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      ‘Shameless’: Texas Republicans lead the charge on voting clampdown

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterTexas Republicans are at the vanguard of a national push to curtail voting rights, with lawmakers targeting the voters and policies that helped Democrats make inroads in the 2020 election.Texas legislators have introduced 49 bills restricting voting access, far more than any other state, even as major Texas-based corporations such as American Airlines express fervent opposition.The sweeping provisions could deal an outsized blow to low-income residents, people with disabilities, city dwellers and Texans of color, many of whom belong to diverse, youthful cohorts whose political views spell trouble for the GOP.And, in a twist that differentiates Texas from other states such as Georgia and Arizona that have instituted or are planning voting restrictions, some of the proposals impose extreme penalties on people who make even innocuous missteps.“When you make making a mistake on a voter registration application a second-degree felony, that’s the equivalent of arson and aggravated kidnapping,” said Sarah Labowitz, policy and advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.Conservative politicians have tried to justify the rollback by hiding behind Donald Trump’s claim that last year’s presidential contest was stolen – despite a complete lack of evidence, and even though their party won handily in Texas.Allegations of widespread voter fraud have almost become a “litmus test” among Texas Republicans, said Juan Carlos Huerta, a professor of political science at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi.Conservatives’ political futures could hinge on whether their base believes they are cracking down on the non-issue. And, as a new generation of voters comes of age, the specious talking point provides cover for politicians who can see that their party’s prospects may be dimming.Although Republicans maintained their ironclad grip on Texas last year, Trump’s margin of victory in the presidential race winnowed to less than six points, from a nine-point lead four years earlier. Democrats also gained significant ground during the 2018 midterm elections, when former representative Beto O’Rourke lost his Senate bid to incumbent Ted Cruz by fewer than 215,000 votes.The state’s current officeholders know they will not be able to get re-elected on the issues alone, so they are moving the goalpost, said Claudia Yoli Ferla, executive director of civic engagement non-profit Move Texas.“These legislators are seeing the writing on the wall, and they’re scared of the power of young people. They’re scared to have the true voices of our communities reflected,” Yoli Ferla said.Already Texas subjects its residents to a byzantine electoral system, giving it a reputation as thehardest place to vote in the US. Voters do not have access to same-day registration, and they can only register online if they are simultaneously updating their driver’s license.Then, at the ballot box, hardline documentation requirements honor handgun licenses as a form of accepted identification, but not student IDs. Mail-in voting is so limited that last fall, voters were forced to gather in long lines, in-person, regardless of the coronavirus pandemic.But despite Texas’s legacy of voter suppression, large, Democratic counties – most notably Houston’s Harris county – came up with innovative approaches to expand access to the polls last year. For instance, Harris county implemented 24-hour and drive-thru polling sites, while the local election administrator tried to send mail-in ballot applications to every registered voter.Instead of lauding those solutions, Republicans fought them hard. Now, the state’s leaders are working to ensure they are not an option for future elections.“Whether it’s the unauthorized expansion of mail-in ballots, or the unauthorized expansion of drive-thru voting, we must pass laws to prevent election officials from jeopardizing the election process,” said the Texas governor, Greg Abbott.In February, while Trump’s national defeat was still fresh, Abbott designated so-called “election integrity” as one of five emergency items for the legislature. As of late last month, Texas was leading the charge among 47 total states that had introduced 361 bills restricting the vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.One Texas bill would do away with drive-through polling places, allow partisan poll watchers to electronically record voters, and set limits on early voting hours.Another could consolidate voter registration responsibilities under the secretary of state, sidelining local governments.Yet another would dangle felony charges over basic activities, such as public servants proactively distributing applications to vote by mail.Texas is already known for criminalizing the ballot box, especially among communities of color. Under the state’s current attorney general, Ken Paxton, at least 72% of prosecutions by the so-called election integrity unit have targeted Black and Latino residents, according to the ACLU of Texas.Those severe penalties cause confusion and can have chilling effects on would-be voters. In the border community of Brownsville, people fear they can’t legally vote for reasons that should not be disqualifying, such as their family’s immigration status, said Ofelia Alonso, a regional field manager for youth organizers at Texas Rising Action.“It’s already such a hostile environment for folks that want to participate in the process, but these restrictions would make it even harder,” Alonso said.In an ironic turn, the proposed reforms may inadvertently affect senior citizens, who are among the few demographics eligible to vote by mail, and whose bloc trends right.As the Texas legislative session ramps up, voting rights advocates and experts are especially concerned by two omnibus bills filled with restrictions, SB7 and HB6. Both are already advancing through the legislature.“It’s kind of difficult to be able to have a strategy on, like, how to target this,” said Alonso, “when we know that the majority of the Republicans in the Texas legislature are very shameless.”Unlike in Georgia, where backlash from corporations such as Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines came retroactively, the Texas bills have already become a lightning rod.“Free, fair, equitable access to voting is the foundation of American democracy,” Michael Dell, chief executive of Dell Technologies, tweeted in early April. “Those rights – especially for women, communities of color – have been hard-earned.“Governments should ensure citizens have their voices heard. HB6 does the opposite, and we are opposed to it.”American Airlines similarly came out against SB7, saying the company is “strongly opposed to this bill and others like it”.But, emboldened by victory in 2020, the state’s conservatives don’t seem to care. When corporate giants decried the bills for being anti-democratic, Abbott simply warned them to “stay out of politics”.“Their priority’s to stay in power, with whatever means necessary,” Alonso said. “And election fraud is a good fearmongering way to rile up their base and not have to come out and say what they’re doing are Jim Crow tactics.“They won’t say it, but we know what it is.” More

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      George W Bush on Trump’s Republicans: ‘Isolationist, protectionist, nativist’

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      George W Bush has called the Republican party under Donald Trump “isolationist, protectionist and … nativist” – a judgment unlikely to make the former US president new friends on the American right.Bush, who is promoting a new book, spoke to NBC on Tuesday.Asked to describe the state of his party under Trump – who lost the Oval Office after one term but retains a firm grip on his party’s base – Bush said: “I would describe it as isolationist, protectionist and, to a certain extent, nativist.“It’s not exactly my vision as an old guy, but I’m just an old guy that’s put out to pasture.”Bush’s book is called Out of Many, One: Portraits of America’s Immigrants. He told NBC the country that includes the Latin for his kicker, E Pluribus Unum, on its great seal was “a beautiful country … and yet it’s not beautiful when we condemn, call people names and scare people about immigration”.Trump continues to do that, calling on his successor, Joe Biden, to restore his draconian policies while followers on the extreme right of the party discuss forming an “America First Caucus” based on “Anglo-Saxon political traditions”.Bush, the son of another president, is from a political dynasty about as Wasp (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) as it is possible to get. But Trump took down the former Florida governor Jeb Bush, the former president’s younger brother, in vicious fashion in 2016.George W Bush maintains friendly relations with former presidents including the Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and to some has come to present a more reasonable face of Republican politics.Others warn that progressives should not think too fondly of a man whose time in office included the invasion of Iraq and the bungled federal response to Hurricane Katrina.“I’m hoping there’ll be some pushback against this because I think it’s an absolute scandal that man should be rehabilitated and tarted up as in any way progressive,” Jackson Lears, a cultural historian, told the Guardian this week. More

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      Maxine Waters says she won’t be ‘bullied’ by Republicans over Chauvin remarks

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      After Republicans launched a long-shot attempt to censure and expel Maxine Waters from Congress over comments on the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, which the judge said could provide grounds for appeal, the veteran California progressive stayed defiant.“I am not worried that they’re going to continue to distort what I say,” Waters, 82, told the Grio. “This is who they are and this is how they act. And I’m not going to be bullied by them.”Chauvin, a former police officer, is on trial in Minneapolis for murder, after he knelt on George Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes in May last year. As the world awaits a verdict, tensions are high in the city.On Tuesday, comments by Joe Biden also attracted attention. At the White House, the president told reporters he was “praying the verdict is the right verdict, which is, I think … it’s overwhelming, in my view”.Waters, who is African American, has served in Congress since 1991. She has a long record of campaigning for civil rights and confronting political opponents in blunt terms, in some quarters earning the nickname Kerosene Maxine.Long a favorite target of Republicans, she attractedfocused ire in 2018, when she said Trump aides and officials should be confronted by the public. Last week, she told the hard-right Republican congressman Jim Jordan to “shut your mouth” during a hearing with Dr Anthony Fauci, the White House medical adviser.She spoke to the media on Saturday during a protest in Brooklyn Center, the Minneapolis suburb where police shot dead a 20-year-old Black man, Daunte Wright, earlier this month.Waters said she hoped Chauvin would be found “guilty, guilty, guilty”.If Chauvin was acquitted, she said, “we’ve got to stay on the street, and we’ve got to get more active. We’ve got to get more confrontational. We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business.”[embedded content]Republicans were quick to accuse Waters of inciting violence as, they said, Democrats accused Donald Trump of doing before the 6 January Capitol riot.The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy – who voted against impeaching Trump over the Capitol attack, which resulted in five deaths – said on Monday he would introduce a resolution censuring Waters for what he deemed “dangerous comments”.“This weekend in Minnesota, Maxine Waters broke the law by violating curfew and then incited violence,” McCarthy tweeted.In a co-ordinated attack, the Florida representative María Elvira Salazar said Waters had “a long history of inciting unrest and supporting dictators who use violence to get what they want”. The Texas representative August Pfluger called her rhetoric “outrageous and shameful”.Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Georgia Republican and conspiracy theorist who has expressed support for executing prominent Democrats and FBI agents, said she would try to expel Waters, whom she called “a danger to our society”.Greene claimed Waters “incited Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists”, following a shooting in which two Minnesota national guard members sustained minor injuries.The Chauvin trial is at the center of national dialogue. On Tuesday Floyd’s brother, Philonise Floyd, told NBC he had received a call from Biden.The president, he said, “was just calling. He knows how it is to lose a family member. And he knows that the process of what we’re going through so he was just letting us know that he was praying for us, and hoping that everything would come out to be OK.”Later, at the White House, Biden told reporters: “I can only imagine the pressure and the anxiety they’re feeling. They’re a good family, and they’re calling for peace and tranquility.”The president added: “I’m praying the verdict is the right verdict, which is, I think … it’s overwhelming, in my view. I wouldn’t say that, lest the jury was sequestered now and not hear me say that.”The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said Biden was “moved” by his conversations with the Floyd family. Biden was “certainly not looking to influence” the outcome of the trial by commenting, she said, adding: “I don’t think he would see it as weighing in on the verdict … regardless of the outcome, the president has consistently called for peace.”Waters’ words were raised in the courtroom in Minneapolis on Monday when defense attorneys motioned for a mistrial because of them. Judge Peter Cahill denied the motion but also expressed frustration, saying Waters had been “disrespectful to the rule of law and to the judicial branch”.Cahill also told the defense: “I’ll give you that Congresswoman Waters may have given you something on appeal that may result in this whole trial being overturned.”But Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, defended Waters, saying she did not need to apologize.“Maxine talked about ‘confrontation’ in the manner of the civil rights movement,” Pelosi said. More

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      ‘It would be glorious’: hopes high for Biden to nominate first Black woman to supreme court

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      Joe Biden’s promise to nominate an African American woman to the supreme court for the first time holds broad symbolic significance for Darlene McDonald, an activist and police reform commissioner in Salt Lake City, Utah.But McDonald has specific reasons for wanting a Black woman on the court, too.When Chief Justice John Roberts asserted in 2013 that federal oversight of voting in certain southern states was no longer needed because “things have changed dramatically” since the civil rights era, McDonald said, he revealed a blindness to something African American women have no choice but to see.“I believe that if Chief Justice Roberts had really understood racism, he would never have voted to gut the Voting Rights Act,” McDonald said, adding that hundreds of voter suppression bills introduced by Republicans in recent months suggest things have not “changed dramatically” since 1965.“Myself, as an African American woman, having that representation on the supreme court will be huge,” McDonald said, “especially in the sense of having someone that really understands racism.”The gradual diversification of US leadership, away from the overwhelming preponderance of white men, towards a mix that increasingly reflects the populace, was accelerated by the election last November of Kamala Harris, a woman of color, as vice-president.Black women have been overlooked in terms of their values and what they have to bring to society as well as to the benchNow enthusiasm is building around a similarly historic leap that activists, academics and professionals expect is just around the corner: the arrival on the court of a justice who would personify one of the most historically marginalized groups.“Black women have been overlooked for decades and decades in terms of their values and what they have to bring to society as well as to the bench,” said Leslie Davis, chief executive of the National Association of Minority and Women Owned Law Firms. “We should be able to look at our highest court in the land and see the reflection of some of the folks who have made America great. And that absolutely includes Black women.”Out of 115 justices in its history, the supreme court has counted two African American justices, one Latina and just five women. The court has no vacant seats but calls are growing for Stephen Breyer, a liberal who turns 83 this year, to retire. Last month, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden’s campaign commitment to nominating a Black woman “absolutely” holds.“This is a big moment in the making,” said Ben Jealous, president of People For the American Way, which recently launched the Her Fight Our Fight campaign to support and promote women of color in government and public service roles.“The presumption is that whomever Biden nominates, the first Black woman to the supreme court would be filling both the shoes of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall,” said Jealous.The late Ginsburg, a pioneering lawyer for women’s rights, was succeeded last fall by the conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett. Marshall was succeeded in 1991 by the George HW Bush appointee Clarence Thomas, who “is anathema to everything that the civil rights community stands for”, Jealous said.“It would be both glorious and a relief to have a Black woman on the supreme court who actually represents the values of the civil rights community, and the most transformative lawyers in our nation’s history.”Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a civil rights historian, dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute and professor of constitutional law, said having qualified federal judges who “reflect the broad makeup of the American public” would strengthen democracy and faith in the courts.“It’s an important historical moment that signifies equal opportunity,” Brown-Nagin said. “That anyone who is qualified has the chance to be considered for nomination, notwithstanding race, notwithstanding gender. That is where we are. In some ways, we shouldn’t be congratulating ourselves, right?”Brown-Nagin pointed out that a campaign was advanced in the 1960s to nominate Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to sit as a federal judge, but some Democratic allies of President Lyndon Johnson opposed such a nomination because they saw it as too politically risky.“This moment could have happened 50 years ago,” Brown-Nagin said.Daniel L Goldberg, legal director of the progressive Alliance For Justice, said to call the moment “overdue” did not capture it.“It is stunning that in the entire history of the republic, that no African American woman has sat on the highest court in the country,” Goldberg said. “For way too long in our nation’s history, the only people who were considered suitable and qualified for the court happened to be white males.”The first Black woman supreme court justice is likely to be nominated at a time when a renewed push for racial justice brings renewed focus on the court, which has played a key role in enforcing desegregation and reinforcing anti-discrimination laws.I would like to see someone like Sherrilyn Ifill or Lia Epperson – a woman who comes out of Thurgood Marshall’s old law firmThe killing of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, by a white police officer outside Minneapolis last weekend during the murder trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin has sharpened cries for a national answer to serial injustice at the local level – precisely the kind of conflict that typically lands before the supreme court.“As we sit here today, and watch the trial of Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd, that precipitated a summer of protests for the lives of Black people to matter – it feels that it is time for there to be a Black woman on the supreme court, because of the moment that we are in right now,” said McDonald, the Utah activist.Davis said it was “imperative” the country make strides toward racial justice after the invasion of the Capitol in January by white supremacists intent on overturning the 2020 presidential election, goaded on by a former president.“That shows that there are folks who are intentional about not seeing diversity, equity and inclusion thrive,” Davis said. “Now is the time for us as a country to recognize that until we value the voices of everyone, including Black women, we are silencing a very important part of the fabric of America.”‘A significant pool’The percentage of Black women who are federal judges – a common stepping-stone to a high court nomination – is extraordinarily small.According to the federal judicial center, the US circuit courts count only five African American women among sitting judges out of 179. There are 42 African American women judges at the district court level, out of 677.Those numbers are partly owing to Republican obstruction of Black women nominated by Barack Obama, including former seventh circuit nominee Myra Selby. She was denied a hearing in the Senate for the entirety of 2016 – a year later Republicans filled the seat with Donald Trump’s nominee: Amy Coney Barrett.“There is a significant pool of lawyers, law professors, public officials who would be viable nominees for the federal courts,” said Brown-Nagin. “The problem is not the pool.”Last month, Brown-Nagin co-signed a letter to the Senate judiciary committee supporting the nomination of district court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the court of appeals for the DC district, sometimes informally referred to as the second-highest court in the land.“Her resumé virtually screams that she is an ideal nominee for an appellate court or even the supreme court, and that is because she has the combination of educational and professional experience on the federal courts that feasibly fits the mold of typical supreme court nominees,” Brown-Nagin said.“I would say it goes beyond what we’ve seen, frankly, in recent nominees to the court.”Jealous, a former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said he would like to see a nominee “who cut their teeth defending the people, not corporations”.“I would like to see someone like Sherrilyn Ifill or Lia Epperson – a woman who comes out of Thurgood Marshall’s old law firm, the NAACP legal defense fund, with a courageous commitment to defending the rights of all Americans,” he said.McDonald said having a Black woman on the supreme court would mean American history had “come full circle”.“I feel in my heart that it’s time,” she said. “Everything takes its time. And everything happens at its time. I was raised in a church, so I’m just going to say it like that.” More

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      The Guardian view on an America First Caucus: a warning democracy is under siege | Editorial

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      In 1944, George Orwell felt that the word fascism had “lost the last vestige of meaning” so liberally had it been used. But fascism remains very much alive. Decades after Orwell’s message, one of the challenges today is to identify and name it. Whether the label could be applied to Donald Trump had divided expert opinion, until the 6 January assault on Capitol Hill by a mob whose passions had been inflamed by his speech earlier that day. This melted the resistance historians of fascism like Columbia University’s Robert Paxton felt to using the f-word. The use of violence against democratic institutions, he wrote, “crosses a red line”.If anyone wondered what American fascism might look like then they could start with the proposed congressional “America First Caucus”, which emerged this weekend from the office of extremist Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene. Carrying the torch for Trumpism, this fringe agenda conceals its racial argument behind muscular populist ones. The caucus plans were welcomed by legislators who had fanned the flames of the Capitol riot. Before being elected to Congress, Ms Greene peddled conspiracy theories, made racist statements and indicated support for the execution of Democratic leaders and FBI agents. She renounced those beliefs on the eve of being kicked off congressional committees but made no apology for having held them.The proposed caucus platform contained not so much dog whistles as foghorns for white supremacy. America, the document claims, is based on “respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions” and decries “post-1965 immigrants” for depressing workers’ wages, highlighting the year when the US ended its policy of giving preferential treatment to western European migrants. It calls for rebuilding the US with an “aesthetic value that befits the progeny of European architecture”. Thankfully the plan exploded on the launch pad. Republican leaders calculated it would hurt their electoral chances in moderate swing seats. Ms Greene disowned the caucus proposals.Fascism not only pursues rightwing policies, it seeks to build up mass-mobilising movements and paramilitary organisations with the aim of establishing a single-party dictatorship. Mr Trump saw armed citizens as a political asset. His heirs see despotism as a viable alternative to the current political structure. In Congress 147 Republican lawmakers promoted Mr Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Republicans in 47 states have 361 proposed laws to restrict voting access on grounds of baseless claims of electoral fraud.Around the world electorates will have to become reacquainted with fascism. Voters must attune themselves to what it looks and sounds like. In the UK, Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer was caught out earlier this year on a national radio phone-in when he failed to recognise a conspiracy theory popular with fascists, and Fox News star Tucker Carlson, known as the “great replacement”. It falsely claims that dwindling white birthrates have been orchestrated by multicultural global elites in an attempt to make whites a minority. There’s no suggestion that Sir Keir agreed with the racist caller but there was criticism in the way he handled the call. There is an urgent and pressing need to recognise both the real threat of fascism as well as the rhetorical and emotional motifs it employs. More

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      in Elections

      Maxine Waters criticised by Republicans for Minneapolis remarks – video

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      The Democratic representative Maxine Waters has come under criticism from the Republican house minority leader, after she expressed support for protesters against police brutality at a rally on Saturday in Brooklyn Center, the Minneapolis suburb where Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was shot and killed by police last week.
      Waters said she would ‘continue to fight in every way that I can for justice’, prompting the Republican minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, to accuse Waters of ‘inciting violence in Minneapolis’

      Republicans demand action against Maxine Waters after Minneapolis remarks More

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      Republicans demand action against Maxine Waters after Minneapolis remarks

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      The Republican leader in the House of Representatives and an extremist congresswoman who champions “Anglo-Saxon political traditions” have demanded action against the Democratic representative Maxine Waters, after she expressed support for protesters against police brutality.On Saturday, Waters spoke in Brooklyn Center, the Minneapolis suburb where Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was shot and killed by police last week.The California congresswoman spoke before final arguments on Monday in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis officer who knelt on the neck of George Floyd for more than nine minutes last May, resulting in the Black man’s death and global protests.“I’m going to fight with all of the people who stand for justice,” said Waters, who is Black. “We’ve got to get justice in this country and we cannot allow these killings to continue.”Tensions are high in Minneapolis.Waters said: “We’ve got to stay on the street and we’ve got to get more active, we’ve got to get more confrontational. We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business.”Of Chauvin, Waters said: “I hope we’re going to get a verdict that will say guilty, guilty, guilty. And if we don’t, we cannot go away.”On Sunday night the Republican minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, said: “Maxine Waters is inciting violence in Minneapolis – just as she has incited it in the past. If Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi doesn’t act against this dangerous rhetoric, I will bring action this week.”Waters, 82, a confrontational figure sometimes known as “Kerosene Maxine”, made headlines last week by telling the Ohio congressman Jim Jordan to “respect the chair and shut your mouth” during a hearing with Anthony Fauci, the chief White House medical adviser.She regularly clashed with Donald Trump, angering some Democratic leaders. In 2018, Waters said people should harass Trump aides in public. Pelosi called the comments “unacceptable”. The Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, went for “not American”.Observers said McCarthy’s most likely course of action is to seek formal censure – a move unlikely to succeed unless enough Democrats support it.From the far right of McCarthy’s party, the Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene compared Waters’ words with those of Trump, when he told supporters to march on Congress and overturn his election defeat, resulting in the deadly Capitol riot of 6 January.“Speaker Pelosi,” she tweeted. “You impeached President Trump after you said he incited violence by saying ‘march peacefully’ to the Capitol. So I can expect a yes vote from you on my resolution to expel Maxine Waters for inciting violence, riots, and abusing power threatening a jury, right?”Trump did tell supporters to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”. He also said: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.”In February, Greene lost committee assignments over conspiracy-laden remarks. At the weekend, she dropped plans to start an “America First Caucus” based on “Anglo-Saxon political traditions”.Some Democrats want to expel Greene from Congress. That too is unlikely to succeed. More