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      With Joe Biden’s own audacious New Deal, the democratic left rediscovers its soul

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      ‘It’s bold, yes, and we can get it done.” So declared President Joe Biden launching his $2tn plan last week to overhaul US infrastructure – ranging from fixing 20,000 miles of roads to remaking bridges, ports, water systems and “the care economy”, care now defined as part of the country’s infrastructure. Also included is a vast uplift in research spending on eliminating carbon emissions and on artificial intelligence. And up to another $2tn is to follow on childcare, education and healthcare, all hot on the heels of the $1.9tn “American Rescue Plan”, passed just three weeks ago.Cumulatively, the scale is head-spinning. Historians and politicians are already comparing the ambition with Roosevelt’s New Deal or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programme. In British terms, it’s as though an incoming Labour government pledged to spend £500bn over the next decade with a focus on left-behind Britain in all its manifestations – real commitments to levelling up, racial equity, net zero and becoming a scientific superpower.Mainstream and left-of-centre Democrats are as incredulous as they are joyful. Bernie Sanders, congratulating Biden, declared that the American Rescue Plan “is the most significant legislation for working people that has been passed in decades”. It was “the moment when Democrats recovered their soul”, writes Robert Kuttner, co-editor of the progressive magazine the American Prospect, ending a 45-year embrace of “Wall Street neoliberalism”. He concludes: “I am not especially religious, but I am reminded of my favourite Jewish prayer, the Shehecheyanu, which gives thanks to the Almighty for allowing us to reach this day.”What amazes the party and commentators alike is why a 78-year-old moderate stalwart such as Biden has suddenly become so audacious. After all, he backed Bill Clinton’s Third Way and was a cheerleader for fiscal responsibility under both him and Barack Obama, when the stock of federal debt was two-thirds of what it is today.Covid-19 has exposed the precariousness of most Americans’ lives. It has re-legitimised the very idea of governmentNow, the debt is no longer to be a veto to delivering crucial economic and social aims. If Trump and the Republicans can disregard it in their quest to cut taxes for the super-rich, Democrats can disregard it to give every American child $3,000 a year.It is not, in truth, a complete disregard. Under pressure from centrist Democrats, the infrastructure proposals over the next 15 years are to be paid for by tax rises, even if in the first stages they are financed by borrowing. Corporation tax will be raised progressively to 28%, a minimum tax is to be levied on all worldwide company profits, along with assaults on tax loopholes and tax havens.If others have better ideas, says Biden, come forward, but there must be no additional taxing of individual Americans whose income is below $400,000 a year. It’s an expansive definition of the middle class, witness to the breadth of the coalition he is building. But even these are tax hikes that Democrats would have shunned a decade ago.It is high risk, especially given the wafer-thin majorities in both the House of Representatives and Senate. With implacable Republican opposition, it requires a united Democratic party, which Biden is orchestrating with some brilliance, his long years in Washington having taught him how to cut deals, when and with whom. He judiciously pays tribute to Sanders, on the left, for “laying the foundations” of the programme and flatters a conservative Democrat centrist such as West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, who insists on tax rises to pay for the infrastructure bill. What will be truly radical is getting the programme into law.Yet, still: why, and why now? The answer is the man, the people round him, the gift of Donald Trump and, above all, the moment – the challenge of recovering from Covid. Biden’s roots are working class; beset by personal tragedies, charged by his Catholicism, his politics are driven by a profound empathy for the lot of ordinary people. He may have surrounded himself with superb economists – the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, Cecilia Rouse and Jared Bernstein at the Council of Economic Advisers, Brian Deese at the National Economic Council, Lina Khan at the Federal Trade Commission – who are the intellectual driving forces, but he himself will have been influenced as much by the Catholic church’s increasingly radical social policy, represented by Pope Benedict XVI’s revision of the famous encyclical Rerum Novarum. What makes the politics work so well is Trump’s legacy in uniting Democrats as never before while dividing Republicans. Biden knows the danger of the midterm elections in 2022, having seen his Democrat predecessors lose control of the Senate, House or both, so introducing gridlock. His bet is that his popular programme, proving that big government works for the mass of Americans, rather than wayward government by tweet, will keep divided Republicans at bay. Better that than betting, like Clinton and Obama, on the merits of fiscal responsibility, which Republicans, if they win power, will torch to serve their own constituency.But the overriding driver is the pandemic and the way it has exposed the precariousness of many Americans’ lives. It has re-legitimised the very idea of government: it is government that has procured and delivered mass vaccination and government that is supporting the incomes of ordinary Americans. Unconstrained US capitalism has become too monopolistic; too keen on promoting fortunes for insiders; too neglectful of the interests, incomes and hopes of most of the people. An astute politician, Biden has read the runes – and acted to launch a monumental reset. Expect more to come on trade, company and finance reform and the promotion of trade unions.The chances are he will get his programmes through and they will substantially work. The lessons for the British left are clear. Left firebrands, however good their programmes, may appeal to the party faithful. But it takes a Biden to win elections and then deliver. With that lesson learned, we, too, may one day be able to invoke the Shehecheyanu. More

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      JD Vance eyes Ohio’s Senate seat as a working-class man – with millions in tech funds

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      As a prospective conservative candidate for the US Senate from Ohio, author JD Vance can claim a rarely authentic connection to the white working-class voters who helped make Donald Trump president.In his bestselling 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, Vance told the tale of his escape from generations of poverty and addiction in the shadow of Appalachia, thanks to a fiercely loving grandmother and a stroke or two of lonesome luck. (The Netflix film adaptation was less well received than the book.)Even if Vance, 36, were a Democrat, his life story – the Marines, Yale law school, venture capital, national renown – would make for political biography gold.But as the Republican party embarks on a highly tenuous makeover, in the aftermath of the Trump presidency, from being “the party of the country clubs” to the party of the working class, Vance and his political fortunes have attracted a disproportionate share of excitement in conservative circles – and a mounting pile of actual gold.Before he has even confirmed that he will run for office, Vance has built a campaign slush fund worth at least $10m on the strength of donations from the tech billionaire Peter Thiel, a formerly ardent Trump supporter, and the hedge fund heiress-slash-Republican mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, Forbes magazine first reported.The new working-class face of the Republican party, it seems, will be rolled out on a distinctly ruling class budget.But a successful Vance candidacy might be worth a very large sum indeed for Republicans, who could see a rare opportunity to confer blue-collar legitimacy on the tricky project of sweeping decades of hostility on workers’ issues – from wages to unions to health care to the giant economic relief package signed into law by Joe Biden just last month – behind a red curtain.“They’re not going to get there on the standard worker issues,” said David Pepper, former chairman of the Ohio Democratic party, of the Republican attempt to rebrand. “There’s no way.”The conventional wisdom among political strategists has long been that the Republican party, whose supporters are disproportionately white, faces a demographic timebomb as the US electorate diversifies. Trump knocked down the theory a bit last year by making inroads among Latinos and, to a lesser extent, African American men.The “working-class” pitch is partly an appeal to those new Republican-curious voters. But Trump also pointed to another, powerful way for the Republican party to extend its reach: by winning an ever-greater share of working-class white voters, the kind who might have once belonged to a union and voted Democratic, but who backed Trump in both 2016 and 2020 by a margin 40 points greater than the national spread.Republican strategists are brainstorming about how to retain those voters. An internal Republican memo revealed this week by Axios, called Cementing GOP as the Working Class Party, advised that “House Republicans can broaden our electorate, increase voter turnout, and take back the House by enthusiastically rebranding and reorienting as the Party of the Working Class.”Plutocrats inside the party who might disagree are keeping mum for now, or placing their bets discreetly, while the party’s leading firebrands in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election – senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley – have taken up the message and are running with it.“The Republican party is not the party of the country clubs, it’s the party of hardworking, blue-collar men and women,” Cruz hypnotically declared in February, in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).“We are a working-class party now,” Hawley tweeted a day after the November election. “That’s the future.”Democratic partisans snipe that a half-century long commitment by Republicans to increasing the comfort of America’s wealthiest combined with a more recent strategy of trying to prevent voters from voting cannot be erased with simple assertions of newborn political intent.But unfortunately for Democrats, in a world where politics has largely come detached from policy – taken over by culture wars and other more sinister currents roiled by Trump, including racist resentments and the scapegoating of immigrants – the Republican strategy is not dead on arrival, as top Democratic strategists themselves admit.“The Democratic party envisions themselves as the party of working people,” said David Axelrod, former Barack Obama adviser, in a debrief of the 2020 election, “but it doesn’t feel that way to a lot of working people, and the party needs to figure that out.”Both sides acknowledge that branding is important, and in 2022 in Ohio, that could be where Vance comes in. The Senate seat in play unexpectedly opened earlier this year, when incumbent Republican Rob Portman, a mild-mannered Trump skeptic who nevertheless supported the former president, indicated he had had enough of Washington.Older-style conservatives, who dislike Trump but might nod knowingly at the scenes in Vance’s book describing people who “gamed the welfare system”, have encouraged him to get in the race.“I hope Vance will run for Ohio Senator Rob Portman’s seat in 2022,” tweeted Rod Dreher, senior editor of the American Conservative magazine. “He is exactly the kind of new Republican we need.”Assuming that Vance’s Yale law degree or Silicon Valley money would not torpedo his working-class credibility with Ohio voters, however, he could face a second crisis of authenticity, one that could stop his candidacy short before he gets to face a single Democratic opponent.To get to the general election, if he runs, Vance must first survive a Republican primary race – and in the cutthroat world of base Republican politics, where fealty to Trump is all-important, Vance is distinctly vulnerable.“I think that I’m going to vote third party because I can’t stomach Trump,” Vance told NPR on book tour in 2016. “I think that he’s noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place.”Perhaps even worse, Vance wrote admiringly of Barack Obama in the New York Times in 2017, saying he would “miss” the former president “and the example he set”.His primary opponents would hammer him relentlessly on plentiful past statements such as those, and in recent months a new version of JD Vance has been scrambling furiously away from the old JD Vance. He has tweeted broadsides against the “ruling class”; suggested that immigrants represent a pandemic threat; appeared on Fox News to trash Meghan and Harry, and bash Biden on immigration; gone after big tech, as he takes Silicon Valley money; and even played Twitter footsie with QAnon.“He’s clearly trying to mimic this Trump genuflection that we’re seeing from some of the other candidates, which is kind of embarrassing for JD Vance, because his brand was very different just a couple years ago,” said Pepper, the former Democratic party chair.It remains to be seen whether the internal tensions – not to say hypocrisies – of a Vance candidacy funded by coastal cash, or of the greater Republican rebranding project, will prove too great to sustain in real life. For now, they are both untested political theories.But with a $10m war chest, Vance has enough to get in the game.“That’s a lot of money, that will help him a lot,” said Pepper, adding that Vance’s popularity as an author belied a low name-recognition, for now, among Ohio voters. “But if the only reason he’s in the game is because of coastal big tech, it kills the ‘I’m-a-Trump-guy’ narrative – but it also kills his narrative about representing the working man.” More

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      Dominion: will one Canadian company bring down Trump's empire of disinformation?

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      When Donald Trump and his allies pushed the “big lie” of voter fraud and a stolen election, it seemed nothing could stop them spreading disinformation with impunity.Politicians and activists’ pleas fell on deaf ears. TV networks and newspapers fact-checked in vain. Social media giants proved impotent.But now a little-known tech company, founded 18 years ago in Canada, has the conspiracy theorists running scared. The key: suing them for defamation, potentially for billions of dollars.“Libel laws may prove to be a very old mechanism to deal with a very new phenomenon of massive disinformation,” said Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist. “We have all these fact checkers but lots of people don’t care. Nothing else seems to work, so maybe this will.”The David in this David and Goliath story is Dominion Voting Systems, an election machine company named after Canada’s Dominion Elections Act of 1920. Its main offices are in Toronto and Denver and it describes itself as the leading supplier of US election technology. It says it serves more than 40% of American voters, with customers in 28 states.But the 2020 election put a target on its back. As the White House slipped away and Trump desperately pushed groundless claims of voter fraud, his lawyers and cheerleaders falsely alleged Dominion had rigged the polls in favour of Joe Biden.Among the more baroque conspiracy theories was that Dominion changed votes through algorithms in its voting machines that were created in Venezuela to rig elections for the late dictator Hugo Chávez.The truth matters. Lies have consequencesIt was laughable but also potentially devastating to Dominion’s reputation and ruinous to its business. It also fed a cocktail of conspiracy theories that fuelled Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January, as Congress moved to certify the election results. Five people died, including an officer of the Capitol police.The company is fighting back. It filed $1.3bn defamation lawsuits against Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, and MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, for pushing the allegations without evidence.Separately, Dominion’s security director, Eric Coomer, launched a suit against the Trump campaign, Giuliani, Powell and some conservative media figures and outlets, saying he had been forced into hiding by death threats.Then came the big one. Last month Dominion filed a $1.6bn defamation suit against Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, accusing it of trying to boost ratings by amplifying the bogus claims.“The truth matters,” Dominion’s lawyers wrote in the complaint. “Lies have consequences. Fox sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the process. If this case does not rise to the level of defamation by a broadcaster, then nothing does.”The suit argues that Fox hosts and guests “took a small flame and turned it into a forest fire” by broadcasting wild assertions that Dominion systems changed votes and ignoring repeated efforts by the company to set the record straight.“Radioactive falsehoods” spread by Fox News will cost Dominion $600m over the next eight years, according to the lawsuit, and have resulted in Dominion employees being harassed and the company losing major contracts in Georgia and Louisiana.Fox fiercely disputes the charge. It said in a statement: “Fox News Media is proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism, and will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court.”Other conservative outlets have also raised objections. Chris Ruddy, chief executive of Newsmax, said: “We think all of these suits are an infringement on press freedom as it relates to media organisations. There were the years of Russian collusion investigations when all of the major cable networks reported unsubstantiated claims. I think Fox was reporting the news and certainly Newsmax was.”But some observers believe Dominion has a strong case. Norman Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said: “Dominion has an outstanding prospect in its litigation against Fox for the simple reason that Fox knowingly broadcast over and over again the most outrageous and clear lies.You should not have a major television outlet that is a megaphone for outrageous falsehoods about the election“Certainly there are protections under the first amendment and otherwise but this is so far outside the bounds, such a clear case, that I think Fox is looking at a very serious legal exposure here and that’s the way it should be.“You should not have a major television outlet that is able day after day to provide a megaphone for outrageous falsehoods having to do with the election, one that helped trigger a violent insurrection on 6 January. They should not be able to feed a steady stream of those pernicious lies into the body politic without any legal consequences.”‘A real battleground’Eisen, a former White House “ethics czar”, suggests that the Dominion case could provide at least one model for dealing with the war on truth.“The United States and the world need to deal with disinformation,” he said.“There can be no doubt that every method is going to be required but certainly libel law provides one very important vehicle for establishing consequences and while there’s no such thing as a guarantee when you go to court, this is an exceptionally high risk for Fox with a large price tag attached as well.”There are signs that the legal actions, and their grave financial implications, have got reckless individuals and outlets on the run.Powell asked a judge to throw out the lawsuit against her, arguing that her assertions were protected by the right to free speech. But she also offered the unusual defence that she had been exaggerating to make a point and that “reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact but view them only as claims that await testing by the courts through the adversary process”.Two days after voting machine maker Smartmatic filed a $2.7bn defamation suit that alleged TV host Lou Dobbs falsely accused it of election rigging, Fox Business abruptly canceled Lou Dobbs Tonight, its most viewed show. It has also filed a motion to dismiss the Smartmatic suit.Meanwhile pro-Trump outlets have begun using prepared disclaimers or prerecorded programmes to counter election conspiracy theories spouted by guests. When Lindell launched into an attack on Dominion on Newsmax in February, co-anchor Bob Sellers tried to cut him off and then walked off set.RonNell Andersen Jones, a law professor at the University of Utah, told the Washington Post: “We are seeing the way that libel has become a real battleground in the fight against disinformation.“The threat of massive damages for spreading probably false conspiracy theories on matters of public concern could turn out to be the one tool that is successful in disincentivising that behaviour, where so many other tools seem to have failed.”The defamation suits will provide another test of the judiciary as a pillar of American democracy. The courts’ independence proved robust regarding dozens of lawsuits by Trump and his allies seeking to overturn the election outcome.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “It is such an under-appreciated illumination of the multiple avenues for pursuing politics. Sometimes we get understandably absorbed by what Congress can do, which is obviously significant at times, but mostly fairly kind of deadlocked.“But we’re going to see the legal system prosecuting the 6 January perpetrators, prosecuting Donald Trump and prosecuting these libel charges by Dominion over the monstrous lies that were told after the election.“Thank goodness for the courts because the elected branches have really botched it.” More

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      Trump and Carlson lead backlash as MLB pulls All-Star Game from Georgia

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      Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson led rightwing backlash after Major League Baseball said it would not play its All-Star game in Georgia because of a new law that restricts voting rights in the state.The former president and the Fox News host some say is his Republican political heir thereby ranged themselves against current president Joe Biden and the Democrat he served as vice-president, Barack Obama.“Baseball is already losing tremendous numbers of fans,” Trump said in a statement, “and now they leave Atlanta with their All-Star Game because they are afraid of the radical left Democrats.“… Boycott baseball and all of the woke companies that are interfering with free and fair elections. Are you listening Coke, Delta and all?”Coke and Delta are among companies which have expressed concern over the Georgia law, which restricts early and mail-in voting, measures seen to target minority voters likely to back Democrats.Laws under consideration in other Republican-run states have attracted criticism from corporate America. The Georgia law was passed by Republicans after Biden won the state against Trump and Democrats won both Senate runoff elections in January.Referring to the segregation of the post-civil war south, Biden called the law: “Jim Crow in the 21st century.”In his own statement on Saturday, Obama congratulated MLB “for taking a stand on behalf of voting rights for all citizens”.He also said: “There’s no better way for America’s pastime to honor the great Hank Aaron, who always led by example.”Aaron, known as the Hammer, was a long-time MLB home-run record holder who played for the Atlanta Braves and endured racist abuse throughout his life in the sport. He died in January, aged 86.MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said he had “decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game and MLB draft” from the home of the Atlanta Braves.“Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box.”The move was not without precedent. In 2016 North Carolina lost the right to host high-profile NCAA college events over a bill which restricted rights for transgender people.On Friday night Carlson, who some say could be a contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 if Trump does not run again, claimed MLB “believes it has veto power over the democratic process”.Before MLB acted, Biden said he would support moving events from Atlanta. Carlson said that showed the president was “willing to destroy even something as wholesome as the country’s traditional game purely to increase the power of his political party”.The chief of the MLB players union has indicated support for the move. In a statement on Friday, the New York Yankees great and Miami Marlins chief executive Derek Jeter said: “We should promote increasing voter turnout as opposed to any measures that adversely impact the ability to cast a ballot … We support the commissioner’s decision to stand up for the values of our game.”Georgia governor Brian Kemp – a bête noire for Trump over his refusal to overturn Biden’s win – said MLB had “caved to fear, political opportunism and liberal lies”. He also decried “cancel culture”, a key Republican talking point.Stacey Abrams, who Kemp beat in a 2018 election he ran as Georgia secretary of state, said she was “disappointed” the All-Star game would not be played in the state.But Abrams, who campaigns for voting rights and has become an influential figure in the national Democratic party, also said she was “proud of [MLB’s] stance on voting rights” and “urged events and productions to come and speak out or stay and fight”.Also on Friday, nearly 200 companies signed a statement expressing concern at moves to restrict voting rights in Republican-run states.Many observers pointed out that the political ramifications of MLB’s decision to move the All-Star Game will be stronger than the economic fallout, given that coronavirus-related restrictions would have placed limits on capacity at the event this year.A leading professor of sports economics warned that MLB could risk losing the support of conservatives in a fanbase which skews right.“After the country’s top professional basketball and football leagues embraced the Black Lives Matter movement last year,” Andrew Zimbalist of Smith College told the New York Times, “they faced organised boycotts from conservatives, though the effort ultimately had little effect. And baseball’s fanbase is older and whiter than basketball’s or football’s.” More

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      'A 10ft pole is not long enough': Matt Gaetz isolated in sex-trafficking scandal

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      The Florida Republican congressman Matt Gaetz appears increasingly politically isolated amid a spiralling scandal over a federal sex-trafficking investigation. Even for Donald Trump, one Republican political operative said, “a 10ft pole is not long enough”.Federal prosecutors are reportedly examining whether Gaetz and a political ally facing sex trafficking allegations may have paid underage girls or offered them gifts in exchange for sex.Few Republicans have rushed to offer any kind of support to Gaetz, a three-term conservative provocateur known for support of Trump, high-volume attacks, sometimes against those in his own party, and frequent media appearances.The Associated Press reported that several lawmakers and aides who spoke on condition of anonymity said Gaetz’s prospects for remaining in Congress were complicated by his unpopularity in his own party.The Daily Beast, meanwhile, reported that advisers were pleading with the former president to keep quiet. Trump was reported to have said the affair seemed “really bad”, though he also thought the allegations could be a “smear” against Gaetz.“I don’t hope for anybody to be guilty of anything but it sounds like [Gaetz has] got a lot of explaining to do,” Barry Bennett, a longtime Republican operative and former Trump adviser, told the website.“People underestimate Donald Trump’s political ear … For something like this, a 10ft pole is not long enough. The former president should stay as far away from this as possible.”Fox News has also stayed quiet. As Vox reported, the Gaetz affair was not mentioned on the rightwing network on Thursday, or on Friday until the news anchor Brett Baier covered the allegations on his evening show.Gaetz has been a familiar presence on Fox News, according to Mediate appearing on the channel 18 times in March. Shortly before news of the allegations against him broke, he was reported to be considering retiring from Congress in order to pursue a media career.Any such plans are now under threat. The scrutiny of Gaetz reportedly stems from a justice department investigation of Joel Greenberg, a former Florida tax collector indicted last year and accused of a number of federal crimes. He has pleaded not guilty.In addition, CNN has reported that Gaetz allegedly showed nude photos of women he slept with to colleagues on the floor of the House of Representatives.Republican leaders have largely been silent. But Gaetz’s spokesman, Luke Ball, has resigned.Part of the investigation is examining whether Gaetz, 38, had sex with a 17-year-old and other underage girls and violated federal sex trafficking laws, sources told the AP, adding that federal agents suspect Greenberg may have enticed the girls and introduced some to Gaetz. Investigators are reported to be examining whether the two men had sex with the same girls.Details of the investigation were first reported by the New York Times, which also said Gaetz took ecstasy, an illegal drug, before having sex.Gaetz has said: “No part of the allegations against me are true.”Among rare lawmakers to express support for Gaetz is the freshman Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, another rising figure propelled by media appearances and baseless conspiracy theories.House minority leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters the accusations against Gaetz were “serious”. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House speaker, told reporters: “If in fact these allegations are true, of course being removed from the Judiciary committee is the least that could be done. From what we’ve heard so far, this would be a matter for the ethics committee.”The investigation into Gaetz has been extant since at least summer 2020 and has reportedly reached the highest levels of the justice department. Investigators have interviewed several witnesses and have been scrutinizing travel and financial records.Greenberg was the elected tax collector in Seminole county near Orlando when he resigned last June after his arrest on charges including stalking a political opponent, trafficking a minor for sex and illegally using a state database to create fake drivers licenses and other ID cards.Since then, the case has ballooned to more than 30 charges, including wire fraud and charges involving efforts to divert at least $400,000 from the tax collectors office into cryptocurrency for Greenberg’s own use. Other charges accuse him attempting to fraudulently obtain coronavirus relief funds.The justice department has a separate investigation into the extortion allegations, the AP reported. Gaetz has said his family has been cooperating with the FBI. More

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      Trump on the ballot again? Daughter-in-law Lara ponders Senate run

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      The Trump flags and yard signs are still up. Flags that shout “Impeach Biden” fly on the back of pickup trucks. “Most people here believe Donald Trump is still the president,” says Nancy Allen of her neighborhood in Shelby, North Carolina. “And I call him President Trump.”Allen might get the chance to vote Trump again sooner than expected. But it will not be for Donald or his politically ambitious daughter Ivanka. Instead the former president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, a North Carolina native, is considering a run for the US Senate next year.“If she decides to run, I will campaign for her,” added Allen, 74, who used to run a business in Wilmington, where Lara Trump (née Yunaska) was born and raised and where her parents still live. “She’s very approachable: it’s amazing that she’s just like one of us. She has no airs about her at all. She’s a people’s person.“She is well known all across the state, which is very important, and I think she is good and she would win. Henry, my husband, said yesterday that it would be a landslide if if she ran.”Lara, 38, a former TV producer who has also worked as a chef and personal trainer, married Eric Trump at his father’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2014. Since becoming a member of the family, she has displayed the zeal of the convert and proved an ardent champion of the “Make America great again” movement.Lara played up her local roots when addressing rallies for the president in North Carolina and her bio on Twitter, where she amassed 1.2m followers, says simply: “NC girl in NYC #MAGA.” She also led Women for Trump events, hosted numerous campaign video streams and, after her father-in-law’s defeat, unabashedly pushed false claims of voter fraud.She told Sean Hannity, a host on the conservative Fox News network, on 5 December: “I want to make it very clear to the American people: this is not over. So don’t for a second think that Joe Biden is going to be sworn in on January 20th.”This week Lara returned to the spotlight in more ways than one. She conducted Trump’s first on-camera interview since leaving the White House on her online show The Right View, but the conversation was removed from Facebook and Instagram because he has been banned from those platforms for incendiary comments.It also emerged that Lara is joining Fox News as a paid on-air contributor – a potential boost to her political brand ahead of a possible run for the Senate seat in North Carolina to be vacated next year by retiring Republican Richard Burr. She told the Fox & Friends programme on Monday that she has not “officially made a decision, but hopefully sometime soon”.Such a move would require her to sever ties with Fox News, according to the network’s policy. It would also represent the first electoral test of the Trump name since 2020 and underline how the former president’s children and their partners have emerged as some of his most influential allies and surrogates.Don Jr’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News presenter, campaigned vigorously for the president and went viral with a Republican national convention address that ended with a crescendo: “The best is yet to come!” Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner, served a senior White House adviser with a portfolio so sprawling that it was ridiculed by critics.The surprise, perhaps, is that the first standard-bearer would be Lara rather than Ivanka, who amid much speculation has ruled out a run for the Senate in Florida.Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “She would be what I think Donald Trump hoped Ivanka would be. She would become the avatar for the Trump family name. She looks like a Trump, she talks like a Trump.“Every president has wanted his children or grandchildren to run for office for a long time. Trump is no different. This is a daughter-in-law, but it doesn’t matter, and we’ll see. Maybe she can do whatever Ivanka can’t do and appeal to suburban college educated women who defected from Trump.”How Lara fares in at the ballot box could also offer clues to the presidential election, Schiller added, even if Donald Trump himself decides not to run again. “By Lara Trump running in North Carolina, the Trump brand get tested and, if she’s successful, that’s an indication that the Trump brand might do well in 2024 in the presidential race, which may lead to pushing Don Jr out there to run for president.“There are a lot of other people who want to run for president in the Republican party in 2024. You’re going to see a very complicated dance between prominent Republicans and the Trump children and Trump himself in the next two years because they want his support but they do not want them to get too successful because that will crowd them all out.”There is no guarantee that Lara would win a Republican primary where the Trump name might turn from asset into liability. Rivals could include Mark Meadows, a former congressman from North Carolina who became Trump’s chief of staff. Burr, the outgoing senator, voted in favour of convicting Trump at his impeachment trial following the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “There are going to be other candidates on the Republican side in North Carolina and some of them are going to both claim loyalty to Donald Trump to try to neutralise that but also suggest to voters that they have a better chance of beating a fairly competitive Democratic candidate come the general election.“Because one thing we know about Donald Trump – and this will be part of the political genetics here – is that he’s a turnoff for independents.”Trump won North Carolina by just 1.3% against Joe Biden, significantly less than his margin in 2016. Democrats hope that the state can trend in the same direction as Georgia and Virginia, where anti-Trump resistance was a rallying point.Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist based in South Carolina who works in North Carolina frequently, said: “The demographics of North Carolina still would give us real possibilities, real opportunities to do the unthinkable, just like we did in Georgia in January.“I think that the timing is right, the environment is right and Republicans are going to have a fight on their hands that they did not expect for that Senate seat. The same way Georgia was key to the Senate in the 2020 cycle, I think North Carolina will be just as key for the 2022 cycle.” More

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      US Capitol: police officer and suspect dead after vehicle rams barrier – live

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      Key events

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      17:07

      Biden orders White House flags at half staff

      5.01pm EDT
      17:01

      Today so far

      4.41pm EDT
      16:41

      Major League Baseball pulls All-Star Game from Georgia over voting law

      4.26pm EDT
      16:26

      Pelosi mourns killed USCP officer as ‘a martyr for our democracy’

      4.20pm EDT
      16:20

      USCP identifies killed officer as William ‘Billy’ Evans

      3.20pm EDT
      15:20

      USCP lifts Capitol lockdown after car attack

      2.53pm EDT
      14:53

      Police: ‘It does not appear to be terrorism related’

      Live feed

      Show

      5.49pm EDT
      17:49

      Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of the homeland security, has released a statement in response to the attack at the Capitol this afternoon.
      “My thoughts and prayers go out to the family, friends, and colleagues of the U.S. Capitol Police Officer who lost his life today protecting the very symbol of our democracy,” Mayorkas said.
      “There is still much to be determined about this attack and DHS offers its full support to Capitol Police and DC Mayor Bowser.”
      USCP has identified the officer killed in the attack as William “Billy” Evans, an 18-year veteran of the force.

      5.44pm EDT
      17:44

      After two deadly attacks on the US Capitol mere months apart, questions are being raised about whether security measures, which were enhanced after Jan. 6, are extensive enough, Vox reports.
      A review of the security released last month found that the Capitol Police are “understaffed, insufficiently equipped, and inadequately trained” to defend the nation’s seat of government from future attacks.
      In a 15-page draft report, commissioned by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, retired Army Lt. Gen Russel Honoré called for adding 854 officers, including 424 to specialize in intelligence, dignitary protection, and operational planning.
      He also recommended additional fencing, specifically barriers that are “easily erected and deconstructed.”

      Scott Taylor 7 News I-Team
      (@ScottTaylorTV)
      More of my interview with former @FBI agent Brad Garrett about today’s attack at the U.S. Capitol. @BradInvestigate tells me the current threat is too high not to add more security at the Capitol. @7NewsDC pic.twitter.com/xQSQFoW56n

      April 2, 2021

      Roughly 4-miles of 7-foot-high “non-scalable” metal fencing was set up around the Capitol complex following the Jan. 6 riot but it was taken down in March, according to Vox.
      Rep. Tim Ryan told reporters today that new permanent additions to security are being considered by lawmakers. “We’ll be reviewing everything, at this point, including the fencing,” he said, emphasizing that there are still many unknowns about today’s incident
      “We can’t get too far ahead of ourselves without knowing that we have the ability to protect the Capitol, to harden the Capitol,” he added.

      5.07pm EDT
      17:07

      Biden orders White House flags at half staff

      Gabrielle Canon here, signing in from the west coast to take you through the Friday afternoon news.
      President Biden has issued a statement on today’s violent attack at the US Capitol that resulted in the death of Officer William Evens and left another US Capitol police officer injured.
      “We know what a difficult time this has been for the Capitol, everyone who works there, and those who protect it,” Biden said in the statement, after expressing his condolences to Evans’ family. His death is the second line-of-duty death this year for the Capitol police, who also lost an officer during the Jan. 6 attack, and the 7th in the agency’s history, according to the Associated Press.
      Here is Biden’s full statement:

      Jill and I were heartbroken to learn of the violent attack at a security checkpoint on the U.S. Capitol grounds, which killed Officer William Evans of the U.S. Capitol Police, and left a fellow officer fighting for his life. We send our heartfelt condolences to Officer Evans’ family, and everyone grieving his loss. We know what a difficult time this has been for the Capitol, everyone who works there, and those who protect it.
      I have been receiving ongoing briefings from my Homeland Security Advisor, and will be getting further updates as the investigation proceeds.
      I want to express the nation’s gratitude to the Capitol Police, the National Guard Immediate Response Force, and others who quickly responded to this attack. As we mourn the loss of yet another courageous Capitol Police officer, I have ordered that the White House flags be lowered to half-mast.

      Updated
      at 5.16pm EDT

      5.01pm EDT
      17:01

      Today so far

      That’s it from me on this sad day in Washington. My west coast colleague, Gabrielle Canon, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
      Here’s where the day stands so far:

      US Capitol Police officer William “Billy” Evans was killed after a car rammed through a security barrier at the Capitol this afternoon. The acting USCP chief, Yogananda Pittman, said a suspect attempted to drive through the barrier and then exited his car wielding a knife. The suspect lunged at the two officers present, and at least one of the officers opened fire on the man, who later died of his injuries.
      The Capitol attack did not appear to be terrorism-related, the acting chief of the Metropolitan Police Department of DC said. At an afternoon press conference, acting MPD chief Robert Contee said it did not appear the Capitol was under active threat. The lockdown at the Capitol was lifted soon afterwards.
      Nancy Pelosi mourned Evans as “a martyr for our democracy”. The House speaker said in a statement, “Today, once again, these heroes risked their lives to protect our Capitol and our Country, with the same extraordinary selflessness and spirit of service seen on January 6. On behalf of the entire House, we are profoundly grateful.” A spokesperson for Pelosi also said the Capitol flags will be lowered to half-staff in honor of Evans.
      The Major League Baseball All-Star Game is being moved out of Georgia over the state’s new voting law. The law, which Republican Governor Brian Kemp signed late last month, restricts access to voting, and it has been widely criticized by Democrats and voting rights activists.
      Fully vaccinated Americans can travel without quarantining, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. According to the CDC’s newest guidelines, vaccinated individuals can travel without getting tested for coronavirus or quarantining after their return. The agency said such travel is low-risk for those who have been vaccinated.

      Gabrielle will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

      4.41pm EDT
      16:41

      Major League Baseball pulls All-Star Game from Georgia over voting law

      The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:
      Major League Baseball will not hold the annual All-Star Game in Atlanta this year after Georgia passed a new law that makes it significantly harder to vote.
      The announcement is perhaps the most consequential action taken since Georgia governor Brian Kemp, a Republican, signed the measure into law. Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola spoke out against the bill this week, but faced criticism for not doing so earlier, when their influence could have had a significant impact on the legislation.
      “I have decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game and MLB draft,” Rob Manfred, the league’s commissioner, said in a statement. “Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box.”
      The Georgia law implements new requirements for mail-in voting, a process voters in the state used in record numbers without evidence of fraud in 2020.

      4.26pm EDT
      16:26

      Pelosi mourns killed USCP officer as ‘a martyr for our democracy’

      House speaker Nancy Pelosi has released a statement mourning the loss of US Capitol Police Officer William “Billy” Evans in this afternoon’s attack.
      “Today, America’s heart has been broken by the tragic and heroic death of one of our Capitol Police heroes: Officer William Evans. He is a martyr for our democracy,” the Democratic speaker said.
      “Members of Congress, staff and Capitol workers, and indeed all Americans are united in appreciation for the courage of the U.S. Capitol Police. Today, once again, these heroes risked their lives to protect our Capitol and our Country, with the same extraordinary selflessness and spirit of service seen on January 6. On behalf of the entire House, we are profoundly grateful.”
      Pelosi pledged that Congress was ready to “assist law enforcement with a swift and comprehensive investigation into this heinous attack”.
      “May we always remember the heroism of those who have given their lives to defend our Democracy,” the speaker said. “May it be a comfort to the family of Officer Evans that so many mourn with them and pray for them at this sad time.”

      4.20pm EDT
      16:20

      USCP identifies killed officer as William ‘Billy’ Evans

      The US Capitol Police has identified the officer who was killed in the attack this afternoon as William “Billy” Evans.
      “It is with profound sadness that I share the news of the passing of Officer William ‘Billy’ Evans this afternoon from injuries he sustained following an attack at the North Barricade by a lone assailant,” USCP acting chief Yogananda Pittman said in a statement.

      U.S. Capitol Police
      (@CapitolPolice)
      Statement on the Loss of USCP Colleague Officer William “Billy” Evans: https://t.co/JMAEbTcbAp pic.twitter.com/DPvkAv5ptO

      April 2, 2021

      Pittman noted Evans, who succumbed to his injuries after being struck by a car that rammed through a security barrier, had been a member of the USCP force for 18 years.
      “He began his USCP service on March 7, 2003, and was a member of the Capitol Division’s First Responder’s Unit,” Pittman said. “Please keep Officer Evans and his family in your thoughts and prayers.”

      4.17pm EDT
      16:17

      Senator Brian Schatz, a Democrat of Hawaii, offered his thoughts to the US Capitol Police, after an officer died in the attack this afternoon.
      “Being a Capitol Police officer has never been more difficult or more stressful. All the love and comfort in the world to them and their family members,” Schatz said on Twitter.

      Brian Schatz
      (@brianschatz)
      Being a Capitol Police officer has never been more difficult or more stressful. All the love and comfort in the world to them and their family members.

      April 2, 2021

      This is the second line-of-duty death for the USCP since January, when Officer Brian Sicknick succumbed to his injuries from the Capitol insurrection.
      Prior to 2021, a total of four USCP officers had died in the line of duty in the entire history of the force, according to the USCP website.

      4.06pm EDT
      16:06

      Martin Pengelly

      The House and Senate are not in session but some elected officials and staff were in the building on Friday, as a car rammed a security barrier on the grounds.
      Ro Khanna, a Democratic representative from California, spoke to CNN from his car, where he said officers had told him to go after he came back to the Capitol from going out for lunch.
      “It’s really sad,” he said. “Once the barriers were removed we were moving back to some sense of normalcy, but this just shows the level of risk there still is.
      “I can’t imagine saying that going to the United States Capitol to represent your constituents is actually a dangerous thing.”

      3.50pm EDT
      15:50

      Noah Green, a 25-year-old man from Indiana, is the suspect who rammed through a Capitol security checkpoint in his car this afternoon, according to NBC News.

      Tom Winter
      (@Tom_Winter)
      BREAKING / NBC News: Multiple senior law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation say Noah Green, 25 year old male, from Indiana is the person who attacked the Capitol today. Reported by @PeteWilliamsNBC @jonathan4ny and myself.

      April 2, 2021

      US Capitol Police has said the suspect exited the vehicle wielding a knife and was then shot by at least one of the officers present. He later succumbed to his injuries and died.

      3.45pm EDT
      15:45

      The US Capitol Police has provided the latest information on the attack that occurred this afternoon.
      According to USCP, a man in a blue sedan charged a security barrier at the Capitol, striking two officers. The man then exited the vehicle with a knife and ran toward the officers.
      At least one of the officers drew their weapon and shot the suspect, who succumbed to his injuries about 30 minutes later. One of the USCP officers who was hit by the car also died of his injuries.

      U.S. Capitol Police
      (@CapitolPolice)
      UPDATE: Here is the latest information. pic.twitter.com/GOVaMv8EXk

      April 2, 2021

      3.31pm EDT
      15:31

      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said he was “heartbroken” for the US Capitol Police officer who was killed today, after a car rammed through a security barrier.
      “I’m praying for the officer injured and his family. We’re in their debt,” the Democratic leader said on Twitter. “We thank the Capitol Police, National Guard, & first responders for all they do to protect the Capitol and those inside.”

      Chuck Schumer
      (@SenSchumer)
      I’m heartbroken for the officer killed today defending our Capitol and for his family. I’m praying for the officer injured and his family.We’re in their debtWe thank the Capitol Police, National Guard, & first responders for all they do to protect the Capitol and those inside

      April 2, 2021

      3.20pm EDT
      15:20

      USCP lifts Capitol lockdown after car attack

      The US Capitol Police has lifted the lockdown on the Capitol grounds, about two hours after a car rammed a security barrier and injured two USCP officers, killing one of them.
      But the police force noted the area immediately surrounding the attack site is still under restricted access as officials continue to process the scene.

      U.S. Capitol Police
      (@CapitolPolice)
      The USCP has cleared the external security threat incident located at all of the U.S. Capitol Campus buildings, however the area around the crime scene will continue to be restricted and individuals should follow police direction. pic.twitter.com/6SXr5WJmcE

      April 2, 2021

      Updated
      at 3.21pm EDT More

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      in US Politics

      DoJ reportedly investigating whether Matt Gaetz paid women for sex

      by

      One of Donald Trump’s loudest cheerleaders in the US Congress is under federal investigation over allegations that he paid for sex with women recruited online, according to a media report.Matt Gaetz, a Republican congressman from Florida, is one of the former president’s most ardent supporters and frequently appeared on TV to promote his lies about a stolen election.But the 38-year-old’s rapid ascent is threatened by a strange, sordid and escalating scandal that includes a report by CNN that he allegedly showed nude photos of women he slept with to colleagues on the floor of the House of Representatives.The crisis for Gaetz began this week when it was reported that the justice department is investigating claims that he had a sexual relationship with an underage girl and paid the 17-year-old to travel with him, potentially breaking interstate sex trafficking laws.Gaetz denied the allegation and sought to deflect it by suggesting that he and his father are the victims of an “organised crime extortion”.But there was a further twist when it was reported that scrutiny of Gaetz stems from a separate justice department investigation into one of his allies, Florida politician Joel Greenberg, who was indicted last summer on sex trafficking and other charges that he stalked a political opponent.Greenberg was involved with multiple women who were recruited online for sex and received cash payments, the New York Times reported on Thursday. Greenberg “initially met the women through websites that connect people who go on dates in exchange for gifts, fine dining, travel and allowances, according to three people with knowledge of the encounters”, the paper said.“Mr Greenberg introduced the women to Mr Gaetz, who also had sex with them, the people said.”The New York Times said it obtained receipts from mobile apps that show payments from Gaetz and Greenberg to one of the women, and a payment from Greenberg to a second woman. “The women told their friends that the payments were for sex with the two men, according to two people familiar with the conversations.”Gaetz took ecstasy, an illegal drug, before having sex, the paper’s sources also claimed.The congressman vehemently denies the reports. His office said in a statement: “Matt Gaetz has never paid for sex. Matt Gaetz refutes all the disgusting allegations completely. Matt Gaetz has never ever been on any such websites whatsoever. Matt Gaetz cherishes the relationships in his past and looks forward to marrying the love of his life.”But adding to a sense of growing momentum against him, a separate report from CNN, based on anonymous sources, told how Gaetz showed off images of women on his phone – sometimes on the House floor – and talked openly about having sex with them. “It was a point of pride,” one source told the network.And on Friday Gaetz’s communications director, Luke Ball, resigned. A statement said: “The office of Congressman Matt Gaetz and Luke Ball have agreed that it would be best to part ways. We thank him for his time in our office, and we wish him the best moving forward.”Gaetz, who came to Congress in 2017, is among a pro-Trump coterie that has found a smash-mouth style and talent to outrage is a short cut to political stardom via rightwing media. He even travelled to Wyoming to hold a rally demanding that Liz Cheney, the No 3 Republican in the House, resign over her vote to impeach Trump following the 6 January riot at the US Capitol.But the congressman is also the latest in a long list of Trump allies to be tarnished by proven or alleged wrongdoing, with some ending up behind bars. So far the ex-president has remained silence on the issue and few of his followers have taken a firm position.Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority leader in the House and a staunch Trump supporter, said on Wednesday that he would not strip Gaetz of his committee assignments until the case against is established.McCarthy told Fox News: “Those are serious implications. If it comes out to be true, yes, we would remove him, if that was the case. But right now, Matt Gaetz says that it’s not true and we don’t have any information. So let’s get all the information.”But Democrats are urging McCarthy to remove Gaetz the House judiciary committee, which oversees the justice department. On Wednesday Ted Lieu, a Democratic congressman from California, tweeted that Gaetz should not be “sitting on the Congressional Committee that has oversight over the Department that is investigating him”.And Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, told reporters: “If in fact these allegations are true, of course being removed from the Judiciary committee is the least that could be done. From what we’ve heard so far, this would be a matter for the ethics committee.”The ethics committee, consisting of five members from each party, can recommend punishments ranging from a reprimand, or formal rebuke, to expulsion. The full House would have to approve such actions, with expulsion requiring a two-thirds majority.Gaetz – whose Twitter bio says “Florida man. Fiancé. Firebrand. America First” – posted to his 1m followers on Thursday: “The allegations against me are FALSE. The extortion of my family by a former DOJ official is REAL. DOJ has the tapes. Please release them.” More