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      Trump response to Capitol attack can’t be ‘swept under rug’, White House says – live

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      Key events

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      5.45pm EDT
      17:45

      Texas Republicans pass voting maps that entrench power of whites

      5.02pm EDT
      17:02

      Today so far

      4.47pm EDT
      16:47

      Progressives voice optimism about reaching deal after meeting with Biden

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      Mayorkas tests positive for coronavirus

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      ‘Crime scene do not enter’ tape outside home linked to Deripaska, after raid

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      Trump’s response to Capitol attack cannot be ‘swept under the rug,’ Psaki says

      12.31pm EDT
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      Interim summary

      Live feed

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      5.45pm EDT
      17:45

      Texas Republicans pass voting maps that entrench power of whites

      Sam Levine

      Texas Republicans are on the verge of enacting new voting maps that would entrench the state’s Republican and white majority even as its non-white population grows rapidly.
      Texas Republicans approved the congressional plan on Monday evening, sending it to Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, who is expected to sign the measure.
      The Texas maps offer perhaps the most brazen effort in the USs so far this year to draw new district lines to benefit one political party, a practice called gerrymandering. The proposed congressional map would blunt growing Democratic strength in the Texas suburbs. Texas Republicans already have a 23-13 seat advantage in the state’s congressional delegation and the new maps would double the number of safe GOP congressional seats in the state from 11 to 22, according to the Washington Post.
      Democrats would have 12 safe seats, up from eight. There would be just one competitive congressional district in the state, down from 12.
      Read more:

      5.14pm EDT
      17:14

      The Supreme Court has declined to stop a vaccine requirement for health workers in Maine.
      Justice Stephen Breyer declined to hear an emergency appeal to block a vaccine requirement announced by Maine governor Janet Mills. The policy requires health workers to get vaccinated against Covid-19 by 29 October or risk losing their jobs.
      According to the state’s dashboard tracking vaccinations among health workers, between 84 and 92% of workers are vaccinated in various settings so far.
      This is the first time the Supreme Court has dealt with a statewide vaccine mandate.

      5.02pm EDT
      17:02

      Today so far

      That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
      Here’s where the day stands so far:

      The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection is expected to hold Steve Bannon in contempt for refusing to comply with the panel’s subpoenas. The expected committee vote comes one day after Donald Trump filed a lawsuit seeking to block certain White House documents from the subpoenas by claiming executive privilege, which is considered a dubious legal argument given that he is no longer president.
      The White House said Trump’s response to the insurrection cannot be “swept under the rug”. “Our view, and I think the view of the vast majority of Americans, is that former President Trump abused the office of the presidency and attempted to subvert a peaceful transfer of power,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said when asked about Trump’s lawsuit. “The former president’s actions represented a unique and existential threat to our democracy that we don’t feel can be swept under the rug.”
      FBI agents raided a Washington home linked to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with ties to Vladimir Putin who was sanctioned by the treasury department in 2018.
      Progressive lawmakers voiced optimism about reaching a deal on the reconciliation package after meeting with Joe Biden at the White House this afternoon. The president is now meeting with a group of centrist Democratic lawmakers to continue the negotiations over the reconciliation package and the infrastructure bill. Democrats are still working to reach an agreement on the top-line cost of the reconciliation package, and House progressives are holding up the passage of the infrastructure bill until a deal is struck.

      Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

      4.47pm EDT
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      Progressives voice optimism about reaching deal after meeting with Biden

      Progressive lawmakers expressed optimism about reaching a deal on the reconciliation package after meeting with Joe Biden at the White House this afternoon.
      Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the group had a “really good, productive meeting” with Biden, Vice-President Kamala Harris and treasury secretary Janet Yellen.
      “And I think we all feel still even more optimistic about getting to an agreement on a really transformational bill,” Jayapal told reporters after the meeting.
      Jayapal said she was confident that “a majority” of progressive priorities would be included in the final bill, and she thanked Biden for his engagement in the negotiations.
      When asked if they agreed to a top-line cost of the bill, Jayapal said that Biden has consistently pushed for a price tag between $1.9tn and $2.2tn, after moderates like Joe Manchin indicated they would not support a $3.5tn package.
      “It’s not the number that we want,” Jayapal said. “But at the end of the day, the idea that we can do these programs, a multitude of programs and actually get them going so that they deliver immediate transformational benefits to people is what we’re focused on.”

      4.24pm EDT
      16:24

      Joe Biden’s first meeting with congressional Democrats has now ended after about two hours, according to the White House.
      The president’s first meeting was with members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Vice-president Kamala Harris and Treasury secretary Janet Yellen attended as well.
      Biden will now meet with some of the centrist Democrats in Congress to continue discussions about the infrastructure bill and the reconciliation package.

      Updated
      at 4.35pm EDT

      4.04pm EDT
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      Gloria Oladipo

      In an attempt to recruit more officers, US Capitol police chief Thomas Manger is using the 6 January insurrection as a reason for why more people should join the force.
      As seen in a promotional video titled The US Capitol Police: A Call to Service, Manger describes how the attack, which many have cited as a failure on the part of Capitol law enforcement, made him want to once again join the force.

      U.S. Capitol Police
      (@CapitolPolice)
      One of our top priorities is to hire more officers to protect Congress and the U.S. Capitol: pic.twitter.com/xbKBOhmNpz

      October 19, 2021

      “I wanted to be a police officer again. I wanted to be there to help. We are looking for really good men and women who have that spirit for public service, who want to serve their country,” said Manger in the video.
      Following the insurrection, officers testified during a House committee about the events of 6 January, describing being swarmed and attacked by rioters as well as the trauma they dealt with.

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      at 4.35pm EDT

      3.33pm EDT
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      Mayorkas tests positive for coronavirus

      Gloria Oladipo

      US Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has tested positive for Covid-19, according to DHS spokesperson Marsha Espinosa.
      “Secretary Mayorkas tested positive this morning for the Covid-19 virus after taking a test as part of routine pre-travel protocols. Secretary Mayorkas is experiencing only mild congestion; he is fully vaccinated and will isolate and work at home per CDC protocols and medical advice. Contact tracing is underway,” said Espinosa in a statement to CNN.
      Mayorkas will no longer be participating in a planned trip to Colombia with secretary of state Antony Blinken and will be working from home, reports CNN.

      Updated
      at 4.44pm EDT

      3.19pm EDT
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      Gloria Oladipo

      An FBI spokesperson has said that the agency is conducting law enforcement activity in a New York City building in connection with an investigation into Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch whose Washington, DC home was raided today, according to ABC news.
      Stay tuned as more information emerges.

      3.13pm EDT
      15:13

      Gloria Oladipo

      House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland discussed the best strategy for Democrats to pass the Biden administration’s $3.5tn spending package, arguing that lawmakers should fund fewer programs for longer, reports Politico.
      “My own view is that we ought to do fewer things better. We ought to make sure that which [programs] we include in the bill will have a real impact,” said Hoyer.
      Hoyer added that he wants “sense of permanency to those policies” that make it in the final version of the financial bill.
      Democrats are still working to get the megabill passed before a self-imposed deadline of 31 October but face opposition from key moderates such as Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Lawmakers including House speaker Nancy Pelosi of California have supported the idea of funding fewer programs, but contention remains around which programs will get cut, including threats to key climate change legislation.
      Hoyer added that Democrats are still aiming towards passing the social spending package and the infrastructure bill by the Halloween deadline and that “if [Congress] make significant progress that’ll also be success towards those ends.”

      2.53pm EDT
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      Gloria Oladipo

      Five people with the climate activist group Sunrise Movement will begin participating in a hunger strike in front of the White House tomorrow at 9am to demand that Congress pass the climate initiatives in the Biden administration’s $3.5tn spending package, a key part of Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, reports the New Republic.
      “We’re here to highlight how dire this moment is,” said Kidus Girma, 26, who is participating in the strike. “A couple hundred people in a two-part building in D.C. are deciding the scope of what climate justice can look like—and not just climate justice, but a lot of critical programs that before this pandemic folks did not think were possible.”
      Protestors decided to strike after news broke from the New York Times on Friday that Democrats were considering getting rid of the Clean Energy Payment Program, an initiative that would award utilities who increase their use of renewable energy, because of holdout from Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and other centrists.
      The hunger strike is apart of a longer week of actions targeting key Democrats who have not supported the legislation. Yesterday, Sunrise activists previously protested outside of Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona’s Phoenix office. Protestors have also previously protested by Manchin’s yatch.
      Protestors are asking people to participate in the hunger strike on Thursday, followed by a nationwide strike from school–coined Fridays for Future–that will result in a break in fasting.

      Updated
      at 2.53pm EDT

      2.29pm EDT
      14:29

      ‘Crime scene do not enter’ tape outside home linked to Deripaska, after raid

      Joanna Walters

      In further developments in the story of Russian metals billionaire Oleg Deripaska, FBI agents have raided a mansion in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods of Washington, DC, that is linked to him.
      Deripaska has ties to the Kremlin and Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former election campaign manager who served time for fraud and was pardoned by the former president. More

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      Colin Powell: the man who might have been America’s first Black president

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      Colin PowellColin Powell: the man who might have been America’s first Black president The ex-general seriously considered running in 1995 but later felt himself increasingly out of step with the Republican partyDavid Smith in Washington@smithinamericaTue 19 Oct 2021 05.00 EDTLast modified on Tue 19 Oct 2021 05.01 EDTColin Powell wrote a speech in November 1995 announcing a run for US president. He wrote another speech announcing a decision not to run.When he faced reporters in a hotel in Alexandria, Virginia, Powell delivered the second speech.Colin Powell’s UN speech: a decisive moment in undermining US credibilityRead morePolitical life “requires a calling that I do not yet hear”, he said, explaining why he would not take on the White House incumbent, Bill Clinton.So Powell was not to be America’s first Black president. Instead he was, “perhaps, one of the finest Americans never to be president”, John Major, the former British prime minister, reflected on Monday after Powell’s death at the age of 84 due to complications from Covid-19.America’s loss was arguably also the Republican party’s tragedy. In his remarks, Powell said he would help the party in “broadening its appeal”, suggesting that he could “help the party of Lincoln move once again close to the spirit of Lincoln” and find ways to “heal racial divides” in society.But by the end of his life, Powell, who previously voted Republican in seven presidential elections in a row, had endorsed Democrats in the last four. He finally quit the party that surrendered to Donald Trump and his mendacious, racially divisive brand of populism.“Like many Republicans, he felt that the party was leaving him, that the party was taking a rightward turn and he felt increasingly unwelcome,” said Joe Cirincione, who as president of the Ploughshares Fund, a foundation focused on nuclear non-proliferation and conflict resolution, worked closely with Powell.“He never joined the Democratic party. He preferred the moderate policies of the Republicans, even as he watched the party go, but it was Trump and Trumpism that pushed him out of the party.”Powell was the son of a seamstress and a shipping-room foreman in Manhattan’s garment district, both immigrants from Jamaica. He wrote in his 1995 autobiography My American Journey: “Mine is the story of a black kid of no early promise from an immigrant family of limited means who was raised in the South Bronx.”A veteran of the Vietnam war, Powell spent 35 years in the army and rose to the rank of four-star general. He served as national security adviser to Ronald Reagan and was chairman of the joint chiefs of staff under another Republican president, George HW Bush, during the 1991 Gulf war.He had been a political independent during his military career but, after retirement in 1993 and a bestselling memoir, was wooed by both Democrats and Republicans as potential presidential material. He sided with the latter, explaining that he aligned with Republicans on fiscal responsibility, small government and low taxes, even though he disagreed with some illiberal positions.Cirincione, now a fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft thinktank in Washington, recalled: “If he had decided, I think he would have been the Republican candidate. At that time he was one of the most widely respected people in the country. He would have been the candidate to beat if he had decided to go for it.”But after much agonising, Powell ruled out a White House bid. He publicly acknowledged the potential impact on his family as a factor. His wife, Alma, reportedly feared that he would be assassinated because of his skin colour. Journalist Bob Woodward’s book Bush at War quoted her as saying: “If you run, I’m gone. You will have to do it alone.”Cirincione added: “He would often say things like, ‘It was the campaigns.’ He wouldn’t mind being president but it was the campaigns that would have killed him. He was comfortable being in leadership roles, including as chairman of the joint chiefs in charge of millions of our troops.“It was very personal for him because of the health of his wife and he just didn’t want to engage in the kind of gruelling, time-consuming effort it takes to become president at the sacrifice of what he thought would be his family. He wasn’t willing to do it.”Powell did return to public service when he was named secretary of state to President George W Bush, becoming the first African American to serve as the country’s top diplomat. He publicly presented mistaken intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, which he later called it a “a blot” that will “always be a part of my record”.Powell also came to personify a certain section of the moderate Republican old guard increasingly horrified by the direction of the party. Although he donated to the campaign of the party’s nominee, John McCain, in 2008, he did not support his running mate, Sarah Palin, a smashmouth neophyte whose stoking of white rage represented the opening of a Pandora’s box.In a major blow to McCain’s campaign, Powell endorsed Barack Obama, a Democrat whom he hailed as a “transformational figure”. He told the NBC politics show Meet the Press: “I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, ‘Well, you know that Mr Obama is a Muslim.’“Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president?”Underlining his misgivings about the Republican party’s populist-nativist drift, Powell endorsed Obama again in 2012, then Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election and Joe Biden last year. He described Trump as a liar who presented a fundamental danger to the US.Cirincione noted: “He thought Trump was insane. He thought the risk of the president of the United States using nuclear weapons was greater under Trump than any time in his career. It was that global security risk, plus the threat to democracy, that alienated him from the Republican party.”The deadly insurrection by a pro-Trump mob at the US Capitol on 6 January was the final straw: Powell declared that he no longer considered himself a Republican. The party that he had grown up with, which espoused the American dream and promoted him to senior roles in government, no longer existed.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “Colin Powell came from a working-class background and he never forgot that. The party moved away from the blue-collar Reagan Democrats, which is probably closer to where Colin Powell was, and it became much more of a corporate party, a party that would win elections by stoking racial resentment.“It became much less inclusive on social issues that Powell was more moderate on. I think the reason he didn’t run for president is he looked at the Republican party and he didn’t see a place for himself. From a practical point of view, he made the assessment he probably couldn’t win the nomination without a lot of conflict and perhaps his reputation being tarnished.”TopicsColin PowellUS politicsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Washington mourns death of ‘trailblazer’ Colin Powell as tributes pour in – live

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      Key events

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      4.31pm EDT
      16:31

      Today so far

      2.18pm EDT
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      Obama praises Powell as ‘an exemplary patriot’

      1.46pm EDT
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      Biden to host two meetings with House Democrats tomorrow

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      Biden offers condolences following former secretary of state Colin Powell’s death

      12.11pm EDT
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      Congress in session for vital two weeks of talks on Build Back Better bills

      9.36am EDT
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      Washington mourns the loss of Colin Powell

      Live feed

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      5.52pm EDT
      17:52

      Zalmay Khalilzad, the top US envoy to Afghanistan is stepping down from his role today, almost two months after the US chaotic withdrawal from the country. Khalilzad is originally from Afghanistan and served as an envoy in George W. Bush’s White House. He was tapped by Donald Trump to pursue peace negotiations with the Taliban in 2018.
      Khalilzad was expected to leave the White House after Joe Biden was elected but stayed on at the behest of Anthony Blinken, the US Secretary of State.
      The now-former envoy has yet to comment on his resignation on his official Twitter page, but earlier today Khalilzad shared a tribute and photo of himself and Colin Powell.

      U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad
      (@US4AfghanPeace)
      I am saddened by the death of Colin Powell, a great American. It was an honor to work with him in the State and Defense Departments. May his soul rest in peace. pic.twitter.com/I8OvviseET

      October 18, 2021

      5.24pm EDT
      17:24

      Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the 6 January select committee and the National Archives. His goal is to block the release of White House documents pertaining to the January riot. His lawyers are seeking a number of things:

      They want a federal judge to invalidate the select committee’s request for documents
      Attorneys also want to avoid turning over any documents that Trump declare to be covered by executive privilege
      And to allow Trump’s lawyers to review all documents selected by the National Archive before they turn them over to the 6 January select committee

      This legal challenge comes as the select committee calls more individuals from the Trump White House to testify and provide documents related to the Capitol riot.
      To read an in-depth piece on Trump’s latest lawsuit, check out Politico’s coverage here.

      4.50pm EDT
      16:50

      Hi readers, I’m Abené Clayton blogging from the west coast.
      It’s a busy day in Washington as Congress returns from recess, Joe Biden paid an unexpected visit to an event honoring teachers and former and current share kind words about Colin Powell, who died today at the age of 84.
      I’ll keep the blog updated with more out of the Capitol and other stories of the day.

      Updated
      at 5.09pm EDT

      4.31pm EDT
      16:31

      Today so far

      That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Abené Clayton, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
      Here’s where the day stands so far:

      Former secretary of state Colin Powell died at 84 from complications of Covid-19. Powell was fully vaccinated against coronavirus, but he had previously been diagnosed with a type of blood cancer, likely putting him at increased risk of becoming severely ill from the virus.
      Joe Biden described Powell as “a patriot of unmatched honor and dignity”. The president has ordered flags at the White House and other federal government buildings to be flown at half-staff for the next few days, in honor of Powell’s life.
      Powell was remembered for his barrier-breaking career and for his involvement in the invasion of Iraq. The former general was the first Black man to serve as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and as secretary of state. But for many, Powell will be remembered for promoting incorrect claims about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction prior to the 2003 invasion. Barack Obama said of Powell, “Although he’d be the first to acknowledge that he didn’t get every call right, his actions reflected what he believed was best for America and the people he served.”
      Biden will have two meetings with House Democrats tomorrow to discuss the reconciliation package and the infrastructure bill. The meetings come as negotiations over the two bills have stalled, with moderates like senator Joe Manchin demanding a smaller reconciliation package while progressives continue to insist that $3.5tn is the bare minimum price tag they will accept.

      Abené will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

      4.16pm EDT
      16:16

      Joe Biden took a few questions from reporters after delivering remarks at the White House event honoring teachers this afternoon.
      Asked how he was going to get senator Joe Manchin to agree to passing the reconciliation package, Biden said, “That’s where I’m going now.”
      The president is also expected to hold two meetings with House Democrats tomorrow to discuss the negotiations over the infrastructure bill and the reconciliation package.
      Manchin has insisted upon a lower price tag for the reconciliation package, while progressives believe the current cost of $3.5tn is the bare minimum needed to address the climate crisis and improve access to affordable healthcare and childcare.

      3.58pm EDT
      15:58

      Joe Biden made a surprise appearance at a White House event honoring the 2020 and 2021 recipients of the National Teacher of the Year award.
      The event was hosted by Dr Jill Biden, who is a teacher herself at a Virginia community college, and education secretary Miguel Cardona also attended. More

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      Republicans move to tighten grip on Texas after redistricting map approved

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      TexasRepublicans move to tighten grip on Texas after redistricting map approvedRedrawn map, expected to strengthen Republican numbers, faces final negotiations before being sent to Governor Greg Abbott Edward Helmore and agenciesSun 17 Oct 2021 12.27 EDTRepublicans have moved to tighten their grip on power in Texas after a late-night vote in the state’s legislature approved an early sign-off to new congressional boundaries at the expense of communities of color.The Republican-led effort will give the party powers over redrawn US House maps and shore up its eroding dominance in Texas, whose demographics are becoming less white in a shift that most experts see as favoring Democrats.The redrawn congressional districts would make make it easier for many Republican incumbents to hold their seats, but critics say they also threaten Black and Hispanic communities’ political influence.The district map contained in Senate Bill 6 is expected to strengthen Republican numbers in the state’s delegation to Washington from the current 23-13 split in favor of Republicans to a 24-14 or 25-13 advantage, according to the Austin American-Statesman.Republicans say the districts, which were drawn by the Texas state senate, adhered to federal voting rights law. Texas Democrats objected to the proposed districts, arguing that Republicans had failed to respect or reflect the sharp increase in Latino, Black and Asian populations who make up more than half of the nearly 4m new Texans over the past decade. The increase gave Texas two seats in Congress last year.“This map is a bad map,” said Democratic representative Chris Turner of Grand Prairie, a city in Dallas County. “It’s a map that does not reflect that the tremendous growth of our state is 95% attributable to Texans of color. It gives the two new districts that Texas received to Anglos.”Another Dallas-area democrat, Rafael Anchía, said that SB 6 would increase Anglo-majority districts from 22 to 23, while districts where Hispanics make up the majority of voters would be reduced from 8 to 7. The state’s sole majority-Black district would disappear.“That doesn’t work morally, it doesn’t work mathematically, and it shouldn’t work in redistricting,” Anchía told the Austin American-Statesman newspaper. But Houston senator Joan Huffman, the Republican author of SB 6, has said that she created a redistricting plan “blind to race” that meets the requirements of the Voting Rights Act.The redistricting maps still face final negotiations between the Texas upper and lower chambers before being sent to Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, who is expected to sign them.The measures are expected to trigger court challenges by Democrats and voting rights advocates in what could be another high-profile, high-stakes legal battle that has already made Texas the center of abortion rights and immigration battles.Republicans, who control both chambers, have nearly complete control of map-making process, and are working off maps that the courts have already declared as tilted, or gerrymandered, in their favor.Representative Van Taylor, for example, whose district in Dallas’ exurbs went for Donald Trump by a single percentage point last year. Under the new maps, reports the Associated Press, Trump would have won the district by double-digits.Michael McCaul, representative of Texas’ 10th Congressional District, stretching from Austin to Houston could now represent a solidly pro-Trump district, after Houston’s exurbs were peeled away.Furthermore, the district stretching from the Rio Grande Valley to San Antonio that President Joe Biden won by just over 2% would now slightly tilt toward Trump voters.But some incumbent Democrats, too, came away with advantages by changing the configuration that placed two Democratic African-American representatives, Sheila Jackson Lee and US Representative Al Green, in the same Harris county district. Another Democratic amendment returned Fort Bliss to the district based in nearby El Paso.TopicsTexasRepublicansGreg AbbottUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Rigged review: shameless – and dangerous – catnip for Trump’s base

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      BooksRigged review: shameless – and dangerous – catnip for Trump’s baseMollie Hemingway says the 2020 election ‘went terribly wrong’. In a divided America, her deeply flawed book will find readers Lloyd GreenSun 17 Oct 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 17 Oct 2021 02.01 EDTThe state of the union is sulfurous. Donald Trump’s defeat did not change that.More than 80% of Trump and Biden voters think elected officials from the other party “present a clear and present danger to American democracy”. Half of Trump supporters and two-fifths for Biden think secession would be a good idea.Into the fray leaps Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemingway with Rigged, 488 pages on “How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections”. Hemingway’s is an immovable feast. It’s about owning the libs.“If you believe things went terribly wrong in the 2020 election, well, you’re not crazy, and you’re not alone,” she writes. “But most of all, you’re not wrong.”In 2015, Hemingway branded Trump a “demagogue with no real solutions”. Now, like so many Republicans, she’s a fan. She discounts Charlottesville, where in August 2017 far-right marchers earned kind words from the president, as a “hoax”. She castigates those who denounce the events of 6 January this year, when Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol.“People who call the few-hour riot at the Capitol by unarmed protesters an ‘insurrection’ are bad people who are harming the country,” she tweeted in July.The riot was an attempt to overturn the election. Five people died, a police officer among them. Rigged is catnip for Trump’s base.“They used Covid to rig an election,” Trump whines, in an interview. “There was nothing I could do.” He has been singing that song since May 2020. And then there is reality: the administration’s performative nonchalance in the face of Covid undermined Trump’s chances of reelection.That was understood by his campaign as early as spring 2020. According to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of the Washington Post, in April Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, warned that Covid could cost the boss re-election.“We have seen the enemy and it is us,” Fabrizio wrote. “It isn’t [Trump’s] policies that cause the biggest problem, it is voters’ reactions to his temperament and behavior.”Hemingway looks in other directions, pointing a finger at Democratic lawyers and voters for supposedly gaming the system amid a pandemic, berating Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell for pursuing the wrong legal strategies, and ignoring comments by Bill Barr, who she interviews but who as attorney general let Trump know he had not “seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome of the election”.It’s true that Trump might have mounted more of a fight. His campaign and the GOP had real lawyers on the payroll and Republicans were secretary of state in Arizona and Georgia. But the party had squandered the advantages of incumbency. Trump and Hemingway both go at Silicon Valley with a vengeance, reserving a special place in hell for Mark Zuckerberg.“Big tech got meaner, bigger, stronger, and they were crazed,” Trump says. As for Zuckerberg, he “should be in jail”. One suspects many Americans might agree.Hemingway criticizes the Zuckerberg-funded Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) for funding election operations in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. She contends that such private-public partnerships undermine the public’s faith in electoral integrity. For the record, courts repeatedly denied pre-election efforts to block CTCL funding. One federal judge, William C Griesbach, a George W Bush appointee, acknowledged the “receipt of private funds for public elections may give an appearance of impropriety” – but dismissed the lawsuit. Hemingway does not examine Team Trump’s own relationship with Facebook and Zuckerberg. In 2014, Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct company part-owned by the Mercer family, Trump benefactors, used Facebook to illegally harvest personal data. Steve Bannon, who would become Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, was a board member and officer. He denies personal culpability.There’s more that Hemingway leaves untouched. According to The Contrarian, a recent book by Max Chafkin of Bloomberg News, in a 2019 meeting between Zuckerberg, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist and Trump ally, Zuckerberg basically agreed to champion “state-sanctioned conservatism”. Zuckerberg has called the claim “pretty ridiculous”. Thiel, an original Facebook investor, still sits on the board.It doesn’t end there. A recent lawsuit commenced by the Rhode Island Retirement System against Facebook, Zuckerberg, Thiel and his company, Palantir, alleges “significant damage” caused by the data-harvesting scandal. The suit quotes the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, Christopher Wylie, in alleging that Palantir employees “regularly worked in person, during normal business hours, at the offices of Cambridge Analytica in London”.Back on the page, it seems Hemingway cannot resist the siren song of race. In Justice on Trial, her last book, about the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, she rubbished the legal underpinnings of Brown v Board of Education, the 1954 supreme court ruling that made state-imposed school segregation unconstitutional. Such decisions, she wrote, “may have been correct in their result but were decided on the basis of sociological studies rather than legal principles”.It’s a unique take, with which even Trump’s three supreme court picks would not agree. Amy Coney Barrett has called Brown a “super-precedent … unthinkable” to overrule. Kavanaugh has said the same. Neil Gorsuch concedes it was properly decided.Stephanie Grisham: Trump turncoat who may be most damaging yetRead moreUndeterred, Hemingway now takes aim at the 1964 Civil Rights Act, resurrecting Barry Goldwater’s contention that it evinced “an unconstitutional usurpation of power by the federal government”. Hemingway also derides Lyndon Johnson’s support for civil rights as a blatant appeal to black voters.In 1964, Senator Goldwater lost to Johnson in a landslide. That was the last time a Democrat accomplished that feat – or won the “white vote”, for that matter.The news remains a battleground. Ryan Williams, president of the rightwing Claremont Institute, has made it known his mission is to save western civilization.“We believe in truth and reason,” he recently told the Atlantic. “The question is whose truth and whose reason.”Williams also said “a third of the country thinks the election was given to Biden fraudulently”. Hemingway is sure to find an audience.
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      Obama and Trump wade into key battle over Virginia’s governor seat

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      VirginiaObama and Trump wade into key battle over Virginia’s governor seat The race is unpredictable and tight, with former governor Terry McAuliffe up against Republican challenger Glenn Youngkin Edward HelmoreSat 16 Oct 2021 15.41 EDTLast modified on Sat 16 Oct 2021 15.43 EDTJoe Biden faces a key test of public standing in a tight and closely watched campaign for governor in Virginia next month. So important has the fight now become in being seen as a bellwether for the 2022 midterm elections, that two ex-presidents are weighing in on the battle.For Biden and the Democrats winning Virginia would hold out the prospect of keeping a grip on congress next year and avoiding being seen as a lame duck administration. For Republicans, a win could pre-sage a major comeback in 2022 and a return to electoral strength of a party still dominated by Donald Trump.The stakes are so high that both Trump and Barack Obama are intervening in the race.Why Virginia holds the key to the 2022 US midterms: Politics Weekly Extra podcastRead moreLast week, Trump called in to a gathering of Virginia supporters, urging them to vote for the Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin, and calling him “a great gentleman”. Meanwhile, Obama will later this month arrive in the state to boost turnout among Black voters. “The stakes could not be greater,” Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe said, as he announced Obama’s campaign support on MSNBC last week.The proxies in the contest, McAuliffe, a former governor running for the job he held from 2014-18, and first-time Republican challenger Youngkin, are currently polling relatively closely at 48.5% and 46.4%, according FiveThirtyEight – making the race unpredictable and tight.The men are running to replace the state’s Democratic governor Ralph Northam who has been in the party’s political doghouse since 2019 when it was revealed his 1984 medical school yearbook page contained a photo of one person dressed as a member of the KKK and another in blackface impersonating an African American.The Virginia race comes against a backdrop of bad news for Biden, who has seen his popularity fall in the aftermath of the botched Afghanistan withdrawal and legislative gridlock on the main plans of his domestic agenda and growing uncertainty of post-pandemic economic recovery. His approval rating has sunk from 55% in March to about 44% now.But so, too, does the contest present a test for Trump, who lost Virginia by 10% in 2020, but is increasingly seen to be gauging his hold on the Republican party and its voters ahead of the midterms, which could then swing his decision to run for re-election in 2024.Nor is Trump’s intervention in the race a win-win for Youngkin. The two men are not likely to campaign in person as Youngkin must simultaneously appeal to pro-Trump rural voters, but not telegraph any association so blatantly that he turns off moderate Republican voters in Virginia’s Washington-centric northern suburbs where elections in the state are often decided.Bob Holsworth, a longtime political analyst in the state, told the Washington Post that if Trump were to hold a rally in the state, it would be a “disaster” for Youngkin. “The more he shows up and he more he participates, the worse off it is for Youngkin,” he added.But Trump countered that political wisdom with some of his own: “The only guys that win are the guys that embrace the Maga movement,” Trump said in an interview with conservative talkshow host John Fredericks. Instead of overtly embracing Trump, Youngkin has campaigned with Texas senator Ted Cruz and with former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. But he steered clear of an event hosted by Trump strategist Steve Bannon who may face contempt charges on Tuesday for refusing to cooperate with an investigation into the 6 January Capitol riot. Youngkin was also careful to criticize the Bannon event’s use of a flag that had reportedly been flown at the 6 January insurrection.Youngkin’s hands-off, hands-on approach is also designed to not raise the hackles of relatively unengaged democratic support for McAuliffe, who has his own endorsement issues to deal with. For his part, Virginia’s former governor comes with the baggage of close ties to the Clintons, whose popularity among independents and left-wing Democrats is far from assured. Last month, Hillary Clinton, whose first, failed presidential nomination campaign was co-chaired by McAuliffe sent out a fundraising email. That was followed by a fundraising event hosted by Bill Clinton.But other Democratic heavy-weights are traveling to Virginia to soothe Democratic anxiety and try to propel McAuliffe’s campaign toward the decisive victory they need. Georgia Democratic star Stacey Abrams and Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and first lady Jill Biden are also expected in the state’s northern suburbs, while House speaker Nancy Pelosi plans a fundraiser.But Biden himself has and will likely remain absent from Virginia. Mirroring Youngkin’s relationship to Trump, McAuliffe and his aides have expressed fears over associating with Biden. McAuliffe recently described the president as “unpopular” in Virginia.McAuliffe has also indicated that legislative impasse in Washington is damaging to Democrats in the country at large. “Democrats have got to quit talking, and they’ve got to get something done,” McAuliffe told The Washington Post. “You got elected to get things done. We have the House, Senate and White House.”Hanging over Democratic heads are the memories of losing the midterm elections in 2010, a crushing defeat for Obama that was predicted when Democrats lost a Senate seat in Massachusetts while trying to push through a controversial healthcare reform bill. TopicsVirginiaUS politicsJoe BidenRepublicansDemocratsBarack ObamaDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Surprised to see US Republicans cozying up to the European far right? Don’t be | Cas Mudde

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      OpinionUS politicsSurprised to see US Republicans cozying up to the European far right? Don’t beCas MuddeBefore Trump, only relatively fringe American conservatives had open connections to the international far right. Today, the ties have mainstreamed Fri 15 Oct 2021 06.15 EDTLast modified on Fri 15 Oct 2021 07.12 EDTThis weekend Texas senator Ted Cruz spoke about how “we all face the same challenges, including a bold and global left, that seeks to tear down cherished national and religious institutions”. Nothing to see here, you might think – except that he was not addressing a local branch of the Republican party in Texas, or a conservative US media outlet. He was speaking on screen to an audience of thousands in Madrid, at a meeting of the Spanish far-right party Vox. It was one of many recent outreaches to the global far right by US rightwing figures, which seem to have increased since the ouster of Donald Trump.Is the so-called “Populist International”, so often foretold but never realized, finally taking shape? And will the US conservative movement play a leading role in it? Or is this more about domestic politics than global domination?Unsurprisingly, given that the US conservative movement, like the Republican Party, covers a broad range of different shades of often far-right ideology, different people have spoken to different types of far-right groups. There are at least four major strands of far-right international networks in which US “conservatives” of all levels participate.The first and most important is the global Christian right. The US Christian right has long been a global player and has been particularly active in post-communist Europe – as is captured well in the Netflix series The Family. They have found influential supporters in Russian president Vladimir Putin and, more recently, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. It was at the latter’s invitation, at the bi-annual Budapest Demographic Summit in Budapest, that Mike Pence recently spoke, together with a broad variety of academics, church leaders and politicians from around the globe, including the French far-right maybe-presidential candidate Éric Zemmour.Budapest has also been the new promised land for the second strand, the so-called “national conservativism” movement – the brainchild of the Israeli think-tanker Yoram Hazony. National conservatism is a kind of far right for people who read, to put it dismissively – an attempt to merge the already ever-overlapping conservative and far-right ideologies and create a far-right movement fit for the cultural, economic and political elite. Tucker Carlson gave a keynote at a national conservatism summit in Washington DC in 2019 and recently took his Fox News show to Budapest, where he raved about Orbán and his regime. And the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is said to be hosting its 2022 meeting in Budapest too.The third strand is the long-standing connections between some far-right Republicans and the usual suspects of the European far right, like the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) or French National Rally (RN), which are built on a shared ideological core of nativism, authoritarianism and populism. Connections between the European far right and Republican members of Congress go back decades; think of people like Steve King, the Iowa Republican, and Dana Rohrabacher, the California Republican. They were fairly marginalized within the party – and both have, ironically, lost their seats in the Trump era. It was largely with these groups that Steve Bannon created “the Movement”, which never moved beyond media hype.And, finally, we have the party that Cruz sent a supportive video message to, Vox in Spain. Almost completely under the radar, Vox has been building a conservative-far right network in the Spanish-speaking world, partly facilitated by the party’s Dineso foundation. Focused mostly on Latin America – and piggybacking on the Latin American right’s long-standing fight against “communism” and for conservative Christianity – the foundation has published a “Charter of Madrid” signed by more than 100 politicians and political activists from Europe and the Americas, including US conservative activist Daniel Pipes (anti-Islam) and Grover Norquist (anti-tax), as well as a host of Latin American MPs. The particular meeting Cruz spoke to was attended by various European far-right leaders, including Giorgia Meloni of Brothers of Italy (FdI), currently the biggest party in the polls, and André Ventura of Chega in Portugal.Obviously, these international networks overlap on many issues, most notably in their common opposition to the “global left” but also, in different gradations, to immigration, Islam and “gender ideology”. But they also disagree on central issues, from the importance of religious doctrine to the role of Russia, and consequently have very different and shifting memberships. And they differ in the role of the US conservative movement within the network.With the exception of the Christian right, which has long dominated the global movement, the US does not play a leading role in these networks. Even the “national conservatism” network is run by an Israeli and increasingly funded by Hungarians. Moreover, the various US Republicans who have recently participated in these meetings seem to use their international connections more for domestic gains – most notably in the fight for the Republican nomination (should Donald Trump not run) – than for the sake of building a Populist International.This is not to say there is nothing new to recent developments. In the pre-Trump era, only relatively marginal rightwing conservatives and Republicans had open connections to the international far right. Today, the ties between the broader US conservative movement and the global far right have become mainstreamed, from the Republican party to National Review, with fewer and fewer dissenting voices. Still, steeped in US exceptionalism, the US conservative movement remains mostly inward-looking, using international connections and events primarily for national political struggles. And the Populist International is still more media hype than political reality.
      Cas Mudde is Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, the author of The Far Right Today (2019), and host of the podcast Radikaal. He is a Guardian US columnist
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      Why Virginia holds the key to the 2022 US midterms: Politics Weekly Extra podcast

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      This week Jonathan Freedland speaks to Jessica Taylor, of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. The pair discuss what the off-year gubernatorial elections coming up in a few weeks might tell us about Democrat and Republican chances in next year’s midterm elections

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