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      Michigan Republicans find no voter fraud and say Trump claims ‘ludicrous’

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      An investigation into the Michigan election by state Republican lawmakers has concluded that there is no evidence of widespread fraud and dismissed the need for an Arizona-style forensic audit of the results.The news comes amid a broad push by many Republicans – from Donald Trump to state parties – to push unfounded lies about Joe Biden’s victory, often promoting baseless conspiracy theories and evidence-free accusations of fraud.The Michigan Republican report released on Wednesday followed 28 hours of legislative hearings starring local and national pro-Trump conspiracy theorists such as former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. The report labeled many of their claims “ludicrous” and called on the state Democratic attorney general to open investigations into those who may have profited from making false claims.The report was authored by the Republican-controlled senate oversight committee and it said it found no evidence of dead voters, no precincts with 100% turnout and no evidence of a Detroit ballot dump that benefited Biden, as GOP activists have claimed occurred.“There is no evidence presented at this time to prove either significant acts of fraud or that an organized, wide-scale effort to commit fraudulent activity was perpetrated in order to subvert the will of Michigan voters,” the report reads.“Citizens should be confident the results represent the true results of the ballots cast by the people of Michigan.”The report represents a stunning repudiation of the unsubstantiated claims made by the state’s pro-Trump activists and Trump himself in their bid to overturn the critical battleground state’s results. Biden won Michigan by about 154,000 votes, or three percentage points. The tally was upheld by judges appointed by both parties in state and federal court, the bipartisan boards of state canvassers and reviews by election officials.Still, Trump supporters have been applying intense pressure on state Republican officials to work to overturn the election results, and have censured or promised primary challenges for those who reject their far-fetched claims.Trump had not responded to the report as of Wednesday afternoon, but in May issued a characteristic threat to his party when he said that Michigan’s senators “should be run out of office” if they haven’t reviewed “the Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020”.In the report, state senator Ed McBroom took aim at the pro-Trump activists who “who have pushed demonstrably false theories for their own personal gain”.“If you are profiting by making false claims, that’s pretty much the definition of fraud,” McBroom said.The office of Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, said on Wednesday that it’s still reviewing the report.Despite that the report rebukes the conspiracy theories, the investigation found “glaring issues that must be addressed” in state election law, and the party is still pushing forward with a package of 39 controversial voting restrictions that it plans to ram through using a constitutional loophole that can bypass the veto of the Democrat governor, Gretchen Whitmer.The Democrat state senator Jeff Irwin, who serves on the oversight committee, was the lone vote against the report. He noted that Michigan has paper ballots that confirm the results and praised Republican committee members for being “willing to stand and say that Michigan has free and fair elections”, but he added that the recommendations for new restrictions are unnecessary.“They are responding to their GOP constituency more than they are offering good policy ideas,” he said. More

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      Progressives criticize Biden and Harris for not doing more to help voting rights

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      When the New York Democratic congressman Mondaire Jones, a freshman, was at the White House last week for the signing of the proclamation making Juneteenth a national holiday, he told Joe Biden their party needed him more involved in passing voting legislation on Capitol Hill.Biden “just sort of stared at me”, Jones said of the US president’s response, describing an “awkward silence” that passed between the two.Jones and a growing number of Democratic activists are becoming more vociferous about what they portray as a lackluster engagement from Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris on an issue they consider paramount, as Republican-led state legislatures pass local laws that will lead to restricted voting for many.The White House has characterized the issue as “the fight of his presidency”.But as Democrats’ massive election legislation, the For the People Act, was blocked by Republicans on Tuesday, progressives argued Biden could not much longer avoid the battle over Senate filibuster rules that allow a minority – in this case the Republicans – to block such bills.And questioning whether he was using all of his leverage to prioritize it suggested risk of a first major public rift with his party’s progressive wing if a breakthrough is not found soon.“President Obama, for his part, has been doing more to salvage our ailing democracy than the current president of the United States of America,” Jones said, referring to a recent interview in which the former president pushed for a compromise version of the voting rights legislation put forward by conservative Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia.Jones tweeted on Monday: “Our democracy is in crisis and we need @Potus [the president of the United States] to act like it” with reference to activists complaining that Biden was not holding public events to lobby for the voting rights bill.Biden met with Manchin at the White House, and Manchin at the last minute declared support for the bill’s advance in the Senate on Tuesday, before the Republicans used the filibuster to kill it. But Biden did not meet with Republicans on the issue.The White House argues that both Biden and Harris have been in frequent touch with Democratic leadership and key advocacy groups. Biden spoke out forcefully at times, declaring a new Georgia law backed by Republicans an “atrocity” and using a speech in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to say he was going to “fight like heck” for Democrats’ federal answer, but he left negotiations on the proposal to congressional leaders.On Tuesday the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said Biden was “absolutely revolted” by Republicans’ efforts to suppress access to the ballot box in ways that have greater chilling effects on Democratic voters.Biden tasked Harris with taking the lead on the voting rights issue, and she spent last week largely engaged in private meetings with voting rights advocates as she traveled for a vaccination tour around the nation.But commentary in the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday remarked at “how little we saw of her” publicly lobbying for the legislation.Biden and Harris’s efforts haven’t appeased some activists and progressives, who argue that state laws tightening election laws are designed to make it harder for Black, young and infrequent voters to cast ballots.Some argue Biden ought to come out for a change in the filibuster rules that require 60 votes to advance most legislation, while Democrats only have 50 seats in the 100-seat chamber and Harris as a tie-breaker because the vice- president can preside in the Senate on such matters.“Progressives are losing patience, and I think particularly African American Democrats are losing patience,” said Democratic strategist Joel Payne, a longtime aide to the former Senate majority leader and Nevada senator Harry Reid.“They feel like they have done the kind of good Democrat thing over the last year-plus, going back to when Biden got the nomination, unifying support around Biden, turning out, showing up on election day.”“Progressives feel like, ‘Hey, we did our part.’ And now when it’s time for the bill to be paid, so to speak, I think some progressives feel like, ‘OK, well, how long do we have to wait?’”The progressive congresswoman Ayanna Pressley tweeted: “The people did not give Democrats the House, Senate and White House to compromise with insurrectionists. Abolish the filibuster so we can do the people’s work.”Senator Elizabeth Warren, a former presidential candidate, focused her ire on Republicans, but supports the campaign to overturn the Senate filibuster.“We cannot throw our democracy over a cliff in order to protect a Senate rule that isn’t even part of the Constitution. End the filibuster,” she tweeted.And the former Obama cabinet member and presidential candidate Julián Castro cranked up the pressure on fellow Democrats.“Senate Democrats have a choice: end the filibuster and safeguard our democracy or let an extremist minority party chip away at it until it’s gone,” he tweeted after Tuesday’s legislative defeat.Harris is expected to continue to meet with voting rights activists, business leaders and groups working on the issue in the states and speak out on the issue in the coming weeks.Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, a progressive grassroots group, said advocacy on the the $1.9tn infrastructure bill has been stronger from the leadership.“The president has been on the sidelines. He has issued statements of support, he’s maybe included a line or two in a speech here or there, but there has been nothing on the scale of his public advocacy for recovery for Covid relief, for roads and bridges,” Levin said.“We think this is a crisis at the same level as crumbling roads and bridges, and if we agree on that, the question is, why is the president on the sidelines?”White House aides point to Biden’s belief that his involvement risks undermining a deal before it’s cut.But in private, advisers, speaking anonymously, currently see infrastructure as the bigger political winner for Biden because it’s widely popular among voters of both parties. More

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      Democrats seek way ahead after voting rights bill hits Senate roadblock

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      After nearly six months of watching Republicans relentlessly make it harder to vote in the US, Democrats suffered a major blow on Tuesday after GOP senators used a legislative maneuver to halt a sweeping voting rights and ethics bill.The vote doesn’t kill the bill, but it marks one of the most significant setbacks for Democrats in Joe Biden’s presidency so far. Democrats heralded the legislation as their No 1 priority, even knowing they were unlikely to get any Republican votes for it. The bill would amount to the most significant expansion of the right to vote in a generation, requiring early voting and automatic and same-day registration, while prohibiting excessive manipulation of electoral district boundaries, a process often called gerrymandering.Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterIt wasn’t an unexpected result. Democrats control only 50 seats in the Senate and a procedural rule, the filibuster, blocks most legislation from proceeding to a full debate on the floor unless it has 60 votes. A handful of Democratic senators, most notably Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, support keeping the filibuster in place, saying it helps ensure the minority party has a say. But while the rule remains, Democrats have virtually no chance of passing sweeping voting rights legislation.Democratic senators are now in a quagmire amid escalating concerns that Democrats, who control both Congress and the White House, might not be able to use their power to stop what many experts see as openly anti-democratic efforts by Republicans across the country to make it harder to vote after an election in which there was record turnout, including surges among Black, Asian American and Hispanic voters.Republicans have used partisan majorities in statehouses across the US to pass these measures, even as they have accused Democrats of acting with partisan intent to pass voting reforms.Raphael Warnock, a Democratic senator from Georgia, harshly criticized Republican colleagues for refusing to even allow a vote on the bill on the Senate floor.“Surely, some of my Republican friends believe – at the very least – that in this chamber, we should be able to debate about voting rights,” he said. “Voting rights are preservative of all other rights. And what could be more hypocritical and cynical than invoking minority rights in the Senate as a pretext for preventing debate about how to preserve minority rights in the society?”Tuesday’s vote on whether to allow debate on the bill was widely seen as a maneuver to pressure Republicans into taking a public stance on the bill and to pressure moderate Democrats, including Manchin and Sinema, to take a position.In a statement a few hours before the vote, the White House offered a blunt assessment of the attack on voting rights across the United States. “Democracy is in peril,” it said, urging senators to support the bill.“This kicks off the next phase of the fight,” said Tiffany Muller, the president of End Citizens United and Let America Vote, a group running a $30m campaign in support of the bill. “If I had a nickel for every time someone wrote ‘this bill was dead’, I would have enough to fund the entire campaign. People have been counting this bill and these efforts out for the entire year, and not really seeing what was happening across the country.”Nsé Ufot, CEO of the New Georgia Project, a Georgia-based group that has worked for years to mobilize voters in the state, called on the White House to increase its efforts to pressure senators who opposed the bill.“Where is the fight?” she said. “I understand that the upper house, the upper chamber, there’s a focus on collegiality … [but] collegiality at the expense of actually getting stuff done, collegiality at the expense of preserving Americans’ ability to participate in our elections, seems misguided.”It’s not clear what the path forward might look like. Last week, Manchin released a compromise that maintained some of the most important provisions in the bill – including making election day a federal holiday, requiring two weeks of early voting, allowing automatic registration at motor vehicle offices, and mandating that states give voters seven days’ notice of a polling place change. However, the proposal does include a voter ID requirement, allowing for more aggressive voter purging, and does not require states to create independent redistricting commissions, which reformers see as a gold standard in curbing excessive gerrymandering.Manchin wound up voting with Democrats on Tuesday to move to advance the bill, an encouraging sign to bill supporters that further highlights Republican obstructionism.“These reasonable changes have moved the bill forward and to a place worthy of debate on the Senate floor,” Manchin said in a statement. “Unfortunately, my Republican colleagues refused to allow debate of this legislation despite the reasonable changes made to focus this bill on the core issues facing our democracy.”Republicans appear unlikely to come around on Manchin’s compromise bill. And while Barack Obama endorsed the compromise on Monday, more than 20 civil rights groups, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Black Voters Matter, said the proposal was inadequate.“Senator Manchin’s compromise fails to adequately address the more than 400 voter suppression measures that are being introduced across the country,” they wrote in a joint statement. “Most damaging is its neglect of protections for formerly incarcerated and justice impacted voters; voters with disabilities; Black and all multi-marginalized voters. There has been no indication from Senator Manchin’s reported conversations with conservatives that he has been able to secure Republican support for any of the core elements of [the legislation] which is disappointing to the many activists who are pushing for passage of the bill.”It’s also not clear how Democrats plan to get around the filibuster. Manchin has been steadfast in his commitment to the rule, though privately he has left the door open to lowering the threshold of votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Sinema, another staunch supporter of the filibuster, also authored an op-ed in the Washington Post on Monday evening saying she was committed to keeping the procedure in place.Muller pointed to the Senate’s August recess as a deadline to pass a bill, when many states are set to begin drawing electoral districts for the next decade. Republicans control the redistricting process in many states and without the anti-gerrymandering provisions of the bill in place, lawmakers would be free to manipulate districts to give them a significant advantage in elections.“We are literally seeing this very direct undermining of our democracy. And if that goes unchecked, I am very concerned about the future of our democracy,” she said.Nearly 500 state lawmakers wrote to Senate leadership on Tuesday begging them to pass the sweeping bill.“We have attempted again and again to work with our Republican colleagues to set policies that safely and securely expanded voting access – but they simply refuse to act in good faith,” they wrote. “We are out of options. We need your help.” More

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      Biden under pressure to act as landmark voting rights bill faces Senate defeat

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      Joe Biden was facing a huge setback on Tuesday as one of his top priorities, a set of reforms to protect voting rights and shore up American democracy, barrelled towards defeat in Congress.Progressives accused Biden of failing to use his bully pulpit to champion the sweeping legislation, which aims to safeguard elections against attacks by former president Donald Trump and his allies.“OK I have reached my WTF moment with Biden on this,” tweeted Ezra Levin, co-executive director of the grassroots movement Indivisible. “Is saving democracy a priority for this administration or not?”The Senate was due to hold a procedural vote on whether to start debate on the For the People Act, a significant near-900-page overhaul of voting and election law that the White House has described as a “cause” for Biden.But in chamber split 50-50, the bill was poised to fall at the first hurdle. Sixty votes are required to overcome a procedural rule known as the filibuster and there was no prospect of 10 Republicans crossing the floor to join Democrats in advancing the legislation.The For the People Act is seen as a crucial counterweight to hundreds of voting bills introduced by Republican-controlled states, many of which include measures that would make it harder for Black people, young people and poor people to vote. Fourteen states had enacted 22 of these laws by mid-May, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.Biden has spoken passionately about the need to defend democracy but despite his penchant for bipartisanship he has been unable to move the needle. Levin, a former congressional aide, drew a contrast with Barack Obama, who organised a debate with Republicans about his signature healthcare law, and Bill Clinton, who gave 18 speeches to promote a North American free trade agreement.Because of one man’s lie, Republicans are now doing the dastardly act of taking away voting from millions of AmericansHe added: “Democracy is under threat. Fascism is rising. Time is running out. It’s time for the president to get off the sidelines and into the game, or we’re all going to lose.”Obama has also sounded the alarm. Speaking on a call with grassroots supporters, he said: “We can’t wait until the next election because if we have the same kinds of shenanigans that brought about [the insurrection on] 6 January, if we have that for a couple more election cycles, we’re going to have real problems in terms of our democracy long-term.”Democrats’ goals include expanding early voting in elections for president and Congress, making it easier to vote by mail – a tool used by record numbers during the coronavirus pandemic – and improving the transparency of certain campaign contributions. They are also aiming to remove party bias from the once-a-decade drawing of congressional districts.Democrats also accuse Republicans of seeking to reduce polling hours and locations and drop boxes, and tightening voter ID laws, as a direct response to Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen by voter fraud.In remarks on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader, likened Trump to “a petulant child”.“Because of one man’s lie, Republicans are now doing the dastardly act of taking away voting from millions of Americans … making it much harder for them to vote, and many, many, many will not,” Schumer said.“From Georgia to Montana, from Florida to Iowa, Republican state legislatures are conducting the most coordinated voter suppression effort in 80 years.”These state houses are making it easier to own a gun than to vote, Schumer said.“Republican legislatures are making it harder to vote early, harder to vote by mail, harder to vote after work. They’re making it a crime to give food or water to voters waiting in long lines. They’re trying to make it harder for Black churchgoers to vote on Sunday.“And they’re actually making it easier for unelected judges and partisan election boards to overturn the results of an election, opening the door for some demagogue, a Trumpian-type demagogue, maybe he himself, to try and subvert our elections in the very same way that Trump tried to do in 2020.”Republicans argue the For the People Act would infringe on states’ rights and that state measures are needed to stop fraud, even though there is no evidence of widespread such problems. Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, dismissed the bill as a “partisan power grab” in his own speech on the Senate floor.Although the outcome of Tuesday’s vote was a foregone conclusion, there is still suspense around two subplots with wider implications.The bill was co-sponsored by 49 Democratic and independent senators. The sole holdout was Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat from West Virginia who has expressed opposition to the legislation and declined to say if he would support the procedural motion to debate it.If, as expected, Manchin did fall into line, it would intensify pressure for Democrats to abolish the filibuster so legislation can be debated and passed by a simple 51-vote majority – with Vice-President Kamala Harris holding the tie-breaking vote. But Manchin and some colleagues have deep reservations about doing so.Kyrsten Sinema, a Democratic senator from Arizona, wrote in the Washington Post: “The filibuster compels moderation and helps protect the country from wild swings.”She said she welcomed a full debate, “so senators and our constituents can hear and fully consider the concerns and consequences”.Biden held talks with Manchin and Sinema at the White House on Monday, aware the congressional stalemate threatens to stall his agenda. Manchin told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday: “We had a very good conversation, very respectful … We’ve just got to keep working.”Both sides are looking for political advantage ahead of next year’s midterm elections, where Republicans hope to win back the House and Senate. More

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      Obama backs Manchin’s voting rights compromise before crucial Senate vote

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      Barack Obama has backed conservative West Virginia Democratic senator Joe Manchin’s voting rights proposal, calling it a “product of compromise” as the landmark legislation struggles towards a crucial vote in the US Senate on Tuesday.The former US president weighed in, as did his wife and former first lady, Michelle Obama, decrying Republican efforts in many statehouses across the country to bring in new laws that restrict voting, and urging Congress to pass federal legislation “before it’s too late”.Barack Obama said the future of the country was at stake.“I have tried to make it a policy not to weigh in on the day-to-day scrum in Washington, but what is happening this week is more than just a particular bill coming up or not coming up to a vote,” he said in an interview with Yahoo News.He added: “I do want folks who may not be paying close attention to what’s happening … to understand the stakes involved here, and why this debate is so vitally important to the future of our country,” Obama said.And the White House said on Monday it views the Senate’s work on an elections bill overhaul and changes being offered by Manchin as a “step forward”, even though the Democrats’ priority legislation is expected to be blocked by a Republican filibuster.White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the revisions proposed by Manchin are a compromise, another step as Democrats work to shore up voting access and what Joe Biden sees as “a fight of his presidency”.“The president’s effort to continue that fight doesn’t stop tomorrow at all,” Psaki said.The Senate is preparing for a showdown Tuesday, a test vote of the For the People Act, a sweeping elections bill that would be the largest overhaul of US voting procedures in a generation.A top priority for Democrats seeking to ensure access to the polls and mail-in ballots made popular during the pandemic, it is opposed by Republicans as a federal overreach into state systems.Manchin has been a vocal Democratic Party holdout on Capitol Hill, opposing the For the People Act and insisting on gleaning bipartisan support for such legislation.But last week he introduced a list of compromises he would support, including 15 days of early voting and automatic voter registration. His compromise would also ban partisan gerrymandering and requiring voter ID.Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, said he opposed the compromise, and hopes are fading in many Democratic quarters that a vote on Tuesday in the Senate will take the legislation to the debate stage, thus leaving it stalled.In his latest interview, Obama said Democrats and Republicans have abused the redistricting process, but shared concerns about efforts in Republican-controlled states to limit access to voting.“Around the world we’ve seen once-vibrant democracies go in reverse,” Obama said. “It is happening in other places around the world and these impulses have crept into the United States … we are not immune from some of these efforts to weaken our democracy.”“If we have the same kinds of shenanigans that brought about January 6, you know – if we have that for a couple more election cycles we’re going to have real problems in terms of our democracy long term.”In a post on Instagram, Michelle Obama talked of the Biden legislation fighting voter suppression and strengthening democracy.“Over the past few months, there’s been a movement in state legislatures all across the country to pass laws that make it harder for people to cast a ballot. That means we’ve got to pass the For the People Act before it’s too late. This bill is one of our best chances…to ensure all of us have a say in our future – whether that’s issues like pandemic relief, criminal justice, immigration, healthcare, education, or anything else,” she wrote.Manchin had been the sole holdout. His proposed changes to the bill are being well received by some in his party, and any nod from the White House lends them credibility.He has suggested adding a national voter ID requirement, which has been popular among Republicans, and dropping other measures from the bill like its proposed public financing of campaigns.Among voting rights advocates, one key voice, Georgia-based Democrat and activist Stacey Abrams, has said she could support Manchin’s proposal.Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, it is clear Democrats in the split 50-50 Senate will be unable to open debate, blocked by a filibuster by Republicans.In the Senate, it takes 60 votes to overcome the filibuster, and without any Republican support, the Democrats cannot move forward.“Will the Republicans let us debate it?” said Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer as he opened the chamber on Monday afternoon. “We’re about to find out.” More

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      Trump proposed sending Americans with Covid to Guantánamo, book claims

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      In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump advocated shipping Americans who contracted Covid-19 abroad to Guantánamo Bay.The stunning revelation is contained in a new book, Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History, by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta, two Washington Post reporters. The Post published excerpts on Monday.According to the paper, at a meeting in the White House Situation Room in February last year, before the onset of the pandemic in which more than 600,000 have now died in the US, Trump asked aides: “Don’t we have an island that we own? What about Guantánamo?”Trump also reportedly said: “We import goods. We are not going to import a virus.”The reporters write that aides blocked the idea when Trump brought it up again.The US holds Guantánamo Bay on a disputed long lease from Cuba. The prison there is used to house terrorism suspects without trial and in extremely harsh conditions and since the 9/11 attacks has been a magnet for condemnation from human rights groups.In 2019, the book A Warning by Anonymous – later revealed to be Miles Taylor, a former homeland security official – reported that Trump suggested sending immigrants to the base in Cuba.According to Taylor, Trump proposed designating all migrants entering the US without permission as “enemy combatants”, then shipping them to Guantánamo.Books about Trump’s rise to power and four years in the White House have proved extremely lucrative. On Monday the news site Axios reported that Trump has spoken to numerous authors working on books about his time in the Oval Office.According to the Post, among scenes reported by Abutaleb and Paletta, Trump is depicted in March 2020 shouting at his health secretary, Alex Azar: “Testing is killing me!”Cases of Covid-19 were mounting at the time, with states entering lockdowns amid public confusion and fear.“I’m going to lose the election because of testing!” Trump reportedly yelled. “What idiot had the federal government do testing?”“Uh, do you mean Jared?” Azar is reported to have answered, referring to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and chief adviser who was in charge of testing.Trump also reportedly said it was “gross incompetence to let [federal health agency] CDC develop a test”.Kushner is reported to have called a staffer who oversaw a March plan to purchase 600m masks a “fucking moron”, because the masks would not be delivered till June.By then, Kushner reportedly said: “We’ll all be dead.”Detailing such infighting and failures of leadership, the authors reportedly write: “That was what the response had turned into: a toxic environment in which no matter where you turned, someone was ready to rip your head off or threatening to fire you.” More

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      Fox News’ Tucker Carlson is key source for media he ‘hates’, columnist says

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      Tucker Carlson of Fox News is a “go-to source” for the US political media he claims to “hate” and has called “cowards” and “cringing animals not worthy of respect” – according to a columnist for the New York Times.Ben Smith, a former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, outed Carlson as “the go-to guy for sometimes-unflattering stories about Donald J Trump and for coverage of the internal politics of Fox News (not to mention stories about Mr Carlson himself)”.Carlson has become a star of the pro-Trump right – even figuring in polls regarding the next Republican presidential nomination, although he told a podcast last week he will not run – and a hate figure on the US left.Referring to Carlson’s role stoking culture wars over Covid-19, Smith wrote that he dodged the question of whether he has been vaccinated himself.Carlson reportedly replied: “When was the last time you had sex with your wife and in what position? … We can trade intimate details.”Smith wrote: “Then we argued back and forth about vaccines and he ended the conversation with a friendly invitation to return to his show.”Smith also quoted a leading recycler of Washington gossip, Michael Wolff, who has written two Trumpworld tell-alls and last week announced a third.“In Trump’s Washington, Tucker Carlson is a primary supersecret source,” Smith quoted Wolff as writing in a new book of essays. “I know this because I know what he has told me, and I can track his exquisite, too-good-not-to-be-true gossip through unsourced reports and as it often emerges into accepted wisdom.”Smith also quoted a heavily trailed book by Michael Bender, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, entitled Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost.According to Smith, Bender recounts a call between Trump and Carlson after the first debate last year, when Trump interrupted and hectored Joe Biden. Carlson is shown letting Trump go to voicemail, then telling him he did not do a good job onstage.“Mr Bender declined to comment on the sourcing that allowed him to so precisely reconstruct a conversation only two people were privy to,” Smith wrote.According to publicity material, Bender spoke to Trump. So have many other authors. Jonathan Karl of ABC News, author of Front Row at the Trump Show, told Axios on Monday: “If you thought there was no more to know, it’s been mind-blowing.”Brian Stelter of CNN, author of Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of the Truth, told Smith “you can see Tucker’s fingerprints all over the hardcover”.But in a week when Carlson pushed conspiracy theories about the 6 January attack on the Capitol, Stelter told Smith they had not spoken for his paperback.Carlson called mainstream US reporters “animals” and “cowards” in April.“I just can’t overstate how disgusted I am,” he told Outkick, “not simply by the details of the lying of the medium, but disgusted by the emphasis. The media is basically Praetorian Guard for the ruling class … I really hate them for it, I’ll be honest.”Detailing the collapse of Times and Politico stories critical of Carlson under attack from the host, Smith compared Carlson to Trump and Joe McCarthy. The senator from Wisconsin fueled anti-communist hysteria in the 1950s and was recently the subject of a biography entitled Demagogue.Carlson told Smith: “I don’t know any gossip.”But Smith said he spoke to 16 journalists from publications other than the Times.One “reporter for a prominent publication who speaks to Mr Carlson regularly” said: “It’s so unknown in the general public how much he plays both sides.”Another said: “If you open yourself up as a resource to mainstream media reporters, you don’t even have to ask them to go soft on you.”Smith said he would not reveal the contents of his own off-record chats with Carlson. More

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      Democrats’ domestic agenda faces setbacks by Republican obstructionism

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      Joe Biden’s far-reaching domestic agenda in the US is facing serious setbacks on a range of issues as the political quagmire of a tightly contested Senate is seeing Democratic ambitions sharply curtailed in the face of Republican obstruction.On a number of key fronts such as pushing election reform and voting rights, efforts to curb gun control and to moving forwards on LGBTQ civil rights, there has been an effective push back by Republicans – and a handful of conservative Democrats – that is forcing Biden and the wider Democratic party on to the back foot.The Senate, whom critics deride as an increasingly unrepresentative body that gives undue influence to smaller, less diverse Republican-run states, is scheduled to vote Tuesday on For the People Act, the voting rights bill that’s certain to be defeated having won no support from Republicans.Republicans are expected to run down the clock – a controversial tactical rule known as a filibuster – on the package that requires lawmakers to reach a 60-vote threshold.On Sunday, Ohio Republican senator Rob Portman shot down amendments proposed by West Virginia’s conservative Democrat Joe Manchin, whose rejection of the initial bill all-but scuttled the Democrats’ project. Portman described the planned legislation as a “federal takeover of our election system”.“The bottom line is we should make it easy to vote in this country. We should also make it hard to cheat,” Portman said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “Again, I appreciate [Manchin is] trying to find that middle ground, and, who knows, maybe something can be done.”By forcing Republicans to carry out their filibuster and making their opposition clear and public to a law seen as defending the voting rights of communities of color. Democrats hope to embarrass the party. But – without destroying the filibuster, which Manchin also opposes – there is little chance of the bill passing.Senate Democrats will also test calls for unity on LGBTQ civil rights, and another bill – The Equality Act – that is in search of Republican support. Schumer said last month the upper house is “considering” a vote on the bill but has yet to schedule it. Again, Manchin is the lone Democrat hold-out.The proposed legislation would include sexual orientation and gender identity to the protected classes of the 1964 Civil Rights Act alongside bans on discrimination based on race, color, religion and national origin.Wisconsin senator Tammy Baldwin, one of two openly gay senators in the 100-member chamber, has said that she is lobbying Republican colleagues but has achieved only “incremental progress”.Baldwin has said she believes the Senate should “hold off” on a vote while “negotiations are productive” and progress is being made. The Senate is split 50-50 and only in Democratic control thanks to the tie-breaking vote of Vice-President Kamala Harris.“There may be a time where there’s an impasse. I’m still trying to find 10 Republicans [to help pass the bill],” said Baldwin.Republicans resistance to the legislation is focused on protecting the rights of religious institutions that condemn homosexuality and opposition transgender rights in sports. Yet it comes against a backdrop of broad public, business and judicial support on the issue.Manchin, an anti-abortion Democrat , has said he is “not convinced that the Equality Act as written provides sufficient guidance to the local officials who will be responsible for implementing it”. But he has also said he’ll seek to “build broad bipartisan support and find a viable path forward for these critical protections”.Nor are Democrats currently likely to find broader opportunities for political unity on infrastructure spending where large-scale Democratic proposals are running into Republican counter-offers of a fraction of the size.Former Republican presidential adviser Karl Rove told This Week with George Stephanopoulos President Biden faces two paths on infrastructure and both are riddled with obstacles. “[It will be] a bipartisan deal small enough to get Republican support, but not big enough to keep Democrats united, or a go-it-alone and go-for-broke plan that progressives want, with a price tag as high as $6tn that’s likely too big to pass,” Rove said.Similarly, pending gun control legislation may also be resistant to winning enough support to pass.As it stands, two House-passed bills to expand background checks on gun buyers have all but stalled out in the Senate. But rather than push legislation that Republicans will reject, Democrats may instead push for a vote on increasing the number of online and gun show sales covered by FBI background checks – a significant retreat on the original proposals.Senator Chris Murphy, the Democrats’ point person to win Republican support for gun control, said he’s still talking with Republican leaders about “some ideas that would involve the expansion of background checks without getting all the way to universal”.Asked if a bill on gun show checks would be favored by Republicans, two senators involved in discussions, Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, offered a cool take on that likelihood.“We’ll see if it goes anywhere,” Graham told Politico.Toomey, who is set to retire next year, said: “Honestly, it’s unclear at this point.” More