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      Meet the key players who have defined the January 6 hearings

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      Meet the key players who have defined the January 6 hearingsAs the eighth public hearing begins, know the people who helped understand Trump’s efforts to overturn the election The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol has introduced Americans to a cast of characters critical to understanding then president Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn a free and fair democratic election. Arizona Republican censured by party over testimony on resisting TrumpRead moreThe committee interviewed hundreds of witnesses during its yearlong investigation into the 2021 insurrection and the events that led to it. Some appeared in person, others taped depositions that were played during the hearings. Some pled the fifth or refused to cooperate.Here are the major players who have defined the January 6 hearings.Bennie ThompsonMississippi Democratic congressman Bennie Thompson, 74, was chosen by House speaker Nancy Pelosi to lead the panel, the capstone of a career devoted to protecting voting rights. He grew up in the racially-segregated south, an experience he has cited as a reminder that antidemocratic forces are as old as the nation itself.With his solemn, reverent tone, the chairman has essentially acted as narrator of the story of a democracy in peril. Thompson will chair Thursday’s hearing remotely due to a Covid-19 diagnosis. Liz CheneyWyoming Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney has led the charge against erstwhile colleague Donald Trump, acting as the panel’s top prosecutor. Unsparring and matter-of-fact, the committee vice-chair has provided some of the hearing’s most shocking revelations, among them that Trump appeared to endorse his supporters’ chants to “hang Mike Pence” for the then vice-president’s refusal to try to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory, and that the former president had sought to contact a committee witness.Cheney, the 55-year-old daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney, is one of the few in her party willing to criticize the former president, though her dogged efforts to hold Trump accountable for the insurrection could cost her a seat in Congress as she faces a Trump-backed primary challenge. Cassidy HutchinsonA former aide to Trump’s last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, Cassidy Hutchinson provided the committee – and the country – with damning testimony.Hutchinson described a president spiraling out of control as he clung to power. She recalled Meadows, who refused to cooperate with the committee, warning that “things might get real bad” on 6 January.Hutchinson described violent outbursts by Trump and testified under oath that he knew some of his supporters were armed when he directed them to march to the Capitol.Hutchinson has been likened to John Dean, a key witness in the Watergate hearings. But her turn from junior White House staffer to star witness has drawn harsh scrutiny from those she once worked alongside, including Trump. She has stood by her testimony.Pat CipollonePat Cipollone, Trump’s second and final White House counsel recently appeared before the January 6 committee, after it subpoenaed him following Hutchinson’s testimony. Cipollone resisted Trump’s schemes to reverse the election and believed he should concede.Cipollone attended meetings at which Trump’s efforts to subvert the election were discussed, including a December 2020 confrontation just before Trump sent a tweet the committee described as a “call to arms” to extremist supporters. Cipollone said he asked informal advisors pushing wild claims of voter fraud: “where is the evidence?” They never provided it.Rudy Giuliani and Sidney PowellRudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, and Sidney Powell, a lawyer for Trump’s 2020 campaign, led the unsuccessful legal campaign to overturn the 2020 election based on spurious claims of voter fraud. Called “Team crazy” by White House officials, Giuliani, Powell and a group of others promoted outlandish conspiracy theories and tactics, including citing far-fetched plots involving hacked thermostats, a deceased former leader of Venezuela and a push to seize voting machines.As a result of their efforts to subvert the election, Giuliani had his law license in New York suspended and is ensnared in a Georgia investigation. Powell is facing disbarment in Texas. John EastmanJohn Eastman was a conservative law professor in California before he became a key figure in Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Eastman devised a brazen plan that vice-president Mike Pence could unilaterally block or delay Congress’ certification of the electoral college results, which finalized Biden’s victory.In a legal memo, Eastman mapped out the actions Pence could take to thwart Congress from counting the electoral votes, an unprecedented deviation from the vice-president’s ceremonial role in the process. A June hearing revealed that Eastman warned Trump that the plan was illegal.A federal judge determined that he and Trump “more likely than not” attempted to illegally obstruct Congress.Jeff ClarkA former mid-level justice department official, Jeff Clark worked closely with Trump to undo the 2020 election. He proposed sending a letter to Georgia and other closely-contested states that falsely claimed the justice department had “identified significant concerns” with the results.In a June hearing, his superiors at the department testified that any assertion the department had substantiated claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election were brazenly false. Clark sought, ultimately unsuccessfully, to persuade Trump to install him as the acting attorney general. Last month, Clark said federal agents searched his home as part of the separate Department of Justice investigation into the 6 January 2021 attack and election subversion efforts.Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss and Ruby FreemanShaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, poll workers in Fulton county, Georgia, had their lives upended when Giuliani placed them at the center of an election-rigging conspiracy. Though the claims were baseless, the women’s testimony described in wrenching detail the very real consequences of Trump’s lie that he had won the 2020 election.Freeman, known as Lady Ruby, told the committee she had lost her sense of security. Her daughter, who testified publicly, said she received a torrent of racist and “hateful” messages on social media. Election-result deniers even showed up at her grandmother’s house claiming they could make a “citizen’s arrest” of the poll workers.Moss was awarded the John F Kennedy profile in courage award for her “hard and unseen work to run our democracy”.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansDonald TrumpRudy GiulianifeaturesReuse this content More

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      Bipartisan Senate group reaches deal to reform Electoral Count Act

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      Bipartisan Senate group reaches deal to reform Electoral Count ActLawmakers agreed to two bills that will overhaul federal law and prevent presidential candidates from overturning election results A bipartisan group of senators reached a deal on Wednesday to reform a federal law and prevent a future presidential candidate from overturning the will of the people and the result of a valid presidential election.The lawmakers have agreed to two bills that would reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which governs how electoral votes are counted following a presidential election. Citing ambiguities in the law, Donald Trump and his attorneys pushed his vice-president, Mike Pence, to disrupt the counting of electoral votes that showed he lost the 2020 election, escalating calls for the 135-year-old law to be reformed. Even before the election, experts warned the law was ambiguous and could be exploited. Arizona Republican censured by party over testimony on resisting TrumpRead more“Through numerous meetings and debates among our colleagues as well as conversations with a wide variety of election experts and legal scholars, we have developed legislation that establishes clear guidelines for our system of certifying and counting electoral votes for president and vice-president. We urge our colleagues in both parties to support these simple, commonsense reforms,” the group of 16 senators said in a joint statement. Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, the two Democrats who stymied more sweeping voting rights reform earlier this year, are among the group that developed the proposal. Republicans in the group include Maine senator Susan Collins, South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham and North Carolina senator Thom Tillis.The first bill is called the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act, and would fix ambiguities in the existing law while clarifying when an incoming administration can access federal resources.Under current law, Congress has to consider an objection to the counting of electoral votes if just one member of each house objects. One of the proposed bills would raise that threshold, requiring the support least 20% of members in each house to consider an objection. The bill also creates a judicial process with expedited review, first by a three-judge panel then by the US supreme court, over certain matters related to disputed electors.In 2020, Trump and allies encouraged submitting alternative slates of electors in key swing states Trump lost. The new law clarifies that only the slate of electors officially approved by the state’s governor can be submitted to Congress. It also clarifies the term “failed election” used in another 19th century law, saying that a state can move its presidential election only if there were “extraordinary and catastrophic events”. There were concerns in 2020 that ambiguities in that language could be used by state legislatures to throw out the popular vote.After Trump insisted Pence had the authority to unilaterally throw out electoral votes, the bill makes certain that the vice-president has no such authority. It makes clear that the vice-president’s presence at the counting of electoral votes is solely in a ministerial role.The bill also clarifies that both presidential candidates should get access to presidential transition funds while an election result is disputed. Trump delayed giving Joe Biden access to resources to transition in the White House after the 2020 election.The Enhanced Election Security and Protection Act is the second proposal, and would up criminal penalties against people convicted of intimidating or threatening candidates, voters and poll workers, amid a significant uptick in threats after 2020. It increases the maximum penalty for those who make threats from one to two years in prison.The bill would require election records to be preserved, help the US Postal Service deal with mail-in ballots and reauthorize for five years a commission that works with states to improve their voting practices.TopicsUS SenateUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Arizona Republican censured by party over testimony on resisting Trump

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      Arizona Republican censured by party over testimony on resisting TrumpRusty Bowers, the Arizona house speaker, testified to the House January 6 committee in June Rusty Bowers, the Arizona house speaker who testified to the January 6 committee about how he resisted Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in the sun belt state, has been formally censured by his own Republican party.Kelli Ward, chair of the Arizona Republican party, said on Tuesday its “executive committee formally censured Rusty Bowers tonight – he is no longer a Republican in good standing and we call on Republicans to replace him at the ballot box in the August primary”.Secret Service turned over just one text message to January 6 panel, sources sayRead moreWard released a copy of the formal censure, which included “killing all meaningful election integrity bills” among Bowers’ alleged misdeeds and called on Arizona voters to “expel him permanently from office”.Bowers testified to the House January 6 committee on 21 June. Discussing Trump’s claim that Bowers told him the Arizona election was “rigged”, Bowers said: “Anyone, anywhere, anytime I said the election was rigged, that would not be true.”Bowers also recalled a conversation with Rudy Giuliani in which Trump’s personal lawyer, a key player in the attempt to prove mass electoral fraud, allegedly said: “We’ve got lots of theories but we just don’t have the evidence.”Bowers also spoke about how his Christian faith motivated his defiance of Trump, and described threats made to his safety by Trump supporters while his daughter lay mortally ill.Like Liz Cheney, one of two Republicans on the January 6 committee and its vice-chair, Bowers was given a Profile in Courage award for his resistance to Trump.After the hearing at which he appeared, though, it emerged that Bowers had previously told the Associated Press: “If [Trump] is the nominee [in 2024], if he was up against [Joe] Biden, I’d vote for him again. Simply because what he did the first time, before Covid, was so good for the country. In my view it was great.”This month, Bowers told the Deseret News he might have changed his mind.“I don’t want the choice of having to look at [Trump] again,” he said. “And if it comes, I’ll be hard pressed. I don’t know what I’ll do.“But I’m not inclined to support him. Because he doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the morals and the platform of my party …“That guy is just – he’s his own party. It’s a party of intimidation and I don’t like it. So I’m not going to be boxed by, ‘Who am I gonna vote for?’ Because that’s between me and God. But I’m not happy with him.“And I’m not happy with the thought that a robust primary can’t produce somebody better than Trump, for crying out loud.”He also told Business Insider: “Much of what [Trump] has done has been tyrannical, especially of late. I think that there are elements of tyranny that anybody can practice on any given day, and I feel like I’ve seen a lot of it.”TopicsArizonaRepublicansUS politicsJanuary 6 hearingsnewsReuse this content More

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      Thank You For Your Servitude review – disappointing tale of Trump’s town

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      Thank You For Your Servitude review – disappointing tale of Trump’s town Mark Leibovich had a big hit with one Washington exposé but his follow-up tells us little we did not know alreadyMark Leibovich is the winner of a National Magazine Award, a former staffer of the New York Times Magazine, the author of a bestseller about Washington and a recent hire of the Atlantic, one of the hotter, the more serous news websites.Newt and the Never Trumpers: Gingrich, Tim Miller and the fate of the Republican partyRead moreIn short, he has a byline that arouses of expectations of thoroughness and thoughtfulness. So one might assume that his new 304-page tome (before the acknowledgments, the notes and the index) would include some new facts or several new insights about his subjects, the Trump sycophants who enabled the most disastrous presidency of modern times.Sadly, Leibovich has almost nothing fresh to tell us. Instead of new information, we get a recycled account of “the dirt that Trump tracked in, the people he broke, and the swamp he did not drain”.To be fair, Leibovich is remarkably up front about his lack of originality. As early as page 11 he warns the reader that “you will almost certainly recall many of the episodes described in the chapters ahead”. But it is still remarkable that he is unable to tell us almost anything new about the greatest hits of the Trump administration.In its preoccupation with gossip and a near-religious avoidance of substance, this book is a parody of the worst practices of the Washington press corps – which are among the biggest reasons a dangerous buffoon like Trump was able to reach the White House in the first place.Leibovoich does make one interesting observation in the first chapter, when he describes the Republican party as “a political version” of the “Stanley Milgram experiment on obedience” conducted at Yale in the early 1960s, when the researcher’s subjects were instructed to administer electric shocks upon innocent neighbors, ostensibly in the next room.“The force of the shocks was apparently becoming more and more painful as the victims screamed” – yet 65% of the subjects kept following instructions to continue the shocks.“The essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes,” Milgram concluded. “He therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions.”Leibovich writes: “Republicans demonstrated much of the same fealty during the Trump years.”Unfortunately, his original insights begin and end there.The rest of the book consists of everything he wrote down in his notebooks, which he wisely left there until he sat down to compose this volume.His most frequent refrain is “Once again, you might recall all of it” – as indeed we do when he recounts the brief moment during the 2016 campaign when it looked like Marco Rubio might be the man to rescue the Republican establishment from Trump, or Rick Perry’s single spate of truth-telling, when he called the orange man from Queens a “toxic mix of demagoguery, mean–spiritedness and nonsense”.Of course, this “did nothing” to stop Perry endorsing Trump and becoming his energy secretary – but yes, we already recall that too.Like any good clip job, the book does include a few good lines – all of them from stories generated by others. Trump’s second secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, was “like a heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass” (reported by Susan Glasser, in the New Yorker). Or Stormy Daniels, recoiling in horror when the late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel referred to her “making love” with the future president.“Gross!” said Daniels. “What is wrong with you? I laid there and prayed for death.”(A few paragraphs before that, Leibovich praises himself for the “minor feat” of not mentioning Daniels until page 153.)The author’s tenuous grasp of substance is most evident when he fudges exactly how much the Republican party had done to prepare itself for this moment, after its decades-long dances with racism and homophobia, dating back to Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy in 1968 and George W Bush’s courageous endorsement of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in 2004.Leibovich makes fun of Mitch McConnell for telling Politico Trump was “not going to change the basic philosophy of the party”, a prediction which turned out to be completely correct, since Trump’s biggest accomplishments were huge tax cuts for the rich and the appointment of three of the most disastrous, pro-business and anti-civil rights supreme court justices of all time.Steve Bannon admitted Trump ‘would lie about anything’, new book saysRead moreBut Leibovich treats the Senate Republican leader’s comment with all the wisdom of a spokesman for the Republican National Committee: “This turned out to be 100% true, except for Trump’s ‘basic philosophy’ on foreign policy, free trade, rule of law, deficits, tolerance for dictators, government activism, family values … and every virtuous quality the Republican party ever aspired to in its best, pre-Trump days.”If you want to hear Leibovich reprise all of the softball questions he asked (half of them off the record) of all Trump’s sycophants, this book is for you. But if you’re interested in explosive new facts about exactly how Trump tried to demolish American democracy, skip this and stay tuned for the next hearing of the House select committee to investigate the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
      Thank You For Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission is published in the US by Penguin Press
      TopicsBooksPolitics booksUS politicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationRepublicansreviewsReuse this content More

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      ‘He could be a good president’: is Tucker Carlson the next Donald Trump?

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      ‘He could be a good president’: is Tucker Carlson the next Donald Trump? The Fox news host spoke at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, a state that has first say in Republican presidential nomineesHe entered to rapturous applause, flattered his hosts shamelessly, told them about his political vision and sold them merchandise bearing his name.Tucker Carlson’s appearance in Iowa on Friday looked like a presidential run, walked like a presidential run and quacked like a presidential run but was most certainly not a presidential run, at least as far as anyone knows.The Fox News host was the keynote speaker at the Family Leadership Summit, a gathering of more than 1,800 religious conservatives in Des Moines, Iowa, which every four years is the first state to have a say in picking the Republican presidential nominee.A deadly ideology: how the ‘great replacement theory’ went mainstreamRead moreIt was at the same forum in the same state seven years ago that businessman and reality TV star Donald Trump told the audience that Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, was “not a war hero” – instantly dooming his candidacy, or so everyone thought.Carlson, 53, another political neophyte and media celebrity, has been touted as a potential Trump heir who might launch a bid for the White House by stoking the same flames of populism, white identity politics and hunger for a man who says what he thinks – the more outrageous the better.The New York Times has described Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News as “what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news”. It is also the most highly rated in prime time.Carlson describes white supremacy as a “hoax” but has become a prominent conduit for its talking points, suggesting that diversity is America’s biggest existential threat. He has notoriously promoted the far right “great replacement” theory, which holds that western elites are importing immigrant voters to usurp white people.Yet while he has embraced the nativist and liberal-taunting strains of the “Make America great again” movement, Carlson had been careful to keep some daylight between himself and Trump – leading some to speculate that he is carving out his own lane.“He could be a good president for sure,” said Kent Proudfit, 70, attending Friday’s Family Leadership Summit. “I don’t know if he would run but he’s pretty popular. He’s got the biggest cable show in America right now. I’d definitely vote for him.”Proudfit, a retired hospital courier driver wearing a “Trump 2024 revenge tour” cap that he got for free, said he was untroubled by Carlson’s lack of political experience.“You don’t always need to have somebody that’s a politician; maybe somebody that’s in business just like Trump was,” Proudfit said. “We need a businessman and he’s done pretty good in business so that’s where I would lean.”At the conference, Carlson’s warm-up acts were Kim Reynolds, Iowa’s governor, and Chuck Grassley, the longest-serving US senator in Iowa history, both of whom lauded the supreme court’s decision to end the constitutional right to abortion.Taking the stage in a dark blue jacket, blue checkered shirt, blue-and-yellow striped tie and grey slacks, Carlson gave a 42-minute speech that ticked some of the boxes of a typical would-be candidate.There was personal biography (“I was super unpopular in sixth grade because I had exactly the same views that I have now.”), compliments to the hosts (“Think I’ve been to all 99 of your counties.”) and swipes at the Democrats (“The other side is so menacing and so scary at this point.”).Carlson also sought to clean up past comments that could be used against him. He has been widely condemned for voicing support for Russia in its war on Ukraine as well as for Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán.“I’m not a Putin defender, despite what you may have heard,” he said. “I don’t care one way or the other because he’s not my president. He doesn’t preside over my country and what he does in Ukraine, while I think historically significant, certainly significant to Ukrainians, is not more significant to me than what gas costs. In fact it’s not even in the same universe.”There was a ripple of applause. Carlson continued: “The rising price of fossil fuels is not an inconvenience. It’s the whole story. … Cheap energy, cheap fossil fuels make the difference between living in the Central African Republic and Des Moines.”He also bore some stylistic similarities to Trump in digressive, meandering remarks, sometimes with flashes of sardonic humour, that were more evocative of a man venting in a bar late at night than a politician reading from a teleprompter. Noting how Iowans have long been besieged by eager candidates, Carlson quipped: “I cannot even imagine being in my boxer shorts and, like, bumping into Beto O’Rourke.”But he admitted that he is “no Bible scholar” and gave no hint of joining that throng as he expressed surprise at being invited to address the conference, saying: “Then I thought, no, actually, I’m the perfect person to come up here because I can give you advice for how to assess the sweaty people begging for your vote. Because if there’s one group I know well, it’s politicians.”He argued that Republicans should choose a candidate who pays attention to voters’ core concerns, such as the welfare of their children, and who does not care what the New York Times thinks. Carlson’s speech went in esoteric directions, including reactionary gripes about modern architecture and an encounter with an underground bees’ nest.The TV host took familiar potshots at women who have abortions and transgender athletes before concluding: “Twitter isn’t real, OK? It’s the domain of super unhappy people with empty personal lives and creepy political agendas. What matters to you is what matters to you and you have every right, in fact you have a constitutional duty, to tell your representative to represent you on those issues.”The room erupted in whoops and applause from the conservative, overwhelmingly white audience that included many regular viewers of Tucker Carlson Tonight.Jim Hawkins, 77, retired from a career in education, said: “He is probably one of the more fearless people to expose many of the false truths. It’s very obvious that our press has a bias that leans toward liberalism.”At first Hawkins was skeptical about Carlson running for president but then appeared to warm to the idea, saying, “He would certainly outshine many of the people who would run against him through his intellect, his exposure to a variety of things. I could get behind that but he would leave a void in what he’s doing now.”Kyle Danilson, 16, wearing a white “Tucker Carlson” cap on sale in the lobby for $30, alongside water bottles for $20, said he had been watching Carlson’s show since he was 14. “He’s probably the number one reporter in conservative media,” Danilson remarked. “I agree with 75% of everything he says.“If he wanted to run for president he’d have the platform but I don’t think he should or would. He’s more one to promote somebody else instead of promoting himself.”Mary Jane Kolars, 71, watches Carlson’s show – widely condemned by fact checkers for spreading false conspiracy theories – every night.“I like that he’s honest,” she said. “He’s exposing a lot of corruption in our country and he’s not afraid to talk about what’s really going on behind the scenes.”But the retired substitute teacher and church secretary added: “I wouldn’t want him to run for president; I want Trump to. Tucker Carlson has his place and he’s gifted in that area. I don’t think he’s gifted in running a country or dealing with foreign countries and making deals like Trump can make deals.”Cindy Manning, 62, a teacher who watches the show almost every night, added: “He could run for president. I don’t know if that’s in his interest at all but he would make a good candidate. He does lack some things that he would need but he would just have to surround himself with people that would help him.”Democrats appear poised to end the first-in-the-nation status of their Iowa caucuses but Republicans are expected to maintain the tradition. Potential 2024 contenders including former vice-president Mike Pence, ex-secretary of state Mike Pompeo and Senator Tom Cotton have been making visits to the Hawkeye state.Some observers suggest that Carlson, who was born to a wealthy family in San Francisco and attended a prestigious boarding school in Rhode Island, would struggle to appeal to Iowa’s conservative rural areas.Storm Lake Times newspaper editor Art Cullen said: “It seems to me like Tom Cotton or Mike Pence is much more a fit for Iowa than, say, Tucker Carlson, a guy who used to wear a bow tie and natty suits and everything. He shows up in Des Moines and Tom Cotton shows up in that little dinky town where there’s a lot of evangelicals.”Carlson’s brand of white nationalism would not necessarily be a vote winner here, Cullen added, saying, “There was a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment stirred up by the likes of former congressman Steve King. But there isn’t the kind of overt racism in Iowa that you’ll see in other places. It’s a much subtler form of racism so I don’t know if overt appeals are going to be that attractive.”Carlson has described impoverished immigrants as making America “poorer, dirtier, and more divided” and dismissed people protesting the police murder of George Floyd in 2020 as “criminal mobs”. He has also sown doubts about coronavirus vaccines and claimed without evidence that the January 6 Capitol insurrection was a government “false flag” operation.All told, his Iowa trip is unlikely to quell speculation that he could seek the Republican nomination.Democratic National Committee adviser Kurt Bardella said: “Tucker Carlson is someone who is very smart, a gifted performer, and would embody the absolute worst impulses of the Republican party come to life.“He would in many ways become the living embodiment of the white grievances that seem to have overrun the platform of the Republican party. When you tune into his programming every night, really it is the white grievance hour.”Bardella, a former Republican congressional aide, added: “The white nationalist element within the party has grown larger and larger and more vocal and influential and visible. That would be a natural launching pad and constituency for a Tucker Carlson presidential bid.“In many ways, think of Tucker Carlson as a more polished Steve Bannon. Just right out of central casting, someone who embodies all the destructive elements that Steve Bannon represents but in a much more presentable and polished way.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsFox NewsIowafeaturesReuse this content More

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      Newt and the Never Trumpers: Gingrich, Tim Miller and the fate of the Republican party

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      Newt and the Never Trumpers: Gingrich, Tim Miller and the fate of the Republican party In two new books, a partisan warrior and a repentant operative paint an alarming portrait of a party gone rogueIn 1994, after 40 years in the wilderness, a Republican party led by Newt Gingrich recaptured the House of Representatives. Eventually, scandals of his own making, the impeachment of Bill Clinton and a drubbing in the 1998 midterms forced Gingrich to step down. But he did not leave public life.Newt Gingrich: Democrats are trying to ‘brainwash the entire next generation’Read moreThe former Georgia congressman ran for the presidential nomination in 2012, seamlessly adapted to the rise of Donald Trump in 2016, and kept on publishing all the while. His latest book, the catchily titled Defeating Big Government Socialism, comes as his party anticipates another congressional takeover in November.Tim Miller is another long-term Republican operative, if not a frontline politician. He served in a number of GOP campaigns, demonstrating media savvy and a knack for opposition research. After Jeb Bush left the presidential race in 2016, Miller emerged as vocal Trump critic. Now, in the footsteps of Never Trumpers Rick Wilson and Stuart Stevens, he has penned a political memoir. His subtitle – A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell – refers to a route many would say was partly paved by Gingrich.The former speaker’s new book is heavy on familiar bombast and predictably short on introspection. Its opening pages deliver a familiar beat-down of China and its financial allies.“Many of our elites refuse to even recognize the threat from Beijing,” Gingrich writes. “For many, it is because they make so much money from China.”He would have done better to check his own financial disclosures.By 2018, Newt and Callista Gingrich – ambassador to the Vatican under Trump – had invested at least $100,000 and possibly as much as $250,000 in certificates of deposit issued by the Bank of China.For what it’s worth, Trump maintained a bank account in China. Further, in such spirit of US-Sino amity, the late Sheldon Adelson funded Gingrich’s 2012 presidential run with $20m, courtesy of the blackjack tables and roulette wheels of his casino in Macau.In other words, Gingrich was cool with China until he wasn’t. Government records also show a $368,334 advance for a book with a simple working title: Trump vs China.Gingrich has long known that reality need not be a constraint. He has compared himself to William Pitt the Younger, the British prime minister who was in office for nearly 19 years, rather than Gingrich’s four as speaker. Gingrich has also suggested Brad Pitt should play him onscreen.A little more substantively, Gingrich uses his new book to demand fiscal responsibility, hammering Joe Biden and the Democrats for budgetary profligacy. The first chapter is titled “Big Government Socialism Isn’t Working and Can’t”. Once again, Gingrich should have thought twice.Gingrich’s presidential run to nowhere doubled as a poor man’s Trump University – the scheme by which Trump pulled in money for a product somewhere between shoddy and non-existent. According to the Federal Elections Commission, the Gingrich 2012 campaign remains more than $4.6m in debt. As Business Insider put it, “No presidential campaign from any election cycle owes creditors more money.”As for extravagance, in 2011 Gingrich maintained a credit line of between $250,001 and $500,000 at Tiffany’s, the Fifth Avenue jeweler.On the page, Gingrich also blames the left for America’s high Covid death rate – despite significantly lower post-vaccine mortality in Democratic states. So it goes: at a recent rally in Alaska, Trump declined to use the word “vaccine”, lest he anger the crowd.In Congress, Gingrich wrapped himself in gun rights, opposing the assault weapons ban in Clinton’s 1994 anti-crime bill and subsequently sending a written promise to the National Rifle Association that no gun control legislation would be considered as long as he was speaker.The assault weapons ban expired almost 20 years ago. As Gingrich’s latest book comes out, mass shootings fill the headlines. To the author, no matter: “The Founding Fathers insisted on the second amendment so that armed citizens would make a dictatorship impossible.”Amid all this, Gingrich calls for civility. In case folks forgot, he was the speaker who shut down the government in a snit after he was seated in the back of Air Force One en route to the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin, and also called Hillary Clinton a bitch. How will his speakership be remembered? The late Robert Teeter, pollster to George HW Bush, accurately observed: “Gingrich makes a great backbencher.”So to Tim Miller. Like Lot’s wife, he cannot resist looking back. At the same time, he is overly repentant. But his attempt to explain why he stuck with the Republican party for as long as he did is revealing.Miller lets us know that he is gay, married and a dad. His rationales for rejecting his party are understandable but not necessarily satisfying. For him and other Republican operatives, the game was fun – until it wasn’t. The metamorphosis of the party of Lincoln into the party of Trump occurred in broad daylight, a train wreck a long time coming. The Never Trumpers could have spoken out sooner.As long ago as 1968, clashes between demonstrators and Chicago police during the 1968 Democratic convention offered a glimpse of simmering cultural tensions. At the same time, the discontent and racism voiced by the Alabama governor George Wallace found a home with a Republican party following Richard Nixon’s southern strategy. Fast forward three decades and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and Pat Buchanan’s quests for the presidency revealed the darker impulses of the pre-Trump right.Working-class resentment and pitchfork populism appeared long before the Iraq war and the great recession. The rise of Trumpism seems entirely predictable.Miller does deliver a searing indictment of officials and appointees who became Trump’s enablers, listing no less than 11 categories. His portraits of Lindsey Graham, South Carolina’s senior senator, and Sean Spicer, Trump’s first press secretary, are devastating.“More than anything,” he writes, Graham “just wanted to be on the golf cart next to Trump. To be on the right hand of the father. Whether or not Trump did as Graham asked was merely icing on the cake.”Here’s the Deal review: Kellyanne Conway on Trump – with plenty of alternative factsRead moreAs reward for doubling as a human doormat, Graham now battles a subpoena from prosecutors in Fulton county, Georgia, concerning his part in Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. The senator cloaks himself in congressional immunity and invokes the constitution. It turns out he was fine with attempting to subvert an election but doesn’t like the idea of appearing before a grand jury. Funny, that.As Miller puts it, the same obsequious spirit made Spicer a peddler of lies for the ages, “happy to put up with Trump’s lunacy as long as he became a star. He didn’t see anything wrong with shining a poison apple … And you’d better believe he’d do it all over again.”Both Gingrich and Spicer may get another chance to ride the Trump rodeo. The 45th president is gearing up for 2024. By then, Biden and Gingrich will be octogenarians, Trump 78. Who says America is no country for old men?
      Defeating Big Government Socialism: Saving America’s Future is published in the US by Center Street

      Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell is published in the US by Harper
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      Trump, battered by January 6 testimony, mulls 2024 run – and not all Republicans are happy

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      Trump, battered by January 6 testimony, mulls 2024 run – and not all Republicans are happy Republicans are odds-on to take back the House and Senate in November, and the last thing the party needs, experts say, is a Trump distraction On Thursday the Trump campaign sent out a begging-bowl email to hundreds of thousands of supporters, previewing the former president’s rally in Arizona this weekend and teasing the recipients with a portent of momentous things to come.Trump to face sworn deposition in New York lawsuit as legal troubles mountRead moreDonald Trump “wants to make sure it’s one of his best rallies yet”, his loyal followers were told. “He is preparing the speech that he will give in front of the American people.”“The speech he will give” was a nudge-nudge wink-wink suggestion that the one-term president is poised to announce another run on the White House in 2024. The tantalizing hint was the latest in an intensifying stream of similar baits – most recently in remarks to Olivia Nuzzi of New York magazine this week – that are driving Republican party leaders to distraction.With inflation running at 40-year highs, and with Joe Biden suffering record lows in his approval ratings, the Republican script for winning back the US House and Senate in November’s midterm elections writes itself. The last thing the party needs, many top Republicans believe, is Trump muddying the message by talking about himself and 2024.“Trump never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity,” said Frank Luntz, the pollster who has a long track record of advising Republican campaigns. “He has the chance to participate in an amazing, historic Republican resurgence, and instead he’s making everything all about him. That could cost Republicans the majorities.”Luntz said that Republican leaders have told Trump “in no uncertain terms that anything that takes attention away from inflation and Biden’s failures could hand the election to the Democrats. But they know there is nothing they can do to influence him, and that he doesn’t really care.”The incentive to announce early is self-evident: Trump is a past master at deflecting public attention from inconvenient truths. It is no coincidence that his dalliance with a third presidential bid comes just when he is taking a battering at the hands of the congressional hearings into the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.Millions of Americans have watched live as the January 6 committee has exposed the lengths to which the then-sitting president was prepared to go to hold onto power having lost the 2020 election. He tried to grab the steering wheel of his armored vehicle to turn it towards the Capitol and join the insurrectionists; he splattered White House walls with ketchup in a fit of rage; and when his vice-president faced a mob of violent white supremacists chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” he told aides that “Mike deserves it”.“It’s the cumulative weight of the evidence that’s piling up,” said Charlie Sykes, a prominent conservative commentator who edits the Trump-critical news site the Bulwark. “The most damaging evidence is coming from people within Trump’s orbit. That’s potentially the greatest danger for Donald Trump: it’s the people closest to him, people who were inside the Oval Office, who are saying it was a big lie.”People like Trump’s then-attorney general Bill Barr who testified that he told the president to his face that his claims that the election was stolen were “crazy stuff” and “bullshit”. Or Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, who declared in a heated Oval Office meeting a month after the election that seizing voting machines was a “terrible idea” and “not how we do things in the United States”.It is not yet clear whether the hearings have managed to launch a torpedo sufficiently explosive to sink USS Trump. But the vessel is clearly taking on water, as is demonstrated by the polls.A revealing survey from the New York Times / Siena College this week showed that more than half of Republican primary voters want to move on from Trump. Though the former president remains dominant in the field of possible candidates, there is one obvious and growing threat: Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who is quietly but steadily gaining strength.“Trump is dropping,” Luntz said. “Six months ago he was at 60%, and no one else was in double digits. Now he’s in the upper 40s and DeSantis has climbed into the 20s. You see poll after poll suggesting a majority of Republicans not wanting him to run again.”That explains the baby steps that some Republican leaders have begun to take to detach themselves from Trump ahead of a possible 2024 head-to-head. Last month DeSantis, who initially adopted the mantle of Trumpism but is now forging his own iteration of it, pointedly let it be known that he was not interested in Trump’s endorsement in his gubernatorial re-election race.Pence, in May, campaigned with the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, in his primary re-election contest in which Trump had backed a rival candidate (Kemp went on to win).Such activity, tentative though it may yet be, is matched by moves among those who are arguably the real powerbrokers in the Republican party: the major donors. “Donors are increasingly flocking to and chatting about Ron DeSantis – he is increasingly sucking up all the oxygen,” said Dan Eberhart, a Denver, Colorado-based businessman who is himself a longtime Republican donor. “They are tired of rehashing the 2020 election. They like Trump’s policies, but not the drama. If he runs they will vote for him, but their preference would be to have someone else like Trump on the top of the ticket,” Eberhart said.One of those critical battleground states is Arizona which Biden won in 2020 by just 10,000 votes. A fascinating insight into the sea-change that is happening in the Grand Canyon state is given by Rusty Bowers, Republican speaker of the Arizona House.In the fourth day of the January 6 hearings last month, Bowers related in searing detail how he had refused to play along with Trump’s plot to overturn Biden’s victory in his state. Asked at the hearing what he thought of a Trump-backed scheme to send fake electors to Washington countering Biden’s win, he called it a “tragic parody”, citing the words he wrote in his journal at the time: “I do not want to be a winner by cheating”.This week Bowers elucidated his thinking on the future of Trump and the Republican party in Arizona to the Guardian. In response to Guardian questions about Trump’s possibly imminent announcement of another presidential run, he talked about the growing exhaustion that he and many other Republicans are feeling.“I know I am no-one in the great scheme of things, and Mr Trump still has a lot of sway here with the extreme part of the Republican party,” Bowers began. “I personally am more upset that we have inflation robbing us of our financial security and many of our seniors are very worried.”He went on to say that “many Republicans are tired of the friction between the poles of the parties and would like us to focus on getting water supplies increased for our arid state, getting common sense solutions to the border which has gone crazy and which causes much of the angst that the extremists take advantage of. I am in that camp and know there are many with me.”He ended with this reflection: “While the fringes focus on the past, we want to tackle the present and future progress we need.”If those are the expressed views of one of the most powerful Republicans in a key swing state, it is a fair assumption that similar ennui is setting in across the country. The question is, will any of the leaders of the party have the guts to act on it?“This is an ideal off-ramp for Republicans to take from Trump, but they’ve had so many other off-ramps they’ve refused to take,” Sykes said. “The one thing we’ve learned is that the Republican party is ultimately invertebrate – it just cannot stand up to someone like Donald Trump, even in these circumstances.”Luntz’s assessment was more bullish about the prospects of Trump being ousted. “No one attacks Republicans more viciously than Donald Trump, not even top Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer,” he said.“Eventually that will come back to bite him.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2024US politicsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      ‘I will not back down’: Biden vows executive action if Senate cannot pass climate bill – as it happened

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      President Joe Biden has just issued a statement calling on the Senate to pass legislation that would lower prescription drug prices and extend health insurance subsidies, while vowing to sign executive orders meant to fight climate change. The announcement comes after Democratic senator Joe Manchin said yesterday he would not support legislation intended to curb America’s carbon emissions, nor new tax proposals to offset its costs. His statement was the latest complication for Democrats’ long-running efforts to pass a major spending bill despite their narrow majority in Congress, where they can afford to lose no votes in the Senate and few in the House. While the initial proposals for the bill released last year showed it would address a host of the party’s priorities, it is now set to be much narrower in scope.Here’s more from Biden’s statement:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Action on climate change and clean energy remains more urgent than ever.
      So let me be clear: if the Senate will not move to tackle the climate crisis and strengthen our domestic clean energy industry, I will take strong executive action to meet this moment. My actions will create jobs, improve our energy security, bolster domestic manufacturing and supply chains, protect us from oil and gas price hikes in the future, and address climate change. I will not back down: the opportunity to create jobs and build a clean energy future is too important to relent.
      Health care is also critical. After decades of fierce opposition from powerful special interests, Democrats have come together, beaten back the pharmaceutical industry and are prepared to give Medicare the power to negotiate lower drug prices and to prevent an increase in health insurance premiums for millions of families with coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Families all over the nation will sleep easier if Congress takes this action. The Senate should move forward, pass it before the August recess, and get it to my desk so I can sign it.=
      This will not only lower the cost of prescription drugs and health care for families, it will reduce the deficit and help fight inflation.After more than a year of negotiations, was today the beginning of the end for Democrats’ long-running effort to pass a spending bill improving America’s social services? It very well may have been, after Senator Joe Manchin nixed provisions to raise taxes and fight climate change, and President Joe Biden called on Democrats to pass a narrow agreement that would lower drug costs and extend health insurance subsidies.Here’s what else happened today:
      Democrats in the House passed two bills to preserve access to abortion nationwide, but they are unlikely to pass the Senate due to Republican opposition.
      Biden fist bumped Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after arriving in the country, drawing a rebuke from The Washington Post’s publisher. Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in an operation US intelligence concluded the crown prince approved, wrote for the newspaper. The president later said he brought up Khashoggi’s murder with MBS.
      Peter Navarro, a former top advisor to Donald Trump, declined a plea deal from federal prosecutors over his refusal to cooperate with the January 6 committee.
      A House committee announced it would take up a Democratic proposal to ban assault weapons.
      A deposition of Donald Trump and his children was postponed due to the death of his first wife Ivana Trump.
      A Georgia district attorney has warned some Republicans lawmakers in the state that they could be indicted for their role in helping Donald Trump overturn the results of the 2020 election.
      In Riyadh, Joe Biden was also asked about Joe Manchin’s apparent torpedoing of Democrats’ attempt to pass spending legislation targeting the climate crisis, healthcare and other party priorities before the midterm elections.Asked for “your message to those Americans right now who were looking for that relief that would have a wide impact as it affects the climate and energy specifically”, the president said: “I’m not going away. I’m using every power I have as president to continue to fulfill my pledge to move toward dealing with global warming.”On his way out of the short and slightly testy briefing, Biden was asked if he thought Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat who has nonetheless stymied his party’s agenda over and over again, had been “negotiating in good faith” over the spending deal and its climate-related provisions.“I didn’t negotiate with Joe Manchin,” Biden said.It’s true that Manchin has been talking to Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic Senate majority leader, this time.It’s also true that Manchin has an outsized influence on Democratic policy priorities in the 50-50 Senate and has been at the centre of almost every legislative drama since Biden took back the White House.In their book Peril, about the end of Trump and the beginning of Biden, Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of the Washington Post devote considerable space to Manchin’s machinations around the $1.9tn Covid relief package Biden got through in March 2021.At one point, they write, Biden told the senator: “Joe, please don’t kill my bill.”He didn’t. That time.More:Biden pledges executive action after Joe Manchin scuppers climate agendaRead moreSpeaking from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Joe Biden said he brought up the murder of Jamal Khashoggi when he met with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman earlier today.“I made my view crystal clear. I said very straightforwardly, for an American president to be silent on an issue of human rights, is this consistent… with who we are and who I am? I will always stand up for our values,” Biden said.Asked how the crown prince responded, Biden replied, “He basically said that he he was not personally responsible for it. I indicated I thought he was”. The president has previously said he wanted to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah state” for the murder, and was asked if he wanted to take those words back. “I don’t regret anything that I said. What happened to Khashoggi was outrageous,” Biden said.The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection has announced its next hearing for 8 pm eastern time on Thursday, July 21.Just in: Jan. 6 committee formally announces eighth hearing on Thursday, July 21 at 8p ET— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) July 15, 2022
      The lawmakers are expected to explore what Donald Trump was doing as the Capitol was attacked.New: Jan. 6 committee member Elaine Luria on CNN confirms @GuardianUS reporting that she and Adam Kinzinger will lead the eighth hearing, taking place in prime time next week, about how Trump did nothing during the 187mins of the Capitol attack.— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) July 14, 2022
      The publisher of The Washington Post has condemned Joe Biden’s fist bump with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom US intelligence concluded ordered the operation that resulted in the murder of Jamal Khasshogi, a contributor to the newspaper.pic.twitter.com/l2EDKZOLsS— Kristine Coratti Kelly (@kriscoratti) July 15, 2022
      Biden, who is visiting Saudi Arabia, will address the press in about 20 minutes, according to CNN. The event was not previously scheduled.In a last minute addition to his schedule, President Biden will address reporters at 3:30 ET/10:30 P.M. local following his meeting with the Saudi crown prince.— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) July 15, 2022
      President Joe Biden has just issued a statement calling on the Senate to pass legislation that would lower prescription drug prices and extend health insurance subsidies, while vowing to sign executive orders meant to fight climate change. The announcement comes after Democratic senator Joe Manchin said yesterday he would not support legislation intended to curb America’s carbon emissions, nor new tax proposals to offset its costs. His statement was the latest complication for Democrats’ long-running efforts to pass a major spending bill despite their narrow majority in Congress, where they can afford to lose no votes in the Senate and few in the House. While the initial proposals for the bill released last year showed it would address a host of the party’s priorities, it is now set to be much narrower in scope.Here’s more from Biden’s statement:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Action on climate change and clean energy remains more urgent than ever.
      So let me be clear: if the Senate will not move to tackle the climate crisis and strengthen our domestic clean energy industry, I will take strong executive action to meet this moment. My actions will create jobs, improve our energy security, bolster domestic manufacturing and supply chains, protect us from oil and gas price hikes in the future, and address climate change. I will not back down: the opportunity to create jobs and build a clean energy future is too important to relent.
      Health care is also critical. After decades of fierce opposition from powerful special interests, Democrats have come together, beaten back the pharmaceutical industry and are prepared to give Medicare the power to negotiate lower drug prices and to prevent an increase in health insurance premiums for millions of families with coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Families all over the nation will sleep easier if Congress takes this action. The Senate should move forward, pass it before the August recess, and get it to my desk so I can sign it.=
      This will not only lower the cost of prescription drugs and health care for families, it will reduce the deficit and help fight inflation.Joe Biden is making his controversial visit to Saudi Arabia, with an increase in oil production seen as the goal. The Guardian’s Bethan McKernan reports:Three years after Joe Biden vowed to make Saudi Arabia a pariah state over the assassination of a prominent dissident, the US president greeted Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with a fist bump as his administration attempts to reset relations and stabilise global oil markets.Whereas Donald Trump was personally welcomed to the conservative Gulf kingdom on his first presidential visit by King Salman, Biden was met on the tarmac on Friday evening by the governor of Mecca and the Saudi ambassador to the US in a subdued ceremony before travelling to the city’s al-Salam palace, where he held talks with the 86-year-old king and his powerful heir, Prince Mohammed, before a working meeting.Fist bumps as Joe Biden arrives to reset ties with ‘pariah’ Saudi ArabiaRead moreLast week, we learned that Herschel Walker, who’s the Republican nominee for a Senate seat in Georgia, lied to his own campaign team about how many children he had. This is not his only misstep, but the longtime friend of Donald Trump continues to have the support of Georgia Republicans. The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland speaks to Roger Sollenberger of the Daily Beast about why Walker might prove a fatal blow for the GOP in November’s midterm elections.Politics Weekly AmericaWhy Republicans are backing a controversial former NFL star: Politics Weekly AmericaSorry your browser does not support audio – but you can download here and listen https://audio.guim.co.uk/2020/05/05-61553-gnl.fw.200505.jf.ch7DW.mp300:00:0000:24:04The passage of two bills preserving the right to abortion is likely to temporarily buoy Democrats, even if both bills are extremely unlikely to pass the Senate.One thing is clear though: the issue of abortion access is not going away.According to the Wall Street Journal, Democrats are “increasingly talking about abortion in their midterm campaign advertising,” while Republicans are shying away from the issue.In June the Supreme Court reversed the Roe v Wade ruling which enshrined the right to abortion in federal law. On Friday almost all House Republicans voted against the bills which would restore and protect access to abortion – but the GOP is out of step with Americans, a majority of whom think abortion should be legal. Ahead of the November mid-term elections, Democrats seem to be tying Republicans to the reversal of Roe v Wade, the WSJ reported:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}[An analysis] of broadcast and national cable data from the ad-tracking firm AdImpact shows more than a third of all spots aired by Democrats and their allies in congressional and gubernatorial campaigns from July 1-12 have mentioned abortion.
      Republicans are focusing their ads on inflation, which voters have consistently cited as their top concern heading into November’s elections. Less than 3% of all spots run by GOP candidates and their allies during that period included the abortion issue, the analysis showed.A second bill protecting the right to abortion has passed the US House.HR 8297, the Ensuring Access to Abortion Act of 2022, passed by 223 votes to 205 no votes. Three Republicans did not vote.The bill would prohibit restrictions on out-of-state travel for the purpose of obtaining an abortion service.Like HR 8296, the bill is likely to fail in the Senate, where there is not enough support for either bill to survive the 60-vote filibuster threshold. There are 50 Republicans in the Senate.223-205: House passes abortion access legislation prohibiting restrictions blocking out of state travel to obtain an abortion in response to Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.3 Republicans joined all Democrats in voting Yes.Ensuring Access to Abortion Act now heads to Senate. pic.twitter.com/a3nAuTLnvp— Craig Caplan (@CraigCaplan) July 15, 2022
      The US House of Representatives has approved a law which would preserve access to abortion nationwide at the federal level – but the bill is still expected to fail in the Senate.HR 8296, the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2022, passed the House by 219 yes votes to 210 no votes. Two members did not vote.The law would preserve access to abortion, after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v Wade.The bill is expected to fail in the Senate, however. In May a vote in the Senate failed, with Joe Manchin, the Democrat who has repeatedly blocked his own party’s legislative efforts, joining Republicans to vote the bill down by 51 votes to 49.The House will now consider another abortion rights bill, HR8297 – the Ensuring Access to Abortion Act of 2022. That bill would protect individual’s right to travel for abortion access.President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda is reeling after a crucial senator said he wouldn’t support proposals to address climate change or raise taxes to pay for it. Meanwhile, Democrats in the House are moving to pass a measure to codify abortion rights.Here is what has happened today so far:
      Peter Navarro, a former top advisor to Donald Trump, declined a plea deal from federal prosecutors over his refusal to cooperate with the January 6 committee.
      A House committee announced it would take up a Democratic proposal to ban assault weapons.
      A deposition of Donald Trump and his children was postponed due to the death of his first wife Ivana Trump.
      A Georgia district attorney has warned some Republicans lawmakers in the state that they could be indicted for their role in helping Donald Trump overturn the results of the 2020 election.
      House lawmakers have taken to the floor to speak for and against a proposal from the chamber’s Democratic leadership to protect abortion rights nationwide.The speeches split along party lines, with Republicans decrying the bill and Democrats casting it as a necessary response to the supreme court’s decision last month overturning Roe v. Wade and handing states the power to ban the procedure outright.California Democrat Barbara Lee condemned Republicans’ proposals to restrict abortion access, asking, “What in the world is this?” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) directly addresses Republicans during debate on bill protecting right to travel for an abortion:“You’re trying to take away people’s right to travel. What in the world is this? Is this America? … They come for me today, they’re coming for you tomorrow.” pic.twitter.com/Qkv7at6h9m— The Recount (@therecount) July 15, 2022
      Brian Mast, a Republican from Florida, put a $20 bill on the table and said to Democrats, “Any one of you or your colleagues wants to speak up and tell us when life begins, it’s sitting here for you.”Pelosi and her allies are pushing for bills that would allow abortion to the very last moment before birth. I asked if they can tell me when a life begins, but I was met with silence. pic.twitter.com/xytK5yUYza— Rep. Brian Mast (@RepBrianMast) July 15, 2022
      A Georgia district attorney has sent “target” letters to prominent Republicans in the state, warning them they could face indictments for their attempt to help Donald Trump overturn the results of the 2020 election, Yahoo! News reports.Fani Willis, the Democratic district attorney for Fulton county, which includes the capital and largest city Atlanta, has sent the letters to Republicans including Burt Jones, a state senator who is standing as Georgia governor Brian Kemp’s running mate in this year’s election, and David Shafer, chair of the state’s Republican party, as well as state senator Brandon Beach.According to the report:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Jones and Shafer were among those who participate in a closed-door meeting at the state Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, in which 16 Georgia Republicans selected themselves as the electors for the state, although they had no legal basis for doing so. Shafer, according to a source who was present, presided over the meeting, conducting it as though it was an official proceeding, in which those present voted themselves as the bona fide electors in Georgia — and then signed their names to a declaration to that effect that was sent to the National Archives.In an interview with Yahoo! News, Willis said she was also considering asking Donald Trump to testify before the grand jury investigating the plot.A colleague of Indiana doctor Caitlin Bernard, who provided the 10-year-old girl from Ohio with an abortion after her rape, has written an op-ed in The New York Times about how the episode, and the downfall of Roe v. Wade, has affected reproductive health.Tracey A. Wilkinson, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine, wrote:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Political attacks on abortion providers are, of course, nothing new. And that’s not all that providers and their staff face: They have been targeted, harassed and in some cases even murdered for providing legal health care to their patients; some types of attacks against them recently have increased. This moment, post-Roe v. Wade, feels particularly frightening and is chilling to anyone who cares for patients, especially those providing reproductive health care.
      This saga has had real-world repercussions for Dr. Bernard. The local police have been alerted to concerns for her physical safety.
      My colleagues and I have watched all this in horror. We are worried that this could happen to us, too. A law that recently went into effect in Indiana mandates that doctors, hospitals and abortion clinics report to the state when a patient who has previously had an abortion presents any of dozens of physical or psychological conditions — including anxiety, depression, sleeping disorders and uterine perforation — because they could be complications of the previous abortion. Not doing so within 30 days can result in a misdemeanor for the physician who treated the patient, punishable with up to 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.Here’s more on the story, which has become an example of the real consequences of the supreme court’s landmark decision last month:Man charged with rape of 10-year-old who had abortion after rightwing media called story ‘not true’Read moreThe depositions of Donald Trump and two of his children planned for Friday will be delayed following the death of Ivana Trump, his first wife and the childrens’ mother. “In light of the passing of Ivana Trump yesterday, we received a request from counsel for Donald Trump and his children to adjourn all three depositions, which we have agreed to,” the New York Attorney General’s Office said. “This is a temporary delay and the depositions will be rescheduled as soon as possible,” the office also said. “There is no other information about dates or otherwise to provide at this time.”Trump and his two eldest children, Ivanka and Donald Jr., were scheduled to give sworn testimony in the office’s three-year civil investigation into potential misconduct surrounding property values. The office is probing whether the Trump Organization provided inaccurate valuation to secure loans at favorable rates, or improperly claim tax breaks. Trump’s attorney has reportedly indicated that the former president will invoke his constitutional right against self-incrimination and refuse to respond to questions. The Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, is facing a tax fraud trial amid a parallel investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. House Democrats will today make a renewed push to pass legislation protecting the right to abortion nationwide and the ability of Americans to cross state lines to seek the procedure. But the bills’ chances of passing the Senate are slim due to opposition from Republicans.House speaker Nancy Pelosi just held an event with other Democrats prior to the vote, declaring, “As we pass his landmark legislation today, Democrats will not stop ferociously defending freedom for women and for every American. And we want everybody to know, women out there who are concerned about their own personal reproductive freedom and what it means to their health, that… the message from the House Democrats in our groups here today is, we are not going back”, sparking a chant that was joined by the lawmakers assembled behind her.You can watch the full speech below:Join @DemWomensCaucus and me at the U.S. Capitol ahead of the passage of legislation to protect women’s reproductive freedom and to stop Republicans from criminalizing women exercising their constitutional right to travel to obtain an abortion. https://t.co/yHypmYBTR5— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) July 15, 2022 More