Republicans

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans’ vilification of Trump critics is ‘ruining’ the US, says governor

      by

      Republicans’ vilification of Trump critics is ‘ruining’ the US, says governorNew Hampshire’s Chris Sununu tells CNN House Republicans ‘have their priorities screwed up’ The Republican party’s vilification of members of Congress who have criticized Donald Trump or supported bipartisan legislation is “ruining America”, New Hampshire’s governor, Chris Sununu, said on Sunday, adding another tacit voice to the small but growing internal opposition to the former president.Sununu, seen as a rising star of the post-Trump right, attacked his colleagues in an interview on CNN, insisting that House Republicans “have their priorities screwed up” for seeking retaliation against 13 members who voted for Joe Biden’s $1.2tn infrastructure bill.Democrats worry inflation could imperil agenda and congressional majoritiesRead moreSununu was scathing when asked about the call for those members to be stripped of their committee assignments in the same week that only two Republicans – vocal Trump critics Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger – voted to censure their colleague Paul Gosar for tweeting a video showing him murdering the Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.“That’s kind of that social media mob mentality that’s built up in this country where we don’t agree with one issue so we’re going to attack them, we’re going to vilify one person or one individual. We’ve got to get beyond that, because culturally, it’s really, really ruining America,” he said.“Politics in its entirety on both sides of the aisle in Washington is screwed up. They got their priorities all wrong, they focus on the wrong things. They don’t talk about balancing budgets, fixing healthcare, immigration reform, social security and Medicare … instead we spend all of our time focusing on these nitpicky things.”He defended Cheney, who was ousted from her leadership role earlier this year by House Republicans after she challenged Trump’s lie that his election defeat by Joe Biden was fraudulent.Regarding Republicans’ failure to speak out against Gosar, a Trump loyalist, Sununu added: “When a congressman says those things, of course they have to be censured … We’re talking about kicking people off committees because they don’t like one vote or the other? Again, I just think they have their priorities screwed up.”Sununu is among a small number of senior, elected Republicans with the confidence to begin pushing back (although not directly) against Trump’s domination of the party.Glenn Youngkin won a surprise victory earlier this month in Virginia’s governor’s race after a campaign during which he deliberately kept Trump at arm’s length, yet did tacitly echo the former president’s talking points. Some saw his win as a new Republican playbook for navigating future elections minus the specter of Trump.Meanwhile, Chris Christie, a former governor of New Jersey and one-time Trump adviser, has told party members they needed to “renounce the conspiracy theories and truth deniers, the ones who know better and the ones who are just plain nuts”. Trump, who is considering another presidential run in 2024, attacked Christie while attempting to seek credit for Youngkin’s victory.Friction has also been reported in Trump’s relationship with his protege Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor touted in Republican circles as the former president’s heir apparent and tipped for a likely 2024 White House run of his own. Trump is increasingly irritated by DeSantis’ soaring popularity, according to CNN, and has become “obsessed” with receiving credit for his rise.A report in the Atlantic published on Sunday suggested that Trump’s once iron-clad grip on the Republican party might finally be slipping, arguing that the recent series of developments “point to the early stirrings of a Republican party in which Trump is sidelined”.However, Trump continues to raise millions of dollars for an as yet undeclared presidential candidacy, and sends out regular endorsements of state and national candidates he believes embody the principles of Trumpism.Until recently, Sununu was believed to be among them, but he reportedly upset Republican colleagues earlier this month with his announcement that he was not interested in pursuing a seat in the US Senate.According to Politico, both the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, and Rick Scott, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, considered him as the perfect candidate to help wrest chamber control from Democratic hands in the 2022 midterm elections, but were blindsided by his decision.“You just get so much more done as governor,” Sununu told CNN on Sunday. “Governors are the ones that have to implement and design programs, create opportunities, and we as governors have the best opportunity to offset some of the negative things coming out of Washington. The Senate and House really don’t have any power to do that.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsNew HampshirenewsReuse this content More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘The testing ground’: how Republican state parties grow Trumpism 2.0

      by

      ‘The testing ground’: how Republican state parties grow Trumpism 2.0 In Oklahoma, Idaho, Wyoming and California, the next generation of GOP extremists are passing laws, picking their own voters … and preparing for powerThe website of the Oklahoma Republican party has a running countdown to the 2024 presidential election measured in “Maga days”, “Maga hours”, “Maga minutes” and “Maga seconds” – Maga being shorthand for Donald Trump’s timeworn slogan, “Make America great again”.Betrayal review: Trump’s final days and a threat not yet extinguishedRead moreThe state party chairman, John Bennett, a veteran of three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, has described Islam as a “cancer in our nation that needs to be cut out” and posted a yellow Star of David on Facebook to liken coronavirus vaccine mandates to the persecution of Jewish people in Nazi Germany.This is just one illustration of how Republican parties at the state level are going to new extremes in their embrace of Trump, an ominous sign ahead of midterm elections next year and a potential glimpse of the national party’s future. Yet the radicalisation often takes place under the radar of the national media.“We are not a swing state and we’re nowhere near a swing state so no one’s looking,” said Alicia Andrews, chair of the Oklahoma Democratic party. “And because no one is looking at Oklahoma, we are allowed to be way more extreme than a lot of states.”Andrews pointed to the example of a state law passed by the Republican majority in April that grants immunity to drivers who unintentionally injure or kill protesters and stiffens penalties for demonstrators who block public roadways.“Only three states passed it, with Oklahoma being the first,” she said. “And you know why? Because there wasn’t national attention. We were talking about Florida passing it and Texas passing it. No one was even considering what was going on in Oklahoma and it quietly passed in Oklahoma.”Similarly, Andrew argues, while other states were debating “critical race theory” in schools, in Oklahoma a ban was rammed through with little coverage. Another concern is gerrymandering, the process whereby a party redraws district boundaries for electoral advantage.Andrews, the first African American to lead the Oklahoma Democratic party, said: “Our legislators are in a special session right now to review our maps and they are really eroding an urban core, taking at least 6,000 Hispanic Americans out of an urban district and moving them to a rural district, thus denuding their votes. I didn’t think that they could make it worse but they are.”Oklahoma is a deep red state. As of August, its house and senate had 121 Republicans and 28 Democrats. It continues to hold “Stop the Steal” rallies pushing Trump’s “big lie” that Joe Biden robbed him of victory in the presidential election.Andrews warns that Republicans in her state are indicative of a national trend.“Their stated strategy is start at the municipal level, take over the state, take over the nation. So while everybody’s talking about the infrastructure plan and the Build Back Better plan, they’re rubbing their hands together and making differences in states.”She added: “We’re like the testing ground for their most radical right exercises, and once they perfect it here, they can take it to other states.”‘Owning the libs’Republican state parties’ rightward spiral has included promotion of Trump’s “big lie” about electoral fraud, white nationalism and QAnon, an antisemitic conspiracy theory involving Satan-worshipping cannibals and a child sex-trafficking ring. It can find bizarre and disturbing expression.Arizona staged a sham “audit” of the 2020 presidential election that only confirmed Biden’s victory in the state. Last month in Idaho, when Governor Brad Little was out of the state, his lieutenant, Janice McGeachin, issued an executive order to prevent employers requiring employees be vaccinated against Covid-19. Little rescinded it on his return.The Wyoming state party central committee this week voted to no longer recognise the congresswoman Liz Cheney – daughter of the former vice-president Dick Cheney and a hardline conservative – as a Republican, its second formal rebuke for her criticism of Trump and vote to impeach him for his role in the US Capitol attack.Nina Hebert, communications director of the state Democratic party, said: “Wyoming is not exempt from the extremism that Trump has intentionally cultivated and fuelled and continues to court today.“He was a popular figure in Wyoming in the 2016 election and he retains that popularity amongst voters in the state, which I think is the most red in the nation.”Gerrymandering is a longstanding problem, Hebert said, but Trump’s gleeful celebration of the 6 January riot has opened floodgates.“They have created situations where Republican-controlled state legislatures have no reason to pretend even that they’re not just trying to hold on to power. This has become something that is acceptable within the Republican party.”The shift has also been evident in policy in Florida, Texas and other states where Republicans have taken aim at abortion access, gun safety, trans and voting rights. Often, zealous officials seem to be trying to outdo one another in outraging liberals, known as “owning the libs”.The drift is not confined to red states. When Republicans in California, a Democratic bastion, sought to recall Governor Gavin Newsom, they rallied around a Trumpian populist in the conservative talk radio host Larry Elder rather than a more mainstream figure such as Kevin Faulconer, a former mayor of San Diego.Kurt Bardella, an adviser to the Democratic National Committee who was once an aide to a leading California Republican, said: “To me that was a bellwether. If even a state like California can’t get a more moderate, pragmatic Republican party at the state level, there’s really no hope for any of the parties in any state at this point.“They’re leaning so hard into this anti-democratic, authoritarian, non-policy-based iteration and identity. The old adage, ‘As goes California, so goes the country,’ well, look at what the California Republican party did and we’re seeing that play out across the board.”‘Wackadoodle Republicans’Like junior sports teams, state parties are incubators and pipelines for generations of politicians heading to Washington. The primary election system tends to favour the loudest and most extreme voices, who can whip up enthusiasm in the base.Trump has been promiscuous in his endorsements of Maga-loyal candidates for the November 2022 midterms, among them Herschel Walker, a former football star running for the Senate in Georgia despite a troubled past including allegations that he threatened his ex-wife’s life.Other examples include Sarah Sanders, a former White House press secretary running for governor in Arkansas, and Karoline Leavitt, a 23-year-old former assistant press secretary targeting a congressional seat in New Hampshire.‘Professor or comrade?’ Republicans go full red scare on Soviet-born Biden pickRead moreThis week, Amanda Chase, a state senator in Virginia and self-described “Trump in heels”, announced a bid for Congress against the Democrat Abigail Spanberger. Chase gave a speech in Washington on 6 January, hours before the insurrection, and was censured by her state senate for praising the rioters as “patriots”.The former congressman Joe Walsh, who was part of the Tea Party, a previous conservative movement against the Republican establishment, and now hosts a podcast, said: “I talked to these folks every day, and for people who think [members of Congress] Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are nuts, they ain’t seen nothing yet.“The Republicans at the state and local level are way, way more gone than the Republicans in Washington. We’re talking about grassroots voters and activists on the ground and eventually, to win a Republican primary at whatever level, every candidate has to listen to them.“So you’re going to get a far larger number of wackadoodle Republicans elected to Congress in 2022 because they will reflect the craziness that’s going on state and locally right now.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsOklahomaWyomingCaliforniaIdahoUS midterm elections 2022featuresReuse this content More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      House Democrats pass Biden’s expansive Build Back Better policy plan

      by

      House Democrats pass Biden’s expansive Build Back Better policy planBill now goes back to the Senate, where it faces total opposition from Republicans and an uphill battle against centrist Democrats Joe Biden has hailed the US House of Representatives for passing a $1.75tn social and climate spending bill, a central pillar of his agenda that must now go before the Senate.The Democratic majority in the House approved the Build Back Better Act on Friday despite fierce opposition from Republicans.The bill represents “a giant step forward”, the president said in a statement. “Above all, it puts us on the path to build our economy back better than before by rebuilding the backbone of America: working people and the middle class.”House passes Biden’s $1.75tn Build Back Better plan after months of negotiations – liveRead moreAfter months of fits and starts, gridlock and intra-party warring, Democrats leveraged their thin House majority to pass the most sweeping expansion of the social safety net since the 1960s.. The vote went almost wholly along party lines, 220 to 213, with Jared Golden of Maine the sole Democrat to oppose it.Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy had derailed the schedule to vote on Thursday by delivering a marathon overnight speech of eight hours 32 minutes. It was the longest speech ever made on the House floor but could only delay rather than deny the inevitable.The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, triumphantly brought down her gavel to mark the bill’s passage to enthusiastic applause throughout the chamber from Democratic members. There were chants of, “Build Back Better! Build Back Better!”“The Build Back Better Act is passed,” Pelosi announced minutes later, smiling with arm aloft, to more cheering and chants of “Nancy! Nancy! Nancy!”Soon after, a triumphant Pelosi said at a press conference: “We will be telling our children and grandchildren that we were here this day.”The bill is “monumental, it’s historic, it’s transformative, it’s bigger than anything we’ve ever done,” she added.On climate crisis action, Pelosi said: “If you care about the planet and how we pass it on, this bill is for you.”President Biden will transfer power to Vice President Kamala Harris for the brief period of time when he is under anesthesia today while getting a colonoscopy, the White House says. “The Vice President will work from her office in the West Wing during this time.”— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) November 19, 2021
      The Build Back Better Act provides hundreds of billions to new social programs and action to mitigate the effects and worsening of the climate crisis.Outside the US Capitol, progressive leader and Democratic congresswoman Pramila Jayapal said there was not agreement on every element of the bill but that she was pleased with the overwhelming support.She called the bill “a very strong vote to send to the Senate”.South Carolina congressman James Clyburn, who was instrumental in shepherding Black voters to support Joe Biden when he was struggling in the primaries during the 2020 campaign, eventually seeing him win the nomination and the White House, spoke of “a good day” as he appeared alongside Pelosi after Friday’s vote..@SpeakerPelosi: “The Build Back Better Bill is passed.”The House of Representatives passes President Biden’s Social Spending Plan. The bill goes now to the U.S. Senate. pic.twitter.com/zxTxPCPz70— CSPAN (@cspan) November 19, 2021
      The bill now goes to the Senate, where it faces total opposition from Republicans and an uphill battle, in its current form, against centrist Democratic senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has indicated that he wants the bill to pass the Senate, return to the House and be on the president’s desk by Christmas for signing, a tall order with more fierce debate yet to come and a crowded legislative calendar on Capitol Hill in December.The huge bill will use the reconciliation process for budgetary-related legislation, meaning it can be passed in the Senate with a simple majority, rather than a 60-vote threshold, so that Democrats alone can see it through the chamber if they support it.But in a hint of the wrangling to come, Bernie Sanders, an independent senator for Vermont, said: “The Senate has an opportunity to make this a truly historic piece of legislation. We will listen to the demands of the American people and strengthen the Build Back Better Act.”The package is ambitious: it aims to dramatically reduce childcare costs, provide universal pre-kindergarten for children, lower the cost of prescription drugs for seniors, expand Medicare to cover hearing aids, extend work permits to millions of undocumented immigrants and provide the largest-ever investment in efforts to combat the climate crisis.The House version of the legislation also includes four weeks of paid family and medical leave, though the provision faces opposition from Manchin.Pelosi told reporters: “We had so much agreement within the bill … and then whatever comes out in the Senate, we’ll be working together with them so that we have agreement when it comes back to us. The biggest challenge was to meet the vision of President Biden.”Five days ago Biden signed the bipartisan $1.2tn infrastructure bill into law at the White House, dealing with rebuilding America’s roads and bridges and spreading broadband internet.The president is attending Walter Reed hospital for a routine medical check on Friday, the day before his 79th birthday.His medical required a colonoscopy, which required going under anesthesia. As such, he briefly transferred power to the vice-president, Kamala Harris, the first time the US has had, albeit briefly, a woman as acting president.Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, tweeted that Biden had spoken to Harris at about 11.35am, adding:“@POTUS was in good spirits and at that time resumed his duties. He will remain at Walter Reed as he completes the rest of his routine physical.”TopicsHouse of RepresentativesJoe BidenUS politicsUS CongressDemocratsRepublicansLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

    • 175 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Paul Gosar retweets same video aimed at AOC after House censures him – report

      by

      Paul Gosar retweets same video aimed at AOC after House censures him – reportRepublican congressman retweeted conservative podcaster Elijah Schaffer’s tweet of the violent video Just minutes after being censured by the US House, the Republican congressman Paul Gosar of Arizona retweeted the violent video that depicts him murdering Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, US media reported.While Gosar had previously deleted the video, after the House voted to censure him, Gosar retweeted the conservative podcaster Elijah Schaffer’s tweet of the video that was captioned: “Really well done. We love @DrPaulGosar, don’t we folks?” The retweet appears to have since been undone.Gosar also retweeted other Republican politicians and public figures, both on his personal and congressional Twitter accounts, that have called Gosar a political “martyr” and denounced his censure.Gosar has not apologized for the video and called the censure “kabuki theater” and a “hysterical mob” in a series of new tweets published after the vote.Following the censure vote, Gosar also released a statement saying that his censure could incite violence, comparing the censure to the events that led up to the 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre.“I remind everyone that pretending to be upset over a cartoon is what happened to the Charlie Hebdo magazine in France,” said Gosar. “All right-thinking people condemned that then, and they should condemn the Democrats now for their violation of free speech.”On Wednesday the House voted to censure Gosar, with 223 in favor and 207 against. While the vote occurred mostly along party lines, three Republicans broke with their party line. Congressman Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming voted in favor of censuring Gosar, and Congressman David Joyce of Ohio voted “present”, the lone Republican member to do so.Republican members have been called out in the past for threatening violence against Democratic representatives, particularly women of color. In February, the House stripped the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments after her social media posts were flagged for supporting violence against Ocasio-Cortez, the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar and Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.TopicsRepublicansUS politicsAlexandria Ocasio-CorteznewsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      This is what gerrymandering looks like | The fight to vote

      by

      This is what gerrymandering looks likeWe zoomed in on four districts that provide some of the clearest examples of how US politicians are locking in election results for the next decade Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterHello, and Happy Thursday,A few months ago, I sat down with my colleagues Alvin Chang and Andrew Witherspoon on the Guardian’s visual team asked to do something that I thought would be exceedingly difficult: could we show what gerrymandering looks like to our readers?While there’s a growing awareness of how gerrymandering “debased” American democracy, in the words of supreme court justice Elena Kagan, articulating exactly how it works can be extremely difficult. The boundaries that make up our political districts are invisible, so when politicians move them every 10 years, voters don’t feel it in their everyday lives. Looking at gerrymandered districts can feel like you’re just looking at a bunch of squiggly lines (trust me, I’ve been there).Over the last few weeks, Andrew put together four maps that overcome this problem. And the final product is, I believe, the best visualization of how gerrymandering works that I’ve seen to date.We zoomed in on four districts – two in North Carolina and two in Texas – that provide some of the clearest examples of how politicians are gerrymandering this cycle. Using the 2020 election results and demographic data, we showed how politicians are transforming districts to virtually lock in election results for the next decade.Just take a look at what happened to the sixth congressional district in the north-central part of North Carolina. It’s currently represented by Democrat Kate Manning, and Joe Biden won the district by 24 points in 2020, a sign that it’s a heavily Democratic area. But when Republicans in the state legislature drew the new lines, they cracked the district into four pieces. The Democratic voters in the sixth district were tossed into four districts that strongly favor the GOP, ensuring Republicans will have a powerful advantage in elections for years to come.All four districts we focused on were drawn by Republicans, who have an immense advantage across the country in drawing district lines this year. But where Democrats do have the upper hand, in places like Oregon and Illinois, they’ve shown a willingness to gerrymander as well.Amid the complexity of redistricting, there’s an important, and often ugly, story about how voters are grouped based on race. In north-eastern North Carolina, for example, we showed how Republicans lowered the share of Black voters in a district, probably making it harder for Black voters there to elect the candidate of their choice. GK Butterfield, a Black Democrat who has represented the district since 2004, is now likely to announce his retirement this week. While courts have historically protected the ability of Black voters to elect the candidate in their choice in the district, that’s now in jeopardy.“I’m fairly certain that this district, if GK were to retire, would be a district that Black voters don’t have the opportunity any longer to elect their candidates of choice,” Allison Riggs, a prominent voting rights attorney at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in North Carolina, told me last week.We also showed how Hispanic voters in the Democratic-leaning suburbs of Dallas and Fort Worth are being tossed into a largely rural district where Republicans dominate.Civil rights groups are bringing a flood of lawsuits to challenge these maps. But they face a huge uphill battle. In 2019, the US supreme court said for the first time that federal courts can’t address partisan gerrymandering. And while plaintiffs can challenge discriminatory maps on different grounds, those suits can take years to resolve in court, enabling politicians to hold several elections using discriminatory maps.Reader questionsRobert writes: With all the talk about eliminating the filibuster, what do you suppose is going to happen to it if Republicans once again achieve a solid majority as now appears likely? Just sayin’.This is a concern that some Democrats who defend the filibuster share. But those who support getting rid of the rule point out that Republicans have distorted the filibuster from a tool that is supposed to forge compromise to one that prevents the majority party from governing at all. And I think there’s also a belief that Republicans might be willing to do away with the filibuster when they get back into the majority, regardless of what Democrats do.Please continue to write to me each week with your questions about elections and voting at sam.levine@theguardian.com or DM me on Twitter at @srl and I’ll try to answer as many as I can.Also worth watching …
      Ohio Republicans were so secretive in drawing new gerrymandered state legislative maps that they shut out members of their own party. Now, they’re pushing ahead with drawing a gerrymandered congressional map.
      Georgia Republicans unveiled a new congressional map that heavily favors the GOP.
      Civil rights groups have filed a challenge to Texas’s new electoral maps.
      TopicsUS voting rightsFight to voteRepublicansDemocratsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 225 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      ‘What is so hard about saying this is wrong?’, says AOC over Paul Gosar’s violent tweet – video

      by

      Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has blasted Republican House minority leader Kevin McCarthy for failing to condemn the violent tweet of fellow Republican Paul Gosar ahead of a censure vote against him. The Democratic-controlled US House of Representatives was poised to punish a Republican lawmaker over an anime video that depicted him killing Ocasio-Cortez and swinging two swords at President Joe Biden. ‘What is so hard, what is so hard about saying that this is wrong?’ Ocasio-Cortez said. ‘This is not about me. This is not about representative Gosar. But, this is about what we are willing to accept.’ 

      ‘This is not about me,’ AOC says as House debates censuring Paul Gosar over violent video – live More