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      Capitol attack committee has spoken to Trump AG William Barr, chairman says

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      Capitol attack committee has spoken to Trump AG William Barr, chairman says
      Bennie Thompson reveals attorney general interviews
      Trump complains panel is going after his children
      ’Walls closing in’: Trump reels from week of political setbacks
      The chairman of the congressional committee investigating the US Capitol attack and Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election revealed on Sunday that the panel has spoken to the former attorney general William Barr, a further indication that the inquiry has moved closer to the ex-president’s inner circle.‘House of Trump is crumbling’: why ex-president’s legal net is tighteningRead moreBennie Thompson told CBS’s Face the Nation that Barr, who was accused of making the justice department Trump’s tool but who resigned before Trump left office, had spoken more than once with the panel.“To be honest with you, we’ve had conversations with the former attorney general already,” Thompson said.His host, Margaret Brennan, asked if the panel would seek answers from Barr over the discovery of a draft executive order for the US military to seize voting machines in contested states.“We have talked to Department of Defense individuals,” Thompson said. “We are concerned that our military was part of this big lie on promoting that the election was false. If you are using the military to potentially seize voting machines, even though it’s a discussion, the public needs to know.”News of the interviews with Barr, who angered Trump by insisting there was no evidence to support his lies of a stolen election, dealt another blow to the former president, whose political and legal woes escalated significantly this week.Unlike other Trumpworld insiders who have refused to cooperate with the January 6 committee, such as the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, strategist Steve Bannon and national security adviser Michael Flynn, Barr appears to have spoken willingly.It reflects moves by the House panel to focus more closely on Trump’s actions following the election, including his inciting of the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol.This week, the committee asked for the cooperation of Trump’s daughter Ivanka.“Our strategy is to get to all the facts and circumstances that brought about January 6,” Thompson said.“And obviously Ivanka Trump was a major adviser to the president all along, a number of items [are] attributed to what she’s been saying and so we asked her to come in voluntarily and give us the benefit of what she knows.”The inquiry has also subpoenaed phone records of Trump’s son Eric and Kimberly Guilfoyle, partner of Donald Jr.Trump is not pleased, complaining in an interview with the rightwing Washington Examiner that the committee was made up of “vicious people” who “go after children”.Donald Trump Jr is 44, Ivanka Trump is 40 and Eric Trump is 38.TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpWilliam BarrUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Sanders: ‘anti-democratic’ Republicans to blame for Biden woes, not just Manchin and Sinema

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      Sanders: ‘anti-democratic’ Republicans to blame for Biden woes, not just Manchin and SinemaSenator confirms he will campaign against moderate Democrats if they face primary challenges

      Robert Reich: Manchin and Sinema are all about their egos
      Bernie Sanders on Sunday sought to turn fire aimed by Democrats at two of their own, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, onto Republican senators he said were “pushing an anti-democratic agenda”.Kyrsten Sinema: Arizona Democrats censure senator for voting rights failureRead more“Republicans are laughing all the way to election day,” the Vermont senator told CNN’s State of the Union. “They have not had to cast one bloody vote which shows us where they’re at.”But the Vermont progressive also confirmed that he will campaign against Manchin and Sinema, both Democrats, should they face viable primary challengers.Manchin, from West Virginia, and Sinema, from Arizona, have blocked Democratic priorities including the Build Back Better spending plan and, this week, voting rights reform.Their refusal to contemplate reform to the filibuster, the rule which requires 60-vote majorities for most legislation, meant two voting rights bills in answer to Republican attacks on voting in states were always doomed to fail.On Saturday, Sinema was formally censured by her state party. Sanders said he supported that move. He also confirmed his threat to campaign against Sinema and Manchin in 2024.“If there was strong candidates prepared to stand up for working families who understand that the Democratic party has got to be the party of working people, taking on big money interests, if both candidates were there in Arizona and West Virginia, yes, I would be happy to support them.”But, Sanders insisted, “it’s not only those two. It is 50 Republicans who have been adamant about not only pushing an anti-democratic agenda but also opposing our efforts to try to lower the cost of prescription drugs, trying to expand Medicare … to improve the disaster situation in home healthcare, in childcare, to address the existential threat of climate change. “You’ve got 50 Republicans who don’t want to do anything except criticise the president and then you have, sadly enough, two Democrats who choose to work with Republicans rather than the president, and it will sabotage the president’s effort to address the needs of working families in this country.”Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press, Sanders insisted the Biden administration made “a great start”, in part with a Covid relief bill passed with just 50 votes and the casting vote of Vice-President Kamala Harris, but was now bogged down thanks in large part to Manchin and Sinema.“The president and the Democratic Congress,” Sanders said, “… looked at the economic crisis that was caused by Covid. We passed the American Rescue Plan … and we also passed along the way the strongest infrastructure bill that has been passed since Dwight D Eisenhower … We were off to a great start. “And then I will tell you exactly what happened. Fifty members of the Republican party decided that they were going to be obstructionist … and then you had two United States senators joining them, Mr Manchin and Senator Sinema. “For five months now there have been negotiations behind closed doors trying to get these two Democratic senators on board. That strategy, in my view, has failed. It has failed dismally. We saw it last week in terms of the Voting Rights Act. We now need a new direction.”Asked if he was frustrated, Sanders told CNN he was.But, he insisted, “we need to start voting. We need to bring important pieces of legislation that impact the lives of working families right onto the floor of the Senate. And Republicans want to vote against lowering the cost of climate change, home healthcare, whatever it may be. And if the Democrats want to join them, let the American people see what’s happening. “Then we can pick up the pieces and pass legislation.”Abolishing the filibuster won’t lead to a ‘tyranny of the majority’. It’s quite the opposite Read moreSome Democrats advocate splitting Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan into separate bills, in order to pass what they can.Sanders conceded that most such legislation will not pass, given Republican obstruction and the machinations of Manchin and Sinema. Bringing bills to the floor, he conceded, would really be about electoral politics ahead of midterms this year in which Republicans expect to take back the House and possibly the Senate, and the presidential contest in two years’ time.“Once we know where people are at,” he said, “then we can say, ‘All right, look, we have 50 votes here, we have just one vote here, 49 votes here. “But what has bothered me very much is Republicans are laughing all the way to election day. They have not had to cast one bloody vote, or two, which shows us where they’re at. And we’ve got to change.”TopicsBernie SandersUS SenateUS CongressDemocratsBiden administrationUS politicsUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More

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      ‘The walls are closing in’: Trump reels from week of political setbacks

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      ‘The walls are closing in’: Trump reels from week of political setbacks It was a terrible seven days, with major developments in investigations of his election lies and the Capitol riot reaching into his inner circle

      ‘House of Trump is crumbling’: why the legal net is tightening
      The last time Donald Trump heard such hammer blows, they were from renovations at Mar-a-Lago that displeased the former president. But not even that sound would have left his ears ringing like last week’s avalanche of bad news that some believe nudged a criminal indictment one step closer.Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn to see honorary university degrees revokedRead moreNo single week in the year since Trump left the White House has been as dramatic, or for him as potentially catastrophic, as the one just passed.It included a rebuke from the supreme court over documents related to the 6 January insurrection which Trump incited; news that the congressional committee investigating the riot was closing in on Trump’s inner circle; evidence from New York’s attorney general of alleged tax fraud; and, perhaps most damaging of all, a request from a Georgia prosecutor for a grand jury in her investigation of Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.The week ended with the leaking of a document showing that Trump at least pondered harnessing the military in his attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.It all left the former president with plenty to ponder.“He’s Teflon Don, he said he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and survive it, his supporters are going to support him no matter what, but I’m starting to think more and more that the walls are closing in on this guy,” said Kimberley Wehle, a respected legal analyst and professor of law at the University of Baltimore.“The most immediate thing is the grand jury in Georgia because there’s audio of him trying to get [secretary of state] Brad Raffensperger to ‘find’ votes. Under Georgia election laws as I read them that is potentially a crime.“The looming question is whether Trump will be indicted along with 11 others so far for seditious conspiracy [over the 6 January Capitol attack]. To me that’s the biggest turn of events … the justice department believes they have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt of an agreement, a meeting of minds to overturn a legitimate election.“And that there are a lot of high-level people that are looped into it, including potentially Donald Trump himself, and of course he’s not president, so he’s not immune from prosecution any more.”It is that Department of Justice investigation into the deadly Capitol assault, parallel but separate to the 6 January House committee, which harbors the most legal peril for Trump. Some believe sedition charges for members of the Oath Keepers militia indicate that the inquiry has moved into a higher gear.Others, most recently Preet Bharara, former district attorney for the southern district of New York, have questioned why it appears members of Trump’s inner guard, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows, have not yet been questioned.“It’s just not a possibility they’ve tried to interview, you know, a dozen of the top people at and around the White House like the [6 January] committee has [because] they squeal like stuck pigs when people approach them,” Bharara told The New Abnormal podcast, a Daily Beast podcast.“It’s odd to have allowed all this testimony to be collected, all these documents to be subpoenaed and compiled, and they don’t look like they’ve done any of these interviews. There are some lower-level people who breached the doors to the Capitol, but I don’t think those people are giving it up in a straight line to Trump.”At a rare press conference earlier this month, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, did not mention Trump by name but sought to reassure critics of his investigation.“The justice department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law – whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy,” he said in a carefully worded address.The objectives of the House committee are easier to divine and more likely in the immediate term to cause political harm to Trump as he mulls another White House run.Thursday’s request for testimony from his daughter Ivanka, a former White House adviser, brings the investigation to the heart of Trump’s inner circle. Trump’s actions are also set to be explored in primetime TV hearings that Jamie Raskin, a Democratic member of the committee, has promised will “blow the roof off the House”.The panel also scored a big victory on Wednesday when the supreme court ended Trump’s efforts to shield more than 700 pages of White House records. The treasure trove of documents included a draft executive order directing the Department of Defense to seize voting machines, and appointing a special counsel to look into the election, in support of Trump’s “big lie” that the election was stolen.“Documents don’t die, they don’t lie,” Wehle said. “A witness can say, ‘Oh, I don’t recall,’ and dance around it. Documents cannot. Secondly, the documents will lead to more people to discuss what happened, including Ivanka Trump.”Trump himself has been uncharacteristically quiet about his week of setbacks, other than two statements attacking Fani Willis, the Democratic district attorney for Fulton county, Georgia, for requesting a grand jury to assist her investigation into his election interference.Draft Trump order told defense chief to seize swing-state voting machinesRead more“The people looking for the crime are being hounded and the people who committed the crime are being protected,” he said. “This is not the American way.”To Wehle, the week’s developments have significance not only for Trump but for November midterm elections in which Republicans are tipped to reclaim Congress.“We have to think about the January 6th committee as getting information to voters before November about sitting members who might be up for reelection,” she said.“The question is not so much whether Trump will be indicted, but who in a seat of power in the US Congress was potentially involved in this conspiracy.“Frankly, if American democracy is to be saved from single-party minority rule, November is absolutely vital.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsUS elections 2020US midterm elections 2022US elections 2024US CongressfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn to see honorary university degrees revoked

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      Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn to see honorary university degrees revokedUniversity of Rhode Island board votes unanimously to revoke degrees given to key allies of Donald Trump in 2003 and 2014

      ‘House of Trump is crumbling’: the legal net tightens
      The University of Rhode Island will revoke honorary degrees given to Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn, key allies of Donald Trump in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.Michael Flynn allies allegedly plotted to lean on Republicans to back vote auditsRead moreThe URI board of trustees on Friday voted unanimously to revoke the degrees, which were given to Giuliani in 2003 and Flynn in 2014.Giuliani’s doctorate of laws was given for his leadership as mayor of New York City after the 9/11 attacks, the Providence Journal reported.Flynn, a retired general and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who graduated from URI in 1981, was given a doctorate of humane letters.The trustees voted on the recommendation of the URI president, Marc Parlange, who said the two men “no longer represent the highest level of our values and standards that were evident when we first bestowed the degree”.Giuliani has acted as Trump’s attorney, work that led to the suspension of his law licenses in New York and Washington DC.A leader of legal attempts to overturn election results in key states, Giuliani spoke at a rally near the White House on 6 January, urging “trial by combat”.Parlange said Giuliani “encouraged domestic terrorist behavior aimed at preventing Congress from certifying the outcome of the 2020 presidential election”.Seven people died around the storming of the US Capitol. Trump was impeached but acquitted. More than 700 people have been charged. Eleven members of a far-right militia have been charged with sedition.This week, Giuliani was among Trump allies served subpoenas by the House select committee investigating the attack. Trump’s former adviser, Steve Bannon, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of contempt of Congress arising from a refusal to co-operate. Trump’s final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, could face the same charge. Leading Republicans in Congress have also refused to co-operate.On Friday, the Washington Post reported that a judge has released to prosecutors more than 3,000 of Giuliani’s communications, in an investigation of work in Ukraine which contributed to Trump’s first impeachment, for seeking dirt on rivals including Joe Biden.Flynn, who was fired from the Defense Intelligence Agency by Barack Obama, became Trump’s national security adviser before being fired for lying to the FBI about contacts with Russian officials.He pleaded guilty but was pardoned by Trump. A leading figure on the far right, he has advocated a military coup and the establishment of Christianity as the state religion.Texts show Fox News host Hannity’s pleas to Trump aide after Capitol attackRead moreFlynn has been implicated in aspects of Trump’s attempt to stay in power including plans to seize election machines, the subject of a draft executive order revealed on Friday by Politico. He has resisted a subpoena from the 6 January committee.Also on Friday, the Guardian reported that law enforcement agencies have learned of an alleged plan by “allies of Flynn” to “gather ‘intelligence’ on top Republicans”, in order to compel them to back election audits in key states.Recommending the revocation of the honorary degrees, Parlange said: “As a civic institution, URI has the privilege and responsibility to sustain and preserve American democracy by insuring and modeling good citizenship. Revoking these honorary degrees reinforces our values and allows us to lead with truth and integrity.”The chairwoman of the URI trustees, Margo Cook, said the board “supports the university and its mission to uphold its values, especially its commitment to intellectual and ethical leadership and fostering an environment of diversity and respect”.TopicsRudy GiulianiThe ObserverMichael FlynnDonald TrumpTrump administrationRhode IslandUS educationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Republican resistance to Trump rings hollow as ‘moderates’ say no on voting rights

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      Republican resistance to Trump rings hollow as ‘moderates’ say no on voting rights Romney, Cheney and others were hailed as the conscience of the party but their deeds in the Senate have provoked accusations of hypocrisyThey have been hailed as the conscience of the Republican party, heroes of the resistance to former US president Donald Trump’s hostile takeover.But Senator Mitt Romney, Congresswoman Liz Cheney and others this month helped kill off a voting rights bill that Democrats say is essential to protecting democracy from a Trump-driven onslaught.Texts show Fox News host Hannity’s pleas to Trump aide after Capitol attackRead moreThe blanket opposition from these Republicans is provoking criticism that their professed rejection of the ex-president rings hollow and, despite their lofty words, they are ultimately helping further his authoritarian agenda.“They might not like Trump but they have the character of Trump,” said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. “The reason why Trump was able to lead their party is because he is a good representation. He’s a liar; they lie. They’ve decided to use any means necessary to maintain power. If that means political corruption, they decide that they’re going to go that route.”Black Voters Matter and other groups warn that Republican-led states across the country are passing laws making it more difficult for African Americans and others to vote by consolidating polling locations, requiring certain types of identification and ordering other changes.In response Democrats in the House of Representatives last week passed the Freedom to Vote: John R Lewis Act, which would make election day a national holiday, ensure access to early voting and mail-in ballots and enable the justice department to intervene in states with a history of voter interference.The legislation was also supported by all 50 Democrats in the Senate but collapsed this week when Republicans used a procedural rule known as the filibuster to block it in the evenly divided chamber. Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, then called on a vote on changing Senate rules to allow the chamber to pass the bill by a simple majority vote. Again all Republicans were opposed, and now they were joined by Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginian and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, ensuring a 52-48 defeat.It was a bitter defeat for Joe Biden just hours after he held a marathon press conference on Wednesday marking the end of his first year in office. “I am profoundly disappointed,” the president said in a statement.Much liberal fury was focused on Democratic holdouts Manchin and Sinema. But their intransigence only mattered because all the Republicans – including so-called moderates – stood firm against legislation that aims to combat voter suppression, which largely impacts communities of color. Even those who claim to be fiercely anti-Trump.Romney, a former presidential nominee, is a prime example. He was the only senator to break with his party by voting to convict Trump for abuse of power in his first impeachment trial in 2020. He was then one of seven Republicans to find Trump guilty of incitement of insurrection at his second impeachment trial last year.“Well, I like Mitt,” Biden told reporters at the press conference lasting nearly two hours. “Look, Mitt Romney is a straight guy.”Yet by then Romney, senator for Utah, had already spelled out his opposition to the voting rights legislation, dismissing it as a partisan takeover of federal elections and even comparing it to Trump’s false claim of election rigging in 2020.Romney was not alone. Senator Ben Sasse of Utah, who also voted to convict Trump at last year’s impeachment trial, described the push to defend voting rights as a “charade” to satisfy a minority “addicted to rage on Twitter”, adding: “It’s bad for America. It’s just as undermining of public trust in elections as what Donald Trump did last year.”Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman and Tim Scott, all of whom have spoke out against Trump at various times, opposed the bill. In the earlier House vote, NeverTrumpers Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger also toed the party line.Cheney, vice chair of the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, has earned bipartisan admiration from some unlikely quarters. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman even floated the idea of her becoming Biden’s running mate in the 2024 election.But the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney made clear last year she did not see connection between Trump’s “big lie” about 2020 and the blitz of voter restrictions imposed by Republican state legislatures. “I will never understand the resistance, for example, to voter ID,” Cheney told Axios on HBO. Some commentators agree that there is nothing inconsistent about decrying Trump’s assault on democracy and rejecting Democrats’ sweeping proposals.Michael Steele, the first African American to serve as chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “You can be against Donald Trump and have a policy view on voting rights – I would personally maybe disagree with it – that would not lead them to support the proposed legislation in the House or the Senate.”But some conservative critics of Trump admit that the reforms, which they regard as an example of government overreach at the expense of states’ autonomy (even though article I of the constitution explicitly authorises Congress to set federal election rules), put them in a quandary.Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, said: “I am vehemently anti-Trump, but anti- what the Democrats are trying to do at the federal level, so I’d be in the same grouping. Republicans are doing a bunch of shit but the answer to that in my mind is not bad, unconstitutional federal legislation.”But Walsh objects to Romney’s attempt to equate Trump’s lies with Biden’s policy. “I disagree with Mitt and any other Republican that’s making any sort of comparisons between what Trump did to our elections and what Democrats are doing.”This week’s vote was also the latest marker of the Republican party’s transformation in the Trump era. Sixteen of its current senators voted to re-authorise the Voting Rights Act in 2006 but opposed the latest bill, which would update the most powerful part of the law. Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, George H W Bush and George W Bush all supported its renewal.Antjuan Seawright, a senior adviser to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, took issue with Romney and colleagues’ claim that Republicans are not making it harder for minorities to vote. “It’s intellectually dishonest for anyone to say that there’s not an effort to suppress, suffocate and silence the votes of Black people in particular around this country. All you have to do is look at the bills that have been filed and where they have been filed,” he said.With the voting rights measures aimed at safeguarding democracy now apparently dead in the water, it may be harder for independents, liberals and others to heap praise on anti-Trump Republicans in quite the same way as before.Kurt Bardella, an adviser to the Democratic National Committee, argues that doing the right thing once does not make them heroes. “Just because you’re anti-Trump doesn’t mean you’re still not part of the anti-democratic effort that’s being spearheaded by the Republican party in America.”Bardella, a former senior advisor to Republicans on the House oversight committee, added: “For Republicans like Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney, it says everything that they’re still willing to be called Republicans, and it is the Republican party’s position to make it harder for minorities in America to vote. You look at the closing of voting locations in states like Georgia, where locations that have the highest density of minority voters are now having less options to go vote.“That’s pretty straightforward. That’s pretty racist. It demonstrates the white privilege in play for people like Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney to not see that. The reality is, if they’re not willing to move forward and assist in the effort to enact voter protections in America, then they’re Donald Trump’s biggest ally.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Texts show Fox News host Hannity’s pleas to Trump aide after Capitol attack

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      Texts show Fox News host Hannity’s pleas to Trump aide after Capitol attackMessages said there should be ‘no more stolen election talk’ and ‘no more crazy people’ should be admitted to president’s orbit

      US politics – live coverage
      In the aftermath of the deadly attack on the US Capitol last year, the rightwing Fox News host Sean Hannity pleaded with a top aide to Donald Trump that there should be “no more stolen election talk” and “no more crazy people” should be admitted to the president’s orbit.Michael Flynn allies allegedly plotted to lean on Republicans to back vote auditsRead moreKayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, agreed – but to little effect.More than a year after the riot, around which seven people died as Trump supporters sought to stop certification of electoral college results, Trump continues to lie that the 2020 election was stolen by Joe Biden.He also continues to keep company with far-right conspiracy theorists including Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder who in a lawsuit this week was accused of being “crazy like a fox”.Hannity has also long been close to Trump, as an informal adviser and sometime rally guest. Though he has been revealed to have been shaken by the attack on the Capitol, he has spent the year since the riot supporting Trump’s version of events.The House committee investigating January 6 has asked for Hannity’s cooperation, a request a lawyer for the host said raises “first amendment concerns regarding freedom of the press”.Hannity has previously said he does not claim to be a journalist.Excerpts of his messages to McEnany on 7 January 2021 were included in a letter from the January 6 committee to Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter and adviser whom the panel also wishes to question.“First,” the letter said, “on 7 January, Mr Hannity texted Ms McEnany, laying out a five-point approach for conversations with President Trump. Items one and two of that plan read as follows:“1 – No more stolen election talk.“2 – Yes, impeachment and 25th amendment are real, and many people will quit… ”McEnany, the letter said, responded: “Love that. Thank you. That is the playbook. I will help reinforce… ”If McEnany did follow Hannity’s playbook, it did not produce a touchdown or even a reasonable punt.It has been widely reported that invoking the 25th amendment, which provides for the removal of a president deemed incapable of carrying out his or her duties, was seriously discussed among cabinet and White House officials.That came to nothing but Trump was impeached a second time. He was acquitted when enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal.On Friday, Politico published the text of a draft executive order for the seizure of voting machines and the text of a speech in which Trump would have condemned the Capitol rioters – but which he never gave.According to the January 6 committee, Hannity also told McEnany: “Key now. No more crazy people.”McEnany said: “Yes. 100%.”A footnote to the letter says Katrina Pierson, another rightwing commentator, “also uses the term ‘crazies’ in her text messages, apparently to describe a number of the president’s supporters”.Lindell continues to insist he has evidence the 2020 election was stolen, recently claiming his work could lead to the imprisonment for life of “300 and some million people”.That prompted the Washington Post to ask: “Are you one of the one in 11 Americans Mike Lindell doesn’t want to arrest?”In remarks at a Trump rally in Arizona last weekend, Lindell took aim at Hannity’s employer.MyPillow CEO faces defamation lawsuit from second voting machine makerRead more“When was the last time you saw anyone on Fox talk about the 2020 election?” he asked.Fox News has continued to stoke conspiracy theories about the Capitol riot but Fox Corporation faces lawsuits regarding claims of a stolen election.This week, Lindell joined Fox in being sued by Smartmatic, a maker of election machines.In the suit, the company accused Lindell of knowing what he was doing – namely, trying to sell pillows – when spreading election lies.He was, the company said, “crazy like a fox”.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsFox NewsUS television industryRepublicansTrump administrationDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      If the Democrats don’t shape up, Biden’s presidency will lead to a Trumpian sequel | Astra Taylor

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      If the Democrats don’t shape up, Biden’s presidency will lead to a Trumpian sequelAstra TaylorThe president has failed to capitalise on progressive sentiment: his party needs to stand up for the working class How should one feel about the first year of the Biden presidency?I can’t really say I’m disappointed, since I didn’t have high hopes going into it. But I do feel dread. This last year has felt a bit like being trapped in a nail-biting intermission between two horror films. The opening instalment consisted of Donald Trump’s first four years in office – it ended with the cliffhanger of a deadly plague and a surreal, poorly executed, but still terrifying ransacking of the Capitol. The sequel practically writes itself, as the man ascends to power a second time, even more emboldened and determined to hold on to power.Winter of peril and impossibility: Biden faces hard truth at anniversary press conferenceRead moreOf course, the script is not yet set in stone. If regular people in the US get organised, we can help push the political class toward a different ending. But to do this effectively, we need to tell a story that begins earlier. To continue with the bad movie metaphors, the prequels are what got us into this mess.For decades, senior Democrats tacked rightward, helping to create the social conditions that Trump and his cronies took advantage of to propel themselves to the White House. Instead of rolling back Reaganism and standing up to a swiftly radicalising conservative base, the party elite helped implement and further entrench an undemocratic, corporate agenda. Democratic functionaries slashed welfare, invested in the military and policing, deregulated the financial sector, increased fossil fuel production and lobbied for disastrous international trade deals.The people who did this are Biden’s natural milieu – and they want Americans to believe their problems began in 2016. Establishment Democrats are desperate to paint Donald Trump and the Covid-19 pandemic as aberrations to an otherwise agreeable status quo. Thus a speedy “return to normal” is all it will take to cure what ails us.The problem, however, is that “normal” was a crisis.The political scientist Corey Robin recently pointed out a core paradox of the Biden administration. On the one hand, Biden has some important accomplishments under his belt: two enormous spending bills and crucial federal appointments, including dozens of judges. But, as Robin notes, they are tainted by an awareness of their fundamental inadequacy. These perilous times require more than generous spending bills and staffing tweaks – Americans need to restructure the economy, stabilise the environment and democratise the political system, before it’s too late.Though never the progressive candidate, Biden briefly appeared to be willing to break with tradition and embrace a bolder approach. “When President Biden took office, he promised to make ending poverty a theory of change,” Shailly Barnes, policy director at the anti-poverty group, Poor People’s Campaign, told me. “While we saw glimmers of what that might have been, we have yet to see this implemented in practice. The 140 million people who are poor or one emergency away from economic ruin … need more than short-term or temporary assistance programmes.”Consider one area I know well: the fight for student debt cancellation. Short-term assistance is all these borrowers have received, despite Biden’s promise of mass relief. Student debt cancellation is an interesting litmus test for the administration. While other proposals he campaigned on – such as raising the minimum wage and securing voting rights – require legislation to pass, the president has the power to cancel all federal student loans with a single signature. But instead of picking up the pen, the president has balked and backtracked, misleadingly focusing on the few Ivy League graduates who would benefit from write-offs. At the end of last year, his administration publicly declared that turning student loan payments back on was a high priority for the administration. Why? A concern about optics: his advisers worry that further relief programmes would undercut messaging about the economy’s good health. Given this intransigence, activists like myself have had to fight the White House tooth and nail just to get it to extend the student loan payment pause to 1 May.Here, the folly of Biden’s first year is on full display. Student debt cancellation would be a win for the American people and the administration. The more loans are cancelled, the more the economy is boosted and the more the racial wealth gap narrows. It is also incredibly popular with young voters, Black voters, and even Republicans. Given that it is a midterm year, delivering on this promise should be a no-brainer. Reform of the criminal punishment system is another area where progress has stalled, despite Biden having come to power after a wave of historic racial justice protests. Members of the dominant, corporate wing of the Democratic party like to marginalise progressives and activists while presenting themselves as savvy and responsible realists. This strategy is both insulting and absurd: there’s nothing naive or irresponsible about wanting a decent and equitable society where people aren’t buried in unpayable debt and don’t have to live in fear of the police.But the strategy is also self-defeating. “They think they are pissing on the left, but what they are really doing is failing to fight visibly [and] vocally for millions of everyday working people,” rural Pennsylvania organiser and author Jonathan Smucker told me. “There is no world in which that is good politics.”The Biden administration has instead been engaged in a dispiriting saga of insider negotiations – negotiations that make an already restive public feel even more frustrated and abandoned.Where the build back better bill is concerned, the president should have instructed his allies in Congress to load it up with extra investment that would mollify opposition and make it harder for his party’s obstructionists, like Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, to hold it hostage. As the organiser Will Lawrence, a co-founder of the youth-led environmental justice-focused Sunrise Movement, put it on Twitter: include a “buyout of coal industry shareholders, and a generous lifetime pension for every miner in West Virginia. Blanket the airwaves promoting it for two weeks in West Virginia. Then put it to a vote and dare Manchin to vote against it.”If you are going to lose because a coal-baron senator is determined to derail your entire agenda and doom millions to deepening poverty and climate chaos, you may as well go down with a real fight. This fight should clarify for the public where the real problem is – not in culture war distractions, but the corruption of our political system by corporate interests – and it would make clear that the Democrats were firmly on their side.President Biden’s first year has ultimately demoralised people, while also providing an opportunity for Republicans to appear poised to seize power. Last spring, a strategic memo by Representative Jim Banks, leader of the largest bloc of House conservatives, was leaked: “URGENT: Cementing GOP as Working-Class party.” It laid out one plot for the second feature of the horror film I keep imagining. Of course, reactionaries will never actually defend working people. But they’re busy crafting a deceptive and destructive script. And if the current administration doesn’t act, we’ll all be watching it soon.
      Astra Taylor is a writer, organiser and documentary maker
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      Mitch McConnell under fire after saying African Americans vote as much as 'Americans' – video

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      Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell has been criticised after saying that Black Americans vote ‘in just as high a percentage as Americans’. The comment came after Senate Democrats failed to pass voting rights protections in the run-up to this November’s midterm elections that will determine control of Congress in 2023. 
      A reporter asked McConnell if he had a message for voters of color who were concerned that, without the John R Lewis Voting Rights Act, they were not going to be able to vote in the midterm. ‘Well, the concern is misplaced because, if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,’ McConnell said

      Mitch McConnell’s viral Black voter comments cause widespread furor More