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      Former Virginia Republican senator John Warner dies aged 94

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      The former US senator John Warner of Virginia, who at times clashed with fellow Republicans during his three decades in office, has died of heart failure. He was 94.Warner died late on Tuesday, with his wife and daughter at his side, his chief of staff, Susan Magill, said in an email to family and friends, according to a Politico report on Wednesday. The Washington Post said he died in Alexandria, Virginia.President Joe Biden led tributes to Warner, saying he “lived an extraordinary life of service and accomplishment”.In a statement issued Wednesday, Biden said: “I had the privilege of serving alongside John in the Senate for three decades. The John Warner I knew was guided by two things: his conscience and our Constitution. And, when acting in accordance with both, he neither wavered in his convictions nor was concerned with the consequences.”The Democrat added: “When told that if he voted in a way that was not in line with his party’s position—as he did numerous times on issues of rational gun policy, women’s rights, and judicial nominees—that “people would say,” his favorite rejoinder was, “Let ‘em say it.”“Indeed, that was his response when, in one of the great honors of my career, he crossed party lines to support me in the 2020 election.”Warner was an influential voice in Congress on military policy and served in the US Senate for five terms from 1979 to 2009. He was also the sixth husband of the actor Elizabeth Taylor.Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said the flags around the Senate side of the US Capitol would be lowered to half-staff in honor of the late senator.“On behalf of the Senate, I want to express our condolences to his family and his friends, and our gratitude for amazing service to America throughout his life,” the Democratic leader said in a floor speech on Wednesday.Virginia Governor Ralph Northam described Warner as “the best of what public service and elected leadership should be”.“Virginia, and America, have lost a giant,” the Democrat said in a statement. “As a sailor, a senator, a statesman, and a gentleman, former US Senator John Warner spent his life in public service.”Current Virginia senator Mark Warner (no relation) tweeted: “I’m devastated to hear of the passing of my dear friend John Warner. To me, he was the gold standard in Virginia. I will forever be grateful for his friendship and mentorship. I’ll miss you, John.”A former chairman of the Senate armed services committee, Warner openly criticized President George W Bush’s handling of the Iraq war and called on him in 2007 to begin withdrawing US troops from Iraq.The decision put Warner in the center of a growing debate in Congress over the conflict. Warner spent months trying to develop an approach to US policy in Iraq that was supported by Republicans and Democrats.During his time in office, Warner clashed with fellow Republican senators on domestic issues, voting in some cases for government funding of abortions and supporting some gun control measures. In 1994, he refused to support the conservative Republican candidate for Senate Oliver North.The Democratic senator Tim Kaine of Virginia said he often turned for advice to Warner, whom he called a “public servant who stood on principle, made us proud, and exemplified the best of what politics can be”.“He was a Gentleman who maintained civility in his politics in an era of rising intolerance,” his fellow Virginian the US representative Gerry Connolly, a Democrat, said on Twitter.Warner, who enlisted in the navy during the second world war at the age of 17, also served in the Marine Corps in Korea. He was secretary of the navy from 1972 to 1974 in President Richard Nixon’s administration.Reuters contributed to this report More

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      Fury as Marjorie Taylor Greene likens Covid rules to Nazi treatment of Jews

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      Republicans and Democrats condemned Marjorie Taylor Greene on Tuesday as the far-right Georgia congresswoman continued to compare measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic to the treatment of Jewish people during the Holocaust.But meaningful Republican action against Greene seemed no more likely than at any time in her brief but controversy-fuelled congressional career.The Republican leader in the House, Kevin McCarthy, said his party “condemned” Greene’s remarks but also used his statement to attack Democrats for allegedly ignoring antisemitism in their own ranks.Greene had already compared mask mandates to the treatment of Jewish people during the Holocaust when on Tuesday morning she tweeted her opposition to companies and venues requiring proof of vaccination, a source of widespread rightwing complaint.“Vaccinated employees get a vaccination logo just like the Nazi’s [sic] forced Jewish people to wear a gold star,” she wrote.“Vaccine passports and mask mandates create discrimination against unvaxxed [sic] people who trust their immune systems to a virus that is 99% survivable.”The coronavirus pandemic is in retreat in the US but more than 33 million people have been infected and nearly 590,000 have died. The Biden administration said on Tuesday 50% of US adults were now fully vaccinated but progress has slowed amid widespread resistance to vaccination, particularly among Republicans.In remarks in the Senate, the Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, the first Jewish person in that role, called Greene’s comments “sickening” and “reprehensible”.“She should stop this vile language immediately,” the New York senator said.McCarthy, the House minority leader, said his party “condemned” Greene’s remarks and added: “Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling.”Elise Stefanik, a New York congresswoman recently elevated to House Republican leadership in place of the Trump critic Liz Cheney, said: “Equating mask wearing and vaccines to the Holocaust belittles the most significant human atrocities ever committed. We must all work together to educate our fellow Americans on the unthinkable horrors of the Holocaust.”Greene was defiant, claiming not to have compared mask mandates and vaccination requirements “to the Holocaust, only the discrimination against Jews in early Nazi years”.McCarthy has not taken disciplinary action against Greene despite a series of controversies over remarks including advocating death for her political opponents.On Tuesday Nancy Pelosi, the target of such invective, told reporters Greene’s latest remarks were “beyond reprehensible” and said: “I think that she should stop talking.”Earlier this year, Democrats who control the House stripped Greene of committee assignments.On Tuesday, Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who like Cheney has become a pariah by rejecting Trump’s control of the party, called Greene’s remarks “demented and dangerous”.He also called for action from McCarthy, Stefanik and other Republican leaders.“I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again,” Kinzinger wrote. “While we cannot stop her from calling herself a Republican, we can and should refuse to let her caucus with the House GOP.” More

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      in Elections

      Most Republicans still believe 2020 election was stolen from Trump – poll

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      A majority of Republicans still believe Donald Trump won the 2020 US presidential election and blame his loss to Joe Biden on baseless claims of illegal voting, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll.The 17-19 May national poll found that 53% of Republicans believe Trump, their party’s nominee, is the “true president” now, compared with 3% of Democrats and 25% of all Americans.About one-quarter of adults believe the 3 November election was tainted by false allegations of illegal voting, including 56% of Republicans, according to the poll. The figures were roughly the same in a poll that ran from 13-17 November which found that 28% of all Americans and 59% of Republicans felt that way.Biden, a Democrat, won by more than 7m votes. Dozens of courts rejected Trump’s challenges to the results, but Trump and his supporters have persisted in pushing baseless conspiracy theories on conservative news outlets.US federal and state officials have said repeatedly they have no evidence that votes were compromised or altered during the presidential election, rejecting the unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud advanced by Trump and many of his supporters. Voter fraud is extremely rare in the US.Yet the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that 61% of Republicans believe the election was “stolen” from Trump. Only about 29% of Republicans believe he should share some of the blame for his supporters’ 6 January deadly attack at the US Capitol, after Trump gave an inflammatory speech encouraging the crowds. The former president was impeached by the House earlier this year for “incitement of insurrection”.Still, 67% of overall respondents say they trust election officials in their town to do their job honestly, including 58% of Republicans, according to the poll.The November and May polls were both conducted online, in English, throughout the United States. The May poll gathered responses from 2,007 adults, including 909 Democrats and 754 Republicans. The poll has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about four percentage points. More

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      Liz Cheney won’t link Trump’s election lies to restrictive Republican voting laws

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      The Republican pariah Liz Cheney has repeatedly refused to admit a link between Donald Trump’s lies about voter fraud and restrictive voting laws being introduced in Republican states, telling an interviewer on Sunday night she will “never understand the resistance to voter ID”.“There’s a big difference between that and a president of the United States who loses an election after he tried to steal the election and refuses to concede,” said the Wyoming representative ejected from party leadership for opposing the former president.Laws tightening regulations on voter ID, voting by mail and even giving water to those waiting on line to vote have been passed or are close to passage in states from Georgia to Texas and beyond.Because of their disproportionate impact on minority voters – many of whom vote Democratic – Democrats including Joe Biden have compared such laws to Jim Crow segregation in southern states from the civil war to the civil rights era.Most in a Republican party under Trump’s grip reject such claims. Cheney has ranged herself against Trump but when pressured by Axios on HBO interviewer Jonathan Swan, she stayed in lockstep with her party.To Cheney’s remark about resistance to voter ID laws, Swan countered: “Even the Republican lieutenant governor of Georgia, Jeff Duncan, said … when this bill was started that the momentum was when Rudy Giuliani was testifying that the Georgia election was a sham.”Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, pursued the electoral fraud lie through an array of cases in states won by Biden, the vast majority thrown out of court.“Four hundred-some voting bills have been introduced,” Swan said, “90% by Republicans, supported by the Republican National Committee. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that after the election, this has happened.”Cheney said: “I think everybody should want a situation and a system where people who want to vote and ought to have the right to vote, vote, and people that don’t shouldn’t. And again I come back to things like voter ID.”Actual instances of voter fraud or attempted voter fraud are few and far between. Some involve Trump voters. Nonetheless, state Republican parties have pursued strict laws while in Arizona the GOP has gone so far as to conduct a highly controversial recount in the most populous county.“But what problems are [these laws] solving?” Swan asked. “What are all these states doing?”“Well,” said Cheney, “each state is different.”Swan asked what the problem was in Georgia, or Texas, or Florida.“I think you’ve got to look at each individual state law,” Cheney said.Swan said: “But you can’t divorce them from the context. Come on.”Cheney said: “But I think what we can all agree on is that what is happening right now is really dangerous.”Swan said: “I can agree with that.”Cheney switched back to her preferred subject – Trump’s refusal to concede defeat, which led to the deadly attack on the Capitol by his supporters on 6 January, over which more than 400 people have been charged, while Republicans in Congress oppose a 9/11-style investigation.“I think about 2000,” said the daughter of Dick Cheney, who became vice-president to George W Bush after a tight election that year.“I think about sitting on the inaugural platform in January of 2001 watching Al Gore. We’d won. I’m sure he didn’t think he had lost. We had fought this politically very, very intense battle. And he conceded. He did the right thing for this nation.“And that is one of the big differences between that and what we’re dealing with now and the danger of Donald Trump today.” More

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      in US Politics

      Lock him up! Why is repeat offender Donald Trump still a free man?

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      A sudden fall from power always comes hard. King Alfred was reduced to skulking in a Somerset bog. A distraught Napoleon talked to coffee bushes on St Helena. Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia hung around the haberdashery department of Jolly’s in Bath. Uganda’s Idi Amin plotted bloody revenge from a Novotel in Jeddah. Only Alfred the Great made a successful comeback.All of which brings us to Donald Trump, currently in exile at his luxury club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Whingeing amid the manicured greens and bunkers of his exclusive golf course, the defeated president recalls an ageing Bonnie Prince Charlie – a sort of “king over the water” with water features. Like deposed leaders throughout history, he obsesses about a return to power.Yet as Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell moves to kill off a 9/11-style national commission to investigate the 6 January Capitol Hill insurrection, the pressing question is not whether Trump can maintain cult-like sway over Republicans, or even whether he will run again in 2024. The question that should most concern Americans who care about democracy is: why isn’t Trump in jail?The fact he is not, and has not been charged with anything, is a genuine puzzle – some might say a scandal, even a conspiracy. Trump’s actual and potential criminal rap sheet long predates the Capitol siege. It includes alleged abuses of power, obstruction of justice, fraud, tax evasion, Russian money-laundering, election tampering, conflicts of interest, hush-money bribes, assassination – and a lot of lies.Let’s take these allegations one at a time. District of Columbia investigators say they have charged 410 people over the Capitol breach. Some could be tried for plotting to overthrow the US government – a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison – or even for murder, given that five people died. Yet Trump, who urged supporters at a Washington rally that day to “fight like hell” to stop Congress certifying his election loss, is not among them. He has not even been questioned over his indisputably pivotal role.For sure, Trump was impeached – but he declined to appear before Congress, and Republican toadies made a mockery of the process, voting to acquit him of inciting insurrection. In March, DC attorney Michael Sherwin said federal investigations involving Trump are still under way. “Maybe the president is culpable,” he mused. But updates about this key aspect of the affair are unaccountably lacking.Letitia James, New York’s attorney-general, last week confirmed a criminal investigation into alleged wrongdoing by Trump’s business empire. This inquiry is running in tandem with another criminal investigation into the Trump Organisation by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance. Alleged false accounting and tax irregularities appear to be the main focus.Yet these long-running investigations lack tangible results. Nor do they appear to be examining potentially more politically illuminating allegations such as Trump’s dealings with Vladimir Putin and Russia’s oligarchs, money-laundering via the New York property market, and the past role of disgraced Deutsche Bank. While claiming it’s all a “witch-hunt”, Trump may be happy for these limited inquiries to drag on indefinitely.Why, meanwhile, has Trump not already been arraigned on charges of obstruction of justice and abuse of power? Exactly two years ago, special counsel Robert Mueller cited 10 instances of the then president allegedly obstructing investigations into collusion between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russia. They included his firing of the FBI director, James Comey, and an attempt to sack Mueller himself.Mueller plainly indicated there was a case to answer, but said he was unable to bring indictments. “A president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office,” he said. Even if that is legally correct, Trump is no longer in office. Merrick Garland, William Barr’s thankfully less Uriah Heep-ish successor as attorney-general, should be all over this. Why isn’t he?Trump’s well-attested attempts to induce Georgia state officials to manipulate November’s election count in his favour were a crime, Fulton County prosecutors suggest. If so, why the delay? Charge him! Add to the rap sheet allegations of the ex-president corruptly channelling US taxpayer and foreign funds into his hotel and resort businesses.Trump, who promised to ‘drain the swamp’, waddled knee-deep in sleaze. So charge him!“Special interest groups likely spent more than $13 million at Trump properties” in order to gain access and influence, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an independent watchdog, reports. This typified an administration “marked by self-interest, profiteering at the highest levels, and more than 3,700 conflicts of interest”.In short, Trump, who promised to “drain the swamp”, waddled knee-deep in sleaze. So investigate and charge him!Trump has much to answer for internationally, too. The UN says the assassination he ordered last year, without just cause, of an Iranian general, Qassem Suleimani, was an unlawful act – possibly a war crime. And if all that is not enough, then consider – from a moral if not a legal standpoint – the thousands of avoidable Covid-19 deaths attributable to Trump’s denialism, stupidity and reckless incompetence.It’s truly strange that in a land of laws, Trump still walks free, strutting around his fancy-pants golf course, holding $250,000 a head fundraisers, evading justice, encouraging sedition, and daily blogging divisive bile about a stolen election. The Big Kahuna peddles the Big Lie. What other self-respecting country would allow it?The dismaying answer may be that to lock him up – the fate he wished on Hillary Clinton – would be to risk another insurrection. That’s the last thing Joe Biden and America’s wobbly democracy needs. But letting him get away with it harms democracy, too. In office, Trump ruled by lawlessness and fear. In exile, fear keeps him beyond the reach of the law. More

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      Rick Santorum axed by CNN over racist remarks on Native Americans

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      CNN has dropped former Republican US senator Rick Santorum as a senior political commentator after racist remarks he made about Native Americans at an event in April.News of Santorum’s termination was first reported by HuffPost. A CNN spokesperson confirmed to the Guardian that the network has parted ways with Santorum. No further comment on the firing was provided, though an anonymous CNN executive told HuffPost that “leadership wasn’t particularly satisfied with that appearance. None of the anchors wanted to book him.”Speaking at an event for the Young Americans Foundation, a conservative youth group, Santorum said that there was “nothing” in the US before Europeans colonizers arrived.“We came here and created a blank slate,” he said. “We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes we have Native Americans, but candidly there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”The comments sparked outrage among indigenous groups, including the National Congress of American Indians, which specifically called on CNN to fire Santorum over the remarks.“Televising someone with [Santorum’s] views on Native American genocide is fundamentally no different than putting an outright Nazi on television to justify the Holocaust,” said Fawn Sharp, the group’s president, in a statement from last month. “Any mainstream media organization should fire him or face a boycott from more than 500 Tribal Nations and our allies from across the country and worldwide.”Following the backlash, Santorum was invited to speak to Chris Cuomo to explain his comments. Santorum said he “misspoke” and denied that he was “trying to dismiss what happened to Native Americans”.“Far from it. The way we treated Native Americans was horrific. It goes against every bone and everything I’ve ever fought for as a leader in the Congress,” he told Cuomo.CNN anchor Don Lemon, who follows Cuomo’s show on the network’s primetime schedule, said Santorum’s non-apology was infuriating.“I can’t believe the first words out of his mouth weren’t ‘I’m sorry, I said something ignorant, I need to learn about the history of this country,” he said. “Did he actually think it was a good idea for him to come on television and try to whitewash the whitewash that he whitewashed?”Santorum has not publicly commented. More