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      Sears and Kmart pull Ashli Babbitt T-shirt after outcry

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      US Capitol attackSears and Kmart pull Ashli Babbitt T-shirt after outcryUS retailers apologize for shirt reading ‘Ashli Babbitt American Patriot’ for the Capitol rioter shot dead by law enforcement Priya ElanWed 7 Jul 2021 16.54 EDTLast modified on Wed 7 Jul 2021 17.42 EDTThe US retailers Sears and Kmart have apologized and pulled from sale a T-shirt featuring the words “Ashli Babbitt American Patriot” after an outcry on social media.Babbitt was shot dead by law enforcement while taking part in the attack on the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on 6 January. She had been inside the building and was attempting to climb through a broken window when she was shot.After her death, her internet history showed she was a conspiracy theorist, including a believer in QAnon. Elements of the conservative movement have been attempting to make Babbitt a martyr for their cause.After the T-shirt’s availability was brought to attention by a Twitter post from the Vox reporter Aaron Rupar, Sears tweeted a brisk apology from its official account, writing: “Thank you for bringing this product to our attention. This item is no longer available for purchase on Sears.com or Kmart.com.”Both shops are owned by Transformco.Last year, Walmart was found to be selling an All Lives Matter T-shirt on its website.Both instances highlight concerns about third-party sellers: companies will sell items from external sources without vetting.In June, the Wall Street Journal reported that Urban Outfitters and J Crew would open their digital stores up to third-party sellers, in a bid to compete with Amazon, which had been selling items by them for years.In April, in a letter to shareholders, Amazon’s then CEO, Jeff Bezos, said that third-party sellers made up 60% of Amazon’s overall sales, compared with 34% in 2010 and 3% a decade earlier.Last month, the first Capitol rioter to be sentenced, Anna Morgan Lloyd, got probation instead of a prison sentence.TopicsUS Capitol attackRetail industrynewsReuse this content More

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      How Trump’s big lie has been weaponized since the Capitol attack

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      The fight to voteUS voting rightsHow Trump’s big lie has been weaponized since the Capitol attackImmediately after the riot Republicans continued to object to election results – and efforts to restrict voting and push the big lie have only grown in the six months since The fight to vote is supported byAbout this contentSam Levine in New YorkWed 7 Jul 2021 07.00 EDTLast modified on Wed 7 Jul 2021 08.38 EDTSign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterHours after the US Capitol was secured against a violent insurrection on 6 January, the Senate reconvened in a late-night session to move ahead with certifying Joe Biden’s electoral college victory. It was a dramatic moment designed to send a clear message: democracy would prevail.“To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today, you did not win. Violence never wins. Freedom wins,” the then vice-president, Mike Pence, said as senators reconvened. “As we reconvene in this chamber, the world will again witness the resilience and strength of our democracy.”“They tried to disrupt our democracy. They failed,” Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, said on the Senate floor.But while the attack on the Capitol failed on 6 January, the attack on US democracy has continued unabated. It continued immediately after the riot, when Republican lawmakers continued to object to the electoral college results in that late-night session, and has only grown in the six months that followed.“We saw the makings of the big lie between November and January, but the consequences of the big lie seem much worse now, six months later, than even in the midst of the big lie leading up to January 6,” said Ned Foley, a law professor at the Ohio State University.In state capitols across the country, Republicans have weaponized lies about the 2020 election to push laws that make it harder to vote. They have embraced amateur inquiries into election results that have already been audited. And they have enacted measures that make it easier to remove local election officials from their posts, opening up the possibility of partisan meddling in future elections. A quarter of Americans, including a staggering 53% of Republicans, believe Donald Trump is the “true president”, a May Reuters/Ipsos poll found.“The fact that the January 6 insurrection didn’t scare us and prompt many Republicans to start aggressively rejecting those claims, and instead Republicans continue to embrace those claims as a justification for imposing additional restrictions means that our democracy remains in real trouble,” said Franita Tolson, a law professor at the University of Southern California.While Donald Trump and his allies failed in their effort to get local election officials to overturn the election, Republicans across the US have moved to make it easier to overturn future elections.After Aaron Van Langevelde, a Republican appointee on the Michigan board of canvassers, refused to block the certification of his state’s election results, Republicans declined to reappoint him to a new term. In Georgia, Republicans stripped the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, of his role as chair of the state elections board after Raffensperger, a Republican, pushed back on Trump’s claims of fraud. Under a new law, the legislature will appoint the chair of the board, which now has the power to remove local election officials from their posts.In Arkansas, Republicans passed a new law authorizing a legislative committee to investigate election complaints and allows the state’s board of election commissioners to take over running elections in a county if the board believes there is an election violation “would threaten either a county’s ability to conduct an equal, free, and impartial election, or the appearance of an equal, free and impartial elections”. In Iowa, Republicans enacted a new law that imposes new criminal penalties on election workers for failing to adhere to election law.The most visible effort to undermine the election results continues in Arizona, where the Republican state senate authorized an unprecedented inquiry into ballots and voting equipment in Maricopa county, the largest in the state. The effort, funded by Trump allies, is being led by a firm with little experience in election audits and whose founder has expressed support for the idea that the election was stolen. It also comes after two previous county audits affirmed the results of the 2020 race.Even as experts have raised alarms about the Ariziona inquiry, which includes far-fetched ideas like looking at ballots for bamboo fibers, Republicans in other US states have embraced it. There are calls for similar reviews in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan, among other places.Republicans have also continued the ethos of the 6 January attack by enacting measures that make it harder to vote after a presidential election that saw the highest turnout in nearly a century. In Georgia, the same new law that allows for interference in elections also requires voters to provide identification information both when they request and return a mail-in ballot. The same law also curtails the availability of mail-in ballot drop boxes, allows for unlimited citizen challenges to voter qualifications, and prohibits volunteers from distributing food and water while standing in line to vote.In Florida, a state long praised for its widespread use of mail-in ballots, Republicans enacted a measure that significantly limits drop boxes and requires voters to provide identification information when they request a mail-in ballot. Iowa Republicans also passed a law that cuts the early vote period by nine days, and requires polls to close earlier.In Montana, Republicans tightened voter ID requirements, made it harder for third parties to collect and so voters can no longer register at the polls on election day – a move that will probably have a big impact on the state’s sizable Native American population. In Arizona, where mail-in voting is widely used, Republicans changed a state policy so that voters could no longer permanently remain on a list allowing them to automatically receive a mail-in ballot for every election.While Republicans ultimately weren’t successful in blocking the certification of Joe Biden’s win, there are still deep concerns that it could succeed next time.The Electoral Count Act, the law that governs the counting of electoral votes, appears to authorize state legislatures to step in and appoint electors in the event of a failed election, but offers no guidance on what would constitute such a scenario. If there is a dispute between the houses of Congress over a state’s slate of electors, the same federal law defaults to whichever group of electors has been certified by a state’s governor. Republicans are poised to take control of the US House in 2022, a perch from which they could wreak havoc when it comes time to count electoral votes.Federal law also says that Congress isn’t supposed to second-guess the certification of electors as long as states reach an official result by the so-called “safe harbor” deadline about a month after election day. But when members of Congress and senators objected to the electoral college results in January, Foley noted, there was little discussion of that deadline, which every state except Wisconsin met in 2020.Foley, the Ohio state professor, has been worried about the ambiguities in the Electoral Count Act long before 2020, warning that Congress was ill-equipped to resolve a legitimately disputed close election. He has urged Congress to revisit and clarify the law before the next election crisis.But last year, he was alarmed at how far Trump and allies took their fight over the election, even with little evidence of fraud.“As I look ahead to 2024, I think the pathology that’s going on culturally with respect to acceptance of defeat, the inability to accept defeat, that is really, really dangerous,” he said. “That seems new in a way we haven’t seen.”TopicsUS voting rightsThe fight to voteUS Capitol attackUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Capitol attack: what Pelosi’s select committee is likely to investigate

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      US politicsCapitol attack: what Pelosi’s select committee is likely to investigateThe body created by the speaker will have a broad mandate to examine the facts, circumstances and causes of the Capitol attack Hugo Lowell in WashingtonMon 5 Jul 2021 05.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 5 Jul 2021 05.30 EDTNancy Pelosi’s creation of a House select committee to investigate the 6 January insurrection reopens the possibility of a comprehensive inquiry into myriad security failures and the causes of the deadly attack on Congress by a pro-Trump mob.Nancy Pelosi signals hard line on formation of 6 January select committeeRead moreThe committee will have subpoena power and a broad mandate to examine the facts, circumstances and causes of the Capitol attack against the seat of modern American democracy.The move comes after Senate Republicans blocked the creation of a 9/11-style commission to investigate the Capitol attack, fearful of scrutiny that could tarnish their party ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.Now, six months after the attack, here are the key issues that the committee may look at:What were Trump and members of his administration doing during the attack?At some point after he delivered his incendiary speech to thousands of supporters opposite the White House, the former president watched TV coverage of the unfolding insurrection from the Oval Office.Trump also knew that the rioters had breached the Capitol since he was told in real time over the phone by Republican senator Tommy Tuberville that his colleagues were being evacuated from the chamber.Yet the former president appeared to do nothing to call off the rioters – almost exclusively his own supporters. Nor did he act later when he was begged to do so by House minority leader Kevin McCarthy.In conflicting accounts, Trump later claimed he called in the national guard, but his acting defense secretary Christopher Miller later testified that he never spoke to the former president during the entire day.Why were police and US intelligence agencies so unprepared?At a Senate hearing in the weeks after the insurrection, the former US Capitol police chief Steven Sund, former House sergeant-at-arms Paul Irving, and his Senate counterpart, Michael Stenger, deflected and laid the blame at each other.The convoluted accounts of the three top officials illustrated the chaos of the day as well as the difficulty of now untangling testimony, which differed from police chief to police chief, as they sought to quell the riot.The officials also blamed the FBI and the US intelligence community for failing to provide adequate warnings that rioters planned to seize the Capitol, and criticized the Pentagon for moving too slowly to authorize the national guard.Yet the initial part of their complaints was contradicted by revelations that an FBI field office in Virginia issued an explicit warning that extremists were preparing to travel to Washington to commit violence a day before 6 January.Why did it take hours for the national guard to be deployed?The commander of the DC national guard at the time, Maj Gen William Walker, has said that he did not receive approval to mobilize troops until more than three hours after he first made the request.Defense department and Capitol security officials have given conflicting statements to explain the delay as well as an unusually restrictive command policy that appeared to come directly from the Trump White House.Walker said he was unable to move troops even from one traffic stop to another without permission from then army secretary Ryan McCarthy, he testified.He added he was uncertain why the restrictions were in place specifically, but raised the prospect that “army senior leaders did not think it looked good” and sending troops in to subdue Trump supporters would not be a “good optic”.Was there any coordination between Trump White House officials, Republican lawmakers and the rioters?An organizer of the “Stop the Steal” rally, Jim Arroyo, who also leads the Arizona chapter of the rightwing Oath Keepers militia group, has previously said that three members of Congress “schemed up” the events of 6 January with him.House Republican and longtime Trump ally Paul Gosar was certainly among the lawmakers who participated in the rally that immediately preceded the Capitol attack, though he has denied any involvement with the insurrection.The DoJ is also investigating whether a number of House Republicans provided tours of the Capitol and other information about the Capitol complex to people who might have gone on to be part of the Trump mob.TopicsUS politicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpNancy PelosinewsReuse this content More

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      Nancy Pelosi signals hard line on formation of 6 January select committee

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      Nancy Pelosi is poised to take a hard line should Republicans try to derail her recently announced select committee into the 6 January Capitol attack and she may appoint its members at her sole discretion, according to a source familiar with the matter.The committee, which passed the House in a near-party-line vote on Wednesday, will have eight members appointed by Democrats and four members appointed by Republicans, as well as broad subpoena power and no deadline to complete its work.“We have the duty, to the constitution and the country, to find the truth of the January 6th insurrection and to ensure that such an assault on our Democracy cannot happen again,” the House speaker wrote in a letter to colleagues.But, deeply distrustful of the GOP, Pelosi is prepared to veto any Republican member and is considering not allowing any Republican who objected to the certification of Joe Biden’s election win to serve on the select committee, the source said.The thinly veiled warning being sent behind the scenes to the Republican House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, reflects Pelosi’s resolve to investigate the root causes of the Capitol attack that left five dead and scores more injured and shocked many Americans.It also underscored Pelosi’s far-reaching power over the select committee in the Democratic-controlled House and her ability to shape the contours of an investigation that could continue through the midterm elections in 2022 and give Democrats a powerful tool to hit Republicans with.The speaker remains acutely aware of how Republicans, in a stark display of loyalty to Trump and self-interest to shield themselves from an inquiry that could tarnish their party, blocked the creation of a 9/11-style commission into the Capitol attack.Pelosi has expressed in private that she will not allow the select committee to be derailed, the source said, and could block the appointment of extremist Republicans such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, who refused to accept Biden’s win.An additional concern raised by some Democrats, but not Pelosi herself, revolves around how to approach conflict of interest situations with Republicans who might be named to the select committee but also be connected to events on or before 6 January.McCarthy is likely to be deposed by the select committee himself over his phone call to Trump as the insurrection unfolded. McCarthy begged Trump to call off the rioters, only for the former president to side with his supporters.The top Republican on the House judiciary committee, Jim Jordan – a likely pick by McCarthy for the select committee – also appeared to suggest in recent months that he spoke with Trump during the insurrection.Such conversations between Trump and top House Republicans are significant as they address the crucial question of what Trump was doing and saying as the Capitol was overrun, and will almost certainly be of central importance to the committee’s investigation.The deliberations over whether to take that kind of aggressive move – which would in effect see Pelosi unilaterally decide appointments to the select committee – come as the speaker prepares to decide on a chair and her other Democratic members.Among the leading contenders to lead the committee is the House homeland security committee chair, Bennie Thompson, who negotiated the framework of the aborted 9/11-style commission into 6 January, and has the backing of the House majority whip, Jim Clyburn.As for the other Democratic appointments, members of Pelosi’s leadership and whip teams are not expecting the speaker to name any managers from Trump’s second impeachment trial to the committee, with the possible exception of congressman Jamie Raskin, the source said.The fraught situation surrounding the select committee, which would hand Democrats sweeping power to issue subpoenas for witnesses and documents that could reveal new information about the Capitol attack, is indicative of a highly partisan dynamic on Capitol Hill.The bill to create the select committee became a lightning rod for Republicans after the framework mirrored the language the GOP used for the 2014 select committee to investigate the attack on a US compound in Benghazi, Libya.Pelosi has reiterated the 6 January select committee will examine the root causes of the Capitol attack, though for months, Republicans have argued Democrats are fixated on 6 as a way of tarnishing Trump and their party.Pelosi moved to create a special House select committee – among the top weapons for congressional oversight – after Senate Republicans blocked the commission, fearful that a close accounting of the Capitol attack could pose an existential threat to the GOP.The speaker maintained that she preferred an independent inquiry modeled on the commission set up after the September 11 terrorist attacks. But with Republicans opposed and downplaying the riot, she eventually conceded that only a select committee was possible.“It is imperative that we seek the truth,” Pelosi said. “It is clear the Republicans are afraid of the truth.”Several investigations into the Capitol attack are already under way across the justice department and Capitol Hill, but they have lacked a mandate to conduct a forensic examination of both the circumstances and causes of the assault. More

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      US House to vote on bill launching committee to investigate Capitol attack

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      A select committee to investigate the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol will have 13 members and the power to subpoena witnesses, according to legislation released by the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. The House is expected to vote on the bill this week.Senate Republicans blocked an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate the attack in which hundreds of Donald Trump’s supporters broke into the Capitol and interrupted certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.The new House panel will have eight members appointed by Pelosi and five appointed “after consultation with” the Republican minority leader, Kevin McCarthy. A Pelosi aide said the speaker was considering including a Republican among her appointments, which would bring the split to 7-6.Pelosi said 6 January was “one of the darkest days in our nation’s history”.“The select committee will investigate and report upon the facts and causes of the attack and report recommendations for preventing any future assault,” she said.Democrats are likely to investigate Trump’s role in the siege and rightwing groups that were present. Almost three dozen House Republicans voted to create an independent panel, which would have had an even partisan split. Seven Republicans in the Senate supported that bill.The new committee will have subpoena power and no end date. It will be able to issue interim reports.Trump is not explicitly referenced in the legislation, which directs the committee to investigate “facts, circumstances and causes relating to the 6 January 2021 domestic terrorist attack upon the United States Capitol Complex and relating to the interference with the peaceful transfer of power”.The panel will also study “influencing factors that fomented such an attack on American democracy while engaged in a constitutional process”.Pelosi has not said who will lead the committee. She has said she is “hopeful there could be a commission at some point”. The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has said he might hold a second vote on forming the independent body, but there’s no indication any Republican votes have changed.Many Republicans have brushed aside questions about the insurrection, including how government and law enforcement missed intelligence and the role of Trump.One Republican has said the rioters looked like tourists and another insisted a Trump supporter named Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed while trying to break into the House, was “executed”.Two officers who battled rioters, Metropolitan officer Michael Fanone and Capitol officer Harry Dunn, have been lobbying Republicans. They met McCarthy on Friday and said they asked him to denounce comments downplaying the violence.Fanone said he asked McCarthy for a commitment not to put “the wrong people” on the new select committee and that McCarthy said he would take it seriously. McCarthy’s office did not respond to requests for comment.The officers also asked McCarthy to denounce 21 Republicans who voted against giving medals of honor to the Capitol and Metropolitan Police for their service on 6 January. Dozens suffered injuries, including chemical burns, brain injuries and broken bones.McCarthy, who voted for the measure, told them he would deal with those members privately.Seven people died during and after the rioting, including Babbitt and three Trump supporters who died of medical emergencies. Two police officers died by suicide and a third, Brian Sicknick, collapsed and died after engaging with the protesters. A medical examiner determined he died of natural causes. More

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      New Michael Wolff book reports Trump’s confusion during Capitol attack

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      Donald Trump told supporters he would march on the Capitol with them on 6 January – then abandoned them after a tense exchange with his chief of staff, according to the first excerpt from Landslide, Michael Wolff’s third Trump White House exposé.The extract was published by New York magazine. Wolff’s first Trump book, Fire and Fury, blew up a news cycle and created a whole new genre of salacious political books in January 2018, when the Guardian revealed news of its contents.That book was a huge bestseller. A sequel, Siege, also contained bombshells but fared less well. Wolff’s third Trump book is among a slew due this summer.On 6 January, Congress met to confirm results of an election Trump lost conclusively to Joe Biden. Trump spoke to supporters outside the White House, telling them: “We’re going to walk down [to the Capitol to protest] – and I’ll be there with you.”According to Wolff, the chief of staff, Mark Meadows, was reportedly approached by concerned Secret Service agents, who he told: “No. There’s no way we are going to the Capitol.”Wolff, one of a number of authors to have interviewed Trump since he left power, writes that the chief of staff then approached Trump, who seemed unsure what Meadows was talking about.“You said you were going to march with them to the Capitol,” Meadows reportedly said. “How would we do that? We can’t organize that. We can’t.”“I didn’t mean it literally,” Trump reportedly replied.Trump is also reported to have expressed “puzzlement” about the supporters who broke into the Capitol in a riot which led to five deaths and Trump’s second impeachment, for inciting an insurrection.Wolff says Trump was confused by “who these people were with their low-rent ‘trailer camp’ bearing and their ‘get-ups’, once joking that he should have invested in a chain of tattoo parlors and shaking his head about ‘the great unwashed’.”Trump and his family watched the attack on television at the White House.As reported by Wolff, the exchange between Trump and Meadows sheds light on how the would-be insurrectionists were abandoned.The White House, Wolff writes, soon realised Mike Pence had “concluded that he was not able to reject votes unilaterally or, in effect, to do anything else, beyond playing his ceremonial role, that the president might want him to do”.Trump aide Jason Miller is portrayed as saying “Oh, shit” and alerting the president’s lawyer and chief cheerleader for his lie about electoral fraud, Rudy Giuliani.Wolff writes that the former New York mayor was “drinking heavily and in a constant state of excitation, often almost incoherent in his agitation and mania”.As the riot escalated – soon after Trump issued a tweet attacking the vice-president – aides reportedly pressed the president to command his followers to stand down.Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and adviser, reportedly saw the assault on the Capitol as “an optics issue”. After an hour or so, Wolff writes, Trump “seemed to begin the transition from seeing the mob as people protesting the election – defending him so he would defend them – to seeing them as ‘not our people’”.In a further exchange, Trump reportedly asked Meadows: “How bad is this? This looks terrible. This is really bad. Who are these people? These aren’t our people, these idiots with these outfits. They look like Democrats.”Trump reportedly added: “We didn’t tell people to do something like this. We told people to be peaceful. I even said ‘peaceful’ and ‘patriotic’ in my speech!” More