December 2020 became the first US senator to announce plans to object to the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, then led Senate efforts to overturn the electoral college vote count, and fist-bumped the rioters on January 6?Or Ted Cruz, Princeton class of 1992 and Harvard law class of 1995, now senator from Texas, who in late 2020 joined in John Eastman’s and Trump’s plot to object to the election results in six swing states and delay accepting the electoral college results on January 6, potentially enabling Republican state legislatures to overturn them?And how to explain a new crop of Republican Senate candidates?JD Vance, Yale Law class of 2013, now Republican candidate for the Senate from Ohio, has claimed that there “were certainly people voting illegally on a large-scale basis” in the 2020 election. When asked earlier this year if he thought the 2020 election was “stolen”, he said, “Yeah, I do.”Blake Masters, Stanford class of 2008 and Stanford law class of 2012, now the Republican candidate for the Senate from Arizona, has declared in campaign ads that “Trump won”. He promotes rightwing “replacement theory” – that Democrats favor illegal immigration “so that someday they can ‘amnesty’ these people and make them voters who they expect to vote Democrat”.These alumni of America’s finest institutions of higher education haven’t adhered to their alma maters’ ideals of service and stewardship of American democracy. In fact, they’re actively wrecking American democracy.Nor can these elite graduates claim they don’t know any better. Most third-graders can distinguish a lie from the truth.No, these scions of the most prestigious halls of American academe are knowingly and intentionally abetting the most dangerous attack on American democracy since the civil war.Whatever did they learn from their rarefied education? Obviously, zilch.The core of a good liberal arts education is ethics. The central question is the meaning of a good society. This has been the case since the 18th century, when most of America’s prestigious institutions of higher education were founded.Adam Smith, the progenitor of modern economics, didn’t call his field economics. He called it “moral philosophy”, and thought his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments more important than his The Wealth of Nations.Edmund Burke – Irish statesman and philosopher, and godfather of modern conservatism – didn’t advise that people in public life seek power above all else. He argued that they owe the public their “judgment and conscience”.There is no single answer to the meaning of a good society, of course. It is the pursuit of it that draws on one’s judgment and conscience. This is why higher education has advanced the role of reason in human affairs and stood for the Enlightenment values of democracy and the rule of law.But this new crop of Republican pretenders hasn’t learned anything of the kind. They are practitioners of a much earlier and more cynical set of ideas: that might makes right, that the purpose of human endeavor is to gain power, and that ambition and treachery trump (excuse the verb) all other values.I can’t help wondering: what do they see when they look in the mirror each morning? And what do they tell themselves after a day of deceit?Any of them who tries to justify the despicable means they are employing by telling themselves they can do more good by gaining or keeping power is under a dangerous illusion. As the great civil rights leader Bayard Rustin once said, “If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end.”These products of the best education America has to offer are betraying the core values of America.They deserve only shame.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionRepublicansDonald TrumpHarvard UniversityYale UniversitycommentReuse this content More

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      Democratic ads boosted extremists in Republican primaries. Was that wise?

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      Democratic ads boosted extremists in Republican primaries. Was that wise? Helping election-denying, Trump-endorsed candidates may secure a more beatable general election opponent but some see it as a cynical and morally dubious moveWhen Peter Meijer voted to impeach Donald Trump, breaking with nearly all of his Republican colleagues in one of his first acts as a newly elected member of Congress, Democrats praised him as the kind of principled conservative his party – and the nation – desperately needed.But this election season, as Meijer fought for his political survival against a Trump-endorsed election denier in a primary contest for a Michigan House seat, Democrats twisted the knife and helped his extremist opponent win.It is part of a risky, and some say downright dangerous, strategy Democrats are using in races for House, Senate and governor: spending money in Republican primaries to elevate far-right candidates over more mainstream conservatives in the hope that voters will recoil from the election-denying radicals in November.How a Trump-backed ‘QAnon whack job’ won with Democratic ‘collusion’Read moreIn Michigan, the gamble paid off – for now. Meijer lost after the House Democrats’ official campaign arm spent $425,000 to elevate Meijer’s opponent, John Gibbs, a former Trump administration official who asserted, falsely, that Joe Biden’s victory was “simply mathematically impossible”.It is impossible to know what impact the Democrats’ ad had on the race, but cost more than the Gibbs campaign raised.Now, as the primary season nears its conclusion and the political battlefield takes shape, Democrats will soon learn whether the gambit was successful. While election deniers have prevailed in Republican primaries across the country without any aid from Democrats, critics say the effort has already undermined the party’s grave warnings about the threats to democracy.“It is immoral and dangerous,” said Richard Hasen, a UCLA law professor and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project. He said the risk of miscalculation was great, particularly at a moment when the January 6 committee is attempting to show just how destructive Trump’s stolen election myth has been for American democracy.“It’s hard for Democrats to take the high road when they’re cynically boosting some of these candidates in order to try to gain an advantage in the general election,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that what Democrats are doing is as bad as what Republicans are doing, but it still makes it objectionable.”Meijer’s defeat has fueled a sharp debate among Democrats over the potential perils of the tactic, especially as the party warns of the risks posed by these very Republicans. But others argue it’s a necessary and calculated gamble in pursuit of keeping a dangerous party from winning power.“If you let Republicans back in power, it is going to be those Maga Republicans who are going to take away your rights, your benefits and your freedom,” Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said, defending the strategy in a recent interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “We need to stop it.”The president’s party historically loses ground during the midterms. Decades-high inflation and widespread frustration with leaders in Washington have dragged Joe Biden’s approval ratings to record lows, hampering Democrats’ efforts to preserve their razor-thin majorities in Congress.The ads are ostensibly scripted as an attack – highlighting a candidate’s loyalty to Trump and their conservative views on abortion. In Michigan, for example, Democrats charged that Gibbs was “handpicked by Trump to run for Congress” and “too conservative” for the district. But when aired during a primary, the message is intended to appeal to the conservative base.“The voters in the Republican primary had agency,” said Bill Saxton, the Democratic party chair in Kent county. “They had two choices.”Saxton, whose county is situated in the west Michigan district, said it was now time to set aside the bickering over tactics and focus on the real threat: Gibbs’s extremism.In 2020, Gibbs could not win Senate confirmation to direct Trump’s Office of Personnel Management over past comments he made, among them calling Democrats the party of “‘Islam, gender-bending, anti-police, ‘u racist!’”. Democrats’ efforts to pick their opponents extends far beyond a single Michigan House race. They have deployed this strategy in House, Senate and governor’s races across the country.In Maryland, the Democratic Governors Association boosted Dan Cox, who attended the January 6 rally and called Vice-President Mike Pence a “traitor” for not stopping the congressional certification of Biden’s victory as Trump wished. He won the party’s nomination for governor. That was after Democrats’ spent millions of dollars to successfully promote the Trump-backed election denier in the Illinois Republican gubernatorial primary. Both states lean Democratic and the party is reasonably confident their candidate will prevail.The race causing the most angst is in battleground Pennsylvania. There the Democratic nominee for governor, Josh Shapiro, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in TV ads boosting the rightwing extremist Doug Mastriano – far more than the candidate spent on his own campaign. Mastriano, who attended the January 6 rally and has cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 election, is now the Republican nominee in a swing state where the chief elections officer is appointed by the governor.Polls show a tight race.The strategy hasn’t always worked. In California, the incumbent Republican congressman David Valadao narrowly beat back a rightwing challenger despite Democratic spending on ads that highlighted his vote to impeach Trump.And in Colorado, an outside group aligned with Democrats spent millions to boost an election denier who marched to the Capitol with rioters on January 6 over a relatively moderate Republican, businessman Joe O’Dea, in the race to take on the Democratic senator Michael Bennet. O’Dea won and now the resources Democrats spent to make him unpalatable to the Republican base may help him appeal to moderate and independent swing voters.Meddling in the opposition’s primary is not a new tactic. In 2012, Claire McCaskill, then a Democratic senator from Missouri, was facing a difficult re-election in a state where Barack Obama was deeply unpopular.Surveying her prospective opponents, she devised a plan to lift the one she thought would be the weakest candidate, the far-right congressman Todd Akin. It worked: he won the primary, and she beat him decisively in the general.But a decade later, she is urging caution.“This has to be done very carefully,” she told NPR, adding: “You also have to be careful what you wish for.”Maloney, the DCCC chair, has said the committee has a “high bar” for meddling in a Republican primary, but insisted that there are races where it “does make sense”. Still, it has become an issue for Maloney in his own primary race, where his challenger, Alessandra Biaggi, has accused him of playing “Russian roulette with our democracy”.Some Democrats have also expressed misgivings about punishing the few Republicans willing to stand up to Trump. David Axelrod, a longtime Democratic strategist and political adviser to Barack Obama, said Democrats’ involvement in Meijer’s primary “makes them an instrument of Trump’s vengeance”.Trump’s support has been one of the most decisive factors in choosing the party’s standard bearers, not Democrats, said David Turner, a spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association. In these races, he said Democrats seized the opportunity to expose a prospective opponent’s extremism early and pre-emptively blunt any attempt to “pivot” toward the mainstream during the general election.Turner blamed Republican leaders for being “too cowardly to tell their voters the truth” about the 2020 election, a failure that he said ensured the success of election-deniers in the GOP’s 2022 nominating contests.In Pennsylvania, one of Mastriano’s chief rivals was Lou Barletta, a signatory to the state’s fake elector scheme. And in Colorado, the candidate deemed more moderate won the Republican primary for governor but then selected an election denier to be her running mate.“There aren’t any Liz Cheneys running for governor,” he said, referring to the Republican vice chair of the January 6 committee who may lose her primary over efforts to hold Trump accountable. “In terms of gubernatorial candidates, the scary part is that all these Republicans are regurgitating the same Maga talking points.”Still, some Democrats argue that they are being held to a different standard than Republicans, who have failed to hold Trump and loyalists in Congress accountable. They say Republicans often cheer their leaders for being ruthless while Democrats are criticized for refusing to play hardball, especially when the stakes are the highest.As a result of gerrymandering, Republican dominance of the redistricting process and historical trends, Democrats see few opportunities to flip House seats this cycle. Michigan’s third congressional district is one of them.Gibbs has downplayed the impact of the ads, and projected confidence that he can win in November.Hillary Scholten, the Democrat who will face him in the Michigan House race and had no involvement in the DCCC’s decision, called the focus on her party’s tactics an unwanted distraction from the issues voters care most about.Scholten said: “It is the Republicans that decided who they wanted in their primary, and they chose John Gibbs, an extremist that embraces conspiracy theories and is way out of step with west Michigan. I’m focused on making sure he doesn’t get to Congress.”Her newly redrawn Michigan district is considerably more favorable to Democrats this cycle than it was two years ago. And many Democrats believe Scholten, a former justice department attorney in the Obama administration who came close to beating Meijer in 2020, would have been a strong contender in a rematch.While many are confident she can beat Gibbs, those still haunted by Trump’s against-the-odds victory in 2016 fear that in a “wave” election, Republicans deemed unelectable could be swept to power.On the eve of his primary race, Meijer lashed Democrats in an online essay that accused them of “sell[ing] out any pretense of principle for political expediency”.“Republican voters will be blamed if any of these candidates are ultimately elected,” Meijer wrote in an online essay published on the eve of the primary, “but there is no doubt Democrats’ fingerprints will be on the weapon. We should never forget it.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsDemocratsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Republican who voted to impeach Trump projected to win primary

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      Republican who voted to impeach Trump projected to win primaryDan Newhouse, one of 10 members of Congress to vote for impeachment, set to beat Trump-backed Loren Culp in Washington state Dan Newhouse, one of the few Republican House members to vote in January in favor of the impeachment of Donald Trump, is poised to move forward to the general election in Washington state, according to a projection by the Associated Press.Viktor Orbán turns Texas conference into transatlantic far-right love-inRead moreNewhouse was one of 10 Republicans who voted in January to have Trump impeached, even ahead of explosive revelations about the former president’s support and endorsement of the January 6 riots just a year prior.This victory comes on the heels of another fellow Republican supporter of the impeachment, Peter Meijer, losing his votes in Michigan.Republican Loren Culp, who has been backed by Trump in the election, was a close second to Newhouse in Washington’s fourth congressional district, garnering the second highest number of Republican votes in four out of the eight counties. In some of the counties where Newhouse won, however, he received almost double the number of votes as Culp.Sign up to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every weekday morning at 7am BSTCulp was up against six other Republican candidates, and will face Doug White, the district’s only Democratic candidate, in November for the general election.Despite his victory, the journey has rarely been smooth for Newhouse. Following his vote for impeachment in January, six Republican leaders in his district demanded his resignation.He defended his position, claiming he “made a decision to vote based on my oath to support and defend the constitution”.On 2 August, he had majority votes in three out of those six counties that had voted for his resignation.TopicsRepublicansUS politicsWashington stateDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Viktor Orbán turns Texas conference into transatlantic far-right love-in

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      Viktor Orbán turns Texas conference into transatlantic far-right love-in The authoritarian Hungarian leader was embraced as a kindred spirit by Trump fans at the CPAC event in Dallas“The globalists can all go to hell,” declared Viktor Orbán. “I have come to Texas!”The crowd roared, whooped and gave a standing ovation as if at a campaign rally for former US president Donald Trump. It was evident they saw in Orbán a kindred spirit – a blunt weapon to wield against liberal foes.Orbán urges Christian nationalists in Europe and US to ‘unite forces’ at CPACRead moreThe Hungarian prime minister was the opening speaker at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas, and perhaps the most vivid demonstration yet of the mutual and rapidly growing affinity between the far right in America and Europe.Orbán, who has been prime minister for 12 years, boasted about his hardline stance on illegal immigration, law and order and “gender ideology” in schools. He touted a rise in marriages and fall in abortions. He was unapologetic in his defence of blood-and-soil nationalism and contempt for “leftist media”.And extraordinarily for a foreign leader, he overtly sided with an opposition party – the Republicans – rather than the incumbent Democrats, paying homage to Trump at his golf club in Bedminister, New Jersey, while ignoring Joe Biden at the White House.Calling for Christian nationalists to “unite forces”, Orbán told CPAC: “Victory will never be found by taking the path of least resistance. We must take back the institutions in Washington and in Brussels. We must find friends and allies in one another. We must coordinate the movements of our troops because we face the same challenge.”He noted that US midterm elections will be later this year followed by the presidential contest and European parliamentary elections in 2024. “These two locations will define the two fronts in the battle being fought for western civilisation. Today, we hold neither of them. Yet we need both.”Rarely has the alliance between nationalist parties across the Atlantic been so bold, overt and unshackled. CPAC was once the domain of cold warrior Ronald Reagan. But in recent years guest speakers have included the Brexit cheerleader Nigel Farage and Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, niece of the far-right French politician Marine Le Pen.On Friday the lineup included Steve Bannon, who has worked with openly racist far-right leaders across Europe and once leased a medieval monastery outside Rome to run a “populism bootcamp”.Bannon is former executive chairman of Breitbart News, which he once described as “the platform of the ‘alt-right’”, a movement associated with efforts to preserve “white identity” and defend “western values”. He served as chief strategist in the Trump White House and is now facing prison after being convicted of contempt of Congress for failing to comply with the January 6 committee.CPAC Texas also heard from the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who railed against the media and told the audience: “When I said that I’m a Christian nationalist, I have nothing to be ashamed of because that’s what most Americans are.” The event will close on Saturday with Trump who, like Orbán, has faced scrutiny over his relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow at the non-profit group Right Wing Watch, said: “Rightwing leaders, and especially the religious right leaders in the US, love Viktor Orbán for the same reasons they love Vladimir Putin. This overt embrace of Christian nationalism, willingness to use strongman tactics and the power of the government to enforce so-called traditional values about family and sexuality.”Montgomery added: “We’ve actually seen some signs of that illiberalism and authoritarianism on the Trumpist right in their efforts to ban the teaching of racism in schools, in their aggressive attacks against LGBTQ materials and information in schools and libraries, and even their encouragement of harassment and violence that we’ve seen against election officials and school board members.“All those signs are signs of a disturbing embrace of authoritarianism on the US right and Orbán is a model and a hero for that to them.”Orbán has few bigger fans than Tucker Carlson, a Fox News host who interviewed him during a week-long broadcast from Hungary last year. Carlson has promoted “great replacement theory” – the baseless claim of a plot to turn white people into a minority through immigration – in 400 of his shows, according to an analysis by the New York Times.Orbán’s visit to the US came amid backlash over anti-migrant remarks in which he warned that Europeans must not “become peoples of mixed race” and cited The Camp of the Saints, a 1973 French novel by Jean Raspail that portrays a dystopia in which a flotilla of south Asian people invade France. The novel has also been promoted by Trump allies such as Bannon and Stephen Miller.Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “Orbán represents a quiet part out loud element of today’s Republican party. That quiet part out loud is the overt appeal to racial politics, the not-bothering-to-hide-it white supremacy element of the global alt-right and authoritarian movement. Donald Trump was the thing that let it loose in the US.“Orbán has struck a set of blows against the media in Hungary, which is one of their main targets here. He has overtly embraced the sort of white replacement politics that are so popular with the Tucker Carlson set and a lot of the other folks that are members of the American Maga [Make America great again] movement.”Wilson, author of Everything Trump Touches Dies, added: “Those things have all added up to giving Orbán a kind of fanboy following in the US of people who were once conservative Republicans and who are now racially driven authoritarian wannabes. He’s the guy who’s pulling it off at a scale that Donald Trump didn’t achieve in the US.”That appeal includes a stealth attack on democracy. Critics say that Hungary’s judiciary, media and other institutions are suffering death by a thousand cuts as Orbán slowly and surely consolidates power. His rightwing Fidesz party has drawn legislative districts in Hungary in a way that makes it very difficult for opposition parties to win seats – not dissimilar to partisan gerrymandering efforts for state legislative and congressional seats in America. The process currently favors Republicans because they control more of the state legislatures that create those boundaries.And at CPAC, purveyors of Trump’s “big lie” – the false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him – held prominent slots. Mike Lindell, chief executive of MyPillow, pushed preposterous conspiracy theories about voting machines. Several speakers denounced the congressional investigation into the January 6 insurrection as a sham.Kurt Bardella, an adviser to the Democratic National Committee, said of Orbán: “They see a blueprint for fascism. They see someone who embodies the Republican party’s values of obstructing free and fair elections, of undermining democratic institutions, of expanding government power and politicising the judicial branch, marginalising minority communities and corrupting the pillars of a free society.“When you talk about an autocratic regime, that’s what Prime Minister Orbán is in Hungary and it’s exactly the blueprint that Republicans are hoping to follow here in the United States of America. It’s not surprising in the least that, especially in a place like CPAC Texas, these rightwing white nationalists are embracing someone like Orbán.”Earlier this year, when CPAC held an event in Europe, it naturally chose Hungary. Orbán remains an outlier on the continent – for now. Le Pen lost the French presidential election to Emmanuel Macron, though she gained the far right’s biggest share of the vote yet. In Italy Giorgia Meloni, leader of a party with neofascist origins, is strongly positioned to become prime minister after snap elections this autumn.Robert P Jones, founder and chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute thinktank in Washington and author of White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, said: “There is this identifiable movement. The difference in many of the European countries is it is represented in minority parties.“In the US now, I think it’s safe to say that this ethno-religious vision of the country has taken over one of our two major political parties. Even demographically speaking, nearly seven in 10 Republicans are white and Christian today in a country that’s only 44% white and Christian. You can see that identity taking hold as the animating beating heart of the party. It’s a really dangerous situation.”TopicsCPACThe far rightViktor OrbánUS politicsRepublicansHungaryfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Dick Cheney attacks Donald Trump as ‘greatest threat to our republic’

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      Dick Cheney attacks Donald Trump as ‘greatest threat to our republic’Vice-president under George W Bush denounces, in campaign ad for daughter Liz, ‘coward … who lost his election, and lost big’ Dick Cheney has branded Donald Trump the greatest “threat to our republic”, in a new campaign ad for his daughter, Liz Cheney, who is running for re-election in Wyoming.“In our nation’s 236-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” said Cheney, who served as vice-president for two terms under George W Bush.Alex Jones: Sandy Hook family seeks punitive damages beyond $4.1m awardRead moreCheney said: “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him.“He is a coward. A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters. He lost his election, and he lost big. I know it, he knows it, and deep down I think most Republicans know it.”Cheney went on to speak about how proud he was of his daughter “for standing up to the truth, doing what’s right, honoring her oath to the constitution when so many in our party are too scared to do so”.The one-minute ad featured the elder Cheney’s sharpest public attacks against Trump to date. Best known as the most powerful vice-president in American history, and a major figure in leading the US to war in Iraq, he has taken to defending his daughter in her fight against Trump.“There’s nothing more important she will ever do than lead the effort to make sure Donald Trump is never near the Oval Office. And she will succeed,” he said in the ad.The younger Cheney has been widely praised from liberals as vice-chairwoman of the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack. Cheney has been one of Trump’s most pointed critics, accusing him of violating the constitution for his role in the insurrection.In return, she has been largely ostracized from her party. Cheney faces an uphill re-election battle against the Trump-backed candidate Harriet Hageman, who maintains that the 2020 election was stolen.“Liz Cheney has long forgotten she works for Wyoming (or perhaps she never knew), not the Radical Democrats,” Hageman tweeted on Thursday. “Wyoming deserves a Congresswoman who will represent us AND our conservative values. It’s time to retire elitist Liz Cheney.”Though Cheney has at least a million dollars more in donations to her campaign against Hageman, she was 22 points behind Hageman in a July poll conducted by the Casper Star-Tribune.In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Cheney said she does not expect to lose on 16 August.“I really believe that the people of Wyoming fundamentally understand how important fidelity to the constitution is – understand how important it is that we fight for those fundamental principles on which everything else is based,” she said.TopicsRepublicansWyomingUS politicsDick CheneyDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump-backed candidate Kari Lake projected to win Republican nod for Arizona governor

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      Trump-backed candidate Kari Lake projected to win Republican nod for Arizona governorFormer news anchor campaigned on proposed election measures, including bans on vote-counting machines and voting by mail Kari Lake, a former news anchor who has embraced Donald Trump’s false claims that voter fraud cost him the 2020 election, has been projected to win the Republican nomination for governor of Arizona.Lake campaigned on enacting many new election measures, including getting rid of vote-counting machines and banning voting by mail.Edison Research and NBC News both projected Lake’s victory late on Thursday over Karrin Taylor Robson, who was endorsed by Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence.Along with primary wins for Mark Finchem as Republican nominee for secretary of state and Abraham Hamadeh for state attorney general, Arizona, a key swing state, is now facing three election-denier candidates for its top positions overseeing the conduct of elections – including certifying the results.According to NBC, Lake had 46.8% of the vote to Taylor Robson’s 44% with 90% of the expected vote counted.Lake did not dispute the results of her own election victory. She said it showed that people “forgotten by the establishment just delivered a political earthquake”.TopicsArizonaDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansUS midterm elections 2022newsReuse this content More

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      On the chopping block? Ron Johnson denies threatening social security

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      On the chopping block? Ron Johnson denies threatening social securitySpokesman for Wisconsin senator targeted by Democrats in midterms says he is not trying to end spending on key programs A swing-state Republican senator denied threatening social security and Medicare, after Democrats accused him of putting them “on the chopping block”.‘I can’t live on $709 a month’: Americans on social security push for its expansionRead moreRon Johnson, who entered Congress on the Tea Party wave of 2010, is up for re-election in Wisconsin. As they attempt to keep hold of the Senate, Democrats think they have a chance of winning the seat.In an interview with The Regular Joe Show podcast, Johnson said social security and Medicare, crucial support programs for millions of older and disabled Americans and their dependents, should no longer be considered mandatory spending.“If you qualify for the entitlement, you just get it no matter what the cost,” Johnson said. “And our problem in this country is that more than 70% of our federal budget, of our federal spending, is all mandatory spending. It’s on automatic pilot … you just don’t do proper oversight. You don’t get in there and fix the programs going bankrupt.”He added: “What we ought to be doing is we ought to turn everything into discretionary spending so it’s all evaluated so that we can fix problems or fix programs that are broken, that are going to be going bankrupt. As long as things are on automatic pilot, we just continue to pile up debt.”Democrats pounced. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate majority leader, referred to Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan when he said: “They’re saying the quiet part out loud. Maga Republicans want to put social security and Medicare on the chopping block.”A Johnson spokesperson said Schumer was “lying”.The spokesperson said Johnson’s “point was that without fiscal discipline and oversight typically found with discretionary spending, Congress has allowed the guaranteed benefits for programs like social security and Medicare to be threatened.“This must be addressed by Congress taking its responsibilities seriously to ensure that seniors don’t need to question whether the programs they depend on remain solvent.”Social security payments average just over $1,600 a month.Last year, Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, told the Guardian: “The nation is really facing a retirement income crisis, where too many people aren’t going to be able to retire and maintain savings to live on. It’s a very strong system, but its benefits are extremely low by virtually any way you measure them.”Democrats see Republican threats to so-called “entitlements” – programs paid for by taxes and relied upon by vulnerable people – as a potent electoral issue. Polls show strong bipartisan support.From Joe Biden to leaders in Congress, Democrats have seized on a plan published by Rick Scott of Florida, the chair of the Republican Senate campaign committee.Scott proposed that all Americans should pay some income tax and that all federal laws should expire after five years if Congress does not renew them.The senator insisted he was “not going to raise anybody’s taxes” – despite saying more people should pay tax. He also said Congress “needs to start being honest with the American public and tell them exactly what we’re going to do to make sure they continue to get their Medicare and their social security”.But his own leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said: “We will not have, as part of our agenda, a bill that raises taxes on half the American people and sunsets social security and Medicare within five years.”Wisconsin will hold its primaries on Tuesday. Johnson is being challenged by the current lieutenant governor, Mandela Barnes.Jessica Taylor of the Cook Political Report told Wisconsin Public Radio Johnson was national Democrats’ “No 1 incumbent … that they are targeting”.TopicsRepublicansWisconsinUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Time is running out. The justice department must indict Trump | Laurence H Tribe and Dennis Aftergut

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      Time is running out. The Department of Justice must indict and convict TrumpLaurence H Tribe and Dennis AftergutIf Trump or any of the likely Republican nominees win in 2024, they will immediately move to protect those who attempted to overturn the 2020 election On Tuesday CNN reported that key January 6 texts have been erased by officials of Donald Trump’s defense department in addition to homeland security and the Secret Service. Not even a clueless Hamlet could avoid smelling “something rotten in the state of Denmark”.With the growing list of deletions, there is a whole new criminal conspiracy to investigate: one to destroy evidence of the grave federal crimes already under investigation. Nothing so focuses the prosecutorial mind or underscores the need to accelerate a criminal investigation as evidence that the investigation’s target may have plotted to erase the proof of his wrongdoing that is needed to hold him accountable.Trump’s attempted coup continues – even after January 6 hearings are over for now | Robert ReichRead moreThe attorney general, Merrick Garland, knows that the fish always rots from the head. On 26 July, the Washington Post broke news that the justice department’s investigation is focused on Donald Trump himself. Time is of the essence in bringing his case to indictment.Indeed, a moving target who gives every indication that he plans to strike again must trigger a different cost-benefit calculus in the inevitable debates both within and outside the justice department about when enough proof has been gathered to indict responsibly – and when it would be a dereliction of duty to delay further.The former president’s insistence that he has nothing to be remorseful about (other than not marching to the Capitol) makes that debate seem academic. And the steps being taken at his behest even now in battleground states to replace 2020’s failure with 2024’s success redouble the urgency. Shakespeare’s Brutus had it right when he said, in Julius Caesar: “We must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”In these circumstances, prudence counsels running the clock backwards to set clear benchmarks for moving forward. Any calculation of how to proceed must start with two pessimistic premises. First, that Trump will run in 2024 and could win. Second, that if any of the likely Republican nominees wins, the next administration will be one that is eager to scrap any prosecution of the last.Hence, the goal must be to secure a conviction before November 2024, and in any event, no later than 20 January 2025, when the next presidential term begins. It is already too late for all appeals from any such conviction to be exhausted by that date, but the key to holding the chief conspirator accountable is a jury verdict of guilt.Consider this: the trial of insurrectionist Guy Reffitt occurred 13 months after his original indictment. That trial, and its delaying pre-trial motions, were incalculably less complex than Trump’s would be. One can easily anticipate motions that, if denied, might go far up the appellate chain.It is not hard to imagine a majority of supreme court justices in no great hurry to resolve motions upon which the start of trial could depend. One can easily conceive a 20-month or longer period with the former president indicted but not yet tried. If Trump is not formally charged until January 2023, that would imply a multi-month trial starting in September or October. Should he run for president and win in November, we would have a president-elect in the middle of a criminal trial.Part of why a lengthy post-indictment/pre-verdict period is foreseeable is that federal district courts are bound to protect an accused’s rights to full airing of pre-trial claims and the time needed to file and argue them. Trump will have many pre-trial claims, setting out his serial and inexhaustible list of grievances, the imagined violation of his rights, his purported immunity from prosecution as a former president and the overriding unfairness of it all.Some district court judges more than others will balance protections for the accused with accountability’s pragmatic need for speed. Importantly, even the four Trump-appointed district court judges in DC have often shown little sympathy for those charged with perpetrating the events of January 6 or resisting their investigation. On 1 August, Judge Dabney Friedrich sentenced Reffitt to more than seven years in prison, the longest sentence to date.Judge Tim Kelly refused to dismiss indictments against Proud Boy leaders who were part of the January 6 siege. Judge Carl Nichols brooked no nonsense in Steve Bannon’s July trial, deliberately preventing it from becoming the “political circus” Bannon sought to make it.On the other hand, among eight judges who have considered defendants’ motions to dismiss federal charges of obstructing an official government proceeding – Congress’s January 6 election certification session – Nichols was the lone outlier who dismissed the count. That is one of the main charges that observers believe federal prosecutors could bring against Trump.The point is that if Trump were to be indicted, the Department of Justice cannot count on a favorable judge putting it on a jet stream to an actual trial. So what does that mean for precisely when Trump must be formally indicted?Thankfully, it doesn’t imply the impossible. The Department of Justice could pull an experienced prosecutor or two from every US attorney’s office and put them together on the case.With all stops pulled, prosecutors still have time to do what is needed before year end. The tasks include talking to witnesses that the January 6 House committee interviewed and deposed, which is well under way. Cassidy Hutchinson, principal aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Vice-President Mike Pence’s top aides, Marc Short and Greg Jacobs, are now working with the Department of Justice or appearing before its grand jury.Cooperation is already reported to have begun among the lawyer-enablers of Trump’s coup plotting. With the investigation’s accelerating aim at Trump, every potential target’s defense counsel has surely discussed with the target the advantages of an early offer to plead guilty and cooperate. Early birds get better worms.On 2 August, the federal grand jury investigating the lead-up to the January 6 insurrection subpoenaed the former White House counsel Pat Cipollone. Department of Justice prosecutors are reported to be preparing to go to court to secure his testimony about his conversations with Trump if Cipollone again declines to disclose them on grounds of executive privilege.The task ahead is massive, but if attacked with supreme urgency, it can get done. The building blocks for a trial of Donald Trump must be put into place with alacrity. In no case more than this one, the perfect cannot be the enemy of the good. The clock is ticking.
      Laurence H Tribe is the Carl M Loeb University professor and professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School
      Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsRepublicansMerrick GarlandcommentReuse this content More