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      Two more Proud Boys face sentencing on US Capitol attack charges – live

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      From 2h agoHere’s more from Reuters on the two Proud Boys who are being sentenced today, and what they were found guilty of:
      The first Proud Boy to face sentencing on Friday morning, Dominic Pezzola, did not play a leadership role in the group and was the only defendant of five to be acquitted of seditious conspiracy. He was convicted of other felonies including obstructing an official proceeding and assaulting police.
      The second defendant, Ethan Nordean, was a leader of the group who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and other crimes.
      Thousands of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol following a speech in which the Republican falsely claimed that his November 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread fraud. Trump has continued to make those false claims even as he leads the Republican race for the 2024 nomination to challenge Democrat Biden.
      Five people including a police officer died during or shortly after the riot and more than 140 police officers were injured. The Capitol suffered millions of dollars in damage.
      The sentencing of Pezzola and Nordean follows U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly on Thursday ordering two other former Proud Boys leaders, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl, to serve 17 years and 15 years in prison, respectively.
      Biggs’ term is just one year less than the 18 years former Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes received earlier this year.
      The sentences for Biggs and Rehl were far less than the 33-year and 30-year terms sought by federal prosecutors.
      The government is seeking a 20-year prison term for Pezzola and a 27-year term for Nordean.
      Although Pezzola was found not guilty of sedition, prosecutors said his assault on former Capitol Police Officer Mark Ode, in which he stole Ode’s riot shield and used it to smash at a window at the Capitol, helps to justify a lengthy prison term.
      “Pezzola’s actions and testimony leave no doubt that he intended to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo. “He committed crimes of terrorism on January 6.”
      Pezzola’s attorneys are asking for their client to be sentenced to around five years in prison, and said in their sentencing memo that he has already served about three years in jail awaiting trial.
      Nordean’s attorney, Nick Smith, plans to argue for a lower sentence within the range of 15-21 months.
      “Nordean walked in and out of the Capitol like hundreds of Class B misdemeanants,” Smith wrote. “When the government does distinguish Nordean’s actions from any other January 6 defendant’s, it relies on characterization, not facts.”
      Security guards for Ron DeSantis followed and physically blocked 15-year-old politics enthusiast Quinn Mitchell from speaking with the Florida governor during campaign events in New Hampshire, the Daily Beast reports.Since 2019, Mitchell has shown up to presidential events in the Granite State to ask candidates questions, and has often received a positive response from politicians who admire his civic mindedness. But after asking DeSantis whether Donald Trump “violated the peaceful transfer of power” – and getting a nonresponse in return from the governor – Mitchell says his security singled him out at campaign events:
      Speaking about it for the first time in an interview with The Daily Beast, Mitchell says that he was grabbed and physically intimidated by DeSantis security at two subsequent campaign stops, where the candidate’s staffers also monitored him in a way he perceived as hostile.
      The experience, Mitchell said, was “horrifying” and amounted to “intimidation.”
      At a Fourth of July parade DeSantis attended, Mitchell was swarmed by security and physically restrained after a brief interaction with the governor—with his private security contractors even demanding Mitchell stay put until they said so.
      With his mother alarmed, the situation escalated to such a degree that the candidate’s wife, Casey, spoke directly with her—but to suggest her son was being dishonest about what happened, according to Mitchell.
      Then, at an August 19 event—where Mitchell was tailed closely by two security guards—an attendee told The Daily Beast they saw a staffer for DeSantis’ super PAC, Never Back Down, take a photo of the teenager on Snapchat before typing out an ominous caption: “Got our kid.”
      Seven other sources corroborated Mitchell’s version of events, either by sharing contemporaneous communications with the family or recounting what they witnessed in person at DeSantis events, including the Fourth of July parade. The teenager and his family say they have yet to receive any kind of apology from DeSantis.
      The DeSantis campaign and Never Back Down did not return multiple requests for comment from The Daily Beast.
      “Really stupid in a small state like New Hampshire,” Mitchell deadpanned about the guards’ behavior. Indeed, the story has the potential to create an avoidable headache for DeSantis, whose campaign for the Republican presidential nomination is going far worse than expected. Despite early momentum and strong fundraising, most polls in the state and nationwide show the Florida governor in a very distant second place to Trump among GOP voters.The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports that former allies are turning their backs on Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and Republican presidential candidate who was last week indicted in Georgia for trying to overturn its 2020 election result:As he attempts to meet mounting legal fees incurred in large part through his work for Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani will reportedly not get “a nickel” from one billionaire who backed his campaign for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination – or, apparently, much from many other previously big donors.“I wouldn’t give him a nickel,” the investor Leon Cooperman told CNBC. “I’m very negative on Donald Trump. It’s an American tragedy. [Rudy] was ‘America’s mayor’. He did a great job. And like everybody else who gets involved with Trump, it turns to shit.”Brian France, a former Nascar chief executive, was slightly more conciliatory. But he told the same outlet his wallet was staying shut: “I was a major supporter of Rudy in 2008 and at other times. I’m not sure what happen[ed] but I miss the old Rudy. I’m wishing him well.”Donald Trump happened to Rudy.Giuliani, now 79, was once a crusading US attorney who became New York mayor in 1993 and led the city on 9/11 and after. Capitalising on the resultant “America’s mayor” tag, he ran for the Republican nomination to succeed President George W Bush. Briefly leading the polls, he raised $60m but flamed out when the race got serious.When Giuliani struggled with drink and depression, his former wife has said, Trump gave him shelter. When Trump himself entered presidential politics, in 2016, Giuliani became a vociferous surrogate. When Trump entered the White House, Giuliani failed to be named secretary of state but did become the president’s aide and attorney.In that capacity his actions fueled Trump’s first impeachment, over attempts to find dirt on opponents in Ukraine, and he helped drive the hapless attempt to overturn Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden in 2020, which has spawned numerous criminal charges.Republican politicians have a long record of claiming to be the party that supports the police, but as NBC News reports, a man who told officers to “go hang yourself” on January 6 is currently working for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.“If you are a police officer and are going to abide by unconstitutional bulls—, I want you to do me a favor right now and go hang yourself, because you’re a piece of s—,” said Dylan Quattrucci, the deputy state director of Trump’s campaign in New Hampshire, in a video he recorded on January 6 near the Capitol. “Go f— yourself.”Quattrucci’s position makes him the number-two figure in Trump’s campaign in the state, which is the second to vote in the GOP’s nominating process. Trump is currently the frontrunner is most polls of Republican primary voters, both nationwide and in New Hampshire.The video was first posted on Twitter by “Sedition Hunters”, an online group focused on tracking down participants in the January 6 attack. NBC News reports there’s no evidence Quattrucci entered the Capitol itself, though on his Twitter account, he does have a picture of himself posing with Trump at a New Hampshire campaign office.The sentencing hearing for Dominic Pezzola, a member of the Proud Boys militia group convicted of serious charges related to the January 6 insurrection, has begun in Washington DC, Politico reports:Prosecutors are requesting a 20-year prison sentence for Pezzola, which, if granted, would be the longest handed out to any defendant related to the attack on the Capitol.There’s no telling how the state and federal cases against Donald Trump and others for trying to overturn the 2020 polls will end, but as the Associated Press reports, the environment for election workers nationwide has grown much more hostile in recent years:More than a dozen people nationally have been charged with threatening election workers by a justice department unit trying to stem the tide of violent and graphic threats against people who count and secure the vote.Government employees are being bombarded with threats even in normally quiet periods between elections, secretaries of state and experts warn. Some point to Donald Trump and his allies repeatedly and falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen and spreading conspiracy theories about election workers. Experts fear the 2024 election could be worse and want the justice department to do more to protect election workers.The justice department had created the taskforce in 2021 led by its public integrity section, which investigates election crimes. John Keller, the unit’s second in command, said in an interview with the Associated Press the department hoped its prosecutions would deter others from threatening election workers.“This isn’t going to be taken lightly. It’s not going to be trivialized,” he said. “Federal judges, the courts are taking misconduct seriously and the punishments are going to be commensurate with the seriousness of the conduct.”More people are expected to plead guilty on Thursday to threatening election workers in Arizona and Georgia.Georgia’s Republican governor Brian Kemp yesterday rejected a call from a handful of rightwing lawmakers to convene a special session of the state legislature with the intention of removing Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney who indicted Donald Trump and 18 others for trying to overturn the state’s elections three years ago.But as the Guardian’s Jewel Wicker reports, Willis may not be out of the woods yet:
      Republicans at the state and federal levels are calling for multiple tactics to unseat Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, even if their legal standing is murky and they lack the support of Georgia’s Republican governor.
      Steve Gooch, the Georgia senate majority leader, and Clint Dixon, a state senator, have said they plan to use a commission designed to discipline and potentially remove rogue prosecutors to investigate Willis following her indictment of Donald Trump for attempting to reverse the results of the 2020 election.
      In May, Governor Brian Kemp signed a bill, SB92, that makes it easier to remove elected district attorneys. Under the law, a prosecuting attorneys qualifications commission has the power to investigate complaints and discipline or remove district attorneys whom the appointed commissioners believe are not properly enforcing the law.
      Kemp on Thursday dismissed talk of using the commission or the legislature to remove Willis from office, but said the decision was not his. “Up to this point, I have not seen any evidence that DA Willis’s actions or lack thereof warrant action by the prosecuting attorney oversight commission, but that will ultimately be a decision that the commission will make,” the governor said.
      The commission will begin receiving complaints on 1 October 2023, and earlier this month Burt Jones, the Republican lieutenant governor, announced three appointments to the eight-member group. Jones, who served as one of Georgia’s fake electors when he was a state senator in 2020, recently criticized Willis’s prosecution of Trump and said her treatment of the defendants like criminals is “very disturbing”.
      Here’s more from Reuters on the two Proud Boys who are being sentenced today, and what they were found guilty of:
      The first Proud Boy to face sentencing on Friday morning, Dominic Pezzola, did not play a leadership role in the group and was the only defendant of five to be acquitted of seditious conspiracy. He was convicted of other felonies including obstructing an official proceeding and assaulting police.
      The second defendant, Ethan Nordean, was a leader of the group who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and other crimes.
      Thousands of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol following a speech in which the Republican falsely claimed that his November 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread fraud. Trump has continued to make those false claims even as he leads the Republican race for the 2024 nomination to challenge Democrat Biden.
      Five people including a police officer died during or shortly after the riot and more than 140 police officers were injured. The Capitol suffered millions of dollars in damage.
      The sentencing of Pezzola and Nordean follows U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly on Thursday ordering two other former Proud Boys leaders, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl, to serve 17 years and 15 years in prison, respectively.
      Biggs’ term is just one year less than the 18 years former Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes received earlier this year.
      The sentences for Biggs and Rehl were far less than the 33-year and 30-year terms sought by federal prosecutors.
      The government is seeking a 20-year prison term for Pezzola and a 27-year term for Nordean.
      Although Pezzola was found not guilty of sedition, prosecutors said his assault on former Capitol Police Officer Mark Ode, in which he stole Ode’s riot shield and used it to smash at a window at the Capitol, helps to justify a lengthy prison term.
      “Pezzola’s actions and testimony leave no doubt that he intended to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo. “He committed crimes of terrorism on January 6.”
      Pezzola’s attorneys are asking for their client to be sentenced to around five years in prison, and said in their sentencing memo that he has already served about three years in jail awaiting trial.
      Nordean’s attorney, Nick Smith, plans to argue for a lower sentence within the range of 15-21 months.
      “Nordean walked in and out of the Capitol like hundreds of Class B misdemeanants,” Smith wrote. “When the government does distinguish Nordean’s actions from any other January 6 defendant’s, it relies on characterization, not facts.”
      Good morning, US politics blog readers. Today, two more members of the Proud Boys militia group will be sentenced by a federal judge on charges related to the January 6 insurrection. Prosecutors are requesting a 27-year prison sentence for Ethan Nordean, a chapter president in the group, after his conviction for seditious conspiracy and other crimes, and a 20-year sentence for Dominic Pezzola, who was acquitted of that charge but convicted of other offenses related to the violent attack on the Capitol.Yesterday, a judge sentenced former Proud Boys organizer Joseph Biggs to 17 years behind bars, and handed a 15-year sentence to Zachary Rehl, a leader of the group. Both men were convicted of seditious conspiracy, a civil war-era offense that is rarely brought. Their sentences were the second- and third-longest handed down from the attack on the Capitol, and two other members of the group, including its former leader, Enrique Tarrio, are scheduled to be sentenced next week.Here’s what else is happening today:
      Just-released government data shows better-than-expect hiring in August but the unemployment rate ticking up to 3.8%. Joe Biden will speak about the report at 11.15am eastern time.
      More defendants in the Georgia election subversion case may opt to skip next week’s in-person arraignment and enter their pleas in writing. Donald Trump did so yesterday, as did his former lawyer Jenna Ellis.
      The White House is asking Congress to allocate an additional $4b to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay for the response to recent disasters, including the wildfire that destroyed Lahaina in Maui and Hurricane Idalia in Florida and other southeastern states. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘Warped history’: how the US supreme court justified gutting gay rights

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      The extreme religious right’s mission to roll back civil rights from abortion to public accommodations is being fueled by false facts and false history. Recent articles in the New Republic have documented the shaky factual foundation behind 303 Creative LLC v Elenis, the case in which the supreme court held that a website design business owned by an evangelical Christian, Lorie Smith, could refuse service to same-sex couples. Even more troubling, the history undergirding the majority’s reasoning is misleading and dangerous to the separation of church and state.Tragically, the religious right knows it has a friendly audience in the six conservative Catholic justices on the supreme court, who have been partners in shaking the foundations of fundamental rights. The justices’ new standard is whether a constitutional right is grounded in “history and tradition”, the latest byword for the bogus doctrine of “originalism”. So they need some history, and apparently any history will do.The legal end to reach a thunderous ruling justifies their debatable means. So the concept of “religious autonomy”, built on a foundation of misleading scholarship, “impact” litigation and, above all, false history, has become the method for restricting rights. Its logic of power rests on its illogic; its warping of the constitution depends on the distortion of history.Tossing aside established historySince the first religious free exercise case in 1878, the supreme court has held that the first amendment protects belief absolutely, but speech and conduct reflecting those beliefs can be regulated if the government’s interest is strong enough.According to the founders, the reason speech and conduct should be subject to the law is the potential for harm. For example, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously remarked, it is illegal to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater when there are no flames. It is also illegal to cover up child sex abuse or to let a child die from medical neglect despite religious motives. This foundational no-harm doctrine used to apply to all Americans. But now, with its recent decision, the conservative supreme court majority has carved out a gaping exception to the no-harm doctrine for the extremist Christian right, tossing aside established history.For the court to reach its holding that an evangelical website designer has a constitutional right to engage in invidious discrimination against same-sex couples, the majority fraudulently inflated the value of Smith’s speech from expressive conduct (regulatable) to highly valued “pure speech” (untouchable).Two conservative amicus groups, the Becket Fund and the Catholic League, provided the court with the necessary tools to assemble this phony argument by concocting fraudulent histories on the freedom of religious speech.Both the Becket Fund and the Catholic League rely heavily on a 1990 article by the conservative law professor Michael W McConnell that cherry-picks history to make the argument that the constitution mandates religious exemptions from the law. No legitimate scholar outside the realm of the religious right takes McConnell’s arguments seriously – they were thoroughly debunked by Philip Hamburger, Ellis West and myself 20 years ago. As I wrote in 2004, “the power to act outside the law–was not part of the framers’ intent, the framing generation’s understanding, or the vast majority–and the best–of the supreme court’s free exercise jurisprudence.”Unlike what the Becket Fund and the Catholic League wish the justices to believe, the historical truth is that the founders believed that obedience to the rule of law was necessary for true liberty. And it is the true history repeatedly stated in the sermons of the leading clergy of the late 18th-century United States. The most influential of them all, president of Presbyterian College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), the Rev John Witherspoon, who trained more framers than any other educator –including the architect of the constitution, James Madison – stated that the “true notion of liberty is the prevalence of law and order, and the security of individuals”. According to Israel Evans, chaplain of the American army in the Revolution and a friend of George Washington, when a believer “counteract[s] the peace and good order of society” and harms others, “he would be punished not for the exercise of a virtuous principle of conscience, but for violating that universal law of rectitude and benevolence which was intended to prevent one man from injuring another.”The founders believed churches should have the “power to make or ordain articles of faith, creeds, forms of worship or church government”, in the words of the congregational pastor, Rev Elisha Williams, rector of Yale University. Yet the ecclesiastical domain had to give way when others are hurt. As the founder Baptist Rev John Leland stated, the civil law is intended to constrain the actions that harm others and the public good: “[D]isturbers … ought to be punished.” Leland was close to Madison and Thomas Jefferson and influenced their views on separation of church and state. “Never promote men who seek after a state-established religion; it is spiritual tyranny – the worst of despotism,” Leland wrote.In short, the founders definitively rejected the notion that religious believers have special rights to avoid the duly enacted laws that apply to everyone else. The inconvenience of this deeply rooted historical fact must be glossed over by the Becket Fund and the Catholic League, because acknowledging it would undermine their entire argument.Exaltation of religious speech through revisionismThe argument for placing religious speech on a pedestal above all other speech is especially suspect. The Becket Fund argues that the freedom of religious speech has historically occupied a “preferred position” in the “constitutional order”, over other forms of speech. By “preferred” they mean untouchable by law. They even concoct a new label for valuable speech: “core religious speech”. The Fund’s so-called “history” argues that the freedom of speech started with the freedom of religious speech for churches, which then devolved to freedom of speech for legislators, and then finally individuals. The history they tick off is in fact a history of the suppression of religious dissenters’ speech, which was often brutal. From that bloody history, they conclude that at the founding, “the framers elected to follow a broad view of freedom of speech”.Yet their history is just spin. First, it’s not supported in the history of the first amendment itself. As they have to admit, “neither the debates in Congress nor the ratification debates within the several states shed light on the exact scope of the right protected, much less to what extent religious speech was covered.” Second, the first amendment’s free speech and press clauses were ratified in an era of vibrant political speech aired by a vital press. It is clear the founders believed that the press and political speech were highly valued, not ranked below that of religious speech in some recently invented imaginary hierarchy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionToday, the first amendment holds that political and religious speech are highly valued (though not one over the other), but at the time of the framing, the framers knew that when they limited the first amendment to the federal government, the state anti-blasphemy laws would stand. They placed political speech above dissenters’ religious speech. Thus, the first amendment was consistent with putting in jail those who criticized Christianity. Indeed, there were prosecutions for blasphemous and sacrilegious speech until Burstyn v Wilson in 1952, which held such a law unconstitutional. Of course, that is religious speech suppression. So much, in the light of the founders, for religious speech’s “preferred position” by history. What they really mean, based on their twisted interpretation, is that Christian speech has a preferred position.The Catholic League in fact leans into the fantastical concept of exalting a subset of religious speech over all other religious speech when it bizarrely attributes to the framers their acceptance of what they claim as Madison’s supposed view “that the governor of the universe supersedes any earthly authority, religious convictions were understood to command greater deference than mere personal opinions”.Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion elevates certain religious speech exactly as the Becket Fund and Catholic League suggest, and achieves this feat by intentionally misapplying free speech doctrine at its most basic. As a matter of law prior to this court, 303 Creative’s website design would have been expressive conduct. 303 Creative’s commercial speech is not the traditional, highly protected speech the court has recognized again and again: it’s not speech in a public park or on a public sidewalk or a parade. The speech is by a commercial business, whose product has expressive elements to it, which means it is expressive conduct, on which the public accommodation laws impose merely incidental burdens. However, the majority pulls a proverbial rabbit out of its hat by saying that the parties “stipulated” the commercial speech is “pure speech” – and so it must be. But that’s not how free speech cases are decided. The courts decide whether expression is traditionally highly protected, lesser valued speech, expressive conduct, or unprotected altogether. Hiding behind the parties’ stipulation is in derogation of the court’s duties and constitutional nonsense.Having transformed commercial expressive conduct into highly protected speech, Gorsuch nudged the law closer to McConnell’s debunked thesis of mandatory exemptions, which downplays any government interest. Gorsuch takes 12 pages to even acknowledge Colorado’s interest in public accommodations law, granting it one full paragraph and a quick tip of the hat: “The vital role public accommodations laws play in realizing the civil rights of all Americans.” Then he segues to suggesting that newer rights in the public accommodations laws haven’t been fully examined in the law. It’s easy to read between the lines: the majority is suggesting that LGBTQ+ discrimination isn’t nearly as bad as race discrimination; it’s a second-order interest. This is exactly what the Institute for Faith and Family argued with some dubious 14th amendment assertions. The disgraced John Eastman, writing for the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, would have moved all the way to McConnell’s conclusion, arguing no state interest could possibly overcome the exalted speech of the wedding website. The court got very close.Dangerous movesThese are dangerous moves by the court that unleash biased and destructive religious speech and conduct. The founders would not recognize the lawless world this court is building.Let’s be frank. The extreme right Christian groups supporting 303 Creative are still burned up about the Obergefell decision, which enshrined gay marriage as constitutional. They have manufactured a fictional guarantee to so-called “pure speech” and trivialized the anti-discrimination laws to make up for the fact they lost the war on LGBTQ+ marriage.The majority’s decision in 303 Creative is, in fact, an expression of the Christian right’s constitutional sour grapes. The supreme court majority has deconstructed the first amendment to fit their Bibles.
      Marci A Hamilton is a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania More

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      in US Politics

      ‘He’s an insider’: Ramaswamy’s deep ties to rightwing kingpins revealed

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      Vivek Ramaswamy has described himself as an “outsider”, accusing rivals for the Republican presidential nomination of being “bought and paid for” by donors and special interests.But the 38-year-old Ohio-based venture capitalist, whose sharp-elbowed and angry display stood out in the first Republican debate this week, has his own close ties to influential figures from both sides of the political aisle.Prominent among such connections are Peter Thiel, the co-founder of tech giants PayPal and Palantir and a rightwing mega-donor, and Leonard Leo, the activist who has marshaled unprecedented sums in his push to stock federal courts with conservative judges.Ramaswamy is a Yale Law School friend of JD Vance, the author of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy who enjoyed success in finance before entering politics. At Yale, Vance and Ramaswamy attended what the New Yorker called an “intimate lunch seminar for select students” that was hosted by Thiel. Last year, backed by Thiel and espousing hard-right Trumpist views, Vance won a US Senate seat in Ohio.Thiel has since said he has stepped back from political donations. But he has backed Ramaswamy’s business career, supporting what the New Yorker called “a venture helping senior citizens access Medicare” and, last year, backing Strive Asset Management, a fund launched by Ramaswamy to attack environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies among corporate investors. Vance was also a backer.Ramaswamy’s primary vehicle to success has been Roivant, an investment company focused on the pharmaceuticals industry founded in 2014.The Roivant advisory board includes figures from both the Republican and Democratic establishments: Kathleen Sebelius, US health secretary under Barack Obama; Tom Daschle of South Dakota, formerly Democratic leader in the US Senate; and Olympia Snowe, formerly a Republican senator from Maine.Ramaswamy’s links to Leo – recently the recipient of a $1.6bn donation from the industrialist Barre Seid, believed to be the biggest ever such gift, but now reportedly the subject an investigation by the attorney general of Washington DC – are many.As reported by ProPublica and Documented, Ramaswamy has spoken at retreats staged by Teneo, a group Leo chairs and which aims to connect high-powered conservatives, to “crush liberal dominance” in American life.Other Teneo speakers have reportedly included Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor polling ahead of Ramaswamy in the Republican primary, and the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who trails Ramaswamy and clashed with him on stage in Milwaukee.ProPublica also linked Thiel to the genesis of the Teneo group. According to a document seen by the Guardian, Ramaswamy became a Teneo member in 2021.Elsewhere, Ramaswamy is a board member of the Philanthropy Roundtable, a group with ties to Leo, and a member of the Federalist Society, the Leo-driven group which works to stock the courts with conservatives.Ramaswamy has also spoken to and received an award from the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF), a group of Republican state treasurers.In June, in South Carolina, the Post and Courier newspaper reported that last year, before launching his presidential bid, Ramaswamy attempted “to leverage his [Republican] connections to gain access [for Strive] to lucrative contracts to manage pension funds … [with] total assets of $39.6bn”.Similar pushes were mounted in Missouri and Indiana, the paper said. Curtis Loftis, the South Carolina state treasurer, told the Post and Courier there was “nothing improper” about such approaches.Asked about Ramaswamy’s claims to be an outsider in light of his links to rightwing donors, activists and establishment figures, a campaign spokesperson told the Guardian: “Vivek has lived the American dream and has had tremendous success in business.“There’s a colossal difference between someone who has friendships and business relationships with wealthy individuals and politicians who change their policies and positions to please their Super Pac donors,” they added.In the Wisconsin debate, Ramaswamy flourished in the absence of Donald Trump, the former US president who faces 91 criminal charges but nonetheless leads Republican polling by huge margins.Amid speculation that Ramaswamy might end up Trump’s running mate, Reed Galen, a Republican operative turned co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, called Ramaswamy “a classic 2020s America tech bro bullshit artist … Trump for the 21st century”.Ramaswamy’s claim to be an outsider, Galen said, was part of his “fundamental understanding … that Maga [the pro-Trump Republican base] wants him to show that the rest of these people [in the primary] are politicians. He’s willing to be the showman … the outsider. Anti-establishment. ‘If anything is there, I dislike it because it’s there.’ You know, ‘I’m going to have fun with this. I’m not going to take it seriously because you’re a bunch of hacks and goons.’”But in another sense, regarding Ramaswamy’s ties to the likes of Leo and Thiel, Galen said: “I think that he’s an insider.“He walks into a room with Leonard Leo and says, ‘What do you need me to do?’ … And they’re like, ‘Here’s what we want you to do. Here’s what we need you to do.’ Right?“Do I think [Ramaswamy] cares about [issues like restricting] abortion? No, not particularly. I don’t think he has a firmly held belief on it. But if he thinks that it will help him, and in exchange for that Leonard Leo will throw a little chicken feed of the $1.6bn that old man gave him, to help him? Sure, what the hell?“He didn’t ever think he’d get this far. So now he’s just gonna push it as far as he can.”Ramaswamy, Galen said, was closely tied to a world of donors and non-profits in which Leo is “certainly at the center. And this movement only moves in one direction, and it’s toward the darkness. It’s towards authoritarianism. And it’s because it finds people like Ramaswamy. And the more that all these other candidates will now attack him, they will drive him further and further into the arms of those people.” More

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      in US Politics

      US businessman is wannabe ‘warlord’ of secretive far-right men’s network

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      The founder and sponsor of a far-right network of secretive, men-only, invitation-only fraternal lodges in the US is a former industrialist who has frequently speculated about his future as a warlord after the collapse of America, a Guardian investigation has found.Federal and state tax and company filings show that the Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR) and its creator, Charles Haywood, also have financial ties with the far-right Claremont Institute.SACR’s most recent IRS filing names Haywood as the national organization’s principal officer. Other filings identify three lodges in Idaho – in Boise, Coeur d’Alene and Moscow – and another in Dallas, Texas.SACR’s public-facing presence is confined to a slick one-page website advertising the organization’s goal as “civilizational renaissance”, and a society “with strong leadership committed to family and culture”.The site claims SACR is “raising accountable leaders to help build thriving communities of free citizens” who will rebuild “the frontier-conquering spirit of America”. It condemns “those who rule today”, saying that they “corrupt the sinews of America”, “[alienate] men from family, community, and God” and promising to “counter and conquer this poison”.It also prominently features SACR’s cross-like insignia or “mark” which it describes variously as symbolizing “sword and shield” and the rejection of “Modernist philosophies and heresies”.Finally, the site advises that SACR membership “is organized primarily around local groups overseen by a national superstructure” and “is by invitation only”, offering an email address for those “interested in learning more”.The Guardian emailed the website contact address from a pseudonymous address but received no response.Heidi Beirich is co-founder of the Global Project on Hate and Extremism and an expert of the far right. She characterized the rhetoric on the website as “palingenetic ultranationalism”, a feature of fascism that proposes a revolution as a means of national rebirth.Haywood has become more active and prominent as a blogger and commentator on the far-right podcast circuit since selling his solely owned Indianapolis-based shampoo manufacturing company, Mansfield-King, to a competitor for an undisclosed price in September 2020.On his personal website, The Worthy House, where he styles himself “Maximum Leader”, Haywood has written that the sale made him “rich beyond the dreams of avarice and looking to cause trouble”. Mansfield-King was reportedly “on track to do $45m in revenue” in the year before its sale.He has featured on Claremont Institute podcasts like The American Mind and shows run by Claremont Institute staffers and alumni, like the New Founding podcast. He has also written for Claremont’s website, The American Mind.Indiana company records show that Haywood incorporated SACR as a domestic non-profit in Indiana on 22 July 2020, just ahead of the sale of his company. IRS records show that on SACR was approved as a non-profit fraternal organization – with provision to create subsidiary lodges – under section 501(c)(10) of the Internal Revenue code.The organization’s structure, aims and apparent secrecy are striking in the light of some of the ideas Haywood has promoted in articles on the Worthy House website.One idea he has repeatedly raised on the website is that he might serve as a “warlord” at the head of an “armed patronage network” or “APN”, defined as an “organizing device in conditions where central authority has broken down” in which the warlord’s responsibility is “the short- and long-term protection, military and otherwise, of those who recognize his authority and act, in part, at his behest”.The “possibilities involving violence” that APNs might face, Haywood writes include “more-or-less open warfare with the federal government, or some subset or remnant of it”.Further on, Haywood writes: “At this moment I preside over what amounts to a extended, quite sizeable, compound, which when complete I like to say, accurately, will be impervious to anything but direct organized military attack”, adding that “it requires a group of men to make it work … what I call ‘shooters’ – say fifteen able-bodied, and adequately trained, men.”These “shooters”, Haywood explains, “can operate my compound, both defensively and administratively”, meanwhile, “I have the personality, and skills, to lead such a group.”Haywood was one of the first on the right to try to rehabilitate the rioters who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Just over two months after that incident, he praised it as an “electoral justice protest”, commenting that “the Protest was pretty awesome in every way. Its most precise analog in American history … is the Boston Tea Party.”The Guardian requested comment from Haywood via text message and email after attempting to contact him via telephone but received no response.Laura K Field is a political theorist and a senior fellow at the Washington DC-based thinktank the Niskanen Center who has written and spoken extensively about the “reactionary conservatism” of the Claremont Institute and those in its milieu.In a telephone conversation, Field said that “some of the Claremont Institute’s leaders have taken on an apocalyptic view of America and think we’re already in a situation where our society is more conflict-ridden than we were before the civil war”.Their fears of “unyielding technocratic tyranny” mean that some in Claremont circles have been “dabbling in talk of secession for years”, and “believe they need to use whatever they might need, including paramilitaries”.Haywood’s ideas have seen him characterized as an extremist even by others on the far right including the former American Conservative columnist Rod Dreher, who wrote last December that Haywood was “seriously, batshit crazy” and characterized him as writing from a “Midwestern Führerbunker”.State and federal tax filings, however, indicate that Haywood has succeeded in attracting men to help him build a network in line with his ideas. Although there is no public membership list available, federal and state filings from regional lodges identify their officers along with those who initially incorporated each lodge.In particular, Skyler Kressin of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, appears to serve a key role in SACR. Idaho and Texas company records show that Kressin incorporated lodges in Boise, Coeur d’Alene and Dallas; serves as a director of the Coeur d’Alene and Dallas lodges; and was named as the principal officer of the parent organization on its 2020-2021 tax return.Like other members revealed as officers in the filings, Kressin appears to be an affluent professional working as a tax accountant.The Guardian emailed a request for comment to Kressin but received no response.According to tax records Haywood has funded SACR through his Howdy Doody Good Times foundation, for which he and his wife, Alison Murphy, are both listed as directors. In the 2020-2021 tax year the foundation gave $30,000 to SACR, followed by $10,000 the following year, according to its 990 filings.Further funding for SACR was provided by the Claremont Institute, which gave $26,248 in 2021 in one of only two grants the organization distributed that year, per its own IRS filings.In another indication of what appears to be a mutually supportive relationship, Haywood’s foundation contributed $50,000 to the Claremont Institute in 2020-2021.The Guardian emailed a Claremont media spokesperson, David Bahr, inviting comment.On Haywood’s sponsorship of SACR and his Claremont ties, Field, the political theorist, said: “What’s creepy about the local-level stuff is that this country has a history of local autocracy … the way they’re acting undermines the rule of law.” More

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      ‘There won’t be libraries left’: how a Florida county became the book ban heartland of the US

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      “Why do you need to know how to masturbate when you still got skid marks in your underwear?” asks Tia Bess, the newly appointed national director of outreach for the conservative advocacy group Moms for Liberty.Inside a squat Pentecostal church on a country road in Clay Hill, Florida, Bess flips through a large illustrated handbook titled It’s Perfectly Normal, marketed to kids ages 10 and up, intended as a primer about the onset of puberty.“This is not something you want your children to see if they are not developmentally ready,” she says, pointing at a rudimentary sketch of young adults masturbating. Bess sports a bright blue T-shirt with a Moms for Liberty logo plastered on the front, touting an organization which she refers to as an army of “joyful warriors” advocating for parental rights, and which the Southern Poverty Law Center considers a rightwing extremist group.Advancing the analogy, Bess pulls a copy of Hustler magazine from her bag, along with a copy of Gender Queer, the graphic novel by Maia Kobabe that PEN America ranks as the most banned book in the country.“Show me the difference,” she says, holding the two illustrated pages side by side.Both pages depict oral sex. Though, in the case of Gender Queer, it’s fairly obvious that the message is one of confusion and insecurity about sexuality, which contrasts with the superficially erotic scene in Hustler.Bess thinks these distinctions are too subtle for teenagers to understand. She wants to see Gender Queer and many other titles removed from shelves of public school libraries in her home district of Clay county, a rural, predominantly conservative swath of north-east Florida. And she’s had tremendous success.Clay county has become a flashpoint in the state of Florida on the topic of book challenges. According to recent tallies, more than 175 books have been permanently removed from its public school libraries – a number which ranks among the highest of any county in the US – and hundreds more remain unavailable to students due to a policy unique to the county, requiring that books are pulled from shelves as soon as a challenge form is filed with the school district. Conservative activists from two organizations have seized on that policy, often filing multiple challenge forms at a time, which inundates the systems and committees that process the claims.“The biggest issue facing Clay county right now is the backlog of challenges and the huge political divide that’s driving it. No other county is dealing with a similar problem,” says Jen Cousins, co-founder of the Florida Freedom to Read Project (FFTRP) and a mother of four. “They’re creating fake outrage over what’s available in libraries.”Last year, Bess moved her family from Jacksonville to Clay county due to a “less restrictive” political and cultural climate. She’s since embedded herself locally in the fight for book removal, filing challenge forms, holding forth in school board meetings on the dangers of books like Gender Queer (which has since been removed from public school collections) by drawing salacious parallels with flatly pornographic material, and recording hammy YouTube videos reading selections from books that she deems inappropriate for middle- and high-school students.In her official capacity at Moms for Liberty, she advises other parents in Clay county on how to do the same. She is also a key player in advancing the mandate on a national level – going city to city, state to state, speaking at chapter meetings and conventions, recruiting new members and encouraging members to run for school board seats.“Empower and educate parents – that’s what we want to do,” says Bess. “And holding elected officials accountable for the decisions they’re making.”Bess first rose to prominence as a volunteer at Moms for Liberty in the spring of 2021, when she successfully sued Jacksonville’s school district for defying Governor Ron DeSantis’s anti-masking mandate on behalf of her then three-year-old son, who has autism and sensory issues. As a Black woman from downtown Jacksonville, who spent a portion of her teenage years homeless, she complicates the stereotype of Moms for Liberty members as a tidy bloc of predominantly white suburban housewives.“A lot of people in the Black community are afraid to speak up,” she says. “And I just didn’t care about that. It wasn’t about me or my feelings.”Despite the express mission of parental empowerment, it’s rare that book challenge forms are filed by individual parents. Instead, nearly all of the challenges in Clay county have been filed by activists affiliated with the same two organizations: Moms for Liberty and No Left Turn in Education. Bess also chalks this up to fear over repercussions and a lack of knowledge about school board politics and procedures.“Parents are afraid. Even my own mother still has the mentality of a Black woman born in the 40s. There’s still that fear and intimidation,” she says. “The average person doesn’t know these books are out there. But if they knew how to challenge them, they would. And that’s my job.”Founded in central Florida in 2021, Moms for Liberty began as a critical mass of parents troubled by their school district’s Covid-19 mask mandates. With the help of well-organized campaigns of outrage (both in person and online) it has since spread rapidly, growing to 285 chapters in 45 states, with roughly 120,000 members, in two years.The group’s national profile has been built on combating what it deems the ills of society: gender ideology, critical race theory and the “sexualization” of children. For those critical of the group, these interpretations often translate to homophobia, racism and delusions of rampant pedophilia.Moms for Liberty purports to be a grassroots organization, but has attracted donations from political action committees such as Conservatives for Good Government. It also has longstanding connections to the Republican party. The founding mothers are Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice, both former school board members from central Florida. The third founder is Bridget Ziegler. (She has since stepped back from her leadership role in the group, but continues to serve as chair of the Sarasota county school board.) She is married to Christian Ziegler, chair of the Florida Republican party. The pair are close friends with Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who recently appointed Bridget Ziegler to the board overseeing Disney World’s district after stripping the corporation of its power to self-govern.Ziegler’s advocacy for the “Parents’ Bill of Rights” laid the groundwork for last year’s Parental Rights in Education Act, better known by the “don’t say gay” moniker. She appeared behind DeSantis at the bill’s signing last year.Among its most controversial sections, the bill prohibits classroom discussions of gender identity or sexual orientation from kindergarten to third grade. An update to that legislation, HB 1069, was passed in the spring of this year, and went into effect on 1 July and extends those same prohibitions from third to 12th grade.Additionally, the new law emboldens book challenges by forcing all districts in Florida to adopt policies that were already in effect in Clay county, such as removing books from shelves five days after a challenge form has been filed, allowing parents to appeal a school district’s decision to return books to shelves, or refile the same challenge form repeatedly, and providing parents a path to limit their children’s access to public school libraries.“It’s effectively a ban when you pull books out of circulation,” says Gargi Chipalkatti, a mother of two children in Clay county public schools. “I want my kids to have access to any book they want to read. I didn’t like the fact that somebody else was trying to dictate that.”Chipalkatti served as a volunteer on Clay county’s book review committee last school year, which rules on whether or not challenged books should be returned to shelves. “It boggles my mind that you had a couple of organizations flooding the system and holding everybody hostage.”All of this is particularly troubling for media specialists, who oversee library collections in public schools, and bear the full weight of the issue.Julie Miller, who serves as chair of the Clay county education association media specialist committee, is in charge of selecting and purchasing books for a high school library in Clay county. Her husband, Joel Miller, is likewise a career educator, and teaches media studies at a rival high school.“Prior to 2021, we’d gone over 20 years without a single challenge,” Julie Miller says. Midway through this summer, 706 books have been officially challenged, according to data provided by FFTRP. Many of the titles currently receiving negative attention have been in libraries for decades. Such is the case for Push by Sapphire, and Lucky by Alice Sebold, both of which contain granular depictions of rape. A handful of outliers, like those furnished by Tia Bess, have questionable illustrations and advice, which the Millers make no concessions for.“It all comes down to community standards,” Joel Miller says. “Portland, Oregon, may feel differently, but there’s probably no place for books like that in Orange Park, Florida.”The Millers note that a large percentage of challenges are for books that have LGBTQ+ themes, such as All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M Johnson. And yet more are challenged on the grounds of being critical race theory-adjacent and teaching “alternative history”, including canonical novels such as Native Son, Beloved and the anodyne children’s book Before She Was Harriet (which has since been returned to library shelves).“There are a few inappropriate books on that challenge list,” says Chipalkatti. “But 99.9% of those are really good books.”As is the case across the country, judging these books as roundly unsuitable for students and demanding their removal is a minority opinion. And Julie Miller feels that librarians are being unfairly maligned.“They’re calling her a groomer, a pornography peddler,” Joel Miller says.She has become the target of one conservative activist’s ire in particular – a former resident of New York named Bruce Friedman. Like Tia Bess, Friedman moved to Clay county in 2021 for political reasons. He now serves as the Florida chapter president of No Left Turn in Education, a rightwing advocacy group allied with Moms for Liberty.Last year, Friedman made headlines for having his microphone cut off at a school board meeting while attempting to read a rape scene from Alice Sebold’s memoir Lucky. At a Florida department of education meeting several months later, Friedman said he’d made a list of books in Clay county public school libraries that had “concerning content”, including “porn, critical race theory, social-emotional learning [and] fluid gender”.He has since become one of the most prolific book challengers in the country. A spreadsheet on his website compiles 4,623 titles that he labeled as problematic and intends to challenge. (Friedman declined to comment for this story.)In dozens of challenge forms provided by FFTRP, Friedman mentions Julie Miller by name – along with comments that the books will “DAMAGE SOULS”, declaring his need to “PROTECT CHILDREN”. In a school board meeting earlier this year, Friedman shared an anecdote about a friend of his son’s reading a library book aloud in his high school cafeteria that contained “steamy, erotic” scenes. Friedman said the experience “stole his son’s innocence”, but failed to provide the title of the book.Dubious, Julie Miller immediately requested an investigation. “I wanted to know if there was a book like that in my library so I could deal with it. If not, I wanted my name to be cleared,” she says.She found no record of any book that had been recently checked out matching Friedman’s description.The term “pornography” is the most bandied by Moms for Liberty and No Left Turn in Education. Bess warns that these books violate statutes. “There’s a clear definition,” she says, citing Florida statute 847.012. “All materials must be free of pornography, the depiction of erotic behavior or pictures intended to cause excitement.”The caveat is statute 847.001, which clarifies that material can only be deemed pornographic if, “Taken as a whole, [it] is without serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors,” making the question of age-appropriateness difficult to parse. If the state holds to the most conservative possible reading of that statute, then texts like the Bible, Shakespeare and countless others would have to be taken off shelves as well. (Since then, Shakespeare has actually come under scrutiny.)“You have to consider context. And if you don’t do that there are not going to be libraries left,” says Chipalkatti.Bess says that the chair of Clay county’s Moms for Liberty chapter introduced the idea of a rubric, like the one recently proposed in Texas, to determine at what age certain themes and language are permissible. “But there hasn’t been much feedback on it yet,” Bess says. “That’s something that I’m really going to push for. Where’s the parental advisory label for books?”Another proposed solution was introduced last school year, when the district advertised a new “individualized school library access plan”, which allows parents to limit what books their kids can borrow or ban library access outright. “What more could you want? It blows my mind as to why that’s not sufficient for [the activists],” Joel Miller says.However, out of 38,265 students enrolled in Clay county schools, only four parents signed up to limit or oversee their children’s library access. In nearby Citrus county, the school district introduced an “opt-in” access plan, where students are defaulted to having no library access until the form has been turned in to school officials by a parent. There were roughly 4,000 students who couldn’t use their school library last school year due to “parent error or lack of engagement”, according to FFTRP. Citrus county has yet to amend this policy.The future of public school libraries in Florida seems to be imperiled in the debate over book challenges. Last year, Julie Miller purchased chairs instead of new books. And she has not been cleared to make any acquisitions for the approaching school year either. DeSantis’s new law does away with earmark percentages of school district funding for specific departments, allowing school boards to curtail or redirect library funds to different categories if they so choose.All of this suggests it might be easier to defund libraries and winnow collections rather than venture the social and political risks associated with fighting a culture war with a governor who’s currently using the state legislature as his personal armory.In a Clay county school board workshop meeting from last month, the chief academic officer Roger Dailey seemed to cast aspersions on the very utility of libraries, referring to them as glorified copy rooms, and admitting that his own teenage children have never checked a book out of their high school library because they “consume their literature in different formats, most of it digitally on their devices”, he says.“I don’t even know if my own sons know where the library is in their school.” More

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      in Elections

      US justice department seeks 33 years in prison for ex-Proud Boys leader

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      The US justice department is seeking 33 years in prison for Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys leader convicted of seditious conspiracy in one of the most serious cases to emerge from the attack on the US Capitol, according to court documents.The sentence, if imposed, would be by far the longest punishment that has been handed down in the massive prosecution of the riot on 6 January 2021. The Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy in a separate case, has received the longest sentence to date – 18 years.Tarrio, who once served as national chairman of the far-right extremist group, and three lieutenants were convicted by a Washington DC jury in May of conspiring to block the transfer of presidential power in the hopes of keeping Donald Trump in the White House after the Republican president lost the 2020 election.Tarrio, who was not at the Capitol riot itself, was a top target of what has become the largest justice department investigation in American history. He led the neo-fascist group – known for street fights with leftwing activists – when Trump infamously told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during his first election debate with Democrat Joe Biden.During the months-long trial, prosecutors argued that the Proud Boys viewed themselves as foot soldiers fighting for Trump as the Republican spread lies that Democrats stole the election from him, and were prepared to go to war to keep their preferred leader in power.“They unleashed a force on the Capitol that was calculated to exert their political will on elected officials by force and to undo the results of a democratic election,” prosecutors wrote in their filing on Thursday. “The foot soldiers of the right aimed to keep their leader in power. They failed. They are not heroes; they are criminals.”Prosecutors are also asking for a 33-year-sentence for one of Tarrio’s co-defendants, Joseph Biggs of Ormond Beach, Florida, a self-described Proud Boys organizer.They are asking the judge to impose a 30-year prison term for Zachary Rehl, who was president of the Proud Boys chapter in Philadelphia; 27 years in prison for Ethan Nordean of Auburn, Washington, who was a Proud Boys chapter president; and 20 years for Dominic Pezzola, a Proud Boys member from Rochester, New York.Defense attorneys argued there was no conspiracy and no plan to attack the Capitol. More

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      in Elections

      Names and addresses of Georgia grand jurors posted on rightwing websites

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      Law enforcement officials in Georgia say they are investigating threats targeting members of the grand jury that indicted former President Donald Trump and 18 of his allies, after private information about jurors was published online.On Thursday, the Fulton county sheriff’s office announced that it was “aware that personal information of members of the Fulton county grand jury is being shared on various platforms”.On Monday the Fulton county grand jury returned a 41-count indictment charging Trump and others with illegally conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.According to the Independent, several users on Trump’s rightwing social media platform Truth Social posted the names of the jurors, with one user writing, “Someone needs to look into all of these grand jurors. I can guarantee that everyone of them has a BIG FAT D by their name!”Another user wrote: “I’m looking forward to the fun some will have with the list of leaked grand jurors …,” the outlet reported.Meanwhile, CNN reported that in addition to names, photos, social media profiles and even home addresses appearing to belong to the jurors have been shared online on various platforms including pro-Trump forums and websites that have been linked to extremist attacks.In Thursday’s announcement, the sheriff’s office said that its investigators were working closely with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to track down the origins of the threats in Fulton county and other jurisdictions.“We take this matter very seriously and are coordinating with our law enforcement partners to respond quickly to any credible threat and to ensure the safety of those individuals who carried out their civic duty. If anyone becomes aware of a threat, please call 911 immediately or contact your local police department,” the sheriff’s office added.Though the grand jury proceedings were secret, the unredacted names of the grand jury members were included in the indictment. That is standard practice in Georgia, in part because it gives criminal defendants a chance to challenge the composition of the grand jury. The indictment itself is a public record.The American Bar Association condemned any threats as well as the sharing of other personal information about the grand jurors online.“The civic-minded members of the Georgia grand jury performed their duty to support our democracy,” the association’s statement said. “It is unconscionable that their lives should be upended and safety threatened for being good citizens.”Since the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, delivered the 41-count indictment, Willis, who is African American, has faced a wave of racist abuse online including from Trump, who, using a thinly veiled play on the N-word, wrote on Truth Social: “They never went after those that Rigged the Election … They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!”As Trump prepares for his fourth arraignment, authorities remain concerned over the spike in political violence across the country. This week, a Texas woman was arrested and charged with threatening to kill Tanya Chutkan, the federal judge overseeing the criminal case against Trump in Washington DC.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe woman, identified as Abigail Jo Shry of Texas, also threatened to kill Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democratic representative, according to court documents reviewed by the Associated Press.Meanwhile, Trump himself has also made threats to authorities and his rivals amid his mounting legal woes, writing on social media: “If you go after me, I’m coming after you.” More

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      in US Politics

      Losing Our Religion review: Trump and the crisis of US Christianity

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      Christianity and the “powers that be” have weathered two millennia, their relationship varying by time and place. Pontius Pilate condemned Jesus to the cross. Emperor Constantine converted. Henry VIII broke from Rome and founded the Church of England. In the US, the denominational divides of protestantism helped drive the revolution and provided fuel for the civil war.In his new book, the Rev Russell Moore opens a chapter, “Losing Our Authority: How the Truth Can Save”, with the words “Jesus Saves”, followed by a new historical tableau: January 6 and the threat Donald Trump and the mob posed to democracy and Mike Pence.“That the two messages, a gallows and ‘Jesus Saves’ could coexist is a sign of crisis for American Christianity,” Moore writes.Heading toward the Iowa caucus, Trump runs six points better among white evangelicals than overall. As for the devout Pence, a plurality of white evangelicals view him unfavorably.Moore is mindful of history, and the roles Christianity has played: “Parts of the church were wrong – satanically wrong – on issues of righteousness and justice, such as the Spanish Inquisition and the scourge of human slavery.” He is editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, a publication founded by Billy Graham. Losing Our Religion offers a mixture of lament and hope. In places, its sadness is tinged with anger. In the south, the expression “losing my religion”, popularized by REM in a 1991 song, “conveys the moment when ‘politeness gives way to anger’,” Moore explains.Moore’s public and persistent opposition to the election of Trump set him apart from most white evangelicals and would lead to his departure from the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).“The man on the throne in heaven is a dark-skinned, Aramaic-speaking ‘foreigner’, who is probably not all that impressed by chants of “Make America great again,” Moore wrote in spring 2016. “Regardless of the outcome in November, [Trump’s] campaign is forcing American Christians to grapple with some scary realities that will have implications for years to come.”He was prescient. Graham’s son, Franklin, threatened Americans with God’s wrath if they had the temerity to criticize Trump. At the time, Moore was president of the SBC ethics and religious liberty commission. His politics forced him to choose. He opted for Christ and his convictions. He joined a nondenominational church.His new book is subtitled “An Altar Call for Evangelical America” but it aims for a broader audience. It contains ample references to Scripture, but also to the journalist Tim Alberta, Jonathan Haidt of New York University, Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, and Robert Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute, a liberal group.Of white evangelicals, Moore quotes Jones: “Their greatest temptation will be to wield what remaining political power they have as desperate corrective for their waning cultural influence.” Welcome to the culture wars, and to what Ron Brownstein of the Atlantic has called the coalition of restoration.Against the backdrop of rising Christian nationalism and January 6, Moore reads the writing on the wall. He is troubled by the shrinking gap between Christian nationalism and neo-paganism. “The step before replacing Jesus with Thor is to turn Jesus into Thor,” he observes. Moore found the presence of prayers in “‘Jesus’s name’ right next to a horn-wearing pagan shaman in the well of the evacuated United States Senate” disturbing, but not coincidental.The Magasphere and Twitterverse bolster Moore’s conclusions.“President Trump will be arrested during Lent – a time of suffering and purification for the followers of Jesus Christ,” Joseph McBride, a rightwing lawyer who represents several insurrectionists, tweeted last March. “As Christ was crucified, and then rose again on the third day, so too will Donald Trump.”Caesar as deity. We’ve seen that movie before. McBride, however, did not stop there.Hours later, he tweeted: “JESUS LOVES DONALD TRUMP. JESUS DIED FOR DONALD TRUMP. JESUS LIVES INSIDE DONALD TRUMP. DEAL WITH IT.”Three-in-10 adults in the US, meanwhile, are categorized as religious “nones”. Only 40% of Americans call themselves Protestant. The Wasp ascendancy has yielded to Sunday brunch and walks in the woods. “The Father, Son and Holy Ghost, they took the last train for the coast,” as Don MacLean sang. For some, Trump rallies present a variation of community and communion. A younger generation of evangelicals heads for the door. The numbers tell of a crisis of faith.“We see now young evangelicals walking away from evangelism not because they do not believe what the church teaches, but because they believe the “church itself” does not believe what the church teaches,” Moore laments.Predation, lust and greed are poor calling cards for religion. Unchecked abuse within the Catholic church left deep and lasting scars among those who needed God’s love most. Moore notes the Catholic church’s fall from grace in Ireland and posits that “born-again America” may be experiencing a similar backlash, as a powerful cultural institution lacking “credibility” seeks to “enforce its orthodoxies”.Against this backdrop, Catholicism’s boomlet among younger continental Europeans is noteworthy. Recently, hundreds of thousands converged on Lisbon to hear the Pope. The same demographic helps fuel the resurgence of the Spanish far right. Tethering the cross to the flag retains its appeal.That said, Jerry Falwell Jr’s posturing as Trump-booster and voyeur didn’t exactly jibe with Scripture. The ousted head of Liberty University, son of the founder of the Moral Majority, allegedly paid a pool boy to have sex with his wife as he watched.“What we are seeing now … is in many cases the shucking off of any pretense of hypocrisy for the outright embrace of immorality,” Moore writes.America barrels toward a Biden v Trump rematch. The former president is a professional defendant. The country and its religion sag and shudder. Moore prays for revival, even as he fears nostalgia.
      Losing Our Religion is published in the US by Penguin Random House More