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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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      Mitch McConnell under fire after saying African Americans vote as much as 'Americans' – video

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

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

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      Michael Flynn allies allegedly plotted to lean on Republicans to back vote audits

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      Michael Flynn allies allegedly plotted to lean on Republicans to back vote auditsEx-whistleblower says group enlisted his help to seek potentially damaging information on two members of Congress to prod them to back audits in key states Trump lost FBI agents and the House panel investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol have both learned of an alleged plan by allies of retired army Lt Gen Michael Flynn to gather “intelligence” on top Republicans to “move” them to back election audits in key states Trump lost, said ex-whistleblower Everett Stern who talked to the panel and the FBI.Stern, who runs the intelligence firm Tactical Rabbit and is a Republican vying for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania, in multiple interviews with the Guardian said two Flynn associates with the rightwing Patriot Caucus group enlisted his help in April in a scheme to seek potentially damaging information on two Republican members of Congress to prod them to back an audit of the 2020 vote that Joe Biden won.Stern told the Guardian he spent several hours in November telling House panel investigators about the alleged drive by Flynn associates who sought campaign finance and other dirt on Pennsylvania’s senator Pat Toomey and congressman Brian Fitzpatrick to win their support for an audit to bolster Trump’s debunked charges that Biden’s win was fraudulent.A long shot candidate to succeed the retiring Toomey, Stern said he alerted the FBI in June when he learned more details of the bizarre drive by Flynn allies to specifically target the two Republicans, both of whom backed impeaching Trump after the January 6 insurrection.The efforts by Flynn’s Patriot Caucus allies were launched after Trump failed to block Biden from taking office, and are part of a wider drive by Trump loyalists and Flynn to help boost Trump’s political fortunes via more state audits nationwide into false charges that Biden’s win was rigged, and elect like-minded candidates in key states to top electoral offices.Stern provided text messages, emails and other documents revealing he had multiple contacts with one of the Patriot Caucus members, Velma Anne Ruth, and two other influential Flynn allies, Houston real estate mogul Al Hartman and former army green beret Ivan Raiklin, who were pushing audits in several key states.Stern said Flynn’s Patriot Caucus associates first approached him in Pennsylvania for possible help after an April Republican party event, and soon after told Stern in phone calls they worked with Flynn and the Patriot Caucus, and planned to recruit “former domestic and foreign intelligence officials” to facilitate their scheme.The plan by Flynn’s allies alarmed Stern, but as a former whistleblower involved in exposing a large bank money laundering scandal by HSBC in 2012, he told the Guardian he decided to play along for a few months to glean information to expose the Trump allies’ scheme.Stern expressed dismay that Flynn’s Patriot Caucus associates “don’t understand that Biden is the president. They wanted to collect information through Tactical Rabbit and my campaign,” to turn up the heat on Toomey and Fitzpatrick to back an audit which Stern viewed as potentially “extortion”.Stern gave the Guardian a voice mail he received in which Hartman talked about leaning on moderate Republican “RINOs” in Pennsylvania to gain support for an audit of that state’s vote which Biden won by over 80,000, and Hartman said a similar drive in Michigan was needed.Stern said Hartman wanted to use Tactical Rabbit’s intelligence gathering tools and his campaign to dig up potentially embarrassing campaign finance information and other dirt about the Pennsylvania members, plus Republican political figures in Michigan who were also resisting audits.Hartman and Raiklin also talked with Stern about meeting Flynn, Trump’s disgraced ex-national security adviser, and proposed compensating him for his information via campaign donations, said Stern.In an April exchange of Hartman text messages seen by the Guardian, Hartman asked a Flynn scheduler to help “connect” Flynn with Stern whose Senate campaign and credentials he touted highly, calling Stern a “strong believer”, in their cause.Although Stern tipped off the FBI in June about what he deemed a threat to national security and he said he met with agents again in November, it’s not clear if his allegations are still being pursued.Stern’s allegations have echoes of Flynn’s scheming with Trump and other loyalists in late 2020 to thwart Biden’s win, efforts that included a White House meeting with Trump where Flynn proposed declaring martial law in several states Biden won and then rerunning the election there.In November, the House panel probing the January 6 Capitol attack subpoenaed Flynn who Trump had pardoned post election even though he had pled guilty twice to lying to the FBI during the Russia investigation. In response to the subpoena to testify and turn over documents, Flynn sued the panel but a judge quickly dismissed his lawsuit last month.John Sipher, who was in the CIA’s clandestine services for 28 years, shares Stern’s view of Flynn who he knew in the military and shortly thereafter. “I am appalled by what he has become,” Sipher said in an email.Asked if he thought the FBI was pursuing Stern’s charges, Sipher said: “I would hope and assume they are taking this seriously.”While Fitzpatrick and Toomey were the main “targets” Stern said other Pennsylvania officials including judges were also being targeted by the Flynn allies as they sought to ramp up pressure for an audit in the state.Neither Fitzpatrick or Toomey’s offices replied to multiple requests for comment.The Patriot Caucus, a coalition of Patriot and other rightwing groups in some two dozen states with which Raiklin and Hartman have ties, according to Stern and documents, has worked with Trump loyalists like Flynn to push audits in key states Biden won, and backed Trump allies for governor, and other top posts in states like Pennsylvania and Arizona Trump lost.Flynn himself on 7 January publicly endorsed another Trump ally and election audit promoter, Doug Mastriano for governor in Pennsylvania, at a campaign rally also attended by Raiklin.Flynn has also endorsed two Trump backed candidates in Arizona: Kari Lake, an ex-Fox News figure for governor, and Mark Finchem, a state representative who attended the January 6 Stop the Steal rally, for secretary of state.To coordinate national efforts, Raiklin and Hartman on 3 July spearheaded one of a series of “Election Integrity” calls with Trump loyalists, lawyers and donors to discuss the status of audits efforts in several states and other plans to cast doubt on Biden’s win, according to an Arizona senate document shared by the watchdog group American Oversight.“Join us every second Saturday for SITUATION UPDATES and COLLABORATION from active leaders in the election remediation process at state level – attorneys with Mike Lindell and Patrick Byrne, data analysts, state legislators, gubernatorial candidates, and grassroots activists whose goal is completing a cyber forensic audit in their state,” the Arizona document reads.A who’s who list of Trump loyalists and groups invited to join these calls included the America Project and America’s Future, both of which Flynn played key roles with as they poured some $2m into a discredited audit of Arizona’s largest county, plus the Patriot Caucus’ Velma Anne Ruth, Finchem and Byrne, the millionaire chief financier of the Arizona audit.Hartman in emails with Stern obtained by the Guardian invited him in June to attend a religious far right meeting known as Ziklag in Dallas where he could meet separately with Flynn. Stern said Hartman told him a “private meeting was going to be arranged with Flynn” who Stern was told wanted to meet him.After indicating to Hartman he would attend, Stern opted to cancel at the last minute after his lawyer indicated there could be legal repercussions from a meeting with Flynn. “I thought it was extremely dangerous to meet with a three star general who I believed had broken the law.”“They planned to give my campaign funds to help me” develop damaging information on Toomey and Fitzpatrick, Stern claimed. “It was like a wink, wink. Hartman is the man behind the curtain. He’s an operative and financier,” promoting audits.Hartman has long been a donor to the right. He’s on the advisory council for the pro Trump Turning Point USA and has been active in the conservative donor network led by oil billionaire Charles Koch.Raiklin, an army reserve officer who reportedly has known Flynn since 2014, is facing an internal army reserve probe into possible violations of rules barring partisan political activity, according to a military official who spoke to Reuters last month.Raiklin in December 2020 outlined a wild scheme in tweets and a podcast to thwart Biden’s win, charging a vast conspiracy that included Pence, intelligence, China and Big Tech, as Reuters reported. Raiklin told Trump to “activate the emergency broadcast system,” and deployed the hashtag #FightLikeAFlynn, stressing that “we the people are going to force this plan on them”.Neither Hartman or Raiklin replied to multiple calls seeking comment.A Flynn scheduler did not respond to questions for the story.Velma Anne Ruth with the Patriot Caucus, who was photographed with Stern at a June event in Pennsylvania where she wore a tank top that said General Flynn, called Stern’s charges “delusional, fabricated and defamatory”, in a text message. Stern said he shared the photo and other documents involving exchanges he had with Ruth with the FBI.Senior ex-prosecutors and intelligence officials say Stern’s allegations merit law enforcement attention.“Stern’s allegations suggest serious crimes,” said ex-prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig who worked on Ken Starr’s team during the impeachment of Bill Clinton. “If his allegations were corroborated by extrinsic evidence they clearly would warrant investigation.”Former CIA official Sipher, who has spoken with Stern before, said: “Everett is someone with a strong sense of right and wrong, and willing to suffer the consequences of doing the right thing. We would be better served to have more people like Everett in public life.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2020US politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      After Democrats’ historic defeat on voting rights, what happens next?

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      After Democrats’ historic defeat on voting rights, what happens next?In an extremely bruising loss for Biden, Republicans used the filibuster to block the sweeping bill from passing Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterFor a little over a year, America has faced a democratic crisis unlike any it has seen in recent history.As Republicans have spread lies about the 2020 presidential election, confidence in it remains staggeringly low and about 1 in 3 Americans now believe Joe Biden was not legitimately elected. Republicans who claim the election was stolen are trying to grab key election administration roles, prompting unprecedented alarm that a future election could be overturned.And after an election with record participation, Republicans have pushed a wave of new laws making it harder to vote, placing new restrictions on longstanding policies that went unquestioned for years. “We’re facing the most significant test of our democracy since the civil war,” Biden said in July.On Wednesday night, Democrats’ biggest hope of blunting that threat failed in a historic defeat as Republicans used the filibuster – a technical senate rule that requires 60 votes to advance most legislation – to block a sweeping voting rights bill from passing.For months Democrats had offered the legislation as an antidote to the anti-democratic sickness that is plaguing America. The bill would have been the most dramatic expansion of the right to vote in a generation. It would have outlawed partisan gerrymandering, protected election officials from partisan interference, required early voting and same-day registration, and restore the pre-clearance provision at the heart of the Voting Rights Act.Politically, the loss was extremely bruising for Biden, who has spent an enormous amount of his political capital in recent weeks only to end up on the losing side. And – even worse – though the measure was blocked by 50 Republicans who refused to even negotiate around it, the moment was one of clear weakness for Democrats. The party has control of both chambers in Congress yet appeared helpless as two of its conservative senators joined with Republicans to preserve the filibuster and doom the legislation.But the deeper stakes of the failure go far beyond politics.It was a moment in which an American government system, crippled by deep partisanship and an arcane rule, turned its back on a rising threat of a dangerous anti-democratic tide. It’s a moment that future historians will be mystified by, a group of scholars warned in November.“To lose our democracy but preserve the filibuster in its current form – in which a minority can block popular legislation without even having to hold the floor – would be a short-sighted blunder that future historians will forever puzzle over,” they wrote.What happens next isn’t exactly clear.Biden suggested the 2022 elections could be illegitimate absent congressional action, a claim the White House quickly walked back on Thursday. “He was explaining that the results would be illegitimate if states do what the former president asked them to do after the 2020 election: toss out ballots and overturn results after the fact,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, tweeted.Cliff Albright, a co-founder of the group Black Voters Matter, said the vote Wednesday was “disappointing”, but said that his group would continue to push for significant voting reforms. He noted how successful pressure from his group and others had been in getting Biden and other Democrats to support changing the filibuster and pointed out that historic past campaigns to pass the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act required continued pushing after setbacks.“Those debates and those votes were important, to put them on record. So that’s a victory for movement,” he said. “I don’t think this moment will be forgotten.”Tiffany Muller, the president and executive director of Let America Vote/End Citizens United, similarly pledged her group would “regroup” and “keep going” to push voting reforms.“We’re going to take that fight to the states. And we’re going to continue to elect champions down the ballot who will prioritize our democracy, and we’re gonna make sure that we’ll hold Republicans accountable at the ballot box in 2022,” she said. “There is no doubt about it that last night’s vote makes the best option on the federal level not available to us anymore. But we’re still gonna look at ‘are there ways to get other pieces of legislation passed on the federal level?’”Politically, Democrats have pledged to fight on.Previewing what could be a midterm message to frustrated voters on Thursday, Jaime Harrison, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, said the failure in the Senate was evidence for why there needed to be more Democrats in the US Senate.“We can send more Democrats to the US Senate and give President Biden and Vice-president Harris the votes they need to pass voting rights legislation. We can show those who stand in the way of voting rights that their actions have consequences,” he said in a statement.Senator Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat who laid out a plan for a talking filibuster, said in a statement he would continue to push to reform the rule.“We fell short. But this is not the end of the story,” he said. “When I came to the Senate, 48 senators voting to change the filibuster seemed like a distant dream, something that would never happen. We’re not there yet, but we’re closer than we’ve ever been.”With broad voting reform stalled, there appears to be some bipartisan appetite in congress for changing the Electoral Count Act, a confusing 19th century law that sets out the procedures for counting electoral votes. Trump’s legal team planned to use ambiguities in the law to try and overturn the election, and election scholars for years have said that it needs to be fixed. “There’s a good win there,” Manchin said after the vote on Wednesday. “I mean, my goodness, that’s what caused the insurrection.”But Democrats have rejected fixing the law alone as an acceptable solution, saying it’s unacceptable to fix the way votes are counted if the rules of voting are rigged. It would be a bit like deciding to fix an unreliable scoreboard in a game of basketball where the rules are rigged against one team. Muller also said she was skeptical of how sincere Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, was in his wish to change the law.“We are supportive of reforming the act. But that’s not going to be nearly enough to protect voters in all of these states. It does nothing to fight back against these voter suppression laws,” she said.Meanwhile, congressional inaction is also likely to encourage those seeking to undermine democracy to be even more aggressive, Sherrilyn Ifill, the director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told Congress on Thursday.“In 2021, we saw a repeat of history – a steady drip of old poison in new bottles. Whereas in a bygone era, discriminatory intent in voting restrictions was dressed up in ideals such as securing a more informed and invested electorate, the new justification is fighting imaginary voter fraud, a phantom conjured only to attack,” she said, according to prepared remarks.“With no pushback from Congress, those intent on subverting the next election by continuing to raise doubts about 2020 are becoming more brazen, not less,” she added.Eric Foner, a historian at Columbia who studies the Reconstruction era in US history, said it was difficult to predict how future historians would remember this moment. He said there were parallel moments in history when congressional efforts to protect voting rights were thwarted by the filibuster, such as in 1890 when federal voting protections backed by Henry Cabot Lodge were defeated after a filibuster in the senate.“​​Historically, the filibuster has been used for one reason: that is to prevent legislation supporting the rights of Black people,” he said. “Let’s not try to glorify the filibuster as having any reasonable reason for existence other than allowing a minority to rule over a majority.”TopicsUS politicsThe fight to voteDemocratsRepublicansBiden administrationanalysisReuse this content More

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      Senate Democrats fail to pass voting rights bill: Politics Weekly Extra

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      As Joe Biden marks his first year in the White House, Democrats will be reeling from their loss to Republicans in the Senate, after Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema chose to let an important voting rights bill fail over a technicality. The Freedom to Vote: John R Lewis Act would have helped bolster voting rights for many minorities who have felt disenfranchised by recent legislation.Jonathan Freedland speaks to Errin Haines of The 19th about how black voters – who were instrumental in getting Biden elected in 2020 – think the president has done in his first year.

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      Mitch McConnell’s viral Black voter comments cause widespread furor

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      Mitch McConnell’s viral Black voter comments cause widespread furorRepublican Senate minority leader’s comments came after party members blocked voting rights bill and changes to filibuster rule00:33Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has sparked widespread outrage by appearing to refer to African Americans and Americans as two separate groups in comments about Black voters that have since gone viral.Republican voter suppression is rampant. Manchin and Sinema are complicit now | Moira DoneganRead moreThe Kentucky Republican was speaking after Republican senators once again blocked Democrats’ voting rights legislation on Capitol Hill on Wednesday evening.Speaking to reporters after the bill failed and the Senate rejected a change to the filibuster rule that could facilitate its passage, McConnell was asked for his message to voters in minority communities who are concerned that voting restrictions being enacted in many states will keep them from the ballot box without new federal laws.“The concern is misplaced, because if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,” McConnell said.In fact, studies indicate that voting restrictions, like those passed by 19 states in the past year, disproportionately impact voters of color.Democratic Illinois congressman Bobby Rush swiftly called out McConnell’s comment, saying in a tweet: “African Americans ARE Americans. #MitchPlease”One of Rush’s Democratic colleagues, Diana DeGette of Colorado, echoed that assessment, describing McConnell’s comment as “disgusting”. “African-American voters ARE AMERICANS & to suggest otherwise is about as racist as it gets,” DeGette said in a tweet.African Americans ARE Americans. #MitchPlease https://t.co/N3dSsQ9Jqn pic.twitter.com/SRnTTVJdJ4— Bobby L. Rush (@RepBobbyRush) January 20, 2022
      Former Kentucky state senator Charles Booker, who is campaigning for the US senate against Republican Rand Paul, tweeted: “I am no less American than Mitch McConnell” and also said: “I need you to understand that this is who Mitch McConnell is. Being Black doesn’t make you less of an American, no matter what this craven man thinks.”Pastor and activist Talbert Swan quipped that he “can’t qwhite put my finger on” what distinction McConnell might be drawing, tweeting: “I wonder what’s the difference he sees between ‘African-American voters’ and ‘Americans.’”And Malcolm Kenyatta, a Democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, argued that McConnell’s words were not a slip of the tongue but were instead an accurate reflection of the Republican party’s mindset toward Black voters.“Mitch McConnell’s comments suggesting African Americans aren’t fully American wasn’t a Freudian slip – it was a dog whistle. The same one he has blown for years,” Kenyatta said.Mitch McConnell’s comments suggesting African Americans aren’t fully American wasn’t a Freudian slip — it was a dog whistle. The same one he has blown for years.— Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (@malcolmkenyatta) January 20, 2022
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