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      Finally, Georgia companies speak out on voting law

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      Happy Thursday,As Georgia lawmakers debated significant new voting restrictions over the last month, many of the most powerful companies in the state stayed neutral. Now, nearly a week after governor Brian Kemp signed the measure, companies are pivoting and speaking out more forcefully on the measure.Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterSeveral of the country’s leading Black executives penned a letter Wednesday urging the business community to protest more forcefully. “There is no middle ground here,” Kenneth Chenault, the former CEO of American Express, who led the effort, told the New York Times. Kenneth Frazier, the CEO of pharmaceutical company Merck, told the Times he only really started paying attention to the Georgia measure once it passed. “There seems to be no one speaking out,” he told the Times. “We thought if we spoke up, it might lead to a situation where others felt the responsibility to speak up.”Sure enough, other companies have started to criticize the measure.The first was Delta Airlines, one of several Georgia-based companies that has issued muted statements over the last few weeks as activists pressured them to take a stand. Ed Bastian, the company’s CEO, finally issued a clear rebuke of the measure on Wednesday. The law, Bastian wrote, was “unacceptable”.“After having time to now fully understand all that is in the bill, coupled with discussions with leaders and employees in the Black community, it’s evident that the bill includes provisions that will make it harder for many underrepresented voters, particularly Black voters, to exercise their constitutional right to elect their representatives. That is wrong,” he wrote.“The entire rationale for this bill was based on a lie: that there was widespread voter fraud in Georgia in the 2020 elections. This is simply not true,” he said.The comments reportedly infuriated Republicans in the Georgia legislature, who were considering punishing the airline, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Kemp said he was caught off guard by the statements.Republicans in the Georgia legislature made a last minute effort Wednesday to punish Delta for its opposition, advancing a measure that would strip a tax break for the airline. The measure ultimately failed, but Republicans made it clear they were sending a warning.“They like our public policy when we’re doing things that benefit them,” David Ralston, the speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution.“You don’t feed a dog that bites your hand. You got to keep that in mind sometimes.”James Quincey, the CEO of Coca-Cola, which like Delta had declined to publicly take a stance on the bill, also condemned it on Wednesday. “This legislation is unacceptable. It is a step backwards,” he told CNBC. “This legislation is wrong and needs to be remedied and we will continue to advocate for it both in private and now even more clearly in public.”Activists welcomed the statements from companies, but warned that words would not be enough. “We’re just getting started!” tweeted Cliff Albright, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter, one of the groups that has been pressuring businesses to take a stand. Now that the statements are (belatedly) more forceful, we need the words joined by more forceful actions. We have a few ideas for them….”Nse Ufot, CEO of the New Georgia Project, told the Guardian earlier this month that the companies have some of the most powerful lobbyists and believed powerful public statements during the legislative process could have killed the legislation. On Wednesday, Ufot urged the companies to speak up against voting restrictions pending in other states.“This is where the problem lies,” she said in a statement.” Conversations with Black and Brown leaders must happen at all stages and all areas of decision-making, not after the damage is done. Here’s the lesson: listen to Black and Brown people. Listen to young voters. Listen to new voters. We are the future, and our voices matter.”“Its too little, too late,” said Deborah Scott, the executive director of Georgia Stand-Up, a civic action group that on Wednesday called for a boycott of Georgia over the law. “We’re glad they’re making these statements. We wish they would have made them 20 days ago, 10 days ago, before it was passed. I think the pressure activist groups are putting on them are making them say that. But they could have stopped it a long time ago had they made a statement.”Also worth watching…
      Crystal Mason, the Texas woman sentenced to five years in prison for mistakenly voting while ineligible in 2016, will get another chance to appeal her conviction, Texas’s highest criminal court announced Wednesday. Mason’s case attracted national outcry because of the severity of her conviction and because Mason was never told she couldn’t vote.
      Rita Hart, an Iowa Democrat, announced Wednesday that she was withdrawing her contest to a US House race she lost by just six votes to Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks. Her campaign claimed it had identified 22 ballots that went uncounted and was asking the US House to investigate and overturn the election. Republicans had rallied around Miller-Meeks, pointing to the fact that Hart declined to pursue her case in state court before asking Congress to step in. More

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      NRA’s grassroots clout still formidable with Republicans despite legal setbacks

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      The once all-powerful National Rifle Association is mired in legal and financial woes but its 5 million members still exert hefty grassroots influence with most Republicans as a fresh gun control debate in Congress heats up, say gun experts and NRA veterans.The NRA’s grassroots clout – via the Internet, letters, phone and other tools – coupled with the influence wielded by millions of other gun owners, keep many Republican allies fighting almost reflexively against gun curbs, notwithstanding recent NRA problems including electoral setbacks, staff cuts, drops in member dues revenue and legal threats, according to analysts.Which means that even after two mass shootings in March in Atlanta, Georgia and Boulder, Colorado spurred the House to pass bills to ban assault weapons and require mandatory background checks on gun purchases, the outlook in the evenly divided Senate to pass these bills seems very slim – unless filibuster rules are changed, say analysts.Still, NRA and Republican sources say if a weaker background check bill than the House passed one is introduced it may have enough Republican support in the Senate to pass as a compromise measure.To be sure, the NRA’s political strength by some key measures is markedly less than in recent years.After giving Donald Trump a huge boost in 2016 with over $30m in ad spending to help him win the White House, the NRA had a much smaller presence in 2020 to Trump’s and the Republican party’s dismay. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the NRA’s spending in 2020 fell to $29.4m from $54.4m in 2016.What’s more in 2018, gun control advocates were credited with helping the Democrats take back control of the House in 2018 as their spending for the first time edged the NRA’s spending. And in 2019, the NRA’s revenue from its members dues declined from 2018 when it was $170m to $113m.Nonetheless, the NRA’s grassroots muscle remains formidable and is working to block the House passed measures.“The NRA is in a weakened condition, and their very future is at stake,” said Robert Spitzer, a political science professor at SUNY Cortland and author of several books on guns, in an interview. “But the gun rights movement is deeply embedded in the GOP. Even though the NRA as an organization is seriously weakened, grassroots supporters are still out there, and are willing to act on the issue.”“For the GOP, support for gun rights from its gun base is pretty much on autopilot,” Spitzer added.Moreover, Spitzer noted that the Senate prospects for the two bills that passed the House seem dim. “The divisions between the two parties are sharper than in the past. Democrats are clearly behind strong gun laws, and Republicans are mostly opposed.”“The filibuster is the real stumbling block,” he added. “ We’ve seen this movie before.”Similarly, a former senior NRA official touted the group’s grassroots strength.“The grassroots of gun owners are still a political force with or without the NRA. Even though the NRA has had significant problems and continues too, they will raise more money” to fend off new gun curbs, if past experience holds.But the ex-official cautioned that “if they changed the filibuster rule, all bets are off”.Further, the NRA veteran noted that he thought a weaker background checks bill like one sponsored in previous sessions by Senators Joe Manchin, a Democrat, and Pat Toomey, a Republican, had a decent chance of getting enough Republican votes to pass the Senate if Democrats accepted it as a fallback option.Republican operative and lobbyist Charlie Black agreed that the less onerous bill like that previously backed by Manchin and Toomey has a good shot of getting through the Senate if Democratic leaders embraced it.But Black noted that the odds of the House’s mandatory checks bill passing the Senate are slim. “You’re not going to get the House bill through the Senate,” Black said in an interview.President Joe Biden has called on the Senate to pass the House measures which he called “common sense”, but at his first press conference last week gave mixed signals about how hard he will push for them.Just 10 days before the Boulder shooter killed 10 people, the NRA weighed in on Twitter and applauded a Colorado court ruling blocking a Boulder assault weapons ban enacted in 2018 which it had sought to overturn.However, the NRA and its leadership remain mired in legal and political battles to defeat the New York attorney general’s lawsuit that accused the nonprofit NRA, which has been chartered in the state for 150 years, of mismanagement and corruption.The lawsuit that attorney general Letitia James filed charges last summer that the NRA’s veteran chief executive Wayne LaPierre and a few other top NRA leaders looted the group costing it about $64m in just the three prior years.LaPierre was accused of self dealing by letting the NRA pay for millions of dollars of junkets with his wife and other family members to Europe, the Bahamas and other scenic spots.LaPierre and NRA lawyer William Brewer III have denounced the lawsuit as fueled by “political animus”, noting that James is a Democrat. And Brewer has said the NRA has taken steps to correct its financial problems including replacing some senior staffers. The NRA’s long-time top lobbyist Chris Cox, who had become a critic of LaPierre, was forced out in 2019.But the NRA’s 76 member board was mostly in the dark this January, when NRA leaders announced it was filing for bankruptcy in Texas where it hoped to incorporate, steps that two NRA veterans say were aimed at thwarting James’s probe.James has filed a motion seeking to halt the NRA’s bankruptcy move, and a bankruptcy judge in Texas is slated to hold a hearing on 5 April on the matter.On Sunday the NRA held an emergency board meeting in Dallas specifically to get the board to “retroactively” ratify the bankruptcy action before the 5 April hearing , say two NRA sources.Despite all the NRA’s legal and political maneuvering, Black sounds bullish that the House bills won’t get through the Senate.“The NRA’s grassroots is still active and powerful and influential with members of Congress,” he said. More

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      Delta and Coca-Cola pivot on Georgia’s restrictive voting law: 'It's unacceptable'

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterAfter weeks of pressure from activists some major companies and prominent Black executives are taking a somewhat harder line in speaking out against a new law in Georgia to restrict voting access.Delta Airlines, one of the Georgia-based companies that declined to speak out as the measure moved through the legislature, issued a forceful statement on Wednesday, saying the law was “unacceptable”.“After having time to now fully understand all that is in the bill, coupled with discussions with leaders and employees in the Black community, it’s evident that the bill includes provisions that will make it harder for many underrepresented voters, particularly Black voters, to exercise their constitutional right to elect their representatives. That is wrong.” Ed Bastian, Delta’s CEO, wrote in a company memo on Wednesday.“The entire rationale for this bill was based on a lie: that there was widespread voter fraud in Georgia in the 2020 elections. This is simply not true. Unfortunately, that excuse is being used in states across the nation that are attempting to pass similar legislation to restrict voting rights,” he added.The statement is an abrupt reversal for Delta, which for weeks declined to say it explicitly opposed the Georgia measure. Two weeks ago, when the measure was being crafted in the state legislature, a Delta spokesperson told the Guardian that “ensuring an election system that promotes broad voter participation, equal access to the polls, and fair, secure elections processes are critical to voter confidence and creates an environment that ensures everyone’s vote is counted”.Delta’s statement came just after some of America’s top Black business leaders and CEOs released a letter condemning widespread efforts across the United States to make it harder to vote. “There is no middle ground here,” Kenneth Chenault, the former CEO of American Express, told The New York Times, which first reported on the letter. “You either are for more people voting, or you want to suppress the vote.”James Quincey, the CEO of Coca-Cola, which has largely stayed quiet over the last few weeks, also pivoted his company’s stance on Wednesday.“This legislation is unacceptable. It is a step backwards,” he told CNBC. “This legislation is wrong and needs to be remedied and we will continue to advocate for it both in private and now even more clearly in public.”Asked why he took so long to issue a full-throated condemnation of the law, Quincey insisted the company has “always” opposed the legislation, even though it has declined to say that for weeks.The Georgia law requires voters to provide identification when they request and return absentee ballots, limits the availability of absentee drop boxes, reduces the length of runoff elections, allows for unlimited challenges to voter qualifications, and gives Republicans in the state legislature more influence over the state election board as well as a pathway to meddle with local boards. The law also makes it illegal to provide food or water to anyone standing in line to vote.Nse Ufot, the CEO of the New Georgia Project, one of the groups leading the pressure campaign, welcomed the statement from Delta, even though she said it was “late”.“This is where the problem lies. Conversations with Black and Brown leaders must happen at all stages and all areas of decision-making, not after the damage is done. Here’s the lesson: listen to Black and Brown people,” she said in a statement. She added that the company should now call out voting restrictions advancing through other state legislatures and support sweeping voting rights legislation in Congress.Deborah Scott, the executive director of Georgia Stand-Up, another civic action group, called for a boycott of Georgia and Coca-Cola on Wednesday.“Although condemning Georgia’s anti-democratic moves is right and vocal support is welcome, the most effective response is one that will hit the pocketbooks of Georgia’s ruling elite – an economic boycott of the state,” she said in a statement. “This is a historic opportunity, comparable to other watershed civil rights moments such as the Montgomery bus boycott and Selma.”While Delta insisted it worked behind the scenes to remove some of the most onerous restrictions in the measure, the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, said he was surprised by the company’s stance.“Today’s statement by Delta CEO Ed Bastian stands in stark contrast to our conversations with the company, ignores the content of the new law, and unfortunately continues to spread the same false attacks being repeated by partisan activists,” Kemp said, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Since 2018, Delta has donated more than 41,600 to lawmakers who backed voting restrictions, according to Popular Information, an independent newsletter.A senior Republican also told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that lawmakers were weighing ways to punish the company after a statement that was “akin to Delta shooting us in the face with a shotgun without telling us it was coming.”The chatter among Republicans about retaliating is growing. Rs are amazed Delta didn’t wait until tomorrow – when leg session is over – to issue this statement. “This is the level of anger that makes people creative,” says one. “That should scare the shit out of them.” #gapol— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) March 31, 2021
      Arthur Blank, the owner of the Atlanta Falcons football team also released a statement on Tuesday condemning the new law.“Every voice and every vote matters and should be heard through our democratic process in Georgia. The right to vote is simply sacred. We should be working to make voting easier, not harder for every eligible citizen,” Blank said in a statement on Tuesday. Spokespeople for both the Atlanta Braves and Hawks, the city’s baseball and basketball teams respectively, declined to comment on the measure on Tuesday.Corporations have signaled a willingness to speak out on controversial issues in recent years, from LGBTQ+ rights to the environment. But observers in recent weeks have questioned why companies have not brought the same force to opposing voting rights in Georgia.“They are looking at their best business interests, and when the pressure from one side increases, they essentially realize ‘hey look there’s a side where I need to weigh in and at this point I need to step up and make my opinion clear,’” said Tarun Kushwaha, a marketing professor at George Mason University. “My hunch is that the Georgia, Atlanta, based organizations were slow at doing this is they feared that there might be repercussions for them. Repercussions not just in terms of customers, but repercussions from the legislature.”Beyond Delta, activists have also singled out Coca-Cola, UPS, Home Depot, Aflac, and Southern Company to oppose the measure. Last week, leaders of the sixth district of the AME church, representing more than 500 Black churches in Georgia, went even further and called for a Coca-Cola boycott.There have also been growing calls for sports officials to sanction Georgia over the law. The president of the Major League Baseball players’ union indicated he was open to discussion about moving the league’s All Star Game from Atlanta this summer. The National Black Justice Coalition has also called on the PGA Tour to move the Master’s golf tournament out of Georgia. More

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      Hunter Biden calls Trump 'vile' in new book and denies Ukraine allegations

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      In a keenly awaited memoir, Joe Biden’s son Hunter attacks Donald Trump as “a vile man with a vile mission” who plumbed “unprecedented depths” in last year’s US presidential election.Hunter, 51, is a lawyer and businessman who has been the focus of Republican bile ever since Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani sought information on his business dealings in Ukraine to use in the 2020 campaign.On the page, Biden insists he did nothing wrong in joining in April 2014 the board of Burisma, the gas company at the heart of the Ukraine affair. He dismisses the controversy as “remarkable for its epic banality”. But he says he would not do so again.He found the company’s role as a bulwark against Russian aggression under Vladimir Putin “inspiring”, though the five-figures a month fee was also a factor. Biden acknowledges that his famous surname was considered “gold” by Burisma. “To put it more bluntly,” he writes, “having a Biden on Burisma’s board was a loud and unmistakable fuck-you to Putin.”Giuliani’s search for dirt saw Trump impeached – and acquitted – for the first time. Republican attacks on Hunter Biden have continued, focusing on his business dealings and also his troubled personal life, including well-known struggles with drink and drug addiction and recently a decision to purchase a gun which became part of a domestic dispute.Biden’s memoir, Beautiful Things, deals with such personal issues as well as the deaths of his mother and sister in a car crash in 1973 and that of his older brother, Delaware attorney general Beau Biden, from brain cancer in 2015. The book will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Describing what it felt like to be in the eye of a political storm over business interests he says “sometimes” unavoidably coincided with his father’s work as vice-president to Barack Obama, Biden writes: “I became a proxy for Donald Trump’s fear that he wouldn’t be re-elected.“He pushed debunked conspiracy theories about work I did in Ukraine and China, even as his own children had pocketed millions in China and Russia and his former campaign manager [Paul Manafort] sat in a jail cell for laundering millions more from Ukraine.”He adds: “None of that matters in an up-is-down Orwellian political climate. Trump believed that if he could destroy me, and by extension my father, he could dispatch any candidate of decency from either party, all while diverting attention from his own corrupt behavior.”Insisting he is “not Billy Carter or Roger Clinton” – relations of previous presidents who proved magnets for media and opposition attention – Biden writes that he knows his surname has helped him in business. But, he adds, “I am not Eric Trump or Donald Trump Jr. I’ve worked for someone other than my father. I rose and fell on my own.”Biden criticises Trump for his efforts to attack his father on the debate stage last October, writing that Trump showed “trademark callousness” in playing “the only card he ever plays: attack”.Joe Biden defended Hunter then, saying he was proud of how he handled his struggles with addiction and telling viewers: “There’s a reason why [Trump is] bringing up all this malarkey. He doesn’t want to talk about the substantive issues. It’s not about his family and my family. It’s about your family.”Hunter Biden also criticises Trump allies, calling the Florida congressman Matt Gaetz a “troll”.The South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, he writes, is a family friend from Joe Biden’s long service in the Senate who nonetheless “morph[ed] into a Trump lapdog right before my eyes, slandering me and my father in the coldest, most cynical, most self-serving ways.”In the book, Hunter offers some insights into the Biden family, including an occasion when his father sought to intervene in his addictions by bringing two counselors from a rehab centre to the family home in Delaware. When Hunter refused, Joe Biden “suddenly looked terrified” and chased him down the driveway, then grabbed him, hugged him and “cried for the longest time”.Hunter had a brief romantic relationship with Beau’s widow, Hallie, after Beau’s death. “Our relationship had begun as a mutually desperate grasping for love we both had lost, and its dissolution only deepened that tragedy,” he recalls. More

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      ‘He’s riding a crest’: Ron DeSantis positions himself as keeper of Trump’s legacy

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      “Covid’s over, baby!” So proclaims a bare-chested man, wearing face paint like the Joker, nemesis of Batman, as he stands atop a car and waves the American national flag.This was the scene last weekend in Miami, Florida, a state that moved quickly to lift lockdowns, reopen schools, shelve mask mandates and become, in the words of its governor, Ron DeSantis, an “an oasis of freedom” during the coronavirus pandemic.This approach has dismayed health experts but delighted Republicans and cemented DeSantis’s reputation as perhaps the most high-profile keeper of Donald Trump’s legacy as a swath of party figures jostle to become his political heir. Last month the governor proposed a raft of new election laws that would make it harder to vote. He relishes sparring with the media and is now claiming victory over his pandemic critics.“Floridians have been flouting the rules since the beginning of the pandemic,” said Monika McDermott, a political science professor at Fordham University in New York. “That said, they seem to be fairly happy with DeSantis’s performance overall and he certainly thinks he’s the heir apparent to Donald Trump at this point. He’s very proud of himself and he’s touting himself as being the next great wunderkind of the Republican party.”While Trump and Joe Biden hogged the limelight, the coronavirus has done much to shape the fortunes of state governors across America. Democrats Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gavin Newsom of California went from heroes to zeroes after a series of missteps. DeSantis – at 42 the nation’s youngest governor – and fellow Republican Kristi Noem of South Dakota both worked hard to create a perception of success despite their uneasy relationship with science.[DeSantis] certainly thinks he’s the heir apparent to Donald Trump at this pointFlorida has hardly escaped unscathed: its death toll of more than 32,000 is the fourth highest in the country after California, New York and Texas. A year ago DeSantis reluctantly bowed to pressure by issuing a stay-at-home order and requiring non-essential businesses to close. But like Trump, he was eager to restart the economy and moved more swiftly than many states to reopen schools.DeSantis faced widespread opprobrium even as Cuomo was publishing a book lauding his own pandemic response. But now the tables have turned.John Zogby, a pollster and author, said: “Bluntly, he was the village idiot at the beginning of all this and it was hard to understand what he was doing in a state like Florida. He’s riding a crest now because it appears to be working. We don’t know what happens next but, providing this crest continues, he’s positioning himself as the non-Trump to Trump’s base.”In a piece of political theatre last week, DeSantis hosted a handpicked panel of health experts at the state capitol in Tallahassee to publicly vindicate his opposition on lockdowns and mandates. Among them was Scott Atlas, a radiologist who had no formal experience infectious diseases when Trump hired him last summer as a coronavirus adviser.DeSantis boasted: “The data could not be clearer that our state has fared far better than many others, particularly those that imposed harsh lockdowns on their residents.”His supporters point out that, despite California’s more cautious approach, its Covid-19 case rate is similar to that of Florida according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A survey by Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy last month found DeSantis with a 53% approval rating.Although the 2024 presidential election is a political aeon away, there is early chatter that the Ivy League-educated lawyer, Iraq war veteran and former member of Congress, who emulates Trump’s in-yer-face style, could become the torch bearer for the “Make America Great Again” movement.Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, said: “He benefits from the same model that Trump benefited from, which is a lot of media criticism. The media castigated him day and night for his handling of coronavirus versus California but then, when he can point that he has better numbers than California, he can say ‘Ah ha!’ That is something that Trump voters love to hear when it’s at the media’s expense.“He is starting to check off boxes that will be important to Trump voters in 2024. One of those is obviously your handling of the pandemic; he doesn’t pray at the altar of Dr Fauci.”Like Ronald Reagan and George W Bush before him, DeSantis would be running for the Republican nomination with executive experience as a state governor and could pitch himself as a Washington outsider.Whalen added: “So he could say, just as Trump did, ‘I’m not part of the problem, I’m part of the solution’. It’s just so fundamentally awkward if you’re Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz or even Josh Hawley or Ben Sasse – the legions of senators all looking to run – to divorce yourself from Washington and Congress.”DeSantis is also in a strong position because Florida, the third most populous state, carries huge electoral clout and appears to have shifted decisively to the right. Trump is now based at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach while his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have set up home in Miami.Meanwhile Florida’s two Republicans senators, Rubio and Rick Scott, are seen as potential contenders for 2024. And the Florida congressman Matt Gaetz is one of Trump’s most combative champions and imitators.Roger Stone, a Florida-based political consultant pardoned by Trump on seven criminal counts in the Russia investigation, said: “Florida remains the last bastion and it is definitely the centre of action in terms of conservative Republican ‘America first’ politics. We could have as many as three candidates here.We are the blue-collar party now, we’re the working-class party“Or four: if the president runs, I think he clears the field. The nomination is his if he wants it. This is his party now. We’re never going to go back to being the country club party of the Bushes. We are the blue-collar party now, we’re the working-class party.”But for now, DeSantis appears to have the edge in what the Politico website dubbed the “if-Trump-doesn’t-run” primary as it noted that several candidates are already networking in Iowa, traditionally the first state to have a say.At last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, the governor finished runner-up to Trump in one straw poll for the 2024 Republican nomination and first in another that excluded the 45th president.And on Monday, in a podcast interview with Lisa Boothe, Trump mentioned DeSantis first when listing Republicans he believes have a bright future. “Ron DeSantis is doing a really good job in Florida,” Trump said, going on to cite Senators Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and the Arkansas gubernatorial candidate Sarah Sanders.Trump also praised Noem, the South Dakota governor who has vied with DeSantis in the anti-shutdown stakes, infamously allowing the Sturgis biker rally to take place. She has been travelling widely to address state Republican parties and chalking up appearances on Fox News. Mike Pence, the former vice-president, and Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, are also potential candidates for 2024. If Trump decides to play kingmaker, his endorsement could be decisive.His 2018 endorsement played a crucial part in DeSantis’s unlikely victory in the Republican primary for governor. Stone observed: “DeSantis’s rise on Fox television as a defender of Trump is really what won him the gubernatorial nomination in the primary. He’s been very loyal to the president since he’s been president and their governing style is very similar.“So in that sense, I think policy-wise, he would be solid. I just wonder whether he has the showmanship that Trump has, that Matt Gaetz has, that Josh Hawley has, for example. We are in the television age, still. Charisma matters and I think to a certain extent the governor doesn’t have the kind of connection with voters that the president has, just in terms of his personal gravitas.”First, however, DeSantis must win re-election as governor of Florida next year. His handling of the pandemic will be a key issue. Critics argue that his vaccine distribution programme favours rich donors and blame his laissez-faire approach for chaos in Miami Beach last weekend that saw fighting in the streets, restaurant property destroyed and more than 1,000 arrests made.Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a former Democratic congresswoman from Florida who is among leaders of a Ron Be Gone campaign, told NBC News: “His arrogance and complete detachment from the pain and suffering of our communities is very telling of someone that is in this position to advance his political ambitions, and it’s obvious because they’re already discussing 2024.” More

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      Republicans have taken up the politics of bigotry, putting US democracy at risk | Robert Reich

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      Republicans are outraged – outraged! – at the surge of migrants at the southern border. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, declares it a “crisis … created by the presidential policies of this new administration”. The Arizona congressman Andy Biggs claims, “we go through some periods where we have these surges, but right now is probably the most dramatic that I’ve seen at the border in my lifetime.”Donald Trump demands the Biden administration “immediately complete the wall, which can be done in a matter of weeks – they should never have stopped it. They are causing death and human tragedy.”“Our country is being destroyed!” he adds.In fact, there’s no surge of migrants at the border.US Customs and Border Protection apprehended 28% more migrants from January to February this year than in previous months. But this was largely seasonal. Two years ago, apprehensions increased 31% during the same period. Three years ago, it was about 25% from February to March. Migrants start coming when winter ends and the weather gets a bit warmer, then stop coming in the hotter summer months when the desert is deadly.To be sure, there is a humanitarian crisis of children detained in overcrowded border facilities. And an even worse humanitarian tragedy in the violence and political oppression in Central America, worsened by US policies over the years, that drives migration in the first place.But the “surge” has been fabricated by Republicans in order to stoke fear – and, not incidentally, to justify changes in laws they say are necessary to prevent non-citizens from voting.The core message of the Republican party now consists of liesRepublicans continue to allege – without proof – that the 2020 election was rife with fraudulent ballots, many from undocumented migrants. Over the past six weeks they’ve introduced 250 bills in 43 states designed to make it harder for people to vote – especially the young, the poor, Black people and Hispanic Americans, all of whom are likely to vote for Democrats – by eliminating mail-in ballots, reducing times for voting, decreasing the number of drop-off boxes, demanding proof of citizenship, even making it a crime to give water to people waiting in line to vote.To stop this, Democrats are trying to enact a sweeping voting rights bill, the For the People Act, which protects voting, ends partisan gerrymandering and keeps dark money out of elections. It passed the House but Republicans in the Senate are fighting it with more lies.On Wednesday, the Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz falsely claimed the new bill would register millions of undocumented migrants to vote and accused Democrats of wanting the most violent criminals to cast ballots too.The core message of the Republican party now consists of lies about a “crisis” of violent migrants crossing the border, lies that they’re voting illegally, and blatantly anti-democratic demands voting be restricted to counter it.The party that once championed lower taxes, smaller government, states’ rights and a strong national defense now has more in common with anti-democratic regimes and racist-nationalist political movements around the world than with America’s avowed ideals of democracy, rule of law and human rights.Donald Trump isn’t single-handedly responsible for this, but he demonstrated to the GOP the political potency of bigotry and the GOP has taken him up on it.This transformation in one of America’s two eminent political parties has shocking implications, not just for the future of American democracy but for the future of democracy everywhere.“I predict to you, your children or grandchildren are going to be doing their doctoral thesis on the issue of who succeeded: autocracy or democracy?” Joe Biden opined at his news conference on Thursday.In his maiden speech at the state department on 4 March, Antony Blinken conceded that the erosion of democracy around the world is “also happening here in the United States”.The secretary of state didn’t explicitly talk about the Republican party, but there was no mistaking his subject.“When democracies are weak … they become more vulnerable to extremist movements from the inside and to interference from the outside,” he warned.People around the world witnessing the fragility of American democracy “want to see whether our democracy is resilient, whether we can rise to the challenge here at home. That will be the foundation for our legitimacy in defending democracy around the world for years to come.”That resilience and legitimacy will depend in large part on whether Republicans or Democrats prevail on voting rights.Not since the years leading up to the civil war has the clash between the nation’s two major parties so clearly defined the core challenge facing American democracy. More

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      Trump and his allies push new Republican effort to restrict voting laws

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      A Republican lawyer who advised Donald Trump on his campaign to overturn the 2020 election results is now playing a central role coordinating the Republican effort to tighten voting laws around the country.
      The moves comes as Trump himself signaled his support for new Republican-pushed legislation in Georgia which critics have slammed as being a major blow to voting rights for communities of color, especially Black voters. Joe Biden called the Georgia laws “Jim Crow in the 21st Century” and “an atrocity”.

      But Trump, whose grip on the Republican party remains strong, welcomed the Georgia developments. “Congratulations to Georgia and the Georgia state legislature on changing their voter rules and regulations,” Trump said in a statement through his Pac, Save America, which repeated his baseless allegation that fraud was a factor in his election loss to Biden. “They learned from the travesty of the 2020 presidential election, which can never be allowed to happen again. Too bad these changes could not have been done sooner!”
      Trump is still a dominant force among the party’s Republican base and his backing for clamping down on voting rights – and the involvement of people close to him – reveal the likely future direction of the party as it faces up to diversifying demographic trends in America at odds with its mostly white support.
      Cleta Mitchell, a longtime Republican lawyer and advocate for conservative causes, was among the Trump advisers on a January phone call in which Trump asked Georgia election officials to “find” enough votes to declare him, and not Biden, the winner of the battleground state.
      Now Mitchell has taken the helm of two separate efforts to push for tighter state voting laws and to fight Democratic efforts to expand access to the ballot at the federal level. She is also advising state lawmakers crafting the voting restriction proposals. And she is in regular contact with Trump.
      “People are actually interested in getting involved and we have to harness all this energy,” Mitchell said in an interview with the Associated Press. “There are a lot of groups that have projects on election integrity that never did before.”
      Trump’s false claims of fraud during and after the 2020 election have fueled a wave of new voting restrictions.
      More than 250 proposed voting restrictions have been proposed this year by mostly Republican lawmakers, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
      On Thursday, Georgia’s GOP governor signed into law a measure requiring voters to present ID to vote by mail, gives the GOP-controlled state legislature new powers over local elections boards and outlaws providing food or water to people waiting in line to vote.
      In response, Democrats have stepped up the push for a massive federal election overhaul bill. That proposal, known as HR1, would effectively neuter state-level voter ID laws, allow anyone to vote by mail if they wanted to and automatically register citizens to vote. Republicans view that as an encroachment on state control over elections and say it is designed to give Democrats an advantage.
      “The left is trying to dismantle 100 years of advancement in election administration,” Mitchell said, expressing bafflement at Democrats’ charges that Republicans are trying to suppress votes. “We’re watching two different movies right now.”
      Mitchell’s most public involvement in the voting wars came in participation on Trump’s call to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, on 2 January. During that call, Mitchell insisted she had evidence of voting fraud, but officials with the secretary of state’s office told her that her data was incorrect.
      Mitchell has two new roles in an emerging conservative voting operation. She’s running a $10m initiative at the limited government group FreedomWorks to both push for new restrictions in voting and help train conservatives to get involved in the nuts and bolts of local elections.
      She’s also a senior legal fellow at the Conservative Partnership Institute, an organization run by former Republican Senator Jim DeMint. She says she’ll use that role to “coordinate” conservative voting positions, particularly in opposition to HR 1.
      Mitchell, 70, has links to other influential players in the conservative movement and serves as outside counsel to the American Legislative Exchange Committee, a conservative group that provides model legislation to state lawmakers and organized a call with state lawmakers and Ted Cruz, the Texas senator, on opposing HR 1.
      Mitchell told the Associated Press she’s been talking regularly with Republican state lawmakers about the need for new election laws. She would not identify whom she speaks with but said it’s been a longtime passion.
      She similarly would not detail her conversations with Trump or say whether they involved the new voting fights. “I’m in touch with the president fairly frequently,” she said of Trump.
      Repeated audits have shown no significant problems with the 2020 election. Trump and his supporters lost more than 50 court cases challenging its results. More