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      Pelosi says she ‘fears for democracy’ if Republicans retake Congress

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      Pelosi says she ‘fears for democracy’ if Republicans retake Congress‘It is absolutely essential for our democracy that we win,’ speaker of the House says in interview The Democratic speaker of the US House, Nancy Pelosi, said she “fears for democracy” if Republicans retake the chamber in November.‘Clank, into the hole’: Trump claims hole-in-one at Florida golf club Read more“It is absolutely essential for our democracy that we win,” Pelosi said in an interview during the 2022 Toner Prizes for political journalism on Monday night.“I fear for our democracy if the Republicans were ever to get the gavel. We can’t let that happen. Democracy is on the ballot in November.”Parties that control the White House usually receive a rebuke from voters in the first midterms after a presidential election. With Joe Biden’s poll numbers in the gutter and his administration facing strong economic headwinds and grappling with the crisis in Ukraine, Republicans are widely favored to win back the House and perhaps the Senate this year.Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, told Punchbowl News last week: “We’re going to win the majority, and it’s not going to be a five-seat majority.”In the Senate, Ron Johnson, from Wisconsin, has indicated how Republicans are looking forward to controlling committees and wielding subpoena power. The GOP, Johnson said, will be “like a mosquito in a nudist colony, it’s a target-rich environment”.Johnson indicated a desire to investigate the federal coronavirus response and the business dealings of Hunter Biden, the president’s son. Most observers expect House Republicans to scrap the committee investigating Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn his election defeat and the Capitol attack that followed.But Pelosi said: “I don’t have any intention of the Democrats losing the Congress in November.”Rejecting “so-called conventional wisdom” about midterm elections, the speaker said: “There’s nothing conventional anymore, because of the way people communicate with social media and how they receive their information, how they are called to action, how they’re called to meetings and the rest is quite different. So any past assumptions about elections are obsolete.”“We do have a plan,” she added. “We have a vision of the victory. We will plan to get it done and we’re going to own the ground.”Pelosi also cast doubt on the accuracy of polling about Biden’s favourability and said redistricting, a process widely thought to favour Republicans, who control more state governments, would not necessarily leave Democrats at a disadvantage.“Everybody said redistricting was going to be horrible for the Democrats,” Pelosi said. “Remember that? Not so. Not so. If anything, we’ll pick up seats rather than lose 10 to 15, which conventional wisdom said that we would. There’s nothing conventional anymore, and it certainly ain’t wisdom.“And nobody’s going to be rejecting the president.”TopicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesUS SenateUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Republican senator says tax rises in own plan are ‘Democratic talking points’

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      Republican senator says tax rises in own plan are ‘Democratic talking points’Rick Scott of Florida grilled on Fox News Sunday about suggested income tax rise and letting social security and Medicare fall A Republican senator and reputed presidential hopeful found himself in a tough spot when he claimed tax rises contained in his own “11 point plan to rescue America” were “Democratic talking points” instead.‘Rick Scott had us on lockdown’: how Florida said no to $70m for HIV crisisRead more“No, no, it’s in the plan!” his interviewer exclaimed, on Fox News Sunday. “It’s in the plan!”Rick Scott, from Florida, is a former healthcare chief executive whose company admitted 14 felonies related to fraudulent practices. As the South Florida Sun-Sentinel put it, “most happened under Scott’s leadership”.As the Guardian reported, when Scott was governor of Florida “his administration presided over the effective blocking of $70m in federal funds available for fighting the state’s HIV crisis”.Scott beat an incumbent Democrat for a Senate seat in 2018 and is now chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) as the party eyes a Senate takeover in the midterm elections.Last month, Scott released an “11 Point Plan to Rescue America”. It proposes that more Americans pay federal income tax and says Congress could “sunset” social security and Medicare within five years, meaning allow them to lapse.The plan immediately came under fire.The non-partisan Institution on Taxation and Economic Policy (Itep) said Scott’s plan “would increase taxes by more than $1,000 on average for the poorest 40% of Americans”.Itep also noted the effect Scott’s plan would have on Republican heartlands, saying the states most affected, “where more than 40% of residents would face tax increases, are … Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Georgia, New Mexico, South Carolina and … Florida”.Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, disowned the plan, saying: “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people and sunsets social security and Medicare within five years.”Dana Milbank, a Washington Post columnist, said Scott had given Democrats a much-needed election-year gift.“All Democrats need do,” he wrote, regarding a plan which would also cut trade with China and slash tax-gathering resources, “is repeat Scott’s own words.”The Fox News Sunday host John Roberts asked Scott: “Why would you propose something like that in an election year?”Scott said Roberts was repeating “Democrat talking points”.“No, no, it’s in the plan!” Roberts said. “It’s in the plan!”Scott said: “But here’s the thing about reality for a second.”Roberts said: “But, Senator, hang on. It’s not a Democratic talking point! It’s in the plan!”Scott defended his plan, saying, “We ought to every year talk about exactly how we are going to fix Medicare and social security” but “no one that I know of wants to sunset” either.“Here’s what’s unfair,” he added, of his tax plan. “We have people that … could go to work and have figured out how to have government pay their way. That’s not right. They ought to have some skin in the game. I don’t care if it’s a dollar. We ought to all be in this together.”Scott is reportedly Donald Trump’s choice to replace McConnell as Senate leader – an effort that shows no sign of succeeding.Scott was asked if, with a Wall Street Journal column entitled “Why I’m Defying Beltway Cowardice”, he was calling McConnell a coward. He dodged the question, saying he wanted “to get something done”.Complaining about “the woke left” and Democratic policy on immigration and energy, he said: “We’ve got to change this. You don’t change it without having a plan.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022RepublicansUS taxationUS domestic policyUS SenateUS CongressUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump heads to Georgia in high-stakes bid to shape Republican primaries

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      Trump heads to Georgia in high-stakes bid to shape Republican primariesEx-president plans rally after endorsing candidates seeking to replace leaders who rejected his election lie Donald Trump’s continuing effort to bend national Republican candidates to his will and the party to do his bidding faces a test in the key state of Georgia on Saturday as the former president holds a score-settling rally there in support of candidates who could boost any future re-election agenda.Trump’s presence in the state comes 18 months after he pressured Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes to overturn Joe Biden’s victory, a conversation that is now the subject of a grand jury investigation in Atlanta.The loss, which made Trump the first Republican presidential candidate to lose the state in 28 years, continues to rankle the former president, and he has endorsed the state congressman Jody Hice in his challenge to Raffensperger. He also backed other candidates in the state against establishment Republicans, including David Perdue against the sitting governor, Brian Kemp.It follows a similar pattern in other states where Trump has held or plans to hold rallies as a way of showing support for Republican candidates who have offered him their fealty.Republicans’ midterms pitch: never mind the policy, here’s the culture warRead moreSaturday’s rally in Commerce, 70 miles north-east of Atlanta and one of the most conservative parts of the state, is expected to feature Herschel Walker, a former football player running for the US Senate; Perdue; and the congressional candidate Vernon Jones, a former Democratic state representative who began calling himself the “Black Donald Trump” after switching parties.But Trump is playing a high-stakes game and his candidates’ success in Georgia’s May primaries is far from guaranteed.Walker is slightly ahead of the Democratic senator Raphael Warnock in RealClearPolitics polling averages, but Jones, who dropped a bid for the governorship in February, faces a crowded Republican field for the conservative 10th congressional district, which covers part of east Georgia.Trump’s pick for governor, Perdue, faces an even more complex struggle. He has struggled to raise campaign money and trails incumbent Brian Kemp by 11 points, according to a Fox News poll.Perdue has toed Trump’s false line of a “stolen” 2020 election and begun claiming that his defeat to the Democratic senator Jon Ossoff, to whom he conceded in January, was also problematic. “Most people in Georgia know that something untoward happened in November 2020,” he told the talk radio host Bryan Pritchard. “I’ll just say it, Bryan. In my election and the president’s election, they were stolen. The evidence is compelling now.”‘Arsonists with keys to the firehouse’: once-obscure state races fuel fears for US democracyRead moreThe Perdue-Kemp contest represents a personal grudge for Trump, which flared after Kemp after refused to support his bid overturn Georgia’s 2020 election result.Trump has also sought to undermine the governor by backing Patrick Witt, who supported Trump’s election challenge, against John King, who is Georgia’s first Latino statewide constitutional officer and a Kemp loyalist. Witt is running against King in the Republican primary for state insurance commissioner. But the larger question is how far Trump’s influence extends in shaping Georgia’s Republican politics. To some, the former president’s endorsement power is diminishing in the state.“He will not be a help to Trump-endorsed candidates when he comes on Saturday,” the conservative commentator Martha Zoller told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution this week. “He will be negative and backward looking – and that’s not what voters want.”Some Republican pollsters said that while Trump’s endorsement was coveted, he had diluted his influence by reaching far down the ballot or supporting late-entry candidates with little public recognition or campaign apparatus.TopicsDonald TrumpUS midterm elections 2022GeorgiaUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Republicans’ midterms pitch: never mind the policy, here’s the culture war

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      Republicans’ midterms pitch: never mind the policy, here’s the culture war Abortion bans, anti-LGBTQ laws, book bans – the party sees hot button issues as a tried and test path to victory. Democrats ignore it at their peril, experts say“Sue-thy-neighbour” laws that ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy in Texas and now Idaho. A “don’t say gay” bill censoring discussion of sexual orientation in schools in Florida. A ban on Maus, a graphic novel about the Holocaust, by a school board in Tennessee.America’s national government might be under Democratic control but its red states are on the march with sweeping laws targeting abortion, LGBTQ+ people and the teaching of race in schools that threaten to turn back the clock to an era when a citizen’s rights depended on where they lived.Republicans to field more than 100 far-right candidates this yearRead moreThe offensive on cultural hot button issues also appears calculated to ensure that November’s midterm elections will be contested on a playing field of rightwing outrage. Democrats argue that Republicans resort to such territory in lieu of policy substance.“There’s no serious agenda on the Republican side,” said Donna Brazile, a former acting chairperson of the Democratic National Committee. “It’s the same choir that had the same anthem from the 60s through the last election cycle. Without an agenda, without a leader, without a way forward, you have to rely on the old hits. It’s no longer on vinyl; it’s digital.”Although President Donald Trump lost the White House and Republicans lost both chambers of Congress in 2020, Trumpism is thriving in the 30 states where Republicans have legislative control. Under Trump’s continued influence, they are exploiting wedge issues as never before.Last year seven states imposed new restrictions on abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, the biggest such wave of legislation since the supreme court’s landmark Roe v Wade decision in 1973.A law in Texas bans abortion after a doctor detects an embryonic heartbeat – usually around six weeks – and allows private citizens to sue clinics, doctors and anyone else accused of helping provide such abortions in the state. In the month after it took effect the number of abortions reported in Texas fell by 60%, with many women travelling to neighbouring states.Deep red Idaho this week passed a similar measure, a six-week restriction again relying on private citizens to enforce the law. Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “We’re right back in the Soviet era with neighbours and family members snitching on neighbours and family members. That’s unbelievable.”Missouri, Oklahoma and Tennessee are considering similar proposals, while earlier this month Florida’s Republican-led legislature sent a 15-week abortion ban to Governor Ron DeSantis for signature.Republican state legislatures have also launched what the Human Rights Campaign, America’s biggest LGBTQ advocacy group, describes as the worst attack on LGBTQ+ rights in decades. A record of more than 300 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced this year, it says, with 130-plus specifically targeting transgender people.The HRC describes the legislation as part of a coordinated effort by powerful interests promoted by rightwing entities such as the Heritage Foundation. “These groups peddle in fear and pit people against each other to marginalize and punish LGBTQ+ people – and especially transgender children.”Among the most egregious examples is Florida legislation dubbed “don’t say gay” that would bar instruction on “sexual orientation or gender identity” in schools from kindergarten through grade 3. Its dog-whistling impulse was evident when Christina Pushaw, press secretary for DeSantis, tweeted: “The bill that liberals inaccurately call ‘don’t say gay’ would be more accurately described as an anti-grooming bill.”Cathryn Oakley, state legislative director and senior counsel for the Human Rights Campaign, said: “We’re looking at one of the worst legislative sessions for LGBTQ issues ever in terms of volume of bills introduced.”“Almost all of them are targeting transgender youth, whether that’s through bans on trans students being able to play school sports consistent with their gender identity, bans on trans youth being able to access gender-affirming medical care, bans on trans students being able to use the correct restroom in school.”Oakley added: “The ‘don’t say gay or trans’ bill lives at the intersection of this huge effort to attack LGBTQ but particularly trans youth and the movement that we’ve seen resurrected in the recent years that’s about surveilling teachers and censoring curriculum, whether that’s talking about critical race theory, about what’s in the sex ed class or about banning books.”In Tennessee, the McMinn county school board removed Maus, a Pulitzer prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, from its curriculum because of “inappropriate language” and an illustration of a nude woman (actually a cartoon mouse). The state’s governor, Bill Lee, then proposed a law for closer scrutiny of school libraries so students consume “age appropriate” content.Tennessee also banned the teaching of a critical race theory (CRT), an academic discipline that examines how racism becomes embedded in legal systems but has been caricatured by Republicans as a divisive anti-white ideology.Eight other Republican-led states – Idaho, Oklahoma, Texas, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Arizona and North Dakota – had also passed legislation against the teaching of CRT as of last November, according to the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, with nearly 20 states introducing or planning to introduce similar legislation.Brookings also noted that the conservative Fox News channel had mentioned “critical race theory” 1,300 times in less than four months. CRT was a frequently cited bogeyman at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, which was themed “Awake not woke” – a sure sign of its potential to energise and rile up the base for electoral purposes.Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at Brookings and former Bill Clinton administration official, said: “There were some very good things about the old Republican party. Now it’s a party of racists and homophobes and people pursuing bizarre cultural things. It’s just crazy.“They’re a bankrupt party and yet they manage to do well on these kinds of issues because people get emotional about them and don’t really understand or in fact care about the economic issues. Democrats have been tone deaf thinking that the economic issues will always trump the cultural issues. They don’t.”For Republicans, this week’s Senate judiciary committee hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson seemed to be as much as about campaigning for the 2022 midterms, which will decide control of the House of Representatives and Senate, as the first Black woman nominated to the supreme court.Dwelling on CRT, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas held up the book Antiracist Baby by Ibram X Kendi and demanded: “Do you agree… that babies are racist?” Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee asked: “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” Jackson replied: “I can’t … I’m not a biologist.”Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the anti-Trump group Lincoln Project, said: “The Scotus [supreme court] nomination hearings this week were a window into the Republican party’s strategy going into midterms and 2024. They have no policy agenda. They are strictly focused on culture war wedge issues because they’ve had success energising their base with them and the people who are leading the charge are fundamentally unserious people.“Senator Mitch McConnell has already said that he’s not releasing a policy agenda. There’s a reason for that. Culture war politics can work and Democrats run the risk of underestimating how powerful and energising this tactic of politicking can be. They underestimate it at their own peril.”What links many hot button issues is children. Whether unborn or at school, they are portrayed by Republicans as vulnerable to sinister forces aligned with Democrats and leftwing militants. Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia, set up a tip line so parents could send “reports and observations” about perceived objectionable conduct by teachers and school staff.The appeal to parental instincts rather than to policy judgments was accelerated by frustrations over mask mandates and school closures during the coronavirus pandemic.Setmayer, a political commentator and former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, said: “Some of the issues speak to the fundamental desire to protect your children. There’s a reason why Republicans for decades have always included getting involved at the school board level as part of their grassroots playbook.“Any time you frame a political issue around children, you can activate voters who may not have been activated before because they want to make sure that their children are safe. It becomes a more righteous issue; it’s not just about them in their minds.”Not all Republicans are on board. This week Indiana’s governor, Eric Holcomb, and Governor Spencer Cox of Utah vetoed legislation that would bar transgender girls from taking part in girls’ sports at school. But such voices remain in the minority, with the Trump-dominated party only likely to become more aggressive on hot button issues as the polls draw closer.Monika McDermott, a political science professor at Fordham University in New York, said: “At this point Democrats are in some ways dismissing it as well as though they think people will see through it and I think that’s a big mistake.“They need to fight this head on, counter these arguments, make things clear, try to redefine things like so-called critical race theory and explain the reasons why they support teaching this kind of historical perspective in schools and why it’s necessary, and why abortion has been legal for so long and what’s happening to it now.”She added: “They need to do the same kind of call to arms that Republicans are doing but on the liberal side, and I don’t see them doing that at this point. I see them resting on their laurels to a certain extent, targeting specific districts. It’s all about strategy but they’re not getting at the heart of the matter.”TopicsUS politicsRepublicansUS midterm elections 2022DemocratsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      US congressman convicted of lying to FBI in campaign funds case

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      US congressman convicted of lying to FBI in campaign funds caseNebraska Republican Jeff Fortenberry found guilty in case involving illegal campaign contributions from foreign billionaire A Nebraska congressman has been found guilty of three felonies for lying to the FBI about illegal campaign contributions from a foreign billionaire.A federal jury in Los Angeles convicted Jeff Fortenberry, a nine-term Republican, on Thursday of concealing information and two counts of providing false statements to authorities.Biden heads to Poland for meetings on Ukraine refugee crisis – US politics liveRead moreHe denied to federal authorities that he was aware of illegal campaign donations from Gilbert Chagoury, a Nigerian billionaire of Lebanese descent who disguised his identity through third-party contributions, said the US attorney’s office for the central district of California.According to court documents reviewed by the Washington Post, Chagoury was accused of making illicit campaign contributions worth up to $180,000 to four American political candidates, including Fortenberry.One of Chagoury’s associates gave $30,000 to “an individual at a restaurant in Los Angeles, who, along with others, later made campaign contributions” to Fortenberry’s re-election campaign, according to officials.Chagoury had connections to Defense of Christians, a nonprofit that combated the persecution of Christians and other minorities in the Middle East, court documents revealed. He attempted to funnel money to “politicians from less-populous states because the contribution would be more noticeable to the politician and thereby would promote increased donor access,” said federal prosecutors.Fortenberry has maintained his innocence. In a YouTube video filmed with his wife and dog, he said “a person from overseas illegally moved money to my campaign” and he “didn’t know anything about this”.“I feel so personally betrayed … We thought we were trying to help,” Fortenberry said. His attorneys accused federal agents of setting him up.Fortenberry’s sentencing is set for 28 June. Each count carries up to five years of federal prison time, along with fines. Fortenberry said the court process had been unfair and that he would immediately appeal.“After learning of illegal contributions to his campaign, the congressman repeatedly chose to conceal the violations of federal law to protect his job, his reputation and his close associates,” said US attorney Tracy L Wilkison in a statement.“The lies in this case threatened the integrity of the American electoral system and were designed to prevent investigators from learning the true source of campaign funds.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsUS political financingnewsReuse this content More

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson hearing reveals racist fears of Republicans | Steve Phillips

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson hearing reveals Republicans’ racist fearsSteve PhillipsRepublicans are becoming so hysterical because people like Judge Jackson pose a revolutionary threat to the status quo “Black Girl Magic” is on full display in the supreme court confirmation hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Republicans are apoplectic. The juxtaposition of Jackson’s calm, confident, professionalism with the hostile, cynical and contemptuous questioning by senators such as Texas senator Ted Cruz is an object lesson for the entire world on the ongoing dynamics of systemic racism in the United States.Rather than do their constitutional duty of engage with a prospective supreme court justice on the pressing legal issues of the day, the Republican committee members have opted to throw racist red meat to their rabid white supporters who are gripped by fear of people of color. Cruz led the charge with his attacks on critical race theory, asking Jackson whether she agrees “that babies are racist” and trying to paint the judge as a dangerous person who would force white children to learn about racism.In so doing, Cruz was working from a tried and tired playbook that seeks to dramatize anti-racist demands in ways that fuel white fears about the consequences of Black people attaining positions of power. There is a long history in this country of the leaders of white people trying to force Black people to denounce anti-racist movements as a condition for entry into the highest precincts of power (Cruz is Latino, but his base is largely white). In 2008, the media tried to force Barack Obama to denounce his pastor Jeremiah Wright’s statements forcefully condemning white supremacy. Two decades earlier, Jesse Jackson was dogged by demands that he distance himself from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. The point of said attacks is to try to weaken support for the Black person one way or another. Either they distance themselves from Black leaders and movements, thereby diminishing Black enthusiasm, or they refuse to renounce anti-racist voices, and that refusal is then used to scare white people.Cruz and his ilk gravitate to such tactics because white fears about Black people have defined politics in this country for centuries. One of the Republican questioners of Judge Jackson was South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, representative of a state that has been in the forefront of efforts to whip white people into a frenzy about the prospects of Black equality. In 1712, the South Carolina legislature passed the “Slave Laws” – legislation designed to control the behavior of “Negroes and other slaves [who] are of barbarous, wild, savage natures”. South Carolina’s leaders were so extreme in stoking white fears that the state was the first to secede from the Union and turn to violence after Abraham Lincoln’s election on an anti-slavery platform in 1860. Graham’s predecessor, Strom Thurmond, ran for president in 1948, defiantly declaring that, “there’s not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the n—-r race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches!”Today’s Republicans are becoming so hysterical because people like Judge Jackson pose a revolutionary threat to the status quo in that they reveal the ubiquity of Black brilliance. Cruz, Graham and their fellow modern-day Confederates know instinctively that as the public sees how many amazing Black women there are, it becomes much harder to explain why most of the powerful positions in this country are still held by white men. In 233 years, there hasn’t been a single Black woman smart enough to sit on the supreme court? The notion is absurd. So, if it’s not lack of talent, then it must be something else. Like racism and sexism. Exposing this reality is very dangerous to a political party whose power rests on exploiting that racism and sexism (all the while denying it exists).The very fact that Jackson’s nomination is historic and not routine is a profound indictment of the United States of America. Hour after hour, question after question, Judge Jackson – secure in the knowledge that she is simply the latest talented Black woman and not the first – is calmly, confidently and politely taking a wrecking ball to the myth that America is a meritocracy. And the implications of that scare the Republicans to death.
      Steve Phillips is the founder of Democracy in Color and author of Brown is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority. He is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonOpinionUS supreme courtLaw (US)US politicsRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

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      It’s the beginning of a new era in Washington – and Putin is responsible | Robert Reich

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      It’s the beginning of a new era in Washington – and Putin is responsibleRobert ReichThere has been a quiet understanding that we’re on the brink of a new cold war, potentially even a hot one – which requires that we join together to survive I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest something that would have seemed utter nonsense as late as a month ago: I’m seeing the stirrings in Washington of a new era of … I’m not sure what to call it. “Unity” is way too strong. “Bipartisanship” is premature. “De-partisanship” is too clunky.Putin may ramp up his war in Ukraine – here’s how Nato should respond | Ivo DaalderRead moreBut something new seems to be happening, and Vladimir Putin is responsible.Don’t get me wrong. Democrats and Republicans won’t join hands and sing Kumbaya anytime soon. Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy will continue to ambush Democrats every chance they get. Expect bitter battles over background checks, immigration reform, civil rights protections and Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation to the supreme court. Trump won’t stop telling his big lie. Your Fox News-obsessed Uncle Bob will remain in his hermetically sealed alternative universe.Yet ever since the runup to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, I’ve noticed something in Washington that I haven’t seen in three decades – a quiet understanding that we’re on the brink of a new cold war, potentially even a hot one. Which requires that we join together in order to survive.It’s a subtle shift – more of tone than anything else. I saw it when Volodymyr Zelenskiy addressed Congress from Ukraine. When he showed lawmakers a gut-wrenching video of the war’s consequences, many eyes filled with tears. The lawmakers shared, according to Maine’s independent senator Angus King, “a collective holding of breath”. That Republicans and Democrats shared anything – that they were even capable of a collective emotion – is itself remarkable.With bipartisan support, Ukraine is receiving unprecedented military and humanitarian aid to fight Putin’s war, including anti-aircraft systems that many experts say can defend against bombs and missiles from Russia’s land-based weaponry.Beyond Ukraine, you can also discern the shift in a series of recent across-the-aisle agreements. After literally 200 failed attempts, the Senate just passed an anti-lynching law. The Senate has also given sexual misconduct claims firmer legal footing with a new law ending forced arbitration in sexual assault and harassment cases. The Senate also just approved sweeping postal reform. And unanimously decided to keep daylight savings time year-round. And it has given the green light to long-awaited reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act as part of a giant spending bill.I’m hearing from Senate staffers that they’re close to bipartisan agreement to strengthen antitrust laws. Also on a measure to expand semiconductor manufacturing in America, as part of a new China competitiveness bill. And another measure to limit the cost of insulin.OK, none of this is as dramatic as protecting voting rights or controlling prescription drug costs. But compared with the last few years, it’s extraordinary. (You may not have heard much about these initiatives because the media only picks up on bitter conflict and name-calling.)Something new is happening in Washington, and I think I know why.You see, I came to Washington in 1974, in the Ford administration, and then worked in the Carter administration. The cold war was raging during those years, serving as a kind of silent backdrop for everything else. Democrats and Republicans had different views on a host of issues, but we worked together because it was assumed that we had to. We faced a common threat.The cold war had produced an array of bipartisan legislation involving huge investments in America – legislation that was justified by the Soviet threat but in reality had much more to do with the needs of the nation. The National Interstate and Defense Highway Act was designed to “permit quick evacuation of target areas” in case of nuclear attack and get munitions rapidly from city to city. Of course, in subsequent years it proved indispensable to America’s economic growth.America’s huge investment in higher education in the late 1950s was spurred by the Soviets’ Sputnik satellite. The official purpose of the National Defense Education Act, as it was named, was to “insure trained manpower of sufficient quality and quantity to meet the national defense needs of the United States”. But it trained an entire generation of math and science teachers, and expanded access to higher education.The defense department’s Advanced Research Projects Administration served as America’s de facto incubator for new technologies. It was critical to the creation of the internet as well as new materials technologies. John F Kennedy launched the race to the moon in 1962 so that space wouldn’t be “governed by a hostile flag of conquest” (ie, the Soviet Union). But it did much more than this for America.Then, in November 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. And in December 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed.Just three years later, Newt Gingrich became speaker of the House – and instigated the angriest and most divisive chapter in modern American political history. I was there. I remember the change in Washington, as if a storm had swept in. Weeks before, Republican members of Congress occasionally gave me a hard time, but they were generally civil. Suddenly, I was treated as if I were the enemy.Looking back, I can’t help wonder if the cold war had held America together – gave us common purpose, reminded us of our interdependence. With its end, perhaps we had nowhere to turn except on each other. If the cold war had not ended, I doubt Gingrich would have been able to launch a new internal war inside America. Had the Soviet menace remained, I doubt Donald Trump would have been able to take up Gingrich’s mantle of hate and conspiracy.Putin has brought a fractured Nato together. Maybe he’s bringing America back together too. It’s the thinnest of silver linings to the human disaster he’s creating, but perhaps he’ll have the same effect on the US as the old Soviet Union did on America’s sense of who we are.TopicsUS politicsOpinionVladimir PutinUkraineRussiaRepublicansDemocratscommentReuse this content More