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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

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      US state legislatures threaten citizens’ rights. We ignore them at our peril

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      US state legislatures threaten citizens’ rights. We ignore them at our perilThe bodies have become the engines of policymaking, behind Georgia’s voting restrictions and Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ bill Hello, and happy Thursday,Since late last year, I have been intensely focused on the frantic efforts by both major parties to put themselves in the best position to win US House races this fall.State-by-state, lawmakers are undertaking the once-a-decade task of redrawing all 435 districts in the US House. In most states, legislatures are responsible for drawing the new lines, and to no one’s surprise, both parties have jostled to draw as many districts in their favor as possible. While many, including me, expected Republicans to dominate the process, because they have control of more legislatures, Democrats have been boosted as a result of anti-gerrymandering reforms and an aggressive legal strategy.Reading lots of analysis about what’s happening at the congressional level, I started thinking that there was a much more significant redistricting story that was being largely overlooked. As they’ve been drawing congressional districts, state lawmakers have also been redrawing districts for their state legislatures (yes, they are setting the boundaries for the districts they run in).US supreme court blocks new Wisconsin voting maps in boost for RepublicansRead moreThis lack of attention is significant because state legislatures have become the engines of policymaking in the US. Take a second and think about the most controversial pieces of legislation you’ve heard about recently. Maybe it’s the sweeping new voting restrictions in Georgia. The “don’t say gay” bill in Florida. Anti-abortion bills in Texas and Oklahoma. All of these measures were passed in state legislatures, not Congress. With the federal government bogged down in gridlock, state legislatures, where one party often has control, have become the forums to pass legislation on issues such as school funding and public health that directly affect people’s lives.“The gerrymandering of the state legislative maps, it’s actually more important than even the congressional gerrymandering,” David Pepper, a former chairman of the Ohio Democratic party, told me. “We have this repeat cycle where every few weeks an outrage of some state law that passed somewhere and then we all cover the court case. But very rarely do people go back and look at: ‘What’s the cause of all this craziness in states?’”Republicans currently control 62 legislative chambers, while Democrats control 36. There are 23 states where Republicans have complete control over state government, and 14 where Democrats do.While things are slightly better for Democrats than they were a decade ago, control of state legislatures is unlikely to change over the next decade. Just 17.5% of districts are estimated to be competitive, a slight decrease from a decade ago, according to Chris Warshaw, a political science professor at George Washington University.“Most of the plans are pretty uncompetitive and most are biased in favor of one of the two parties. So I don’t think we’re likely to see many state legislatures flip control over the next decade,” he said.Letting Republicans depress the vote is ‘not in the cards’: a US governor on a race that may shape democracyRead morePerhaps no state better embodies the consequences of state legislative gerrymandering than Wisconsin. The Wisconsin state assembly, the legislature’s lower chamber, is widely understood to be one of the most gerrymandered bodies in the US. It’s so distorted that it’s virtually impossible for Republicans to lose a majority in it – even if they got a minority of the vote, they would still be able to hold a majority of the seats.Republicans have used that advantage recently to press a slew of anti-democratic policies, including a partisan review of the 2020 election that made the impossible case for how the lawmakers could “decertify” the results of the 2020 race.Earlier this month, Democrats had hoped they would get a slight boost in the legislative maps. After looking at a range of proposals, the state supreme court picked a new legislative map submitted by Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, saying it best complied with an earlier court order to make as little change as possible to the current maps.But on Wednesday, the US supreme court stepped in and threw out those maps, taking issue with the creation of additional Black-majority district in the Milwaukee area. It sent the case back to the state court for further consideration.“The will of the people is traditionally the law of the land. That is not the case at this point in time,” Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, told me last week.Also worth watching…
      I spoke with Evers about the stakes for his re-election bid and democracy.
      Listen to Pamela Moses, the Black Memphis woman sentenced to six years in prison for trying to register to vote, speak about her case.
      This redistricting cycle has blunted the political power of voters of color.
      Arizona Republicans are advancing a measure that would do away with no-excuse mail-in and early voting, which is widely used in the state.
      Ohio Republicans remain engaged in a high-stakes standoff with the state supreme court, which has refused to let GOP lawmakers enact gerrymandered electoral districts.
      TopicsUS newsFight to voteUS voting rightsUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsWisconsinfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Republican says Trump asked him to ‘rescind’ 2020 election and remove Biden from office

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      Republican says Trump asked him to ‘rescind’ 2020 election and remove Biden from officeMo Brooks of Alabama appeared at the rally before the Capitol assault and is under scrutiny by January 6 committee The Alabama Republican congressman Mo Brooks said on Tuesday that Donald Trump asked him to “rescind” the 2020 election, remove Joe Biden from the White House and reinstate Trump.The extraordinary statement came in an angry response to a withdrawn endorsement by the former president. Trump had been angered that Brooks was insufficiently toeing his line on calling the 2020 election a fraud.Brooks’ statement on Trump’s demands is now likely to be of interest to the January 6 committee. That panel is investigating Trump’s lie about electoral fraud in his defeat by Biden, efforts to marshal members of Congress to object to election results, a rally near the White House on 6 January 2021 which Trump and Brooks addressed, and the deadly attack on the US Capitol that followed.On Wednesday, after Trump withdrew his endorsement, Brooks said he was still in the race as the only true Trumpist candidate. He also claimed to have known he risked losing the former president’s endorsement by telling him “the truth”, and added: “I repeat what has prompted President Trump’s ire.”“The only legal way America can prevent 2020’s election debacle is for patriotic Americans to focus on and win the 2022 and 2024 elections so that we have the power to enact laws that will give us honest and accurate elections.”He then added: “President Trump asked me to rescind the 2020 elections, immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, immediately put President Trump back in the White House, and hold a new special election for the presidency.”“As a lawyer, I’ve repeatedly advised President Trump that 6 January was the final election contest verdict and neither the US constitution nor the US Code [the laws of the United States] permit what President Trump asks. Period.”Brooks also said “I took a sworn oath to defend and protect the US constitution”, an oath he said he would “break … for no man”.However, Brooks has until now been one of Trump’s most ardent supporters, including on and around the events of 6 January.Addressing the “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse in Washington DC that day, Brooks said: “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.“Now, our ancestors sacrificed their blood, their sweat, their tears, their fortunes and sometimes their lives … Are you willing to do the same? My answer is yes. Louder! Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America?”Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” to stop the certification of election results. According to a bipartisan Senate report, seven deaths were linked to the riot that followed. Nearly 800 people have been charged, some with seditious conspiracy. Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection but acquitted when enough Republican senators stayed loyal.In the aftermath of the riot, Brooks was the first of 147 Republican members of Congress to vote against certifying election results.His role in the “Stop the Steal” movement has been under scrutiny ever since.Multiple reporters have placed Brooks with other far-right Republicans including Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Jim Jordan of Ohio in White House meetings with Trump. An organiser of the 6 January rally, the convicted felon Ally Alexander, has named Brooks and two Arizona Republicans, Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, as members of Congress who helped plan the event.Brooks said he spoke at the invitation of the Trump White House and had no recollection of communicating with Alexander. He has also confirmed that he wore body armour while giving his speech.The January 6 committee has been weighing whether to seek to compel Brooks to testify.A Democratic congressman, Eric Swalwell of California, sued Brooks, Trump, Donald Trump Jr and Rudy Giuliani for violating federal civil rights law and local incitement law. In February, a federal judge said he would dismiss Brooks, Giuliani and Trump Jr from the case, because their speeches were political and thus protected by the first amendment.Brooks is running for US Senate in Alabama, his campaign featuring warnings of “dictatorial socialism and its threat to liberty, freedom and the very fabric of American society”.He had attracted Trump’s endorsement. But in a statement on Wednesday, Trump said: “Mo Brooks of Alabama made a horrible mistake recently when he went ‘woke’ and stated, referring to the 2020 Presidential Election Scam, ‘Put that behind you, put that behind you.’“When I heard this statement, I said, ‘Mo, you just blew the election, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’”In response, Brooks accused Trump of being “manipulated” by Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate.McConnell and Trump have split since 6 January, after which McConnell voted to acquit Trump at trial but also excoriated him in a speech on the Senate floor.The Republican establishment reportedly fears that extreme pro-Trump candidates could jeopardise the party’s chances of retaking the Senate this year. A model for such a catastrophe exists in Alabama, where in 2017 an extremist, Roy Moore, was beaten by the Democrat Doug Jones in a special election.Brooks has however fallen behind in polling and fundraising. Katie Britt, a former aide to the retiring senator, Richard Shelby, is well placed to secure the nomination.TopicsUS elections 2020Donald TrumpUS Capitol attackRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Republican Royce White isn’t the average jock turned politician

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      Republican Royce White isn’t the average jock turned politicianWhile the 30-year-old’s self-determined streak might have cost him a lucrative NBA career, he has a decent shot at being elected to Congress It appears the US has entered the age of the jock politician. First ex-Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville wins a US Senate seat in Alabama. Then Heisman trophy winner Herschel Walker kicks off his own Senate run in Georgia. And now former NBA player Royce White jumps into the fray as the Republican challenger to Ilhan Omar in Minnesota’s 5th congressional district.After going public with his candidacy from the steps of Minneapolis’ Federal Reserve, White, 30, published a 3,500-word open letter rallying Black voters away from the leftist “plantation” and their “globalist” agenda while heading off opposition research into his legacy of legal trouble, his personal debts and unpaid child support allegations, and his overall mental fitness. He made sure to address the letter to “Democrats”, dismissing Omar and her ilk as bought and paid for while promoting himself as a populist. In between he invoked God, raged against Big Tech and its overlords and, well, came off more than just a little unfocused. “You motherfuckers don’t own me,” he wrote, hitting back at the tech bros. “You don’t own my mind. I will die for the rights and freedoms that this nation’s constitution affords me before I see myself, my family or my countrymen returned to chains. Your arrogance and petulance insults me to my core.”His political ambitions, while certainly bold, aren’t entirely out of bounds. White is a longtime friend of the conservative movement and Omar, his opponent in the upcoming election, is a progressive Muslim who is a favourite target for the right. White has also appeared as a guest on Steve Bannon’s show and Donald Trump’s former strategist was one of the first prominent Republicans to endorse his run for Congress.But the 6ft 8in White didn’t exactly maintain a low profile even before he started his political career. After being voted Minnesota’s 2009 ‘Mr Basketball’, an honor reserved for the state’s standout high school prospect, White signed on for the University of Minnesota but never played after pleading guilty to shoplifting and assaulting a mall cop. After his second semester he transferred – “reluctantly” he says – to Iowa State, where he proved to be an analytic nerd’s dream: the only player in the country to lead his team in points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks.After posting 23 points, nine rebounds, four assists and three steals in a loss to eventual champion Kentucky in the 2012 NCAA tournament, White declared for the draft and was selected 16th by Houston. Whatever concerns NBA teams had about White keeping his head down were confirmed when he made his appearance in training camp contingent on the league adopting some form of mental health policy and the Rockets making allowances for travel.At Iowa State, he had relied on Xanax and Benadryl to cope when the team flew to games and had hoped to manage the NBA’s far more intense flight schedule by taking the bus when possible. And despite the Rockets accommodating him, White remained at odds with Houston and was eventually traded to Philadelphia in 2013. When he no-showed on the Sixers, they cut him after three months. The following season White resurfaced with the Sacramento Kings on a pair of 10-day contracts. His NBA debut – a home game against San Antonio – lasted 56 seconds and saw him record no significant statistics. Two games later, after fewer than 10 minutes played all together, he was out of the league once again.But that wasn’t the end of White’s athletic career. He played professionally in Canada, dabbled in MMA and popped up again on the basketball radar when he was picked first in the BIG3’s 2019 draft. When he wasn’t being ejected for tussling with Josh Smith, he was tarrying on court to bring attention to the plight of the Uyghurs and working behind the scenes to help shape the BIG3’s mental health safety net. Before Kevin Love, Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles were being celebrated for prioritizing their mental health, White was being pilloried for the same thing. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, White emerged as a prominent figure in anti-racism protests.All of this is to say White hardly fits the profile of the jock Republican. Unlike Tuberville he’s not an out-of-touch entitlement seeker. (An advocate for financial fair play, White wrote another open letter encouraging NBA players to start their own bank.) Unlike Walker he not only doesn’t run from his mental health challenges, but can ably articulate them. And as the pandemic has plunged the US into deeper denial about its collective mental health, it wouldn’t hurt to have someone in Congress making more noise about this. Sadly for this country, civil discourse is much too broad for nuanced and practical discussions about anxiety, depression and the overhaul the US health system would need to even moderately address these issues. And so far White doesn’t seem to possess the discipline for that debate. (Did I mention his open letter was 3,500 words?) But that’s not to say he doesn’t have a chance of getting elected.Name recognition goes a long way in Minnesota, an electorate that’s more fawning of celebrity than it definitely cares to admit. This is a state that sent Saturday Night Live alum Al Franken to the Senate and had ex-wrestler Jesse Ventura for a governor. Most likely, if voters hold anything against White, it’s him not logging a meaningful second for the Gophers. His stubborn self-determined streak might have cost White a lucrative NBA career. But those same traits that crushed his hoops dream would well lift him to dizzying heights in an entirely new game.TopicsNBABasketballRepublicansUS sportsMinnesotaIlhan OmarUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      ‘Morally bankrupt’: outrage after pro-Israel group backs insurrectionist Republicans

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      ‘Morally bankrupt’: outrage after pro-Israel group backs insurrectionist Republicans Aipac defends move by saying that support for the Jewish state overrides other issues as it faces a storm of criticismThe US’s most powerful pro-Israel lobby group has been accused of putting support for Israel before American democracy after it declared its backing for the election campaigns of three dozen Republican members of Congress who tried to block President Biden’s presidential victory.But the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) has defended the move by saying that support for the Jewish state overrides other issues and that it is “no moment for the pro-Israel movement to become selective about its friends”.In December, Aipac launched a political action committee that enables it for the first time to spend money directly supporting congressional candidates in this year’s midterm elections. Earlier this month the committee released a list of 120 political endorsements that includes 37 Republicans who voted against certifying Biden’s victory following the January 6 2021 storming of the Capitol.Among them are two members of Congress, Jim Jordan and Scott Perry, who plotted with Trump’s White House to overturn the election result. Perry has also publicly promoted racist “white replacement” conspiracy theories.The lobby group’s move has been met by a storm of criticism, including from other pro-Israel organizations.“Aipac’s support for these candidates endangers American democracy and undermines the true interests and values of millions of American Jews and pro-Israel Americans who they often claim to represent,” said the more moderate but less influential pro-Israel lobby group, J Street. “Whatever their views on Israel, elected officials who threaten the very future of our country should be completely beyond the pale.”Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, described the endorsement of politicians who “undermine democracy” as “morally bankrupt and short-sighted”.“What ties the 2 countries is a commitment to democracy. An undemocratic America could easily distance itself from the Jewish state,” he tweeted.The former head of the strongly pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League, Abe Foxman, described the endorsements as a “sad mistake”. The former US ambassador to Israel, Dan Kurtzer, called on Aipac to reconsider the move and “do the right thing for America”.Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America and a former national security adviser to then Senator Kamala Harris, said that Aipac’s endorsements suggest that, at times, “one must compromise support of America’s democracy to support Israel”.“This is a patently false dichotomy rejected by the overwhelming majority of American Jews,” she wrote in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz.In the face of the growing criticism, Aipac’s leaders last week sent a letter to the group’s members defending the endorsements.“This is no moment for the pro-Israel movement to become selective about its friends,” said the letter, obtained by the Jewish Insider.“The one thing that guarantees Israel’s ability to defend itself is the enduring support of the United States. When we launched our political action committee last year, we decided that we would base decisions about political contributions on only one thing: whether a political candidate supports the US-Israel relationship.”Aipac broke with more than 70 years of standing back from individual political campaigns to launch the political action committee (Pac) that permits it to directly fund favoured candidates within limits. It also founded a second so-called “super Pac” that allows unlimited funding for advertising in support of campaigns but not direct donations. The super Pac is reported to have raised $10m already, including $8.5m from Aipac itself.The list of endorsements includes Democrats with a record of strong backing for Israel at a time when opinion polls show declining support among the party’s voters. A poll last year found found that half of Democrats want Washington to shift policy toward more support for the Palestinians.Although Aipac presents itself as bipartisan, that position has been increasingly tested. It openly opposed President Obama’s demand that Israel freeze expansion of settlements in the occupied territories, widely considered illegal under international law. The group also lobbied Congress on behalf of Israel against Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.In his memoir, A Promised Land, Obama wrote that “members of both parties worried about crossing” Aipac.“Those who criticized Israeli policy too loudly risked being tagged as ‘anti-Israel’ (and possibly antisemitic) and confronted with a well-funded opponent in the next election,” he wrote.Aipac’s move also comes amid stiffening criticism of Israel from human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which have both recently accused the country of maintaining a form of apartheid over the Palestinians.The head of Amnesty International’s US office, Paul O’Brien, recently said that when the organisation met with members of congress to discuss its new report, Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians, it found that Aipac had got there first.“It was an interesting experience for us to introduce a report that was about to be launched in public a week later and to get in 80 different congressional offices a public statement dissociating themselves from the findings of the report in which none of those 80 statements actually disputed the findings of the report, except to say, in broad strokes, we do not believe that this report is motivated for the right reasons or reaches the right conclusions,” he said.TopicsRepublicansSuper PacsIsraelUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson says Roe v Wade ‘the settled law of the supreme court’ – live

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      Key events

      Show

      2.06pm EDT

      14:06

      Psaki tests positive for Covid-19

      11.33am EDT

      11:33

      Jackson: Roe v Wade is ‘settled law’

      8.58am EDT

      08:58

      Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings continue

      Live feed

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      5.42pm EDT

      17:42

      In response to Hawley’s insinuations that she was not tough enough on defendants in child sexual abuse cases, Jackson has explained in detail how sentencing works, saying, “What a judge has to do is determine how to sentence defendants proportionately consistent with the elements that the statutes include, with the requirements Congress has set forward … Judges are doing the work of assessing in each case a number of factors that are set forward by Congress, all against the backdrop of heinous criminal behavior … and Congress has given judges factors to consider.”
      Jackson said she has to consider the facts and the recommendations of government and the probation department in sentencing, adding, “You’re questioning whether or not I take them seriously or if I have some reason to handle them in a different way than my peers or in a different way than other cases, but I assure you I do not.”
      Hawley said: “I am questioning your discretion and judgment.” He asked her why she was not tougher on an 18-year-old in a case involving child sexual abuse images.
      Jackson explained that she was following guidelines and responding to specific facts in the case, and sentenced him to three months in federal prison.

      5.31pm EDT

      17:31

      Josh Hawley, Republican senator from Missouri, started his questions with detailed descriptions of child sexual abuse cases and accusing Jackson of not being tough enough on offenders. Here’s the response from a White House spokesperson, saying Halwey’s remarks are “embarrassing” and a signal to QAnon conspiracy theorists:

      Andrew Bates
      (@AndrewJBates46)
      Hawley’s embarrassing, QAnon-signaling smear has been fact checked by: @washingtonpost, @nytimes, @AP, @CNN, @ABC, and @NRO:https://t.co/JDHAWH7l3dhttps://t.co/JbPnmE7lbIhttps://t.co/8DuoUg80hGhttps://t.co/fA4hUmeqGyhttps://t.co/fA4hUmeqGyhttps://t.co/UVCtmAImJ2

      March 22, 2022

      5.17pm EDT

      17:17

      Martin Pengelly

      Josh Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri, is now questioning Jackson. There was an interesting nugget from Punchbowl News this morning, on Hawley and why he is pressing his attack on the judge over her past sentencing of offenders convicted over child sexual abuse images. More

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      The real – and far scarier – reason Republicans think Biden is illegitimate | Thomas Zimmer

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      The real – and far scarier – reason Republicans think Biden is illegitimateThomas ZimmerMany conservatives don’t think the 2020 election was stolen. But they believe democracy itself has betrayed America, by allowing the ‘wrong’ people to take charge Earlier this month, Team Trump claimed in court that their efforts to nullify Joe Biden’s victory could not possibly have been fraudulent or be described as a criminal conspiracy, because those in and around the White House had merely been acting on the basis of sincerely held suspicions.This sparked the latest round in the never-ending debate over whether or not Republicans actually believe that the election was stolen from them. Politically, it is important to push back against the opportunistic ways in which Republicans up and down the country have been using the “big lie”. But if we are trying to understand what is animating the right’s rapidly accelerating radicalization against democracy, binary assumptions of Republicans as either true believers or power-hungry cynics are not very helpful and actually obscure more than they illuminate. In some fundamental way, Republicans are both. What we really need to grapple with is why so many Republicans are convinced the outcome of the election was illegitimate regardless of whether or not there were specific procedural irregularities.Surveys have consistently indicated that a clear majority, probably about two-thirds, of Republicans consider Biden an illegitimate president. It’s highly likely that many of them are well aware that some of the specific conspiratorial claims emanating from the right – fake ballots? Lost ballots? “Illegals” voting? – are bogus. But they don’t seem to care about the specifics. They just believe Biden shouldn’t be president.What is most alarming is the underlying ideology that leads so many on the right to consider Democratic victories invalid – even if they concede there was nothing technically wrong with how the election was conducted. It has become a core tenet of the Republican worldview to consider the Democratic party as not simply a political opponent, but an enemy pursuing an “un-American” project of turning what is supposed to be a white Christian patriarchal nation into a land of godless multiracial pluralism. Conversely, Republicans see themselves as the sole proponents of “real” America, defending the country from the forces of radical leftism, liberalism and wokeism.Even if they don’t subscribe to the more outlandish conspiracies propagated by Trumpists, many Republicans agree that the Democratic party is a fundamentally illegitimate political faction – and that any election outcome that would lead to Democratic governance must be rejected as illegitimate as well. Republicans didn’t start from an assessment of how the 2020 election went down and come away from that exercise with sincerely held doubts. The rationalization worked backwards: They looked at the outcome and decided it must not stand. In other words, accusations of fraud gain plausibility among conservatives not because of empirical evidence, but because they adhere to the “higher truth” of who is and who is not legitimately representing – and therefore entitled to rule – “real” America.It is worth paying attention to how reactionary intellectuals have been dealing with the 2020 election. We certainly wouldn’t expect Trump, most Republican officials, or the conservative base to devour rightwing treatises. As much as they would like to believe it, these reactionary thinkers are not leading the movement. But they tend to articulate the radicalizing authoritarian spirit that is threatening American democracy in strikingly stark terms. In this way, the rightwing intellectual sphere provides a crucial window into the energies and anxieties that are animating the right more broadly.In March 2021, the magazine American Mind published a particularly instructive essay by Glenn Ellmers, entitled “‘Conservatism’ is No Longer Enough”. American Mind is a publication of the Claremont Institute, a rightwing thinktank in California that has become home to some of the most outrightly pro-Trumpian intellectuals. It is notable that Ellmers makes no claim that the 2020 election was “stolen” – he doesn’t allege manipulation, voter fraud, or conspiracy, and in fact explicitly acknowledges that more people voted for Biden than for Trump. He does not peddle conspiracy theories. Yet Ellmers maintains that the outcome of the 2020 election is illegitimate and must not be accepted.According to Ellmers, Biden’s presidency represents an “un-American” idea of multiracial pluralism – something that is fundamentally in conflict with what he refers to as “authentic America”. In his view, everyone who voted for Joe Biden and his “progressive project of narcotizing the American people and turning us into a nation of slaves” is also “un-American” and therefore not worthy of inclusion in the body politic. Ellmers declares that “most people living in the United States – certainly more than half – are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term”. Only “authentic Americans” are allowed in Glenn Ellmers’ United States – a racialized idea of “the people,” most clearly represented by “the vast numbers of heartland voters”.On the other side are “un-American” enemies, not coincidentally characterized by their blind admiration for a young Black artist: “If you are a zombie or a human rodent who wants a shadow-life of timid conformity, then put away this essay and go memorize the poetry of Amanda Gorman.” Ellmers’ racist, anti-pluralistic vision is remarkably radical: he wants to redraw the boundaries of citizenship and exclude over half the population.The uphill battle to resurrect the US child tax credit that lifted millions from poverty Read moreEllmers is outraged precisely because he accepts the fact that a majority voted for Biden, that “authentic Americans” have become the minority in a country which they are supposedly entitled to dominate. Here we have a striking glimpse of the depth of despair underlying the pervasive siege mentality on the right. What’s scandalous about the 2020 election, in this interpretation, is not that it was “stolen”, but that “un-American” forces straightforwardly won.Reactionaries like Ellmers have internalized the idea that they represent a persecuted minority, fighting with their backs against the wall in a desperate effort to defend “authentic America”. They dispute the legitimacy of the 2020 election not necessarily on the basis of fraud and conspiracy but because democracy itself subverted the will of “real America” by allowing the “wrong” people too much of an influence on the fate of the country.Trump’s incessant lies represent a vulgar, clumsy, narcissistic strand of conspiratorial thinking; those lies are shared by some, opportunistically used by many, and widely accepted on the right because they adhere to a “higher truth”: “we” are entitled to rule in America. That’s what is behind the widespread support for, or willingness to accept, any kind of suspicion, regardless of whether or not there is any shred of empirical evidence. If an election doesn’t result in “us” being in power, it must be illegitimate, as we are “real America”; if it puts “them” in charge, it cannot be accepted, as they are out to destroy the nation.Whether or not Republicans actually believe conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, most are absolutely convinced the result was illegitimate – and they are all too willing to use allegations of fraud or ally with conspiracy theorists if it helps prevent future “illegitimate” outcomes. It is precisely the mixture of deeply held ideological convictions of white Christian patriarchal dominance, of what “real America” is supposed to be and who gets to rule there, and the cynical opportunism with which these beliefs are enforced that makes the assault on democracy so dangerous.
      Thomas Zimmer is a visiting professor at Georgetown University, focused on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United States, and a Guardian US contributing opinion writer
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      Mitch McConnell: Republicans who support Putin ‘lonely voices’ in party

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      Mitch McConnell: Republicans who support Putin ‘lonely voices’ in partySenate minority leader dodges invitation to say such Republicans should be ejected from party or face disciplinary measures

      US not optimistic about Ukraine talks as Zelenskiy ups pressure
      Republicans who support Vladimir Putin over the Russian invasion of Ukraine are “lonely voices” in the party, Mitch McConnell said.‘Tucker the Untouchable’ goes soft on Putin but remains Fox News’s biggest powerRead moreBut the Senate minority leader dodged an invitation to say such Republicans should be ejected from the party or at least face disciplinary measures.Support or admiration for Putin flecks the Republican party.Donald Trump, the former president who maintains a firm grip on the GOP, has called the Russian leader “smart” while condemning the war in Ukraine.Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene, far-right members of Congress and enthusiastic Trump supporters, have made controversial comments of their own.Cawthorn has called Volodymyr Zelinskiy, the president of Ukraine who addressed Congress last week, a “thug” and his government “incredibly evil”. Greene has said the US should not support Ukraine financially in a war it cannot win.Such rhetoric echoes that from influential voices on the US right prominently including Tucker Carlson, a primetime Fox News host reportedly praised by Russian government sources.On CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, McConnell was asked about what the anti-Trump congresswoman Liz Cheney has called the “Putin wing of the Republican party”.The Kentucky senator was asked: “Is there any room in the Republican party for this rhetoric and why isn’t there more discipline?“Well, there’s some lonely voices out there that are in a different place,” McConnell said.“But looking at Senate Republicans, I can tell you that I would have had I been the majority leader put this Ukraine supplemental [aid package] up by itself” instead of being included in a government funding bill.“I think virtually every one of my members would have voted for it,” McConnell added. “The vast majority of the Republican party writ large, both in the Congress and across the country, are totally behind the Ukrainians and urging [Joe Biden] to take these steps quicker. To be bolder.“So, there may be a few lonely voices off the side. I wouldn’t pay much attention to them.”Liz Cheney does not regret vote against Trump Ukraine impeachmentRead moreSome of McConnell’s fellow Republican leaders, it seems, do not. On Friday Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader in the House, was asked about Cawthorn’s remark about Zelinskiy.“Madison is wrong,” McCarthy said. “If there’s any thug in this world, it’s Putin.”McCarthy also said he supported Cawthorn’s bid for re-election. He is not supporting Cheney in the same endeavor. After all, the Wyoming congresswoman faced rare party discipline, losing a leadership role, after she joined the January 6 committee, investigating the attack on Congress by Trump supporters.McCarthy has endorsed Cheney’s opponent.TopicsRepublicansUS politicsVladimir PutinRussiaUkraineEuropenewsReuse this content More