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      in US Politics

      Trump justice department secretly obtained New York Times reporters’ phone records, paper says

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      The justice department under Donald Trump secretly obtained the phone records of four New York Times reporters as part of a leak investigation, the newspaper has reported.The case announced on Wednesday is the third instance in the past month in which a news media organisation has disclosed that federal authorities seized the records of its journalists in an effort to identify sources for national security stories published during Trump’s administration.President Joe Biden has said he would not allow the department to continue the practice of obtaining reporters’ records, calling it “simply, simply wrong”.A department spokesman, Anthony Coley, said it notified the four reporters on Wednesday that it had obtained their phone toll records last year and that it had sought to obtain non-content email records as part of “a criminal investigation into the unauthorised disclosure of classified information”.The newspaper said the records that were seized covered a nearly four-month period in 2017 and belonged to reporters Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eric Lichtblau and Michael S Schmidt. Lichtblau has since left the newspaper.The journalists are neither the subjects nor the targets of the investigation, Coley said.Coley added: “Forthcoming annual public reports from the department covering 2019 and 2020 will indicate that members of the news media have now been notified in every instance in this period in which their records were sought or obtained in such circumstances.”The department did not disclose which article it was investigating, according to the newspaper.The period covered by the phone record seizure encompasses an April 2017 story from the four journalists that described the decision-making of then-FBI director James Comey during the conclusion of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, and that referenced a classified document obtained by Russian hackers.Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the New York Times, said in a statement published by the newspaper that seizing reporters’ phone records “profoundly undermines press freedom”.“It threatens to silence the sources we depend on to provide the public with essential information about what the government is doing,” Baquet said.The Washington Post disclosed last month that the justice department had last year obtained phone records belonging to three of its journalists who covered the investigation into 2016 Russian election interference. CNN later revealed that the department had seized phone records of its Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr.After those disclosures, Biden told a reporter he would not allow the department to persist in obtaining reporter phone records. That would mark a break from Democratic and Republican predecessors alike, whose administrations have seized reporter call logs in an effort to identify sources of classified information.The justice department under former attorney-general Eric Holder announced revised guidelines for leak investigations, requiring additional levels of review before a journalist could be subpoenaed – though it did not end the practice.Jeff Sessions, who served as Trump’s first attorney-general, announced in 2017 an aggressive government crackdown on leaks. More

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      in Elections

      US investigating if Ukrainian officials interfered in 2020 election – report

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      Federal prosecutors in New York are investigating whether Ukrainian officials attempted to interfere in the 2020 presidential election to undermine Joe Biden and help Donald Trump, the New York Times has reported, citing unnamed sources “with knowledge of the matter”.The criminal investigation includes examining whether the Ukrainian officials used Rudy Giuliani, then personal lawyer to the former president, to spread misleading claims about Biden, the New York Times reported.The inquiry, which began during the final months of the Trump administration, is being handled by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, the newspaper reported, and is separate from an ongoing criminal investigation into Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine.One of the officials being investigated is a Ukrainian member of parliament named Andriy Derkach, the newspaper reported.The US Treasury Department previously sanctioned Derkach, identifying him as an “active Russian agent for over a decade”.Giuliani, who the New York Times said has not been accused of wrongdoing in this investigation, has previously denied representing any Ukrainians.The US Attorney’s Office and Arthur Aidala, a lawyer for Giuliani, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Giuliani’s business dealings with Ukrainian oligarchs while he was working as Trump’s lawyer are the subject of an investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan. Federal agents searched his home and office in April, seizing phones and computers.Giuliani has denied allegations in that probe and his lawyers have suggested the investigation is politically motivated. More

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      in US Politics

      Workers matter and government works: eight lessons from the Covid pandemic

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      Maybe it’s wishful thinking to declare the pandemic over in the US, and presumptuous to conclude what lessons we’ve learned. So consider this a first draft.1. Workers are always essentialWe couldn’t have survived without millions of warehouse, delivery, grocery and hospital workers literally risking their lives. Yet most of these workers are paid squat. Amazon touts its $15 minimum wage but it totals only about $30,000 a year. Most essential workers don’t have health insurance or paid leave. Many of their employers (including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, to take but two examples) didn’t give them the personal protective equipment they needed.Lesson: Essential workers deserve far better.2. Healthcare is a basic rightYou know how you got your vaccine without paying a dime? That’s how all healthcare could be. Yet too many Americans who contracted Covid-19 got walloped with humongous hospital bills. By mid-2020, about 3.3 million people had lost employer-sponsored coverage and the number of uninsured had increased by 1.9 million. Research by the Urban Institute found that people with chronic disease, Black Americans and low-income children were most likely to have delayed or foregone care during the pandemic.Lesson: America must insure everyone.3. Conspiracy theories can be deadlyLast June, about one in four Americans believed the pandemic was “definitely” or “probably” created intentionally, according to the Pew Research Center. Other conspiracy theories have caused some people to avoid wearing masks or getting vaccinated, resulting in unnecessary illness or death.Lesson: An informed public is essential. Some of the responsibility falls on all of us. Some of it on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms that allowed misinformation to flourish.4. The stock market isn’t the economyThe stock market rose throughout the pandemic, lifting the wealth of the richest 1% who own half of all stock owned by Americans. Meanwhile, from March 2020 to February 2021 80 million in the US lost their jobs. Between June and November 2020, nearly 8 million fell into poverty. Black and Latino adults were more than twice as likely as white adults to report not having enough to eat: 16% each for Black and Latino adults, compared to 6% of white adults.Lesson: Stop using the stock market as a measure of economic wellbeing. Look instead at the percentage of Americans who are working, and their median pay.5. Wages are too low to get by onMost Americans live paycheck to paycheck. So once the pandemic hit, many didn’t have any savings to fall back on. Conservative lawmakers complain that the extra $300 a week unemployment benefit Congress enacted in March discourages people from working. What’s really discouraging them is lack of childcare and lousy wages.Lesson: Raise the minimum wage, strengthen labor unions and push companies to share profits with their workers.6. Remote work is now baked into the economyThe percentage of workers punching in from home hit a high of 70% in April 2020. A majority still work remotely. Some 40% want to continue working from home.Two lessons: Companies will have to adjust. And much commercial real estate will remain vacant. Why not convert it into affordable housing?7. Billionaires aren’t the answerThe combined wealth of America’s 657 billionaires grew by $1.3tn – or 44.6% – during the pandemic. Jeff Bezos, with $183.9bn, became the richest man in the world. Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, added $11.8bn to his $94.3bn fortune. Sergey Brin, Google’s other co-founder, added $11.4bn. Yet billionaires’ taxes are lower than ever. Wealthy Americans today pay one-sixth the rate of taxes their counterparts paid in 1953.Lesson: To afford everything the nation needs, raise taxes at the top.8. Government can be the solutionRonald Reagan’s famous quip – “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem” – can now officially be retired. Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” succeeded in readying vaccines faster than most experts thought possible. Biden got them into more arms more quickly than any vaccination program in history.Furthermore, the $900bn in aid Congress passed in late December prevented millions from losing unemployment benefits and helped sustain the recovery when it was faltering. The $1.9tn Democrats pushed through in March will help the US achieve something it failed to achieve after the 2008-09 recession: a robust recovery.Lesson: The federal government did not just help beat the pandemic. It also did more to keep the nation afloat than in any previous recession. It must be prepared to do so again. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump DoJ subpoenaed Twitter over Devin Nunes parody account

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      The Trump administration subpoenaed Twitter for information related to a parody account that criticized Devin Nunes, a close ally to the former president, according to federal court records released on Monday.Investigating messages related to the parody Twitter account @NunesAlt, which poses as the California representative’s mother, the Department of Justice (DoJ) sought to identify the user behind the account, according to a motion to quash the subpoena.“It appears to Twitter that the subpoena may be related to Congressman Devin Nunes’s repeated efforts to unmask individuals behind parody accounts critical of him,” the document states.In 2019, Nunes filed a $250m lawsuit that accused the media giant of defamation while profiting from abusive behavior and language. The lawsuit also sued @NunesAlt and another parody account posing as the representative’s cow, @DevinCow.Last summer, a judge ruled that the representative could not sue Twitter, citing section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects sites from liability for what users may post.Twitter has not complied with the demand to share the identities. A lawyer for the site said last summer it had no intention of doing so.In the DoJ investigation, a gag order prohibiting Twitter from talking about the subpoena was issued along with the document.According to the motion to quash the subpoena, Twitter asked the justice department for an explanation regarding the criminal investigation. The government said messages by the parody account were a possible violation of a federal statute that makes it a felony to use interstate communications to threaten to injure someone – but did not point to any tweet that made a threat.A Twitter account holder would typically be notified of any legal request – such as subpoenas, court orders or other legal documents – regarding their account, according to Twitter’s rules and policies. However, in this case, prosecutors got a court order in November to keep the subpoena secret, citing a fear that its disclosure could harm the investigation.On Tuesday, a Twitter spokesperson said the company was “committed to protecting the freedom of expression for those who use our service. We have a strong track record and take seriously the trust placed in us to work to protect the private information of the people on Twitter.”The user behind @NunesAlt wrote that the release of the court records was “the closest thing I’m gonna get to a Mother’s Day card”.He or she also quoted Eric Garcia, a Democrat running against Nunes in California, who referred to Nunes’s prominent opposition to the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.“So,” Garcia wrote, “the person who claims secret courts and organizations and trying to destroy our country tried to use a secret grand jury subpoena to find the identity of @NunesAlt. How many other times did Devin use the DoJ to try and attack private citizens?”A GoFundMe campaign has been created by the user behind @DevinCow to pay for the costs related to the congressman’s lawsuit against both parody accounts.“These parodies are anonymous on Twitter, however, they are real people behind these accounts who have retained attorneys to respond and fight these allegations in court,” reads the fundraiser description.By Tuesday, the fundraiser had raised more than $146,000.Nunes has filed several defamation lawsuits, including one against the political journalist Ryan Lizza and Hearst, which owns Esquire, over a 2018 article about his family farm. The lawmaker also filed a $435m libel suit against CNN over a report about his contacts with a Ukrainian prosecutor. More

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      in US Politics

      Big Short author Michael Lewis on the inside story of America’s failed Covid response

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      The author and journalist Michael Lewis discusses reporting on a group of individuals who tried to alert the US government to the dangers of its inaction as coronavirus cases began to rise at an alarming rate

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      The author and journalist Michael Lewis has made a career of writing about people who see things coming that most of us don’t. His book The Big Short, which was turned into an Oscar-winning film, followed a group of investors who predicted the collapse of the American housing market in 2007. He tells Rachel Humphreys about the group of individuals who have become the focus of his new book, The Premonition. As Covid case numbers began to rise at an alarming rate across America, Lewis discovered a group of medics and scientists who were trying to alert the US government to the dangers of its inaction. To order The Premonition, visit the Guardian bookshop. More

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      in US Politics

      Ex-Pentagon chief will defend military’s Capitol riots response to Congress

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      Donald Trump’s acting defense secretary during the 6 January Capitol riots plans to tell Congress that he was concerned in the days before the insurrection that sending troops to the building would fan fears of a military coup and could cause a repeat of the deadly Kent State shootings, according to a copy of prepared remarks obtained by the Associated Press.Christopher Miller’s testimony is aimed at defending the Pentagon’s response to the chaos of the day and rebutting broad criticism that military forces were too slow to arrive even as pro-Trump rioters violently breached the building and stormed inside. He casts himself as a deliberate leader who was determined that the military have only limited involvement, a perspective he says was shaped by criticism of the aggressive response to the civil unrest that roiled American cities months earlier, as well as decades-old episodes that ended in violence.The defense department, he will tell members of the House oversight committee on Wednesday, has “an extremely poor record in supporting domestic law enforcement”, including during civil rights and anti-Vietnam war demonstrations in the 1960s and 1970s.“And some 51 years ago, on May 4, 1970, Ohio national guard troops fired at demonstrators at Kent State University and killed four American civilians,” Miller will say, adding, “I was committed to avoiding repeating these scenarios.”He will also deny that Trump, criticized for failing to forcefully condemn the rioters, had any involvement in the defense department’s response and will say that Trump had even suggested that 10,000 troops might be needed for 6 January.Miller, expected to testify alongside the former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and District of Columbia police chief, Robert Contee III, will be the most senior defense department official to participate in congressional hearings on the riots. The sessions have been characterized by finger-pointing by officials across agencies about missed intelligence, poor preparations and an inadequate law enforcement response.The Capitol police have faced criticism for being badly overmatched, the FBI for failing to share with sufficient urgency intelligence suggesting a possible “war” at the Capitol, and the defense department for an hours-long delay in getting support to the complex despite the violent, deadly chaos unfolding on TV.Rosen, for his part, is expected to tell lawmakers that the justice department “took appropriate precautions” ahead of the riot, putting tactical and other elite units on standby after local police reports indicated that 10,000 to 30,000 people were expected at rallies and protests, according to prepared remarks obtained by the AP.Miller’s testimony will amount to the most thorough explanation of Pentagon actions after months of criticism that it took hours for the national guard to arrive.In his remarks, he defends his resistance to a heavy military response as being shaped by public “hysteria” about the possibility of a military coup or concerns that the military might be used to help overturn the election results. Democrats have signaled that they intend to press Miller on why it took so long for the national guard to arrive despite urgent plans for help. Miller will contend that those complaints are unjustified, though he also concedes that the guard was not rushed to the scene – a decision that he maintains was intentional.“This isn’t a video game where you can move forces with a flick of the thumb or a movie that glosses over the logistical challenges and the time required to coordinate and synchronize with the multitude of other entities involved, or with complying with the important legal requirements involved in the use of such forces,“ he will say.Even after the guard was requested, he said he felt compelled to send them “in with a plan to not only succeed but that would spare them unnecessary exposure and spare everyone the consequences of poor planning or execution”.Although the timeline Miller offers in his remarks generally matches up with that provided by other high-ranking leaders, he notably puts himself at odds with William Walker, who as commanding general of the DC national guard testified to what he said were unusual Pentagon restrictions that impeded his response and contributed to a three-hour delay between the time he requested aid and the time it was received. Walker has since become the House sergeant-at-arms, in charge of the chamber’s security.Miller will say that Walker was given “all the authority he needed to fulfill the mission” and that before 6 January he had never expressed any concern about the forces he had at his disposal. Miller said he approved the activation of the guard at 3pm. He said that though that support did not arrive at the Capitol complex until 5.22pm, the coordination, planning and deputizing of personnel by civilian law enforcement all took time.Miller, a Green Beret and retired army colonel, served as a White House counter-terrorism adviser under Trump before being tapped as the acting defense secretary for the final months of the Trump administration. He replaced Mark Esper, who was fired after the election after being seen by Trump as insufficiently loyal.The abrupt appointment raised concerns that Miller was in place to be a Trump loyalist. In his opening statement, though, he will say that he believes Trump “encouraged the protesters” but decline to say if he thinks the president bears responsibility. He recounts a conversation on 5 January when Trump, struck by a crowd of supporters at a rally that day, told him that 10,000 troops would be needed the next day.“The call lasted fewer than 30 seconds and I did not respond substantively, and there was no elaboration. I took his comment to mean that a large force would be required to maintain order the following day,” Miller says in his statement. More

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      in US Politics

      A mother’s happy day: military spouse deported by Trump returns to family

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      Three years ago Alejandra Juarez fell victim to Donald Trump’s cruelty as the wife of a decorated US Marine Corps veteran and mother of two young US citizen daughters was deported to Mexico under the former president’s zero-tolerance immigration policies.On Saturday Juarez will rejoin her family in Florida as one of the first beneficiaries of a humanitarian program set up by Joe Biden’s administration to reunify parents Trump separated from their children.But while Juarez’s Mother’s Day weekend reunion with daughters Pamela, 19, Estela, 11, and husband Temo will close a lengthy, painful journey of isolation and depression, she sees it as a door opening for other families torn apart by deportation.“I’m happy this is behind me and my family, and hoping this will lead to a permanent solution not only for military spouses like myself, but for everyone,” she told the Guardian from Mérida, Mexico, where she has been living since being forced from her home in Davenport, Florida, in 2018.“I hope it will have a domino effect and bring many more people back.”The Biden administration’s family reunification taskforce was set up by the new president’s executive order in February and began returning some of those “unjustly separated at the US-Mexico border” during the Trump era this week by granting them “humanitarian parole”.The numbers, however, are uncertain. The homeland security department (DHS) taskforce has been working to identify cases, but admits finding them all will be a lengthy process. It is scheduled to deliver its first report on 2 June.Also unclear is how many military families were affected by what Biden has called the “human tragedy” of separations during the four years Trump was in office. Federal agencies do not record military service in immigration cases, but a 2018 report by the advocacy group American Families United estimated that up to 11,800 active service men and women, all US citizens or permanent residents, had a spouse vulnerable to deportation.Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary who is also the taskforce’s chair, said this week’s first wave of reunifications was “just the beginning”.“Many more will follow, and we recognize the importance of providing these families with the stability and resources they need to heal,” he said, noting the taskforce was “exploring options” for long-term legal stability for reunified families.Juarez, 41, and her 43-year-old husband Cuauhtemoc, known as Temo, were both born in Mexico. But while he came to the US legally as a child and was naturalized in 2002, shortly before a 16-month deployment in Iraq, she spent the 18 years of their marriage until her deportation undocumented.As a teenager she was caught crossing the border illegally and chose to sign a document in English she said she didn’t understand and return to Mexico voluntarily instead of being placed in detention. The document permanently forfeited her right to legal status, which she did not discover until after her marriage.She returned to the US and lived anonymously in Florida with her husband until a traffic stop in 2013 exposed her undocumented status. Even then, under the more relaxed policies of Barack Obama’s administration, she was allowed to stay with twice-yearly check-ins with immigration authorities.Juarez self-deported in 2018 after Trump implemented his no-tolerance approach, and before authorities could enforce a removal order issued against her. She rented an apartment in Mexico with Estela while her husband remained in Florida to run his roofing business and allow Pamela to finish high school, but with money running out and two households to run, visits to Mexico became less frequent.When the coronavirus pandemic struck, Juarez said, her jobs teaching English slowed up and Estela returned to Florida. The knowledge her daughters were growing up without their mother, she said, caused her depression for which she needed therapy.Darren Soto, a Florida Democratic US congressman, lobbied the White House for Juarez to be allowed to return, and has introduced the Protect Patriot Spouses Act to Congress to protect military families from deportations.“President Trump’s administration was an aberration in American history with regard to immigration. Now we have humanitarian considerations, which are American values, reincorporated into our federal government,” said Soto, who also backs the American Families United Act that would allow some undocumented immigrants with US citizen family members to stay.“It’s been a long time coming, but Alejandra never gave up on us and we never gave up on her. They’ve missed almost three years of cherished memories together and it’s been traumatic for all of them.”Juarez said she was grateful for the efforts of Soto, her immigration lawyers and daughter Estela, who was one of her mother’s biggest cheerleaders. The 11-year-old excoriated Trump at last year’s Democratic national convention, reading a letter in which she told him: “You tore our world apart.”In January, she appealed for Biden’s help in an emotional video in which she likened her father’s military service to that of the new president’s late son Beau. Estela, Juarez said, is documenting the family’s story in a forthcoming book titled Until Someone Listens.For now, Juarez said, her intention is making up for lost time.“They need my cooking and they already told me what they want for breakfast on Sunday, so I’ll go grocery shopping like I always did, make breakfast for all of them and go to church like we used to,” she said. “I just want to enjoy my house and my family again.” More

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      The first 100 days of Biden were also the first 100 without Trump – that’s telling | Robert Reich

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      By almost any measure, Joe Biden’s first 100 days have been hugely successful. Getting millions of Americans inoculated against Covid-19 and beginning to revive the economy are central to that success.Two-thirds of Americans support Biden’s $1.9tn stimulus plan, already enacted. His infrastructure and family plans, which he outlined on Wednesday night at a joint session of Congress, also have broad backing. The $6tn price tag for all this would make it the largest expansion of the federal government since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. But for most Americans, it doesn’t feel radical.Rather than bet it all on a single large-scale program such as universal healthcare – which Bill Clinton failed to accomplish and which Barack Obama turned into a target of Republican fearmongering – Biden has picked an array of popular initiatives, such as preschool, public community college, paid family and medical leave, home care and infrastructure repairs, which are harder to vilify.Economists talk about pent-up demand for private consumer goods, caused by the pandemic. Biden is responding to a pent-up demand for public goods. The demand has been there for years but the pandemic has starkly revealed it. Compared with workers in other developed nations, Americans enjoy few if any social benefits and safety nets. Biden is saying, in effect, it’s time we caught up.Even on the fraught issue of race, the contrast with Trump has strengthened Biden’s handBesides, it’s hard for Republicans to paint Biden as a radical. He doesn’t feel scary. He’s old, grandfatherly. He speaks haltingly. He’s humble. When he talks about the needs of average working people, it’s clear he knows them.Biden has also been helped by the contrast to his immediate predecessor – the most divisive and authoritarian personality to occupy the Oval Office in modern memory. Had Biden been elected directly after Obama, regardless of the pandemic and economic crisis, it’s unlikely he and his ambitious plans would seem so benign.In his address to Congress, Biden credited others for the achievements of his first 100 days. They had been accomplished “because of you”, he said, even giving a nod to Republicans. His predecessor was incapable of crediting anyone else for anything.Meanwhile, the Republican party, still captive to its Trumpian base, has no message or policies to counter Biden’s proposals. Donald Trump left it with little more than a list of grievances irrelevant to the practical needs of most Americans: that Trump would have been re-elected but for fraudulent votes and a “deep state” conspiracy, that Democrats are “socialists” and that the “left” is intent on taking away American freedoms.Biden has a razor-thin majority in Congress and must keep every Democratic senator in line if he is to get his plans enacted. But the vacuum on the right has allowed him to dominate the public conversation about his initiatives, which makes passage more likely.Trump is aiding Biden in other ways. Trump’s yawning budget deficits help normalize Biden’s. When Trump sent $1,200 stimulus checks to most Americans last year regardless of whether they had a job, he cleared the way for Biden to deliver generous jobless benefits.Trump’s giant $1.9tn tax cut for big corporations and the wealthy, none of which “trickled down”, make Biden’s proposals to increase taxes on corporations and the wealthy to pay for infrastructure and education seem even more reasonable.Trump’s fierce economic nationalism has made Biden’s “buy American” initiative appear innocent by comparison. Trump’s angry populism has allowed Biden to criticize Wall Street and support unions without causing a ripple.At the same time, Trumpian lawmakers’ refusal to concede the election and their efforts to suppress votes have alienated much of corporate America, pushing executives toward Biden by default.Even on the fraught issue of race, the contrast with Trump has strengthened Biden’s hand. Most Americans were so repulsed by Trump’s overt racism and overtures to white supremacists, especially after the police murder of George Floyd, that Biden’s initiatives to end police brutality and “root out systemic racism”, as he said on Wednesday night, seem appropriate correctives.The first 100 days of the Biden presidency were also the first 100 days of America without Trump, and the two cannot be separated.With any luck, Biden’s plans might prove to be the antidote to Trumpism – creating enough decent-paying working-class jobs, along with benefits such as childcare and free community college, as to forestall some of the rightwing dyspepsia that Trump whipped into a fury. More