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      Worried about abortion and demonic possession? You’d make a great Republican politician | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Worried about abortion and demonic possession? You’d make a great Republican politicianArwa MahdawiJust when you think you’ve plumbed the depths of delusion and bigotry, another stalwart of the GOP proves you wrong. Astounding work, Kristina Karamo, Scott Neely and Karianne Lisonbee Have you mislaid a few brain cells? Do you have increasingly bizarre delusions? Are you completely befuddled about how the female body works? Well, congratulations! You have what it takes to forge a successful career as a Republican politician. Anyone watching recent events unfold would be forgiven for thinking the main skills required for a job in Republican politics appear to be extreme bigotry combined with a knack for saying whatever outlandish thing comes into your head first.Even so, there are still times when Republican politicians can surprise you with the depths of their inanity. Let me introduce you, for example, to Scott Neely, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor of Arizona. During a televised debate last week Neely discussed an Arizona abortion ban by invoking aliens. “If we found life on Mars, wouldn’t we do everything in our power to protect that life?” Neely asked. “Why can’t we treat human life the same way we would treat alien life?”Neely would probably have quite a lot to talk about with Kristina Karamo, who is vying to become Michigan’s next secretary of state, and has the endorsement of Donald Trump. Karamo has publicly said (in a 2020 podcast that was publicised this week) that she thinks “demonic possession is real” and can be sexually transmitted. Unfortunately for those of us not wanting to catch a bad case of demonic possession, she didn’t go into the details of how this works. Do contraceptives stop sexually transmitted demons? Inquiring minds want to know.Karamo isn’t the only Republican to have made headlines in recent weeks for her unorthodox views on biology. Utah Republican Karianne Lisonbee recently apologised for saying she trusts women to “control [their] intake of semen” in order to avoid unwanted pregnancies. And, last month, Yesli Vega, who just won a Republican primary in Virginia, told an interviewer that she had heard it was “harder for a woman to get pregnant if she’s been raped … maybe because there’s so much going on in the body”. Clearly, there’s not much going on in the brain, or she might have realised what she had just said.
      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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      Highland Park shooting death toll rises to seven with 46 injured – as it happened

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      Americans grappled with another wave of gun violence that left seven people dead after a shooting in a Chicago suburb while two new polls paint a grim picture of Americans’ views of President Joe Biden, his handling of the economy, and the country’s institutions in general.Here’s a rundown of what’s happened today:
      A Chicago Sun-Times journalist wrote a harrowing account of the mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, that killed seven during an Independence Day parade.
      Biden awarded the Medal of Honor to four army veterans who fought in Vietnam.
      The head of Planned Parenthood talked to the Guardian about how the group will continue working to help women get abortions.
      Inflation and the overall cost of living remains Americans’ top concern, according to a poll released today that casts doubt on Democrats’ hopes that concerns about abortion and gun access will reverse Biden’s poor approval ratings.
      But if Biden is unpopular, he’s not alone. Americans’ confidence in almost all of their institutions has declined compared with last year, according to a different poll.
      Local authorities also announced the names of three more victims which had not been known yet. The identity of the seventh – and so far last – victim has not been released. The three new names are: Katherine Goldstein, 88 Irina McCarthy, 35 Kevin McCarthy, 37At a press conference police have detailed two previous incidents involving the alleged shooter Robert Crimo. The first happened in April, 2019 when police got a report from Crimo’s family that he had attempted suicide. The second occurred in September, 2019 when there was a report that Crimo had been making threats that he wanted to “kill everyone” and had a collection of knives.Police visited where Crimo was living and confiscated a collection of 16 knives, a dagger and a sword. The New York Times has some heartbreaking details on the third victim to be identified. The paper reports: Steve Straus, 88.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}A father of two, grandfather of four and a financial adviser who, at 88, still took the train every day from his Highland Park home to his office at a brokerage firm in Chicago, Steve Straus “should not have had to die this way,” his niece, Cynthia Straus, said in a phone interview.
      “He was an honorable man who worked his whole life and looked out for his family and gave everyone the best he had,” Ms Straus said. “He was kind and gentle and had huge intelligence and humor and wit.”
      He was devoted to his wife, she said, and intensely close with his brother, and extremely health conscious: “He exercised as if he were 50.”Biden has no plans yet to visit Highland Park, Illinois, site of Monday’s mass shooting that killed seven people, his press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.“We don’t have any plans right now to go to Chicago”, the city of which Highland Park is a suburb, Jean-Pierre said. However vice-president Kamala Harris is scheduled to be in the city later today to to address the National Education Association, “and she will speak to the devastation that we that we all saw with our own eyes yesterday in Highland Park”, according to Jean-Pierre.Biden will travel to Cleveland, Ohio on Wednesday for a speech regarding the economy.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is holding the daily press briefing, and reiterated the Biden administration’s efforts to get WNBA star Brittney Griner released from prison in Russia.“We believe she was wrongfully detained. We believe she needs to come home, she should be home,” Jean-Pierre said, adding that Griner’s wife spoke with national security advisor Jake Sullivan over the weekend, their second phone call in the past 10 days.Griner wrote a letter to Biden asking him to push for her release, which Jean-Pierre said the president had read. “He takes this to heart, he takes this job very seriously, especially when it comes to bringing home US nationals who are wrongfully detained,” Jean-Pierre said.This post has been updated to clarify that Griner’s wife, not Griner herself, spoke to Jake Sullivan.’I’m terrified I might be here forever’: Brittney Griner appeals to Biden in letterRead morePresident Biden has ordered flags flown at half-staff across the United States and its embassies abroad until the end of the day on July 9 in memory of the people killed at the mass shooting in Highland Park.Biden had previously ordered flags flown at half-staff in May after the shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas that killed 19 children and two teachers.A seventh person has died following the July 4 shooting at an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois, NBC Chicago reports.The death brings the toll of wounded in the shooting to 46, according to the broadcaster. Police have said the man suspected of carrying out the attack planned it for weeks and dressed as a woman in order to conceal his identity.Mississippi’s restrictions on abortion were at the center of the supreme court’s ruling last month overturning Roe v. Wade, but the litigation isn’t finished in the state.The Associated Press reports that Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the plaintiff in the supreme court case, is suing to stop a law that would ban almost all abortions in the state:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} The law — which state lawmakers passed before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 ruling that allowed abortions nationwide — is set to take effect Thursday.
      The Jackson Women’s Health Organization sought a temporary restraining order that would allow it to remain open, at least while the lawsuit remains in court.
      The closely watched lawsuit is part of a flurry of activity that has occurred nationwide since the Supreme Court ruled. Conservative states have moved to halt or limit abortions while others have sought to ensure abortion rights, all as some women try to obtain the medical procedure against the changing legal landscape.
      If Chancery Judge Debbra K. Halford grants the clinic’s request to block the new Mississippi law from taking effect, the decision could be quickly appealed to the state Supreme Court.Twenty-six states are expected to outlaw abortion entirely following the supreme court’s decision, and according to the Guttmacher Institute, six states have already done so.Maryland’s governor announced today that his state will change its requirements for licensing concealed weapons in response to last month’s ruling by the supreme court expanding Americans’ ability to possess a gun outside their homes.In light of a recent Supreme Court ruling and to ensure compliance with the Constitution, I am directing the Maryland State Police to suspend utilization of the ‘good and substantial reason’ standard when reviewing applications for Wear and Carry Permits.My full statement: pic.twitter.com/0wi1dzD8Aw— Governor Larry Hogan (@GovLarryHogan) July 5, 2022
      As its term came to a close in June, the court’s conservative majority overturned a New York law that had placed strict limits on carrying a firearm outside the home, which affected states with similar laws on their books, including Maryland.New York’s governor Kathy Hochul last week signed legislation designed to counter the supreme court’s ruling by prohibiting the carrying of weapons in certain locations such as bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, schools, government buildings and airports, as well as requiring owners to consent to people carrying guns on their property.US supreme court overturns New York handgun law in bitter blow to gun-control pushRead moreIn other January 6 news, Adam Kinzinger, one of only two Republicans sitting on the House committee investigating the insurrection, has released a compilation of threatening and profane phone calls his office has received.Threats of violence over politics has increased heavily in the last few years. But the darkness has reached new lows. My new interns made this compilation of recent calls they’ve received while serving in my DC office.WARNING: this video contains foul & graphic language. pic.twitter.com/yQJvvAHBVV— Adam Kinzinger (@RepKinzinger) July 5, 2022
      Last year, Kinzinger announced he would retire from Congress, where he’s served since 2011.A Georgia grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s attempts to subvert the 2020 election result in the state has issued subpoenas to a number of the former president’s attorneys and allies, including senator Lindsey Graham.The special grand jury empaneled in Fulton county, where the capital and largest city Atlanta lies, issued the subpoenas today, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} In addition to Giuliani, among those being summoned are John Eastman, Cleta Mitchell, Kenneth Chesbro and Jenna Ellis, all of whom advised Trump on strategies for overturning Democrat Joe Biden’s wins in Georgia and other swing states.
      The grand jury also subpoenaed South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s top allies in the U.S. Senate, and attorney and podcast host Jacki Pick Deason.
      The subpoenas, were filed July 5 and signed off by Fulton Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who is overseeing the special grand jury. Unlike subpoenas issued to Georgians, the summons were required to receive McBurney’s blessing since they are for people who reside outside the state.Viewers of the January 6 committee’s hearings will remember Eastman, the lawyer who, according to testimony from witnesses before the lawmakers, worked with Trump on his plot to undermine the results of the 2020 election. Eastman is among those who asked Trump for a pardon before he left office.At the press conference, investigators said the suspect Robert E Crimo III, 21, had legally bought the rifle allegedly used in the shootings and recovered at the scene – a high-powered rifle styled after an AR-15 – along with at least one more, as well as some pistols.The attack had evidently been planned for weeks, said Covelli, though investigators had not been tipped off to the social media videos posted by the suspect before the shooting.Authorities have still not said what charges Crimo faces, though another press conference is scheduled for later today.All six people killed were adults, Covelli said, and more than 30 others went to hospitals with bullet wounds.Covelli said there is no indication targets were picked out based on race, religion or any other federally protected status.The suspect in the 4 July shootings in Highland Park pre-planned the attack for several weeks, according to officials, and wore “women’s clothing” in what investigators said they believed was an effort to conceal his identity.According to Chris Covelli, the leader of a police taskforce investigating major crimes in the Illinois county that includes Highland Park, local officers recognized the suspect in surveillance footage they reviewed after the shooting, which helped them track him down. The suspect has prominent facial tattoos. Details continue to emerge about the mass shooting in a Chicago suburb yesterday, while two new polls paint a grim picture of Americans’ views of President Joe Biden, his handling of the economy, and the country’s institutions in general.Here’s a rundown of what’s happened so far today:
      A Chicago Sun-Times journalist wrote a harrowing account of the mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, that killed six during an Independence Day parade.
      Biden awarded the Medal of Honor to four army veterans who fought in Vietnam.
      The head of Planned Parenthood talked to the Guardian about how the group will continue working to help women get abortions.
      Inflation and the overall cost of living remains Americans’ top concern, according to a poll released today that casts doubt on Democrats’ hopes that concerns about abortion and gun access will reverse Biden’s poor approval ratings.
      But if Biden is unpopular, he’s not alone. Americans’ confidence in almost all of their institutions has declined compared with last year, according to a different poll.
      High inflation is just one reason why economists are worrying that the United States is poised to enter a recession.But if the economy does contract, The Wall Street Journal reports that it may not look like more recent downturns such as at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic or the global financial crisis. One key difference is that waves of layoffs that accompanied those downturns may not occur.From their article exploring the “very strange” situation the world’s largest economy finds itself in:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Today, something highly unusual is happening. Economic output fell in the first quarter and signs suggest it did so again in the second. Yet the job market showed little sign of faltering during the first half of the year. The jobless rate fell from 4% last December to 3.6% in May.
      It is the latest strange twist in the odd trajectory of the pandemic economy, and a riddle for those contemplating a recession. If the U.S. is in or near one, it doesn’t yet look like any other on record.
      Analysts sometimes talked about “jobless recoveries” after past recessions, in which economic output rose but employers kept shedding workers. The first half of 2022 was the mirror image—a “jobful” downturn, in which output fell and companies kept hiring. Whether it will spiral into a fuller and deeper recession isn’t known, though a growing number of economists believe it will.
      Some companies, especially in the tech sector, have given indications that they’re pulling back on hiring, though across the broad economy the job market has rarely looked stronger.Also unpopular with Americans: the country’s institutions.Gallup has today released a poll showing a decline in confidence for most of the 16 institutions they track, in particular the supreme court and the presidency.Americans’ confidence in major U.S. institutions has dropped to the lowest point in Gallup’s more than 40-year trend. https://t.co/G2frb7HXxk pic.twitter.com/OyWfUwXmjp— GallupNews (@GallupNews) July 5, 2022
      In the yearly survey, confidence in the supreme court dropped 11 percentage points from 2021 to 25 percent, while the presidency suffered a 15 point decline to 23 percent. The least popular institution was Congress, in which only seven percent of respondent had confidence, down five points from last year. Just above them was television news, in which only 11 percent of Americans had confidence. Small businesses were the most popular institution of those surveyed, with 68 percent confidence, a decline of only two percentage points from last year. The military was up next with 64 percent confidence, followed by the police, with 45 percent confidence. More

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      Trump 2024 run could upend midterms – and deflect risk of prosecution

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      Trump 2024 run could upend midterms – and deflect risk of prosecutionRumors are swirling that the ex-president could make an announcement soon, as January 6 revelations continue Speculation is swirling in the US media that Donald Trump is considering announcing a 2024 presidential run as early as this summer and in the face of ever more damaging revelations from a congressional investigation of his role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol.Irrespective of Trump’s chances of winning a second term, another presidential campaign under consideration – as reported by the New York Times, CBS and other US outlets – could give the former president a multi-year shield to deflect the attention of prosecutors.The reports have come after committee hearings into the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot that could see the congressional panel itself recommend Trump face criminal charges for his role in an attempt to thwart the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral win. Or the justice department could charge Trump via its own investigation of the scheme.In testimony to the panel last week, Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, strengthened a potential criminal case when she alleged that Trump knew his supporters were armed when he encouraged them to march on the Capitol.January 6 panel getting more new evidence by the day, says KinzingerRead moreBut if Trump were to run for a second stint in the White House, most experts believe it would – at the very least – complicate any decision to criminally charge him. It would also be likely to bolster his support in the Republican party, which has begun to ebb slightly in the wake of the January 6 revelations.It would also, perhaps, stem the rise of Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, who has emerged in recent months as a genuine potential rival to Trump with the promise of pursuing the same rightwing agenda but with more traditional political skills and style.A former House Republican aide told MSNBC on Saturday that Trump would probably announce his intentions soon.“Well, we all know from past experience that Donald Trump doesn’t care about anybody else but Donald Trump,” said Kurt Bardella. “So it doesn’t surprise me that when faced with the criticism that’s been mounting right now, following the January 6 hearings, he’s thinking about pulling the trigger.”At recent rallies, Trump has been relatively explicit about his designs. “This is the year we’re going to take back the House, we’re going to take back the Senate, and we’re going to take back America,” he said at a recent rally in Illinois. “And in 2024, most importantly, we are going to take back our magnificent White House”.“The advantages of declaring now are that potential rivals could be dissuaded from running against him,” said Carl Tobias, Williams chair in law at the University of Richmond. “Meanwhile, the pressure will build for the January 6 committee to move quickly to find as much damning information as it can and refer it over to the attorney general.”Carly Cooperman at Schoen Cooperman Research said Trump could be attempting to change the narrative because the January 6 hearings have painted him in a bad light. Cooperman also cautioned that the speculation could be just that – rumors – and that some Republican officials might try to stave it off.“I’m skeptical Trump will actually make an announcement before the midterms. Republicans would rather have the conversation be about the economy, inflation, and a referendum on Biden. An early announcement from Trump would change the midterm elections to become a referendum on Trump and his claims of election fraud in 2020,” Cooperman said.On Sunday, Trump’s Republican party nemesis Congresswoman Liz Cheney told ABC’s Jonathan Karl that the party could not survive if Trump were the nominee in 2024. “Those of us who believe in Republican principles and ideals have a responsibility to try to lead the party back to what it can be,” Cheney said.The case against Donald TrumpRead moreTrump has reportedly told advisers that declaring a run for the White House now would allow him to strengthen his argument that other criminal investigations against him in New York and Georgia are politically motivated.According to a CBS report on Sunday, Trump’s deliberations are fluid and no decision has been made on a bid or the time of an announcement. As with other media reports, sources said to be close to Trump requested anonymity.Typically, a presidential candidate waits until after the midterms in November, but the presidential cycle has been stretching longer and now begins as early as two years before the general election. A declaration now could upend both parties’ midterm strategies.Trump told Newsmax last week that he thought “a lot of” the committee hearings were about trying to prevent him from running in 2024.“I am leading in all the polls – against Republicans and Democrats. I am leading in the Republican polls in numbers that no one has ever even seen before. And against Biden, and anyone else they run, I am leading against them.”“At the right time, I will be saying what I want to do,” Trump added. But in comments to the New Yorker last month, Trump said he was “very close to making a decision” about whether to run.TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansUS elections 2024analysisReuse this content More

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      After Roe, are Republicans willing to expand the social safety net?

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      After Roe, are Republicans willing to expand the social safety net?The party has shown little enthusiasm to help those affected by unplanned pregnancies – is anything likely to change? Republicans across the United States cast the supreme court’s decision last month that allowed states to ban abortion as a victory for “life”. Left unsaid was the quality of life that families and mothers set to be left dealing with unplanned pregnancies might have.For years, the Republican party has pushed to ban a procedure that is mostly sought out by people who are poor, while showing much less enthusiasm for efforts to permanently expand the country’s social safety net. Critics have labeled the party’s stance as caring a lot politically about unborn fetuses, but losing interest in them when they are born as American citizens.I read the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling to see what we lost. Everyone should | Francine ProseRead moreTwenty-six states are now expected to ban abortion entirely following the supreme court’s ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and following November’s midterm elections, Republicans could gain control of one or both houses of Congress, and make gains in state legislatures.That dynamic could now give many more Americans a close-up look at what the party’s policies mean for women and families dealing with any wave of unplanned pregnancies, and there are signs Republicans are worried about what they will see.“Over the years, we have written on federal policies that we consider ‘pro-life’ that support pregnant women, not just policies that restrict abortion. This line of thinking is no longer a luxury of thought for pro-lifers like us. It is an obligation of pro-life advocacy in the future as we enter what will be a dynamic, uncertain, and uneven state landscape for years to come,” Republican operatives Mark Rodgers and Kiki Bradley wrote in the National Review last month, in an essay calling for the party to get behind policies like paid family leave and tax credits for families with children.“A number of leaders understand that our expressions of concern for life would ring hollow without our movement’s advocacy of a support system for pregnant women and their babies.”Already, there are signs of some Republican lawmakers moving to address these concerns. Republicans senators have proposed two bills expanding aspects of the government social safety net, and lawmakers may end up considering them before the year is out and the new Congress convenes in 2023.“There’s certainly, I think, at least at the intellectual level, a recognition that we need to be approaching these issues in a fresh way,” said Brad Wilcox, a University of Virginia professor affiliated with the Institute for Family Studies and the American Enterprise Institute, both right-leaning thinktanks.Yet opponents of the supreme court’s decision in Dobbs can’t help but contrast the fervency within the party for outlawing abortion with their relative historic coolness towards programs that could help people affected by the bans.“Republicans claim to be for small government – but where it comes to abortion they are for big government. Traditional views about women – and disrespect for poor women – may blind Republicans to these contradictions,” said Reva Siegel, a Yale Law School professor who wrote a brief unsuccessfully urging the supreme court to overturn the Mississippi law at issue in the Dobbs case.“The Republican party now has its chance to show the nation what pro-life means. In many states now banning abortion, its policies are more concerned with control than care. I hope the party can change course, but I have yet to see a Republican jurisdiction that has developed a philosophy of social services even remotely appropriate to accompany laws requiring pregnant women to give birth.”The downfall of national abortion rights in America comes as the US remains an outlier among its wealthy peers in terms of social services. It famously has no national health insurance program, and is the only wealthy country not to offer paid family leave, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.Data shows that women who seek abortions tend to be the ones who could stand to benefit the most from social services. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 75 percent of American abortion patients are poor and 60 percent already have a child.State bans already on the books could lead to an additional 75,000 birth per-year, Caitlin Knowles Myers, an economics professor at Middlebury College, predicted, and the costs of an unplanned pregnancy have been shown to be substantial. A University of California, San Francisco study found that women who wanted an abortion but could not get one saw their household poverty rates increase for at least four years as compared to women who were able to access the procedure, and also struggled to pay for necessities like food and transportation for years after.America is also a uniquely deadly place to give birth. The Commonwealth Fund found that in 2018, the United States’s ratio of deaths for live birth was more than twice that of most other wealthy countries.Meanwhile, 12 states still have not expanded Medicaid health insurance coverage for poor people offered under the Affordable Care Act, and of these, only Kansas and North Carolina are among those not immediately banning abortion.At the state level, there have been moves by lawmakers to address these disparities. The Republican-led legislatures in Georgia, Tennessee and Texas, for instance, have pushed to expand Medicaid coverage to women after they gave birth, even as they’ve declined to take part in the program’s expansion. South Carolina and Georgia recently enacted legislation giving state employees paid parental leave.But much of the most powerful social welfare legislation comes from Congress, where progress has been uneven. In 2021, Democrats pushed through a massive spending package that included a provision sending monthly checks to almost all families with children, which was credited with slashing child poverty.President Joe Biden proposed continuing it in his massive Build Back Better proposal to revamp social services and fight climate change, but the package won no Republican support and died amid infighting with Democrats.Samuel Hammond, director of social policy at the Niskanen Center, said Republicans will now be under pressure to pass legislation to aid families and children by the same groups that wanted them to overturn the 49-year old Roe v Wade ruling that allowed abortion nationwide: social conservatives.“The kind of bargain they had was we will pass our tax cuts and deregulations and you will get conservative court justices,” Hammond said. “And now that Roe has been repealed, you can’t put Amy Coney Barrett on the court twice.”In the past weeks, Senate Republicans have announced legislation to expand aid to families, casting their proposals as “pro-life” responses to the end of Roe. Florida’s Marco Rubio has published a plan that would allow families to pull from their social security benefits to fund paid family leave, expand a tax credit meant to help families with children, while also allowing religious groups to play a greater role in federal social service programs.In a press release filled with endorsements from anti-abortion groups, three senators announced a bill that would give families $350 each month for a young child and $250 for a child attending school. The proposal is similar to the child tax credit that Biden unsuccessfully tried to extend, but requires families to earn a certain amount to be eligible and, Hammond said, would be less effective at slashing poverty.“You want to make sure you’re supporting families that are making some effort to support themselves,” Wilcox said.“You don’t want to be promoting policies that lock in support for a model of family life that is detached from work and from marriage, which are of course two of the key avenues for economic progress even in the 21st century.”While the Democratic-led Congress has been deadlocked over social policy for months, Hammond predicted the proposal from the three Republican lawmakers could be worked into a larger tax bill that has to be passed by the year end, giving Republicans an opportunity to show that they want to help families.“Where they’ve always pulled their punches is on these more proactive social policies,” Hammond said. “I think this is now the window for the Republicans to put their stamp on a major extension to the child credit in a way that’s more generous to parents and make good on this outreach to parents and this Christian conservative minority.”TopicsRoe v WadeAbortionUS politicsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Fox and friends confront billion-dollar US lawsuits over election fraud claims

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      Fox and friends confront billion-dollar US lawsuits over election fraud claims Rightwing networks Fox News, OAN and Newsmax could be found liable in cases brought by voting machine company DominionIn the months following the 2020 US presidential election, rightwing TV news in America was a wild west, an apparently lawless free-for-all where conspiracy theories about voting machines, ballot-stuffed suitcases and dead Venezuelan leaders were repeated to viewers around the clock.There seemed to be little consequence for peddling the most outrageous ideas on primetime.But now, unfortunately for Fox News, One America News Network (OAN), and Newsmax, it turns out that this brave, new world wasn’t free from legal jurisdiction – with the three networks now facing billion-dollar lawsuits as a result of their baseless accusations.Group aims to strip Fox News of ad revenue over ‘fueling next insurrection’Read moreIn June, Dominion Voting Systems, which provided voting machines to 28 states, was given the go-ahead to sue Fox Corp, the parent company of Fox News, in a case that could draw Rupert Murdoch and his son, Lachlan, into the spotlight.In the $1.6bn lawsuit, Dominion accuses Fox Corp, and the Murdochs specifically, of allowing Fox News to amplify false claims that the voting company had rigged the election for Joe Biden.Fox Corp had attempted to have the suit dismissed, but a Delaware judge said Dominion had shown adequate evidence for the suit to proceed. Dominion is already suing Fox News, as well as OAN and Newsmax.“These allegations support a reasonable inference that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch either knew Dominion had not manipulated the election or at least recklessly disregarded the truth when they allegedly caused Fox News to propagate its claims about Dominion,” Judge Eric Davis said.Davis’s ruling is not a guarantee that Fox will be found liable. But the judge made it clear that this isn’t some frivolous attempt by Dominion – and media and legal experts think Fox could be in real trouble.“Dominion has a very strong case against Fox News – and against OAN for that matter,” said Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a professor who teaches constitutional law at Stetson University and a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute.“The reason Dominion is suing is because Fox and other rightwing news outlets repeated vicious lies that Dominion’s voting machines stole the 2020 election from Trump for Biden. But all of these conspiracy theories about Dominion’s machines were just pure bunk, and Fox as a news organization should have known that and not given this aspect of the big lie a megaphone.”“What’s particularly bad for Fox is [that] Dominion asked them to stop and correct the record in real time, and Fox persisted in spreading misrepresentations about the voting machine company.”Indeed, in his ruling, Davis noted that “other newspapers under Rupert Murdoch’s control, including the Wall Street Journal and New York Post, condemned President Trump’s claims and urged him to concede defeat”.In a statement, a Fox News spokesperson said: “Limiting the ability of the press to report freely on the American election process stands in stark contrast to the liberties on which this nation was founded, and we are confident we will prevail in this case, as the first amendment is the foundation of our democracy and freedom of the press must be protected.”A potential precedent in the Dominion v Fox case could be found in a recent case involving Sarah Palin, who sued the New York Times. Palin claimed the newspaper maliciously damaged her reputation by erroneously linking her campaign rhetoric to a mass shooting. In February a jury sided with the Times, finding that a Times employee had not acted with “actual malice” against a public figure or with “reckless disregard” for the truth – the criteria necessary to prove defamation.But the Times victory shouldn’t give Fox too much hope, said Torres-Spelliscy.“In the Palin case, the New York Times quickly corrected the mistake about Palin that had been added while an article was edited,” Torres-Spelliscy said.“By contrast Fox News kept up the bad behavior and repeatedly told myths about Dominion’s voting machines. This is likely why judges in several of these Dominion defamation cases have not dismissed them.”Dominion isn’t the only company seeking damages from Fox and its contemporaries.Smartmatic, an election software company which provided voting software to precisely one county in the 2020 election but found itself subjected to claims that it was founded “for the specific purpose of fixing elections” by associates of Hugo Chavez, the former president of Venezuela who died in 2013, is suing Fox Corp, Fox News and associates for $2.7bn.Still, Fox News is the most-watched and arguably most influential cable news channel in the US, and is probably too big to fail.But that isn’t the case for the smaller rightwing networks OAN and Newsmax, which are also both being sued by Dominion and Smartmatic – in June, a Delaware judge refused Newsmax’s motion to have the Dominion case dismissed, but did not weigh on whether Newsmax was innocent or guilty.“I think OAN is going to be wiped out from the litigation costs. Forget about any judgment,” said Angelo Carusone, president and chief executive of Media Matters for America, which monitors rightwing media.Carusone pointed out that OAN is already struggling to survive, after it was dropped by the DirecTV cable company – which was reportedly responsible for 90% of OAN’s revenue – in April.“We’ve started seeing, already, them scaling back programming, they’ve been laying off staff, they’ve been cutting back the number of programs. So it’s pretty clear that they don’t have sufficient resources to weather a protracted litigation.”Newsmax, which is still carried by DirecTV, is “relatively cash flush” in comparison to OAN, Carusone said – enough to survive a trial, if not to pay the billions of dollars Dominion and Smartmatic are seeking.In a statement, Newsmax said it had “reported on allegations made by President Trump and his surrogates and at no time did we report these allegations were true. We also reported on critics of the Trump claims”.It added: “The Dominion suit is an assault on a free press and endangers all press outlets if it were to prevail.”OAN did not respond to a request for comment.As for Fox, the most significant thing could be if the Murdochs are subjected to discovery – where they and Fox could be forced to hand over documents potentially including communications data – as part of the legal process, Carusone said.Text messages obtained by the January 6 commission have already revealed that there was communication between Fox News hosts and White House officials regarding the insurrection – and it seems unlikely that is the only thing that was discussed.“I think once you start to pull the discovery material, what you’re going to find is there was a lot of communication between the Trump people both internally and externally about pushing very specific lies and narratives,” Carusone said.While Fox is more financially comfortable than OAN and NewsMax, it is not invulnerable. Fox News is due to renegotiate its contracts with cable providers at the end of this year, and Carusone said cable companies could use the lawsuit to drive down prices.The Dominion and Smartmatic cases are likely to drag on for some time, and it remains to be seen how Fox News, OAN and NewsMax will react.As for the news channels’ conspiratorial claims of election fraud, at least that is one thing that has already been settled.The courts, the Department of justice, election officials have investigated and dismissed the accusations, as has the US Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.“The November 3 election was the most secure in American history,” the agency said in a statement in 2020.“While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too.”William Barr, Trump’s attorney general, put it in rather less sophisticated terms.The claims of election interference, Barr told the January 6 committee, were “bullshit”.TopicsFox NewsUS politicsRepublicans21st Century FoxUS television industryTelevision industryUS press and publishingnewsReuse this content More

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      As Trump’s star wanes, another rises: could Ron DeSantis be the new Maga bearer?

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      As Trump’s star wanes, another rises: could Ron DeSantis be the new Maga bearer? With the January 6 hearings chipping away at the former president’s image, the Republican Florida governor is quietly working to turn the tide in his favorHe was the most powerful man in the world, the possessor of the nuclear codes. Yet he behaved like a deranged manchild who threw temper tantrums and food against the wall.That was the tragicomic story told to America last Tuesday at a congressional hearing that had even seasoned Donald Trump watchers lifting their jaws off the floor and speculating that his political career might finally be over.Mark Meadows’ associate threatened ex-White House aide before her testimonyRead moreIn two seismic hours in Washington, Cassidy Hutchinson, a 25-year-old former White House aide, told the panel investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol that the former president had effectively gone haywire.She described how Trump knew a mob of his supporters had armed itself with rifles, yet he asked for metal detectors to be removed. She also recounted how his desire to lead them to the Capitol caused a physical altercation with the Secret Service, and how in a fit of rage he threw his lunch against a White House wall, staining it with tomato ketchup.Trump, who once called himself “a very stable genius”, vehemently denied the allegations but the political damage was done. Infighting and plotting engulfed a Republican party that had hoped the House of Representatives’ committee hearings would pass as a non-event.Instead they have exceeded all expectations and could prove terminal to Trump’s ambition of regaining the presidency in 2024 if Republican leaders, donors and voters run out of patience and decide to move on.02:44“Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s Tuesday testimony ought to ring the death knell for former President Donald Trump’s political career,” said an editorial in the Washington Examiner, a conservative news website. “Trump is unfit to be anywhere near power ever again.”The column concluded: “Trump is a disgrace. Republicans have far better options to lead the party in 2024. No one should think otherwise, much less support him, ever again.”Seemingly aware of his growing political vulnerability, Trump is reportedly considering announcing another run for the White House sooner than expected. He has teased the prospect at recent rallies and, according to the New York Times, told advisers that he might declare his candidacy on social media without warning even his own team.Such a move could have the added impetus of heading off a new star rising in the Republican firmament. Ron DeSantis, the pugnacious governor of Florida, is widely seen as his heir apparent and biggest rival for the Republican presidential nomination in two years’ time. At 43, DeSantis is more than three decades younger and is free of Trump’s January 6 toxicity.Speaking from Tallahassee, longtime Republican strategist Rick Wilson of Florida said: “I’ve picked up the same rumors that everybody else is hearing that Ron DeSantis’s people are practically picking out curtains in the White House after Tuesday.“Apparently they feel like this was a phenomenal day for them, that it was a great breakdown of Trump’s malfeasance and they didn’t have to bring the attack – it was brought by one of his former loyalists. If you look at it in terms of the 2024 nomination process, it was a consequential day.”Wilson, author of Everything Trump Touches Dies, cautioned that the twice impeached former president has been written off countless times before only to bounce back. But Trump has not faced a challenger like DeSantis.“DeSantis has been very carefully building out a presidential campaign for 2024 to primary Donald Trump, raising money, building relationships, going out there and quietly whispering: ‘He’s crazy, I’m not, I’m younger, I’m smarter, I’m thinner, I’m better looking. I can deliver more for you than the crazy old orange guy,’” Wilson said.DeSantis certainly has political buzz. Ed Rollins, another Republican strategist, also believes Trump could be done, and has launched a group called Ready for Ron to gather details of DeSantis supporters ahead of an expected presidential bid.An opinion poll released last week in the state of New Hampshire, traditionally the site of the first presidential primary, showed DeSantis in a statistical tie with Trump among likely Republican voters.The University of New Hampshire poll found 39% supported DeSantis, with 37% backing Trump – a big swing from October, when Trump had double the support DeSantis did. Former vice-president Mike Pence, who is exploring a 2024 campaign after breaking with Trump post the Capitol insurrection, was in a distant third at 9%.There have been other clues that Trump’s hold on Republican voters is not what it was. He has seen mixed results for his most high-profile endorsements in key states during this year’s midterm elections, in which DeSantis is seeking reelection as Florida governor.DeSantis has proved himself a financial powerhouse, raising more than $120m since winning office in 2018. Recent financial disclosures showed his political accounts had over $110m in cash in mid-June.Trump’s Save America group, meanwhile, had just over $100m in cash at the end of May.Republican donor Dan Eberhart told the Reuters news agency that three-quarters of roughly 150 fellow donors with whom he regularly interacts backed Trump six months ago, with a quarter going for DeSantis. But now the balance has shifted and about two-thirds want DeSantis as the 2024 standard bearer.Eberhart was quoted as saying: “The donor class is ready for something new. And DeSantis feels more fresh and more calibrated than Trump. He’s easier to defend, he’s less likely to embarrass and he’s got the momentum.”And the January 6 hearings are far from over. The six sessions so far have pointed the finger firmly at Trump as the unhinged architect of a failed coup who pushed conspiracy theories about voter fraud he knew to be false and was willing to let his supporters hang his own vice-president.‘He thinks Mike deserves it’: Trump said rioters were right to call for vice-president’s deathRead moreA survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 48% of American adults say Trump should be charged with a crime for his role. The crisply presented hearings would have been enough to bury any other politician for good.Political scientist Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “If the testimony stands as delivered, many Republicans will begin to ask themselves whether it wouldn’t be preferable to find a candidate with Mr Trump’s views but not his vices.“And, of course, there is such a candidate waiting in the wings. Tuesday’s hearing was a ‘Ron DeSantis for president’ rally because it underscored the risks of sticking with Mr Trump for a third consecutive presidential election.”Galston, a former senior policy adviser to President Bill Clinton, described DeSantis as “the distilled essence of what the post-Reagan Republican party has become. In addition, it’s clear to the Republican base that, like Trump, he’s a fighter. Like Trump, he is not at all deterred by liberal criticism.”Some believe the cumulative effect of the January 6 hearings could be enough to persuade many in the “Make America great again” base that, even while they remain devoted fans of Trump, he is no longer the pragmatic choice to oust Democrat Joe Biden from the Oval Office.“The big question for Republicans moving forward is: do they want to carry this baggage of Trump into 2024?” said the director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, Larry Jacobs.“When you’re battling to win over independent voters and when you’re going to be handed a platform that could very well present a referendum on the insider party, the Democrats, it doesn’t make sense even for a lot of Republican Trump supporters. Trump and his influence and his future prospects are fading fast.”But the populist-nationalism that the ex-president branded “America first” does look set to survive him, Jacobs added.“In the primaries, there’s going to be a battle of who can carry Trumpism without Trump and that’s going to be ethnic nationalism, attacks on the liberal cultural tilt of this moment,” Jacobs said. “You go to a Trump rally, a lot of those lines are going to be evident.”For Democrats, it may be a case of being careful about what you wish for. DeSantis was a relatively obscure congressman when Trump endorsed him for Florida governor in 2018 and has proven a worthy disciple, sparring with everyone from journalists to Disney to what he calls the “woke left”.After the coronavirus pandemic took hold in 2020, he relaxed restrictions on businesses and schools in defiance of federal guidelines and overruled local officials who sought to preserve mask mandates.DeSantis has also enacted numerous conservative bills with the help of Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature, including an election “police force” dedicated to investigating alleged voter fraud, new voting limits and banning teachers from discussing gender identity with young children – which critics decry as the “don’t say gay” law.He also effectively commandeered the redistricting process from Florida’s state legislature, vetoing their congressional map and substituting his own proposal that eliminated two majority-Black districts while delivering four additional seats to Republicans.Florida supreme court declines to rule gerrymandered voting map unconstitutionalRead moreSome fear that, as president, DeSantis would represent Trump 2.0 – a refined, purified version without the incompetence, more efficient and ruthless and able to get things done.Wilson, the longtime Republican consultant and Trump critic from Florida, commented: “Ron DeSantis in Florida has accumulated enormous power. He has taken power away from the legislature. He is attempting to take power away from independent colleges and universities and to literally replace governance at every institution in Florida from top to bottom with the governor’s office.“I grew up in a time where Republicans thought a hyper powerful executive was not a great thing but Ron DeSantis has a very different opinion of executive power and he, as president, would engage in its use at a scale that would be dangerous for the country at a lot of levels.”The first nominating contests for the 2024 election are more than 18 months away, and the long term impact of the January 6 hearings remains uncertain. Lou Marin, executive vice president of the Florida Republican Assembly, does not think they will change minds. “People who are paying attention realize that it’s a kangaroo court,” he said. “They need to move on and start doing their job instead of wasting taxpayer dollars.”DeSantis will also be wary of peaking too early and keenly aware that Trump, who famously boasted that he could shoot someone and not lose any voters, remains his party’s most popular figure. A Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll this week found 56% of Republican voters said they would back the former president – well ahead of DeSantis on 16%.Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said: “A lot of people want to put a tombstone on the grave but Donald Trump is still above ground. He’s still walking the earth and has a lot of political clout with a lot more people inside the party than folks may want to admit.“Those bridges are in front of us. We haven’t come to them yet to see exactly what these extra revelations will now present in terms of further chiseling away Donald Trump’s hold on the party.”Some Democrats argue that DeSantis would be preferable because, unlike Trump, he would not threaten the foundations of America’s constitutional democracy.But Steele warned: “Who’s the better thief, the one who breaks the window to get into your house or the one who’s craftily picked the lock? DeSantis knows how not to trip the alarm system.”TopicsRepublicansThe ObserverUS politicsRon DeSantisDonald TrumpFloridaWashington DCfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Incendiary Republican ads boasting of ‘hunting’ rivals raise fears of violence

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      Incendiary Republican ads boasting of ‘hunting’ rivals raise fears of violenceAds like Eric Greitens’, in which he says ‘get a Rino hunting permit’, could lead people to rationalize violence – experts Before the Capitol attack on 6 January, Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor, had studied political violence around the world but not in the United States because there had not been much to examine, he said.Pape worries that could soon change because of politicians like Eric Greitens, a former Navy Seal from Missouri running for Senate, who recently released an advertisement in which he racked a shotgun and led a team of armed men as they stormed a house to hunt more moderate members of his own party, know derisively as Rinos, as in “Republicans in name only”.“Join the Maga crew,” Greitens, a former Republican governor, declares in the ad. “Get a Rino hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”But such messaging won’t save lives and instead could lead people to rationalize committing violence against those with whom they have political disagreements, according to Pape and other political scientists.“This is important, not because [Greitens] himself will necessarily do any violent act, but what is happening is that the more there is community support for violence, this lowers the threshold for volatile actors to act violently,” said Pape, who directs the Chicago Project on Security and Threats.Public figures on the left – and a smattering on the right – condemned the ad, and Facebook removed the video for violating its violence and incitement policies.This is not the first time that Greitens has released such a campaign video. In April, he posted one on Twitter in which he and Donald Trump Jr, fired rifles at a range. In the accompanying text he wrote, “Striking fear into the hearts of liberals, Rinos, and the fake media.”Greitens leads the Republican primary for Senate, according to recent polls, in spite of allegations that he committed campaign violations and was abusive to his wife, who has since divorced him, their children and a woman with whom he had an affair.Nor is he alone among Republicans in producing incendiary advertisements featuring guns. More than 100 television ads this year from the party’s candidates and supportive groups have included guns as talking points or visual motifs, according to the New York Times.In the Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania, Dave McCormick, who later narrowly lost, ran an ad in which he recalled his experiences with various guns and said, “I approve this message to protect the second amendment because that’s what guarantees the rest of it.”But Greitens’ spot differs from other Republican candidates’ videos in that it shows him and the other men targeting political opponents rather than, for example, shooting an inanimate object, the political scientists said.“What I do not recall seeing before is actually verbalizing that the target is other people,” said Erika Franklin Fowler, a professor of government at Wesleyan University, and an author of a report on guns in recent political advertising.The video also differed from other incendiary advertisements in that Greitens says people in his own party should be targeted.“Republicans are competing against each other for the nomination there, so it’s not unusual to hear within-party criticism, but I’ve never heard such vitriol against their own party from a candidate, let alone in an ad that was presumably vetted by several people in the campaign,” Nathan Kalmoe, professor of political communication at Louisiana State University and author of Radical American Partisanship, stated in an email.The political scientists also expressed concern over the video because he is among the Republican candidates who promote the false conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was rigged against Donald Trump.“It’s of extreme concern to me that fairly mainstream Republicans have jumped on that wagon in order to win in primaries,” said David Romano, a Missouri State University professor who researches and teaches about political violence. “If [Republicans] think it’s rigged again in the next presidential election, then it’s not a far step to much more widespread violence, like we saw on January 6.”Pape, who has studied conflicts in the Middle East and eastern Europe, worries that such messaging could lead to similar violence in the United States. He traced his concern to events such as the May mass shooting in Buffalo. The alleged perpetrator targeted Black people and cited the “great replacement” conspiracy theory that non-white individuals are being brought to America to replace white voters and achieve an agenda.“There is every reason to believe our country will follow the trajectory of other countries and societies where this kind of rhetoric is in the mainstream,” said Pape.Pape has called for a “public conversation about the consequences of community support for violence in the mainstream”.He testified at a Senate judiciary committee earlier this month on the “metastasizing” domestic terrorism threat. Pape said he saw it as a positive step that a bipartisan group of senators held such a hearing and “were not at each other’s throats”.“They didn’t fully agree by any stretch,” Pape said. “There are differences, but they were trying to think through these issues of political violence in the mainstream, and it’s a challenge because this is not a problem that’s been around for 30 years.”TopicsRepublicansAdvertisingUS politicsnewsReuse this content More