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      Idaho’s Republicans in political civil war as state lurches further right

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      Idaho’s rightward political lurch has immersed the state’s Republicans in a political civil war that now extends all the way from the grassroots to the executive mansion.In late May, the state’s Republican governor, Brad Little, angrily revoked an executive order banning mask mandates in the state that had been put in place by his own militia-supporting lieutenant governor during a period when she was deputizing for him. Janice McGeachin had ordered that Idaho cities and counties revoke mask orders, playing into a widespread fear among the far right that basic health measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic are a sign of an over-reaching government. Little then called McGeachin’s action “tyranny” and a “stunt” and scuppered it after it had been in place for just a day.But observers say the bizarre fight is symptomatic of a much wider problem in Idaho and the rest of America.They fear that the political dynamics in Idaho – where far-right actors have won recruits and political momentum through uncompromising refusal to comply with public health measures – may presage a worrying direction of conservative politics in the country as a whole.“Political moderates around the country need to pay more attention to what is happening here,” said Mike Satz, executive director of the Idaho97 project, which was founded last year to combat misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic.“Idaho used to follow broader trends, but now it is in the vanguard of extremist activity,” Satz added.Political moderates around the country need to pay more attention to what is happening hereThe mask ban was put in place by McGeachin, a businesswoman who previously spent 10 years as a state representative for a rural district in the state’s far east. Idaho had no statewide mask ban measures in place, but McGeachin’s move was an attempt to prevent cities and counties addressing the pandemic with emergency measures by themselves.The lieutenant governor won election in 2018 after squeaking through a crowded five-way Republican primary earlier that year. Since then she has won praise from the far right and drawn concern from more moderate Republicans over her associations with the Three Percenter militia movement.During her vice-gubernatorial run, a member of her security detail sported a Three Percenter tattoo, and McGeachin refused to answer media questions about security staffing. On another occasion in 2019, she posted to Facebook a picture of herself with members of the Real Three Percenters group, who were protesting on behalf of Todd Engel, who was sentenced in the previous year to 14 years in a federal prison over his role in a 2014 armed standoff with federal agents at Bundy Ranch in Bunkerville, Nevada.Just weeks later, McGeachin led armed protesters, including Three Percenters, through an impromptu oath which appeared to be intended to swear them in as state militia.Recently McGeachin, while appearing as a guest on the podcast of Southern Poverty Law Center-listed extremist David Horowitz, said that the federal US government did not rightfully own any public lands in Idaho, which make up about 60% of the state’s total area.“I don’t view that the federal government owns the land in Idaho, my view is that the land of Idaho belongs to the state of Idaho,” McGeachin told Horowitz, echoing the views expressed by the likes of fellow Idahoan Ammon Bundy, who led the armed occupation of the Malheur national wildlife refuge in 2016.Even in a deep red state, until recently such associations and positions may have ruled McGeachin out as a serious contender for the governorship.But Jaclyn Kettler, a political scientist at Boise State University, located in the state’s capital, said that over the last year, “battles over mask mandates have underlined divisions within the Republican party”.She says that the divisions are long-standing, and partly related to the party’s lock on statewide offices and the legislature in a state which has not elected a Democratic governor for more than 30 years, and has returned large majorities for every Republican presidential candidate since Richard Nixon’s run in 1968.“When you have a majority for so long, it can lead to internal divisions and factions,”, Kettler said, and adds that the recent successes of conservative Republican candidates in winning primaries, elections or re-election has “shifted the legislature and the party to the right”.Satz, the Idaho97 director, says that this rightward move means that the election of McGeachin, who has positioned herself as the hard right’s tribune, is now a possibility.“Before 2018, no one thought that there was a realistic chance of her becoming lieutenant governor, but here we are,” Satz added.In the last year, and particularly in 2021, what has boosted McGeachin’s status among conservatives has been her support of protests against mask and lockdown orders, which have included direct criticisms of Little’s efforts to rein the virus in, and mandates introduced by local governments.Satz says that a range of far right actors have exploited grassroots angst about Covid measures, including McGeachin, legislators like Heather Scott, Dorothy Moon and Chad Christensen and far-right actors like Bundy, and members of Christ Church, based in the Idaho college town of Moscow.According to Satz these increasingly “violent and aggressive” protests came about in a slow boil. While there were only sparse, fringe protests at the outset of the pandemic, racial justice protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd brought armed rightwing counter-protesters into the streets. That included in the North Idaho town of Coeur D’Alene, where dozens of heavily armed men began facing off with relatively small Black Lives Matter protest groups in June 2020.Satz said that these counter-protests began to bleed into anti-mask protests, and later ones against Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, which many Republicans and those on the far right falsely believe was stolen by the Democrats. “It’s all the same people,” he said of the composition of the various rightwing protests movements.Consistent promoters of protests include Bundy, who began early on in the pandemic to characterize mask mandates and lockdowns as affronts to liberty.As early as March 2020, Bundy was fronting meetings in his current home city of Emmett, Idaho, calling on people to reject mask orders. By April, he was rallying followers to the defense of arrested anti-vaxxers, and was a prominent participant in anti lockdown marches on the state capitol, some of which were organized in part by the dark money group the Idaho Freedom Foundation. Last August, Bundy was arrested multiple times while leading a maskless protest against Covid measures in the Idaho state house. .Despite being banned from the state house after his arrests, Bundy himself has now filed to run for governor in Idaho in 2022.Bundy also had a hand in making the tone of anti-mask protests more aggressive from December 2020 on. In that month, protesters succeeded in shutting down a meeting of public health officials who had convened to discuss a mandate in the Boise region to address then-surging cases of Covid-19.That protest included members of Bundy’s People’s Rights group. Bundy has reportedly encouraged members, who include a wide range of far-right activists in Idaho and beyond, to engage in weapons and ham radio training sessions in 10-person cells in order to defend themselves in an armed conflict with government, which Bundy has hinted is an inevitability.Now, People’s Rights-linked farmers have purchased land along the Klamath River in Oregon to protest against drought-related reductions in irrigation allowances to farmers.Amy Herzfeld-Copple monitors extremism and other threats in Idaho and beyond for progressive non-profit the Western States Center. In an email, she wrote that “both Bundy and McGeachin have exploited pandemic anxiety and instability over the last year to build political power and attract attention for disrupting democratic norms”.Herzfeld-Copple added that “they each have long histories of engaging with paramilitaries, encouraging political violence, courting bigoted groups”, and that “there’s a real danger that their campaigns will embolden extremist movements”.In March 2021, again in Coeur D’Alene, protesters, with the support of McGeachin and North Idaho Republican legislators including Scott and Moon, burned masks outside a health center. Statewide, Satz says, different elements of the far right are “working together in ways we haven’t seen before”.“They’re using Covid and becoming more aggressive and more focused. The extreme right are gaining power in Idaho, but we don’t think it will stop here,” Satz said. More

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      Four more Oath Keepers indicted for participating in Capitol attack

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      Four additional members of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group that took part in the storming of the US Capitol on 6 January, have been indicted for participating in the event.Court documents unsealed on Sunday named three individuals living in Florida – Joseph Hackett, 51, of Sarasota, Jason Dolan, 44, of Wellington, and William Isaacs, 21, of Kissimmee. The three appeared last Thursday before US magistrates in Tampa, West Palm Beach and Orlando. A fourth person’s name was hidden.The four new defendants are charged with conspiring to obstruct Congress’s confirmation of the 2020 presidential election results in a joint session of Congress that was interrupted by the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. Five deaths were ultimately linked to the attack.The four Oath Keepers are each accused of forcing entry through the Capitol’s East Rotunda doors after marching up the steps wearing combat uniforms, tactical vests, helmets and Oath Keepers insignia.The new indictment is part of a larger criminal conspiracy case that now includes 19 members of the far-right group. Members previously charged in the government’s case have pleaded not guilty.According to prosecutors, members of the group attended a 9 November meeting during which the Oath Keeper’s founder Stewart Rhodes, referred to in government documents as Person One, described the attack as an insurrection.“We’re gonna be posted outside DC, awaiting the president’s orders. … We want him to declare an insurrection,” according to documents.Prosecutors say the Oath Keepers is a loose federation of militia groups that targets law enforcement and military members for recruitment and promotes a totalitarian vision of the government that its members believes represents a threat to American citizens.Rhodes, who has not been charged, has claimed that the government is trying to build the action of a few members into an alleged organizational conspiracy. “I may go to jail soon, not for anything I actually did, but for made-up crimes,” Rhodes told Texas Republicans in March, according to the Washington Post.The new indictment alleges that Rhodes began developing plans to keep Donald Trump in office by force six days after the presidential vote. During an online meeting on 9 November, prosecutors claim, he told some of the Oath Keepers now under indictment:We want [Trump] to declare an insurrection, and to call us up as the militia,” Rhodes allegedly stated. More

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      Police records show threats to kill lawmakers in wake of Capitol attack

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      Washington’s Metropolitan police department recorded threats to lawmakers and public facilities in the wake of the 6 January attack on the Capitol, according to documents made public in a ransomware hack on their systems this month.The documents also show how, in the month following the Capitol attack, police stepped up surveillance efforts, monitoring hotel bookings, protests in other jurisdictions, and social media for signs of another attack by far-right groups on targets in the capital, including events surrounding the inauguration of Joe Biden as president.The revelation of the seriousness of the threats comes amid Republican opposition to forming a 9/11-style commission to investigate the January attack, which saw the Capitol roamed by looting mobs hunting for politicians and involved the deaths of five people.The police documents were stolen and published by the ransomware attack group Babuk, and some were redistributed by the transparency organization Distributed Denial of Secrets, from whom they were obtained by the Guardian. Various outlets last week published stories based on the data showing intelligence indicating that far-right Boogaloo groups planned to attack various targets in the capital.But another collection of documents labeled “chiefs intelligence briefings” shows a broad, cross-agency effort in the days following the attack on the Capitol to identify suspects, monitor and apprehend far-right actors, and anticipate further attacks on Washington around events like the inauguration of Joe Biden and the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump.In the aftermath of the riot, the attention of police and other law enforcement agencies was focused on far-right activity on social media platforms, and especially on a group calling itself Patriot Action for America.One 13 January bulletin said that the group had been “calling for others to join them in ‘storming’ state, local, and federal government courthouses and administrative buildings in the event POTUS is removed as president prior to inauguration day”.The bulletin also noted that the agency was facing broader challenges in monitoring far-right actors on social media websites, saying that “with the shutdown of Parler it has been a challenge to track down how activities are being planned”, and that they continued to “see more users on Gab and Telegram following the de-platforming of many accounts on more conventional social media companies”.The bulletin mentions a “possible second suspect” in the placement of pipe bombs near the DNC and RNC, who was “observed on video scouting/taking photographs in advance of the placement”, who “took a metro to the East Falls church stop and took a Lyft from there”.On 12 January, a bulletin noted that a supreme court agent had noticed “two vehicles stopped beside each other” outside the court building, and that in one an older white male was “videotaping the Capitol fence line and the court”, and in the other a passenger was “hanging out the window in order to videotape the court”.A 22 January bulletin mentions that in Pennsylvania a man was arrested after “transmitting interstate threats to multiple US senators of the Democratic party”, having stated that he was “going to DC to kill people and wanted to be killed by the police”. When Pennsylvania state police apprehended him “he was in possession of a rifle, two handguns, and a large quantity of ammunition”.A later bulletin described an incident in which a man with an illegal firearm was arrested after asking for directions to the “Oval Office”, and another man’s van was searched after he was observed sitting in the vehicle while parked outside the supreme court justice Sonya Sotomayor’s house.The same day’s bulletin mentioned that Metropolitan police were cooperating with Capitol police in investigating “a number of threats aimed at members of Congress as the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump nears”.The threats continued for weeks after the attack.Almost a month later, a bulletin reported that “an identified militia group member” in Texas was claiming that if their “operation failed at the US Capitol”, there was a “back-up plan” involving the group “detonating bombs at the US Capitol during the State of the Union”.The group was not named but was described as “a large organization allegedly with members from every state, which included individuals who were former military and law enforcement”.The documents also reveal how law enforcement agencies secured the cooperation of private companies, from ride-share companies to hotels.A bulletin includes the claim that “FBI [is] working with Lyft and Uber to identify riders to and from the protest locations”.The same bulletin carries detailed figures on reservations in hotels across the capital leading up to the inauguration on 20 January, which was secured by an unprecedented mobilization of law enforcement and the national guard.Two days later, another bulletin said that “MPD’s intelligence division has conducted extensive outreach with security directors of area hotels”, who they asked to be “vigilant for evidence of suspicious activity and firearms possession by hotel guests”. 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      Trump Hotel raised prices to deter QAnon conspiracists, police files show

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      Police intelligence documents show that Washington’s Trump Hotel raised its rates “as a security tactic”, in the hope of deterring Trump-supporting QAnon supporters from staying there in early March, on a day which some believed would see Trump restored to office.The information, which police gleaned from a Business Insider version of a story published in Forbes on 6 February, was confirmed in an 8 February intelligence briefing stolen by ransomware hackers from Washington’s Metropolitan police department (MPD).The hackers from the Babuk group subsequently published those documents online, and transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets redistributed them to news outlets including the Guardian.As Forbes reported in February, Trump International hotel in Washington raised its rates to 180% of the normal seasonal charge for 3 and 4 March this year.That was a date upon which some adherents to the QAnon conspiracy movement believed would see Trump once again sworn in as president, based on an interpretation of the US constitution influenced by a belief held by many “sovereign citizens” that the US government was secretly usurped by a foreign corporation in 1871, and all legal and constitutional changes since that date are illegitimate.The swearing-in date of US presidents was 4 March until the passage of the 20th amendment in 1933, and believers thought that Trump would restore his presidency and constitutional government on that date in Washington.While Forbes suggested that the rate hike might be “price gouging or simply opportunistic marketing”, the internal police document said “MPD’s intelligence division confirmed with Trump Hotel management that they raised their rates as a security tactic to prevent protesters from booking rooms at their hotel should anyone travel to DC”.However, the document also noted that the hotel was “not aware of any credible information regarding an event actually taking place on that date”, and that “none of the hotels in [Washington] are showing any noticeable increase in hotel reservations for this timeframe”.Trump International was one of a number of hotels in the region whose occupancy was closely monitored by the MPD and other agencies as they looked for signs of an attack on Joe Biden’s inauguration, Trump’s impeachment hearings, and other hot button events, according to other intelligence documents made public in the ransomware hack.The hotel, along with the Trump Organization and Trump’s inauguration committee are co-defendants in a case brought by the District of Columbia attorney general, which alleges that the hotel was used to funnel money spent on the inauguration to the former president and his family.The use of Trump International to house government employees has also been a focus of scrutiny from congressional committees and the Government Oversight Office. More

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      Capitol police condemned by US states for January attack failures, emails show

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      A January meeting of mayors and police chiefs of large American cities criticized “failed leadership by Capitol police and a failure to plan” over the rightwing insurrection in Washington on 6 January, according to emails reviewed by the Guardian.The revelations were contained in an email sent by a senior police officer in Washington state. Additional emails from local, state, and federal agencies sent in January show that following the attack, authorities in Washington state paid increased attention to far-right groups such as QAnon adherents, the Three Percenters, and Joey Gibson, the founder of Vancouver-based street protest group Patriot Prayer.The emails, provided to the Guardian by transparency nonprofit Property of the People, show how the events of the attack on the Capitol sent ripples around the US, and how agencies in states across the country scrambled to monitor local far-right activists, track down locals wanted for their role in the insurrection, and protect their own state capitols from groups who were openly planning to breach them.The first email was sent to officers in police departments in cities within Snohomish county, north of Seattle, by Ryan Dalberg, the police lieutenant in Everett, Washington.The email summarized a “US conference of mayors/major cities police chiefs to discuss the riot at the US Capitol” and “the potential for ongoing civil unrest related to the election outcome and upcoming presidential inauguration”, which the email said Everett police chief Dan Templeman had attended.Following the comment about “failed leadership”, Dalberg added: “Much of the intel about the number of participants and the potential for violence was available via open-source information, and for whatever reason, the US Capitol police did not appear to be fully prepared for what they encountered.”Dalberg added that participants had connected the events of January 6 “to domestic terrorism, in that it is both real and perceived grievances that are driving people and groups to take violent and extreme actions”.Property of the People’s executive director, Ryan Shapiro, said: “The intelligence was there, coming from the agencies and right in the open. Despite ample warning, US Capitol police leadership failed to defend democracy. The question is why.”Everett police department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Other emails show that even before the Capitol attack, analysts at the Washington State Fusion Center had been keeping close tabs on far-right groups and their plans to occupy that state’s capitol, in Olympia.On 28 December, Alexandria Forbush, an Intelligence Analyst at the Fusion Center, sent an email to Stefan Pentcholov, a University of Washington police department detective currently seconded to the Joint Terrorism Task Force based at the FBI’s Seattle field office.In the email, which she later forwarded to Washington State Fusion Center director Curt Boyle, Forbush warns that “Washington 3 Percenters sent out an email calling for action at the Olympia legislative building when the session begins on 11 January”.The plan outlined in the email was “to crowd all the entrances to the building and gain entrance to the gallery when people enter or exit the building by following after them”. In addition, they said they would be “making every attempt to enter the building – per the constitution. For every person that makes their way through our gauntleted entrances, we will attempt to go right along with them inside.”Other signs of concern in the wake of the Capitol riot came in the form of an email sent by Pentcholov, the JTTF officer, to Sgt Debra Winsor, who runs the Critical Infrastructure Section of the Washington State Fusion Center, advising of a February 23 lecture at the University of Washington by Joey Gibson.Gibson, the founder of Patriot Prayer, was the organizer of a long string of confrontational pro-Trump protests in Portland, Oregon, between 2017 and 2020. Many of the protests became violent, and some descended into riots.In the email, Pentcholov advises that “the same setup applies- indoor venue, 100% ID and weapons check, etc”, adding “local antifa regulars are also aware of the re-scheduled event. There is unconfirmed info that Washington 3%-ers will also attend.” More

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      Falun Gong-aligned media push fake news about Democrats and Chinese communists

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      US news outlets aligned with Falun Gong, a religious movement locked in a decades-long conflict with the Chinese state, have been increasingly successful in promoting conspiracy narratives about Democrats, election fraud and communists to the pro-Trump right in America.Experts say that in a future post-pandemic landscape, the cable news channel NTD, and especially the multimedia enterprise the Epoch Times, may amplify the efforts of Republicans to link Joe Biden and Democrats to the Chinese Communist party (CCP), and to harden US public opinion against China.According to Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of the media watchdog Media Matters for America, these outlets, and especially the Epoch Times, were always critical of China, and somewhat right-leaning, but were not commonly counted as problematic during the 2016 election as spreading falsehoods across social media platforms like Facebook.But in a telephone conversation, Carusone said Epoch Times pivoted hard from 2017 towards material which stoked conspiracy narratives, and began spending freely in order to make sure that their message was prominent on platforms like YouTube.“After social media sites moved against the fake news outlets, it left a gap,” Carusone said. “What Epoch Times did so well was to step right into that gap.” And, he says, they secured their niche by handing money to big tech platforms.After Epoch Times spent about $11m on Facebook ads in 2019, the platform banned them from advertising on the grounds that they had violated rules around transparency in political advertising. But the outlet simply took its business elsewhere: according to data from Pathmatics that was analyzed by Media MattersIn the year to date, Epoch Times has spent an estimated $930,000 in digital advertising promoting videos and desktop display ads. Over 95% of their spending was on YouTube.Through 2020 and into the early life of the Biden administration, Epoch Times and NTD alike promoted conspiracy theories related to the QAnon movement, the supposedly compromising international ties of Hunter Biden, and even sold merchandise outlining half-forgotten conspiracy theories such as “Uranium One”, which held that Hillary Clinton, as US secretary of state, engineered the sale of uranium deposits to Russian interests in return for donations to the Clinton Foundation.While US rightwing outlets like One America News and Newsmax have profited by supplying the seemingly bottomless appetite among the rightwing grassroots for material that depicts American politics as a tangle of elite conspiracies, Carusone says it is a mistake to view the Falung Gong-aligned outlets as normal media companies.The principal goal of Epoch Times – now publishing in 36 countries under the supervision of a network of non-profits – is not to generate profit, he says, but to mount a long and broad “influence operation”. And the goal of that influence operation, in turn, is “to foment anti-CCP sentiment”.By leveraging the deep partisan polarization in US politics, and by tapping into a long tradition of anticommunism on the American right, according to Carusone, the outlets have sought to link Biden and the Democratic party to radical leftist movements like antifa, and then publish “anything that ties them to CCP influence”, however spurious.He envisages the possibility that Republicans will cooperate with these outlets – who have also spread significant amounts of disinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic – to ask “what is Joe Biden going to do about China causing coronavirus?”Although there is no evidence of direct cooperation, they have already shown a willingness to echo anti-China messaging with the likes of the former Trump aide Steve Bannon and billionaire Chinese exile Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok, who has financed Bannon’s activities through consulting contracts and donations.From as early as January 2020, Bannon and Kwok were attempting to spread a narrative alleging that the pandemic was caused by a Chinese bioweapon, both on Bannon’s radio program and on their shared media venture, G News. The Epoch Times followed that April with a documentary that repeated the bioweapon claims, and have taken further opportunities to allege, without basis, that China’s government started the pandemic deliberately.According to Carusone, such opportunistic retreading of existing conspiracy narratives is characteristic of these outlets. “They’re not drivers, they’re not weaving new conspiracy theories, they’re amplifying what’s already out there,” he said.This effort appears to be increasingly well-resourced. Although the financial arrangements of the many Epoch Times non-profits vary, the original Epoch Times Association Inc, headquartered in New York City, saw revenues and donations increase sharply every year between 2016 and 2019 according to IRS 990 declarations inspected by the Guardian. While in 2016, the association took in $3.9m in revenue, in 2019 they brought in $15.4m, and cleared $1.86m after salaries and expenses.Neither outlet has ever explicitly confirmed its links to Falun Gong, a religious organization which emerged from the so-called “qijong” movement, which teaches adherents to practice breathing, movement and meditation exercises. But former employees reportedly say that they are run by movement adherents, and that Falun Gong founder and leader, Li Hongzhi, and others in the movement’s hierarchy exercise a powerful influence over the outlets’ anti-China messaging.Alongside the English language outlets, Chinese language outlets and a dance troupe spread the group’s messages.Though Falun Gong emerged in China in the 1990s, its founder now lives in the US.The Epoch Times, which began as a print newspaper in 2000, has been a steadfast opponent of the CCP, which has persecuted Falun Gong and other, related qijong movement groups since the late 1990s.The newspaper was founded in Georgia by a Chinese-American Falun Gong adherent, John Tang, and a group of like-minded businessmen. Over the next half-decade it expanded internationally.Carusone says that the intensification of conspiracy messaging in the output of NTD and the Epoch Times, along with their embrace of Trumpism could make them more influential as the far right regroups in the coming months and heads towards the 2022 midterm elections.“There’s an incredible demand for a version of the world centered on one big villain.” he said. “Epoch Times provides that very simple narrative.” More

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      CNN urged to fire Rick Santorum after racist comments on Native Americans

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      The former US senator and CNN political commentator Rick Santorum has sparked outrage among Native Americans, and prompted calls for his dismissal, by telling a rightwing students’ conference that European colonists who came to America “birthed a nation from nothing”.“There was nothing here. I mean, yes we have Native Americans but candidly there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture,” Santorum told the ultra-conservative Young America’s Foundation’s summit, entitled standing up for faith and freedom, and shared by the group to YouTube.“We came here and created a blank slate, we birthed a nation from nothing,” he said.Santorum’s comments, effectively dismissing the millennia-long presence of Native Americans and the genocide inflicted on them as the Christian settlers transformed and expanded their colonies into the United States of America, angered many within the Native American community, and beyond.“The erasure of Native people and histories, which existed before and survived in spite of a white supremacist empire, is a foundational sin of a make-believe nation,” the activist Nick Estes, a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux tribe and host of the Red Nation podcast, said on Twitter.“According to Rick Santorum, the US was founded as a ‘Judeo-Christian’ theocratic state. He might be right about that, but the idea that the first colonizers escaped religious persecution is laughable. Invasion was an economic enterprise for god, glory, and gold.”In his remarks, Santorum, a two-term US senator for Pennsylvania and a twice-failed candidate for the Republican party’s presidential nomination, likened the colonization of Native lands to an act of religious freedom.“I don’t know of any other country in the world that was settled predominantly by people who were coming to practice their faith,” Santorum said. “They came here because they were not allowed to practice their particular faith in their own country.”Others were outraged but not surprised by the comments of Santorum, who joined CNN as a senior political commentator in 2017.“Rick Santorum is just saying what the majority of Americans silently believe – the only ‘real history’ is US history,” said Brett Chapman, a Native American attorney and descendant of Chief Standing Bear, the first Native Indian to win civil rights in the US.“Everything centers around it. Many claim to appreciate and respect Native history yet know nothing about it. Let’s not act like he’s some lone wolf out there on this.”The Cherokee writer Rebecca Nagle pointed to CNN’s lack of Native American commentators, while giving a platform to Santorum, who has previously made offensive and false claims about other minority communities.On Monday, the Native American Journalists Association cautioned Native American and Alaska Native reporters from working with, or applying for jobs, at CNN in the wake of continued racist comments and insensitive reporting directed at Indigenous people.Last week, a CNN host incorrectly identified Minnesota’s lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, as a white woman. The network has yet to correct its mistake.Politicians also weighed in. “Seriously is anyone surprised to hear this hot garbage coming from Rick Santorum?” Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) said in a tweet. “Nothing was here?! No native American culture in American culture?! America hasn’t changed?!”Mark Pocan, Democratic congressman for Wisconsin, was even more critical. “Native & Indigenous nations lived, governed, and thrived here before their land was stolen and they were murdered in a mass genocide, you ignorant white supremacist,” he wrote.Meanwhile, Nick Knudsen, executive director of DemCast USA, a digital hub of Democratic opinion and online activism, said it was “long past time” for CNN to cut ties with Santorum, whose extreme views have become a lightning rod for controversy in recent years.In 2015, he insisted the US supreme court would not have the final say on same-sex marriage, the same year he said he regretted his comments from a decade earlier comparing homosexuality to bestiality.In 2018, shortly after a former student killed 17 teenagers and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, Santorum taunted survivors who formed themselves into gun reform campaigners.“How about kids, instead of looking to someone else to solve their problem, do something about maybe taking CPR classes or trying to deal with situations that when there is a violent shooter that you can actually respond to that?” he said on CNN’s State of the Union.The politician, who claimed the survivors’ March for Our Lives group was supported by “Hollywood elites and liberal billionaires”, later tried to distance himself from his comments, claiming that he misspoke.In a statement, the National Congress of American Indians, the nation’s largest organization representing American Indian and Alaska Native groups, criticized the former senator.“Rick Santorum is an unhinged and embarrassing racist who disgraces CNN and any other media company that provides him a platform,” Fawn Sharp, the group’s president, said.She said Santorum’s assertion that settlers birthed a nation were wrong. “What European colonizers found in the Americas were thousands of complex, sophisticated and sovereign Tribal Nations, each with millennia of distinct cultural, spiritual and technological development,” she said.“Hopefully, sophisticated and humane Native American philosophy will win out over the caveman mentality of people like Rick Santorum.”CNN did not respond to a request from the Guardian for comment.In a brief statement to the Guardian issued through a spokesperson on Monday afternoon, Santorum said: “I had no intention of minimizing or in any way devaluing Native American culture.” More

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      Apple and Parler agreement could restore rightwing platform to App Store

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      Apple said it had reached an agreement with Parler, the rightwing social media app, that could lead to its reinstatement in the company’s app store. Apple kicked out Parler in January over ties to the deadly 6 January siege on the US Capitol.In a letter to two Republican lawmakers in Congress, Apple said it has been in “substantial conversations” with Parler over how the company plans to moderate content on its network. Before its removal from the App Store, Parler was a hotbed of hate speech, Nazi imagery, calls for violence (including violence against specific people) and conspiracy theories.Apple declined to comment beyond the letter, which didn’t provide details on how Parler plans to moderate such content. In the letter, Apple said Parler’s proposed changes would lead to approval of the app.Parler did not immediately respond to a message for comment. As of midday Monday, Parler was not yet available in the App Store and Apple did not give a timeline for when it would be reinstated. According to Apple’s letter, Parler proposed changes to its app and how it moderates content. Apple said the updated app incorporating those changes should be available as soon as Parler releases it.Google also banned Parler from its Google Play store in January, but Parler remains available for Android phones through third-party app stores. Apple’s closed app system means apps are only available through Apple’s own App Store. On Monday, Google reiterated its January statement that “Parler is welcome back in the Play store once it submits an app that complies with our policies”.So far, this has not happened.Parler remains banned from Amazon Web Services. Amazon said in January that Parler was unable to moderate a rise in violent content before, during and after the insurrection. Parler asked a federal judge in Seattle to force Amazon to reinstate it on the web. That effort failed, and the companies are still fighting in court.The Republican political donor Rebekah Mercer has confirmed she helped bankroll Parler and has emerged in recent months as the network’s shadow executive after its founder John Matze was ousted as CEO in February. More