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      Republican McCarthy risks party split by courting extremists amid Omar spat

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      Republican McCarthy risks party split by courting extremists amid Omar spat
      Anonymous moderate predicts rocky road to speakership
      Omar: Boebert’s ‘Jihad Squad’ bigotry is ‘no laughing matter’
      Interview: historian Joanne Freeman on congressional violence
      The House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, said on Saturday he had “reached out” to Democrats over Islamophobic comments made by one of his party, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, about the Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar.While Americans mark Thanksgiving, Republicans panned over Harris attackRead moreBoebert apologised for the remarks, in which she likened one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress to a suicide bomber, on Friday, saying she wanted to meet Omar in person. Omar responded by condemning the remarks and calling for action from party leaders.In a statement to CNN, McCarthy said: “I spoke with Leader [Steny] Hoyer today to help facilitate that meeting so that Congress can get back to talking to each other and working on the challenges facing the American people.”McCarthy did not condemn Boebert’s remarks. He also faced criticism from within his own ranks, after another pro-Trump extremist, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, tweeted that she had “a good call” with McCarthy and liked “what he has planned ahead”.Greene had criticised McCarthy, seeking to cast doubt on his ambitions to be speaker should as seems likely Republicans take back the House next year.A Republican who spoke anonymously to CNN and was described as a moderate said McCarthy was “taking the middle of the conference for granted. McCarthy could have a bigger math problem [in the election for speaker] with the moderates”.The anonymous moderate said his wing of the party – more of a rump, perhaps, given Donald Trump’s dominance – was upset about McCarthy’s embrace of extremists.One such extremist, Paul Gosar of Arizona, was this month censured for tweeting a video which depicted him killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York – like Omar a leading progressive and woman of colour in Congress – and threatening Joe Biden.Gosar lost committee assignments. McCarthy said he would get them back under a Republican speakership and held out the same prospect to Greene, who was stripped of her committees in February for racist, antisemitic and generally incendiary behaviour.McCarthy has faced calls from the right to punish Republicans who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill, as well as the 10 who voted to impeach Trump over the deadly Capitol riot.Two who voted to impeach, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, will retire next year. Primary challengers await the rest including Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a stringent conservative nonetheless split from the Trumpists over the Capitol attack.On Saturday, Kinzinger criticised the minority leader’s call with Greene, writing: “Here is real strength, when Kevin McCarthy has to call a freshman begging for permission to stay in power. What has Kevin promised? The people deserve to know.”He also said it had “been a while” since most “normal members … last talked to Kevin”.Congresswoman Jackie Speier: ‘Republicans are about doing what’s going to give them power’Read moreThe anonymous moderate who spoke to CNN said the party was on a “collision course” with itself, as their side “isn’t going to take this much longer”.On Sunday, Asa Hutchinson, the governor of Arkansas who is seen by some as a possible presidential nominee from the more moderate side of the party, told CNN’s State of the Union McCarthy should have condemned Boebert.“Even in our own caucus, our own members, if they go the wrong direction, I mean, it has to be called out,” Hutchinson said. “It has to be dealt with particularly whenever it is breaching the civility, whenever it is crossing the line in terms of violence or increasing divides in our country.”Earlier this week, Jackie Speier, a senior Democrat from California, told the Guardian McCarthy had “a number of radical extremists in his caucus that are very effective communicators to the right fringe, and he can’t really rein them in because reining them in means they will attack him.“So they have become the face of the House Republicans. You might as well put a brass ring in Kevin McCarthy’s nose because they’re pulling him around.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesThe far rightnewsReuse this content More

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      Republicans are quietly rigging election maps to ensure permanent rule | David Pepper

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      Republicans are quietly rigging election maps to ensure permanent ruleDavid PepperThe past decade in Ohio shows how bad it can get – and how quickly. Despite the state’s voters often swinging Democratic, 75% of its congressional delegates are Republican The long-term health of American democracy is in peril, to a degree far worse than people imagine. But not where most people are looking.This is what gerrymandering looks like | The fight to voteRead moreWhile many eyes go to Washington DC or Mar-a-Lago, the attack on democracy is actually most concentrated and coordinated in state capitals. Whether it’s gerrymandering or voter suppression or attacks on offices that provide needed checks and balances – the states have become widely undemocratic. As I outline in my book Laboratories of Autocracy, the consequences of this anti-democratic movement are only getting worse.The past decade in Ohio, where I served in recent years as chair of the state Democratic party, shows how bad it can get – and how quickly.When Fox News called Ohio for Barack Obama in 2012, it meant he’d be president for another term. Ohio’s Democratic senator Sherrod Brown also won handily that night. But how did these victories in America’s bellwether state translate at the congressional level?Not at all.Even though it was Democratic in 2012, a state that only four years ago had sent 10 Democrats to the US House of Representatives and eight Republicans, now sent 12 Republicans to the House and only four Democrats. 2014 was a big year for Republicans. They won decisively for statewide offices. The congressional delegation? 12-4. 2016? Another Republican year: 12-4. But in 2018, Sherrod Brown won again, this time by almost seven points. And many of his voters also voted for a Democrat running for the House. In all, 47% of Ohioans cast a vote for the Democratic candidate for the House, while 52% voted for the Republican.What was the outcome of that 52-47 split for Ohio’s congressional delegation? 12-4 again – 75% Republican.2020? 12-4 again.So for an entire decade, whether Ohio voters tilted to Democratic or to Republican or a toss-up, when it came to Congress, nothing changed. The makeup was the exact same 12-4 split no matter how the voters voted. In the world’s oldest democracy, the voters basically didn’t matter.Why is that?Because in Ohio in 2011, in a secret hotel room they called “the bunker”, a small group of partisan insiders designed House district maps to guarantee the outcome of all 90 US House elections that were to follow in the coming decade. And they proved to be so good at their work, they got all 90 elections right.It’s a success rate in rigging election outcomes – amid the appearance of a democratic process – that Vladimir Putin would admire. Sadly, Ohio isn’t alone. Numerous other American states experienced the same decade of guaranteed outcomes for both their US House delegations and their state-level legislatures.In some cases, even when a majority of voters voted for one party to be in charge, the rigged districts meant that the losing party remained in charge. In Michigan, in 2018, voters chose Democrats over Republicans for their statehouse by 52%-47%. Nevertheless, this led to a Republican majority in that statehouse of 58-52. In Wisconsin, losing the popular vote for the statehouse across the state by a 54-45 gave Republicans a 63-36 supermajority in that statehouse. Now that would truly impress a foreign autocrat – a system locking a minority into power despite a clear mandate by the voters that they wanted the opposite.The prime culprits behind all this election rigging are the statehouses themselves – mostly anonymous elected officials who few voters know but who wield far more power than most Americans appreciate. And that includes the power to draw the district lines of both federal and state representatives (ie their own districts), as well as establishing most of the other rules of how elections are run, including how presidential electors are divvied up.But it all gets worse. Fast-forward to now. Outraged by a decade of rigged elections, citizens in Ohio and other states took action to change the process of how lines are drawn. Some opted for independent districting commissions. In Ohio, more than 70% of the voters amended the Ohio constitution (twice!) to add clear guidelines to curb the type of extreme partisan districting that led to a decade without democracy.And how have those in charge responded? Knowing that fair districts and robust democracy threaten their grip on power, the legislative leaders are simply ignoring the new rules. Defying them. In fact, the first map they have proposed here in Ohio would guarantee an astonishing 13-2 map, knowing full well that Ohio’s partisan breakdown would best be reflected by an 8-7 map. Despite the new rules, key urban counties are now being split three ways rather than two to achieve that outrageous result.So not only are these unknown politicians willing to rig elections, they are willing to defy their own state constitution – and the voted will of more than 70% of their own population – to get it done.As bad as this example is, it’s only one of the many fronts in a nationwide attack on democracy. Locked into power in these statehouses are a generation of politicians who themselves largely got there absent any true democracy – because they also benefited from rigged maps – who are now doing all they can to maintain that power. And one thing they know for sure: the greatest threat to their hold on power is robust democracy.Since they write the rules, they have the ability to hold that risk at bay, through gerrymandering, voter suppression, cracking down on protests, attacking independent courts and officials that get in the way, and other measures – and they are taking all these actions and more across the country right now.The truth is, if another country were taking all these steps, we’d call it out for what it is – an attack on democracy itself. A descent toward autocracy. But because it’s happening in our own state capitols, we too often treat it with less urgency. That needs to end.It’s time to go on offense for democracy, at the state level, every year. Beginning now.
      David Pepper is the author of Laboratories of Autocracy and former chair of the Ohio Democratic party
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      ‘The goal was to silence people’: historian Joanne Freeman on congressional violence

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      Interview‘The goal was to silence people’: historian Joanne Freeman on congressional violenceJoan E Greve in Washington Paul Gosar was censured for a video depicting a colleague’s murder but physical assaults were a feature of the pre-civil war eraAs the House debated whether the Republican congressman Paul Gosar should be censured for depicting the murder of his colleague, one Democratic leader took a moment to reflect on the chamber’s long history of violence.Speaking on the House floor last week, the majority leader, Steny Hoyer, argued that Gosar had grossly violated the chamber’s rules of conduct by sharing an altered anime video showing him killing Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Joe Biden.“When those rules were written, they did not anticipate that a member would threaten violence directly against another member,” Hoyer said. “Not because it’s never happened – a congressman from South Carolina nearly beat to death a senator from Massachusetts, Senator Sumner, because he wanted to abolish slavery.”The 1856 caning of Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks is probably the most infamous example of violence between members of Congress, but it is far from the only one. In her book, The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War, the Yale history professor Joanne Freeman details the many threats and attacks between lawmakers during the antebellum era.The Guardian spoke to Dr Freeman about the history of congressional violence and what it can tell us about the current state of US politics and the significance of Gosar’s censure. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.Besides the caning of Sumner, what were some of the other examples of congressional violence in the pre-civil war era?The research that I did revealed there were at least 70 violent incidents in the House and in the Senate. Some of them were canings. Some of them were fist fights. Some of them were actual brawls with groups of congressmen. In the well of the House where we saw [Gosar’s] censure take place, that was actually a location for several fights in those decades before the civil war.And there was a lot of deployment of threats and intimidation. Most of these were offered by southerners and usually were deployed against people who had anything to say against slavery. Obviously the goal of that was to silence people or intimidate people so they wouldn’t even stand up to say anything that was not going to be to the liking of southerners.What effect did those threats have on public debate over slavery in Congress?There’s a diary entry from a very prominent, very aggressive anti-slavery advocate, named Joshua Giddings from Ohio. And when he first gets to Congress, he reports something like, “Our northern friends are afraid.” They’re afraid to stand up against the southerners. So there’s clearly evidence that people were afraid to stand up.And not only does it shape the direction of debate, the people who do that kind of threatening very often are wildly supported by the folks back home. I suppose that’s what we’re going to see now; the person who does that kind of bullying and that kind of threatening gets a good degree of support for it.Although Gosar was censured and stripped of his committee assignments, he was also somewhat rewarded for his behavior. Donald Trump immediately offered Gosar his endorsement, and the minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, suggested that he might get “better committee assignments” when Republicans regain control of the House. Is there a history of lawmakers being rewarded for violence?Unfortunately, yes. Most notoriously, look at Preston Brooks, who caned Charles Sumner, and Laurence Keitt, who held people off from intervening in the caning. There was discussion of expelling Brooks. He does not get expelled, but he resigns in protest when the debate is attacking him for what he did. He resigns in protest and is immediately re-elected. And Laurence Keitt, who actually is censured, is immediately re-elected. So sometimes these violent acts are done partly for the base, for constituents, for “the cause”. And sometimes that is indeed rewarded.So historically, have censures been effective in changing lawmakers’ behavior? Or do they sometimes encourage more of that same behavior?On the one hand, you could say people are proving that they’re willing to stand up for something, and for some populations, that gets applause. But the thing is, if people are really being offensive in some way or another, and they’re not called on it … that’s basically an endorsement. And it’s also a sign that the rules of Congress almost don’t exist. They’re just not in play.For reasons of just upholding that there are lines that can be crossed, I think it’s important for that to happen. The message of that kind of censuring is that this person did this thing and is accountable for that. And if you don’t hold people accountable for their actions, that too is a passive stab at democracy.How did the violence in Congress before the civil war both reflect and intensify the divisions in the country itself?The violence in Congress reflects and affects the violence and politics throughout the nation at large in a few ways. By the time you get into the 1850s and you have the telegraph, which is spreading that kind of information very quickly around the nation more broadly than ever before, Americans can see that happening. So that sets a tone for politics all by itself.Some of it is playing to an audience. Depending on how it’s acted out and the language that’s used and the posturing that’s taken by the members of Congress, it’s deliberately intended to rile up Americans, which it does. That kind of violence can encourage violence, intensify political rhetoric [and] seemingly justify extremism and violence. It has an impact on the public.If the public gets riled up, they’re going to demand more things from their representatives – more violence, more extremism.Given everything you know about the congressional violence that happened leading up the civil war, what do you think the censure of Gosar says about the direction of our country now?It certainly reflects the tone and tenor of our politics right now, and that almost goes without saying. It gestures towards what’s coming next because he’s going to be rewarded for it in some ways, and because of that, there will be others that follow in that model.It also shows a certain lack of respect for the institution of Congress. The censure doesn’t matter clearly to this person. It’s a moment that shows how far party is above government and above institutions of government and above institutional stability. That’s not a very comforting thing to consider either.We’re in very unpredictable times. We never know from one moment to the next what direction things are going to lean towards. It’s tempting to see an incident like [the Gosar censure] and assume from it we’re doomed. We’re in a moment of extreme contingency, and indeed things might become much worse.But during that kind of moment of extreme contingency where anything can happen, those are also moments where it’s possible to make positive change. It’s possible in a moment of instability to really push for some kind of a change that isn’t necessarily in the direction of force and violence, but is rather in a direction of inclusion and rights. I think we as Americans need to be thinking about that right about now.TopicsUS politicsUS CongressRepublicansDemocratsinterviewsReuse this content More

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      Trump stoked Covid in red states – but there are blue anti-vaxxers too | Robert Reich

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      Trump stoked Covid in red states – but there are blue anti-vaxxers tooRobert ReichAmong my neighbors in the bluest region of the bluest county of the bluest state in America, many don’t trust big pharma or the government – or simply choose to put themselves first Is there a relationship between Covid and politics? Sure seems so.Michigan leads US in Covid case count, accounting for one in 10 new casesRead moreBy the end of October, 25 out of every 100,000 residents of counties Donald Trump won by wide margins had died from Covid. That was more than three times higher than the Covid death rate in heavily Biden counties, of 7.8 per 100,000.Counties where Trump received at least 70% of the vote had an even higher average Covid death toll than counties where Trump won at least 60%.Presumably, this is because Trump counties also have the highest unvaccinated rates in the US. Almost every reliably blue state now has a higher vaccination rate than almost every reliably red state.There are some obvious reasons why Trump voters have been hesitant to get vaccinated. Trump politicized the issue – making the jab a hallmark of his peculiar form of rightwing populism. He and Fox News spread false rumors and conspiracy theories about the vaccine. By the time Trump finally called on people to get vaccinated, the damage was already done.In other words, it’s the same trifecta of rightwing media, inadequate education and rejection of science that gave us Trump in the first place.But this isn’t the whole story, because the US as a whole trails every other advanced country in the rate of vaccinations. Why?In recent weeks I’ve discovered that several anti-vaxxers live around me – in the bluest region of the bluest county of the bluest state in America. I’ve known several for years. They are well-informed and well-educated. But they’re as opposed to getting a shot as any Trump anti-vaxxer.Some are ex-hippies, now in their late 60s and early 70s, who regard their bodies as “sacred” and don’t want anything or anyone to “invade” it.One, who grows her own food and lives by herself in a cabin not far from here, told me she didn’t want anything going into her body that she didn’t control. When I asked whether she had been vaccinated against smallpox, measles, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough, she told me she assumed so but had been too small to have had knowledge or control.Others – also in their late 60s and early 70s – don’t trust big pharma. They see Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson as greedy global corporations in search of people to exploit and tax havens to park their exorbitant profits.“Why in hell would I trust a fucking thing Pfizer says or does?” one of them asked me.None of these people trusts the government. Their generation (which is also mine) came to political consciousness during the Vietnam war – a time when the American flag became an emblem of fascism, particularly in lefty coastal enclaves. They now believe the government has been so corrupted by big money that they don’t trust agencies charged with protecting the public.I’m sympathetic to their distrust of both big pharma and big government. But this doesn’t mean the science is wrong.One of them referred me to a 2017 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association which found that about a third of the drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration between 2001 and 2010 had safety problems after reaching the market.I checked and he’s correct. But he left out a critical fact: as soon as the FDA discovered the problems it forced manufacturers to pull the drugs or issue warnings.Deep down, I think these blue anti-vaxxers are motivated by something different from mere distrust. When I pointed out that they could well be endangering others (including me), they remained unmoved.When I suggested that their concerns, however valid, had to be weighed against the public’s overall interest in conquering this epidemic, they said they didn’t care.My conclusion: They’re infected not by Covid but by a narcissism that refuses even to consider the risks and costs they’re imposing on others.Has living through Covid made me a hypochondriac? I asked some experts | Maeve HigginsRead moreI can’t say for sure that Trump anti-vaxxers share this narcissism, although the leader of their cult surely does. And, of course, my sample size was so small I can’t even generalize to all blue anti-vaxxers.If we blame Trump and the culture that produced him for the relatively low rate of vaccinations in the US, we’re missing a character trait that may offer a fuller explanation.This trait is found among Democrats and independents in blue America as well as Republicans in Trumpland. In fact, I think it’s been near the core of the American personality since before the founding of the nation – a stubborn, selfish, me-first individualism.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
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      Ilhan Omar: Lauren Boebert’s ‘Jihad Squad’ bigotry is ‘no laughing matter’

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      Ilhan Omar: Lauren Boebert’s ‘Jihad Squad’ bigotry is ‘no laughing matter’
      Colorado Republican apologises for remarks in home district
      Minnesota Democrat demands action from party leaders
      How the threat of political violence is growing across US
      Islamophobic remarks by Lauren Boebert are “no laughing matter”, Ilhan Omar said, demanding action from congressional leaders – after the Colorado Republican said sorry. Why Republicans are embracing Kyle Rittenhouse as their mascotRead more“Saying I am a suicide bomber is no laughing matter,” the Minnesota Democrat tweeted. “[House Republican leader] Kevin McCarthy and [Speaker] Nancy Pelosi need to take appropriate action, normalising this bigotry not only endangers my life but the lives of all Muslims. Anti-Muslim bigotry has no place in Congress.”Boebert made the remarks in her home district. To laughs and whoops, she joked about encountering Omar, one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, in an elevator on Capitol Hill.“I see a Capitol police officer running to the elevator,” she said. “I see fret all over his face, and he’s reaching, and the door’s shutting, like I can’t open it, like what’s happening. I look to my left, and there she is. Ilhan Omar.“And I said, ‘Well, she doesn’t have a backpack, we should be fine.’ We only had one floor to go. I said, ‘Oh look, the Jihad Squad decided show up for work today.’”That was a reference to the “Squad”, a group of prominent House progressives of which Omar is a member. Boebert, a far-right Trump ally and controversialist, has also used the term on the floor of the House.In response, Omar said: “Fact. This buffoon looks down when she sees me at the Capitol, this whole story is made up. Sad she thinks bigotry gets her clout.“Anti-Muslim bigotry isn’t funny and shouldn’t be normalised. Congress can’t be a place where hateful and dangerous Muslims tropes get no condemnation.”In the face of widespread condemnation, Boebert apologised “to anyone in the Muslim community I offended with my comment about Representative Omar”.She also said she had “reached out to [Omar’s] office to speak with her directly. There are plenty of policy differences to focus on without this unnecessary distraction”.Democratic House leaders including Pelosi indicated that was not enough.“Racism and bigotry of any form, including Islamophobia, must always be called out, confronted and condemned in any place it is found,” they said in a joint statement.“Congresswoman Boebert’s repeated, ongoing and targeted Islamophobic comments and actions against … Ilhan Omar are both deeply offensive and concerning … we call upon Congresswoman Boebert to fully retract these comments and refrain from making similar ones going forward.”The statement also condemned as “outrageous” McCarthy “and the entire House Republican leadership’s repeated failure to condemn inflammatory and bigoted rhetoric from members of their conference”.Can the Republican party escape Trump? Politics Weekly Extra – podcastRead moreAnother far-right Republican, Paul Gosar of Arizona, was recently formally censured for tweeting a video in which he was depicting killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, another leading progressive, and threatening Joe Biden.Only two Republicans voted for censure: Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who both broke with the pro-Trump wing over the Capitol attack.On Friday, Kinzinger called Boebert “trash” and said: “I take sides between decency and disgusting.”Perhaps alluding to McCarthy’s silence on controversies involving pro-Trump figures, he wrote: “Ask some of the normal members when they last talked to Kevin? Been a while for most.”On Friday evening another pro-Trump extremist, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, tweeted that she “just got off a good call” with McCarthy.“We spent time talking about solving problems not only in the conference, but for our country,” she said. “I like what he has planned ahead.” TopicsIlhan OmarDemocratsUS politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesIslamophobiaRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘A core threat to our democracy’: threat of political violence growing across US

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      ‘A core threat to our democracy’: threat of political violence growing across USRepublicans’ muted response to Paul Gosar’s behavior has intensified fears about where incendiary rhetoric may lead Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stood on the House floor and implored her colleagues to hold Paul Gosar accountable for sharing an altered anime video showing him killing her and attacking Joe Biden.“Our work here matters. Our example matters. There is meaning in our service,” Ocasio-Cortez said in her speech last week. “And as leaders in this country, when we incite violence with depictions against our colleagues, that trickles down into violence in this country.”House Republicans heard Ocasio-Cortez’s impassioned plea and responded with a collective shrug. All but three Republican members voted against censuring Gosar and stripping him of his committee assignments, while every House Democrat supported the resolution.The Gosar incident served as the latest data point in an alarming trend in American politics. In a year that began with a deadly insurrection at the US Capitol, lawmakers have seen a sharp rise in the number of threats against them. Republicans’ muted response to Gosar’s behavior has intensified fears about the possibility of more political violence in America in the months to come.Jackie Speier, the Democratic congresswoman who spearheaded the effort to censure Gosar, warned that Republicans’ refusal to hold him accountable could have dangerous repercussions.“If you are silent about a member of Congress wanting to murder another member of Congress, even in a ‘cartoon’, you are inciting violence,” Speier told the Guardian. “And if you incite violence, it begets violence.”That cycle is already playing out in the halls of Congress. The US Capitol police reported earlier this year that the agency had seen a 107% increase in threats against members compared with 2020. The USCP chief, Tom Manger, has said he expects the total number of threats against members to surpass 9,000 this year, compared with 3,939 such threats in 2017.Some of those threats have been on vivid display in the past month. In addition to Gosar’s violent video, the 13 House Republicans who voted in support of the bipartisan infrastructure bill earlier month have received threatening messages.Representative Fred Upton of Michigan publicly shared one such message, in which a man called the Republican congressman a “fucking piece of shit traitor”. “I hope you die. I hope everybody in your fucking family dies,” the man said in the message.And those kinds of threats are not reserved solely for members of Congress. Election workers and school board members also say they are receiving more violent messages. According to an April survey commissioned by the Brennan Center for Justice, nearly one in three election officials are concerned about their safety while on the job.Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel at the government watchdog group Common Cause, described such violent tactics as “a core threat to our democracy”.“The threat of violence is really to intimidate people from doing their jobs and upholding their oath of office,” Spaulding said. “When you start having these violent episodes enter the system, it is totally counter to the way that we are supposed to engage in open and fair debate about policy issues in this country.”There are already signs that fears over personal safety are pushing lawmakers out of office. When the Republican congressman Anthony Gonzalez announced in September that he would not seek re-election, he said his vote to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the insurrection had affected the lives of his family members.Gonzalez told the New York Times that, at one point earlier this year, uniformed police officers had to escort him and his family through the Cleveland airport because of security concerns.“That’s one of those moments where you say, ‘Is this really what I want for my family when they travel, to have my wife and kids escorted through the airport?’” Gonzalez said.Even though threats are affecting their own caucus members, House Republicans rejected the opportunity to send a message by voting to censure Gosar. Instead, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, attacked the censure resolution as a Democratic “abuse of power” and suggested he would award Gosar with “better committee assignments” whenever Republicans regain control of the chamber.“He’s got a number of radical extremists in his caucus that are very effective communicators to the right fringe, and he can’t really rein them in because reining them in means they will attack him,” Speier said. “You might as well put a brass ring in Kevin McCarthy’s nose because they’re pulling him around.”Dr Joanne Freeman, a Yale history professor and author of The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War, warned that McCarthy’s response to Gosar’s behavior may encourage similar incidents in the future.After all, there are other historical examples of lawmakers being rewarded for violent behavior, Freeman noted. After Congressman Preston Brooks attacked Senator Charles Sumner with a cane over his anti-slavery views in 1856, he resigned from the House but was then quickly re-elected by South Carolina voters.“He’s going to be rewarded for it in some ways, and because of that, there will be others that follow in that model,” Freeman said. “It’s a moment that shows how far party is above government and above institutions of government and above institutional stability.”While acknowledging the possibility of future violence within Congress, Freeman added that the Gosar incident could also provide an opportunity for a course correction in political discourse.“We’re in a moment of extreme contingency, and indeed things might become much worse,” Freeman said. “But during that kind of moment of extreme contingency where anything can happen, those are also moments where it’s possible to make positive change.”For Speier, Gosar’s behavior served as a reminder of how far some of her colleagues have strayed from their duties to constituents. The California congresswoman, who announced her retirement last week, urged fellow members to focus on advancing policy rather than spewing violent rhetoric to raise money and rack up retweets.“I love this institution. It’s such a privilege to serve,” Speier said. “We’re given the opportunity to fashion legislation to make lives better for the American people. And that’s what we should be doing.”TopicsAlexandria Ocasio-CortezRepublicansUS CongressUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Why Republicans are embracing Kyle Rittenhouse as their mascot

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      Why Republicans are embracing Kyle Rittenhouse as their mascotCongress members float the idea of offering the 18-year-old internships as experts say their use of him is ‘a very dangerous thing’ Wearing suits and ties, the two men give the camera smiles and thumbs up. One is Donald Trump, former president of the United States. The other is Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two people at an anti-racism protest. And behind them is a framed photo of Trump meeting the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.The mesmerizing tableau emerged from the ex-president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida earlier this week. It was, in effect, the coronation of Rittenhouse as a future star of the rightwing media, Republican party and “Make America great again” (Maga) movement in their crusade against liberalism.A historian of white power reacts to the Rittenhouse verdict: ‘a bonanza for the far-right’Read more“Kyle Rittenhouse has become the poster child for a general feeling among some in this country that White America is under siege,” Eddie Glaude, chairman of the department of African American studies at Princeton University, wrote in the Washington Post. “Rittenhouse defended himself, this argument goes, and White America must do the same.”Rittenhouse was 17 last year when he travelled 20 miles from his home in Antioch, Illinois, to Kenosha, Wisconsin, where racial justice protests had been held since the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a white police officer.Rittenhouse joined others who said they wanted to protect private property. Armed with an AR-style semiautomatic rifle, he shot and killed two people and wounded a third. In court he argued that he fired in self-defense after he was attacked and in fear for his life.When a jury acquitted Rittenhouse on all charges earlier this month, progressive activists urged fresh debate on gun safety and vigilantism. But Republican members of Congress wasted no time in lionising Rittenhouse as a victim turned hero.Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Paul Gosar of Arizona floated the idea of offering Rittenhouse an internship in their offices on Capitol Hill. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Florida trumped them by sponsoring a House bill to award Rittenhouse a congressional gold medal for protecting the community of Kenosha.Not to be outdone, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida tipped as a potential presidential candidate in 2024, declared: “Kyle Rittenhouse did what we should want citizens to do in such a situation: step forward to defend the community against mob violence.”And in light of Rittenhouse’s meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, it would come as no surprise if the now 18-year-old is given a speaking slot at next year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) or a future Republican National Convention (RNC).Kurt Bardella, an adviser to the Democratic National Committee, said: “It’s very clear that they’re trying to make him their mascot. Any time that your mascot is someone who thought that it was an acceptable form of protest to show up at a political event with an AR-15, that is glorifying violence. And that’s a very dangerous thing to prop up and promote.”In the week of Rittenhouse’s acquittal, all but two House Republicans refused to censure Gosar for posting an animated video that depicted him killing Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking Biden.Bardella, a former Republican congressional aide and spokesperson for rightwing Breitbart News, added: “It is a pattern. These aren’t isolated incidents. One is following the other and it’s not an accident and it’s not a coincidence. It’s a deliberate strategy.”The sanctification of Rittenhouse, who was photographed in a bar before his trial with apparent members of the far-right Proud Boys, fits a tried and trusted playbook. Mark and Patricia McCloskey, a white couple in St Louis who pointed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters marching past their house, addressed last year’s RNC a day before Rittenhouse opened fire in Kenosha.Mark McCloskey is now running for the US Senate in Missouri and welcomed Rittenhouse’s acquittal by stating: “Liberals want to defund the police and prevent you from defending yourself, your family, your home, and your businesses. I will never stand for that. I stood for Kyle Rittenhouse and his right to self-defense.”Nicholas Sandmann, a high school student from Kentucky who sued media outlets for their depiction of his interaction – wearing a Maga cap – with a Native American activist on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington also came to personify grievances on the right.And the pro-Trump mob that stormed the US Capitol on 6 January in an attempt to block certification of Joe Biden’s election has received similar treatment. Taylor Greene visited accused insurrectionists in what she called the “patriot wing” of a Washington prison, condemning its conditions as she tweeted: “I have never seen human suffering like I witnessed last night.”Trump himself has praised Ashli Babbitt, a Capitol rioter fatally shot by police, as “a truly incredible person” and recorded a video to mark what would have been her 36th birthday in what many regard as an effort to turn her into a martyr.Each cause célèbre is typically magnified by conservative media. On Monday more than 5m viewers watched Rittenhouse interviewed by Tucker Carlson, the Fox News opinion host’s biggest audience since the night of the 6 January attack.Carlson told viewers: “During the course of our long conversation, Kyle Rittenhouse struck us as bright, decent, sincere, dutiful and hardworking … exactly the kind of person you would want many more of in your country. He’s not especially political. He never wanted to be the symbol of anything.” He also described Rittenhouse as a “sweet kid”.In the interview, Rittenhouse claimed that he had been “extremely defamed” during the case, fuelling speculation that he will take legal action against the media and politicians. Sandmann urged him to do so, writing in the Daily Mail: “The parallels between me and Kyle Rittenhouse are impossible not to draw … The attacks on Kyle came from the national news media, just as they came for me.”Other Fox News presenters have revelled in an opportunity to “own the libs”. Laura Ingraham tweeted: “The Left is going wild. Enjoy,” ahead of a show captioned: “Kyle and the liberal mind.” Sean Hannity interviewed Trump, who after meeting Rittenhouse made the provocative claim: “He should not have had to suffer through a trial. He should never have been put through that.”Such comments imply resistance to a leftwing tyranny that assails individual rights, such as the right to bear arms. Dan Cassino, a political scientist at Fairleigh Dickinson University and author of Fox News and American Politics: How One Channel Shapes American Politics and Society, said: “This is where the energy in the party is.“If you ask people on the right or look at rightwing media, they’ll tell you all the people Kyle Rittenhouse shot were criminals, they were terrible, they were going to kill everybody and these people are heroes for standing up, especially for using their second amendment rights.“That’s a big part of this narrative, that having guns allows you to stand up to disorder and is a necessary thing to do in order to protect your community. It’s not Kyle Rittenhouse himself: he was protecting his community, and that’s what the second amendment is about as far as they’re concerned.”But the normalisation of violence represented by Trump’s remarks at rallies, Gosar’s tweet and Rittenhouse’s valorisation is likely to be politically polarising, firing up the Maga base but turning off certain constituencies in elections.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “The challenge for Republicans who are running in competitive seats is, is that who you want? He’s a guy who is not cheered by a lot of people, including suburban and better educated women. The idea of people running around with automatic weapons in street? That doesn’t really excite them.“I expect the Trumpians to grab on to him, bring him out, have him smile and wave and say a few things. But I think the candidates may be more selective.”TopicsRepublicansKyle RittenhouseUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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