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      ‘These are conditions ripe for political violence’: how close is the US to civil war?

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      ‘These are conditions ripe for political violence’: how close is the US to civil war? Nearly half of Americans fear their country will erupt within the next decade. Ahead of the midterm elections this week, three experts analyse the depth of the crisisBarbara F Walter: ‘Judges will be assassinated, Democrats will be jailed on bogus charges, black churches and synagogues bombed’American political scientist and author of How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them (Viking)Americans are increasingly talking about civil war. In August, after the FBI raided Donald Trump’s Florida home, Twitter references to “civil war” jumped 3,000%. Trump supporters immediately went online, tweeting threats that a civil war would start if Trump was indicted. One account wrote: “Is it Civil-War-O’clock yet?”; another said, “get ready for an uprising”. Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, said there would be “riots in the streets” if Trump was indicted. Trump himself predicted that “terrible things are going to happen” if the temperature wasn’t brought down in the country. Perhaps most troubling, Americans on both sides of the political divide increasingly state that violence is justified. In January 2022, 34% of Americans surveyed said that it was sometimes OK to use violence against the government. Seven months later, more than 40% said that they believed civil war was at least somewhat likely in the next 10 years. Two years ago, no one was talking about a second American civil war. Today it is common.Are America’s fears overblown? The most frequent question I get asked following my book How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them is whether a civil war could happen again in the US. Sceptics argue that America’s government is too powerful for anyone to challenge. Others argue that secession will never happen because our country is no longer cleanly divided along geographic lines. Still others simply cannot believe that Americans would start killing one another. These beliefs, however, are based on the mistaken idea that a second civil war would look like the first. It will not.If a second civil war breaks out in the US, it will be a guerrilla war fought by multiple small militias spread around the country. Their targets will be civilians – mainly minority groups, opposition leaders and federal employees. Judges will be assassinated, Democrats and moderate Republicans will be jailed on bogus charges, black churches and synagogues bombed, pedestrians picked off by snipers in city streets, and federal agents threatened with death should they enforce federal law. The goal will be to reduce the strength of the federal government and those who support it, while also intimidating minority groups and political opponents into submission.We know this because far-right groups such as the Proud Boys have told us how they plan to execute a civil war. They call this type of war “leaderless resistance” and are influenced by a plan in The Turner Diaries (1978), a fictitious account of a future US civil war. Written by William Pierce, founder of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, it offers a playbook for how a group of fringe activists can use mass terror attacks to “awaken” other white people to their cause, eventually destroying the federal government. The book advocates attacking the Capitol building, setting up a gallows to hang politicians, lawyers, newscasters and teachers who are so-called “race traitors”, and bombing FBI headquarters.Pages of The Turner Diaries were found in Timothy McVeigh’s truck after he attacked a federal building in Oklahoma City in April 1995. Patrick Crusius, the alleged El Paso Walmart gunman, and John Timothy Earnest, the accused shooter at a synagogue in Poway, California, echoed the book’s ideas in their manifestos. A member of the Proud Boys can be seen on video during the insurrection on 6 January 2021 telling a journalist to read The Turner Diaries.The US is not yet in a civil war. But a 2012 declassified report by the CIA on insurgencies outlines the signs. According to the report, a country is experiencing an open insurgency when sustained violence by increasingly active extremists has become the norm. By this point, violent extremists are using sophisticated weapons, such as improvised explosive devices, and begin to attack vital infrastructure (such as hospitals, bridges and schools), rather than just individuals. These attacks also involve a larger number of fighters, some of whom have combat experience. There is often evidence, according to the report, “of insurgent penetration and subversion of the military, police, and intelligence services”.In this early stage of civil war, extremists are trying to force the population to choose sides, in part by demonstrating to citizens that the government cannot keep them safe or provide basic necessities. The goal is to incite a broader civil war by denigrating the state and growing support for violent measures.Insurgency experts wondered whether 6 January would be the beginning of such a sustained series of attacks. This has not yet happened, in part because of aggressive counter-measures by the FBI. The FBI has arrested more than 700 individuals who participated in the riot, charging 225 of them with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees. Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, will almost certainly go to jail for his role in helping to organise the insurrection, as will numerous other participants. But this setback is likely to be temporary.Civil war experts know that two factors put countries at high risk of civil war. The US has one of these risk factors and remains dangerously close to the second. Neither risk factor has diminished since 6 January. The first is ethnic factionalism. This happens when citizens in a country organise themselves into political parties based on ethnic, religious, or racial identity rather than ideology. The second is anocracy. This is when a government is neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic; it’s something in between. Civil wars almost never happen in full, healthy, strong democracies. They also seldom happen in full autocracies. Violence almost always breaks out in countries in the middle – those with weak and unstable pseudo-democracies. Anocracy plus factionalism is a dangerous mix.We also know who tends to start civil wars, especially those fought between different ethnic, religious and racial groups. This also does not bode well for the US. The groups that tend to resort to violence are not the poorest groups, or the most downtrodden. It’s the group that had once been politically dominant but is losing power. It’s the loss of political status – a sense of resentment that they are being replaced and that the identity of their country is no longer theirs – that tends to motivate these groups to organise. Today, the Republican party and its base of white, Christian voters are losing their dominant position in American politics and society as a result of demographic changes. Whites are the slowest-growing demographic in the US and will no longer be a majority of the population by around 2044. Their status will continue to decline as America becomes more multi-ethnic, multiracial, and multireligious, and the result will be increasing resentment and fear at what lies ahead. The people who stormed the Capitol on 6 January believed they were saving America from this future and felt fully justified in this fight.America’s democracy declined rapidly between 2016 and 2020. Since 6 January 2021, the US has failed to strengthen its democracy in any way, leaving it vulnerable to continued backsliding into the middle zone. In fact, the Republican party has accelerated its plan to weaken our democracy further. Voter suppression bills have been introduced in almost every state since 6 January. Election deniers are running for office in 48 of the 50 states and now represent a majority of all Republicans running for Congressional and state offices in the US midterm elections this week. Trump loyalists are being elected secretaries of state in key swing states, increasing the likelihood that Republican candidates will be granted victory, even if they lose the vote. And America’s two big political parties remain deeply divided by race and religion. If these underlying conditions do not change, a leader like Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers can go to jail, but other disaffected white men will take his place.What is happening in the US is not unique. White supremacists have leapt on projections that the US will be the first western democracy where white citizens could lose their majority status. This is forecast to happen around 2044. Far-right parties of wealthy western countries have issued ominous warnings about the end of white dominance, seeking to stoke hatred by emphasising the alleged costs – economic, social, moral – of such transformation. We are already seeing elements of this in Europe, where rightwing anti-immigrant parties such as the Sweden Democrats, the Brothers of Italy, Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, the Vlaams Belang in Belgium, the National Rally in France and the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs in Austria have all seen their support increase in recent years.What can we do about this? The obvious answers are for our political leaders to invest heavily in strengthening our democracies and to have their political parties reach across racial, religious and ethnic lines. But here in America, the Democratic party does not have the votes to institute much-needed reforms of our political system, and the Republicans have no interest; they are moving in the opposite direction.But there is a potentially easy fix. Regulate social media, and in particular the algorithms that disproportionately push the more incendiary, extreme, threatening and fear-inducing information into people’s feeds. Take away the social media bullhorn and you turn down the volume on bullies, conspiracy theorists, bots, trolls, disinformation machines, hate-mongers and enemies of democracy. The result would be a drop in everyone’s collective anger, distrust and feelings of threat, giving us all time to rebuild.Stephen Marche: ‘America has passed the point at which the triumph of one party or another can fix what’s wrong with it’Canadian novelist and essayist and author of The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future (Simon & Schuster)The United States is a textbook example of a country headed towards civil war. The trends increasingly point one way, and while nobody knows the future, little – if anything – is being done, by anyone, to try to prevent the collapse of the republic. Belief in democracy is ebbing. The legitimacy of institutions is declining. America increasingly is entering a state where its citizens don’t want to belong to the same country. These are conditions ripe for political violence.No civil war ever has a single cause. It’s always a multitude of factors that lead to decline and collapse. The current US has several of what the CIA calls “threat multipliers”: environmental crises continue to batter the country, economic inequality is at its highest level since the founding of the country, and demographic change means that the US will be a minority white country within just over two decades. All of these factors tend to contribute to civil unrest wherever they are found in the world.But the US is more vulnerable to political violence than other countries because of the decrepitude of its institutions. For 40 years, trust in institutions of all kinds – the church, the police, journalism, academia – has been in freefall. Trust in politicians can hardly fall any lower. And there is no reason for trust. The constitution, while unquestionably a work of genius, was a work of 18th-century genius. It simply does not reflect, nor can it respond to, the realities of the 21st century.The divide between the American political system and any reflection of the popular will is widening, and increasingly it cannot be ignored. The electoral college system means that, in the near term, a Democrat will win the popular mandate by many millions of votes and still lose the presidency. The crisis of democracy will only grow. With around 345 election deniers on the ballot as candidates in November, the Republicans appear to have evolved a new political strategy, seemingly based on the gambling strategy of Joe Pesci’s character in Casino: if they win, they collect. If they don’t, they tell the bookies to go away. Unless there is a completely separate Republican leadership in place by 2024, they will simply ignore the results they don’t like.The American electoral system is already hugely localised, outdated and held together by good faith. Any failure to recognise electoral outcomes, even in a few states, could result in a contested election in which nobody reaches the threshold of 270 electoral college votes. In that case, the constitution stipulates a “contingent election” – acclimatise yourself to this phrase now – in which each state gets a single vote. That’s right: if no candidate in an American presidential election reaches the threshold of 270 electoral college votes, the state legislatures, overwhelmingly dominated by Republicans, pick the president, with each state having one vote.In 1824, the candidate who won the popular vote and the most electoral college votes, Andrew Jackson, did not become president. John Quincy Adams fudged his way through. A contingent election is one mechanism, just one, by which an American government could be perfectly constitutional and completely undemocratic at the same time. The right has been preparing for exactly such a reality for a while, with a phrase they repeat as if in hope that it will mean something if they say it enough: “We’re a republic, not a democracy.”Quasi-legitimacy is what leads to violence. And America’s political institutions are destined to become more and more quasi-legitimate from now on. One of the surest markers of incipient civil war in other countries is the legal system devolving from a non-partisan, truly national institution to a spoil of partisan war. That has already happened in the US.The overturning of Roe v Wade, in June, was both a symptom of the new American divisiveness and a cause of its spread. The Dobbs decision (in which the supreme court held that the US constitution does not confer the right to abortion) took the status of women in the US and dropped it like a plate-glass window from a great height. It will take a generation or more to sweep up the shards. What women are or are not allowed to do with their bodies – abortions, IVF procedures, birth control, maintaining the privacy of their menstrual cycles, crossing state lines – now depends on the state and county lines in which their bodies happen to reside. The legal reality of American women is no longer national in nature. When a woman travels from Illinois to Ohio, she becomes a different entity, with different rights and duties.The court itself is well aware of the legal carnage it has caused. “If, over time, the court loses all connection with the public and with public sentiment, that is a dangerous thing for democracy,” associate justice Elena Kagan said shortly afterwards. Her conservative colleague Samuel A Alito responded: “It goes without saying that everyone is free to express disagreement with our decisions and to criticise our reasoning as they see fit. But saying or implying that the court is becoming an illegitimate institution or questioning our integrity crosses an important line.” But what anyone says or implies is of little to no importance at this point. The percentage of the American public having almost no confidence in the supreme court reached 43% in July, up from 27% in April. The confusion of legal status of a separate group of persons is a classic prelude to civil war.The justices of the court, and the American public, are just catching up with the inevitable consequences of the refusal of Congressional Republicans to allow President Obama to select Merrick Garland for the court and then going on to confirm three Trump nominees, resulting in a court skewed six: three to the right. The supreme court feels illegitimate because it is illegitimate. The Dobbs decision does not reflect the will of the American people because the supreme court does not reflect the will of the American people.Elections have consequences, right up until the point when they don’t. On a superficial level, the 2022 midterms couldn’t matter more; American democracy itself is at stake. On a deeper level, the 2022 midterms don’t matter all that much; they will inform us, if anything, of the schedule and the manner of the fall of the republic. The results might delay the decline, or accelerate it, but at this point, no merely political outcome can prevent the downfall. America has passed the point at which the triumph of one party or another can fix what’s wrong with it, and the kind of structural change that’s necessary isn’t on the table. This is a moment between two American politics. The wind has been sown. The whirlwind is yet to be reaped.Christopher Sebastian Parker: ‘Many white people feel the need to take drastic measures to maintain white supremacy’Professor of political science at University of California, Santa Barbara and author of Change They Can’t Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America (Princeton)America is rushing headlong into another civil war, and it’s a matter of when, not if. As political scientist Prof Barbara F Walter argues, civil wars are likely in the presence of two factors: anocracy and ethnic factionalism. When one considers the centrality of race to American politics, it is clear that ethno-nationalism is hastening the movement towards anocracy.Think about the role of race in the first civil war and the one we’re headed towards. It’s well documented that the repulsive nature of the institution of slavery was the principal cause of the civil war, driven by moral as well as economic and political concerns. In 19th-century America, the Democratic party was a relatively reactionary institution in the south, whereas the Republican party was a relatively progressive institution located in the north. Republicans supported the abolition of slavery, whereas 19th-century Democrats were all for it. Regardless of the outcome of the war – driven as it was by the prospect of material gain or loss, moral redemption or amorality – the war came to rest on the fulcrum of race and racism.Throughout history, political identity in the US has ultimately been driven by the parties’ respective positions on race, with divisions sorting primarily by way of racial identity and racial attitudes. Contemporary Republicans, for instance, tend to be white and relatively racist. Democrats are more likely to draw from a more diverse pool and, as such, are, typically, less racist. To illustrate this point, Republicans are far more alarmed by a diversifying country.Likewise, white people were and are more likely to support Trump, driven by the anxiety associated with the rapid racial diversification of “their” country. What, you may ask, do white people and the Republican party have in common? Well, 80% of Republican voters are white.The consequences of the centrality of race and racism to American politics and the threat of internal war are dire. It was racism that was ultimately responsible for the rise of the Tea Party, a reaction to Obama’s (racialised) presidency. The Tea Party (now the Maga movement), in turn, moved the GOP to the right, eventually setting the stage for Trump.With Trump pushing the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen, and many Republicans buying into it, the stage is set for another American war of all against all. We’ve seen this before. The civil war, as it happens, was set in motion by the refusal of the Democrats to accept Abraham Lincoln as the legitimate winner of the 1860 contest given his views on slavery: he thought it morally wrong.But it wasn’t the economics of slavery that motivated the south’s insistence on maintaining what was known as the “peculiar institution”. Only 3.2% of white southern families owned slaves. Clearly, then, the maintenance of slavery as an economic institution carried no value for almost all white southerners. With economic reasons absent, why were white southerners willing to fight a war over slavery? The southern way of life: white supremacy. As part of southern culture, these people were not ready to forfeit their social dominance, relative to the Black community.These conditions remain in place. As many white people (Republicans) confront the fear that by 2044 they’ll no longer be in the ethnic majority, they feel the need to take drastic measures to maintain white supremacy. It’s all they’ve ever known. It happened in the 1860s; what’s to prevent it from happening now?Look for the next civil war to take place after the 2024 election cycle, when the next wave of violence is likely to emerge. Similar to the original civil war, there’s too much at stake for both sides. Then, as now, the threats are existential. In the 19th century, Democrats viewed the newly established Republican party as a threat to their way of life. Republicans, for their part, saw southern intransigence on the issue of slavery as a threat to the union.Today, Republicans, driven by the existential threat of losing “their” (white) country, will continue their attack on democracy as a means towards preserving America for “real” Americans. Democrats, on the other hand, see the “Magafication” of the GOP as an existential threat to liberal democracy.Election-related violence generally takes place when the following four factors are present: a highly competitive election that can shift power; partisan division based on identity; winner-takes-all two-party election systems in which political identities are polarised; and an unwillingness to punish violence on the part of the dominant group. All four are present in America now, and will be more amplified in 2024.We’re almost there. White angst over increasing racial diversity makes another Trump candidacy (and presidency) likely, pushing us into anocracy. Democrats are having none of that. They’ll resist going down the slippery slope to autocracy the same way that their 19th-century counterparts, the party of Lincoln, refused to let the Confederacy bust up the union. Likewise, should Democrats prevail in 2024, Republicans will revolt – the 6 January Capitol attack is a forewarning.Either way, I’ll wager that a civil war featuring terrorism, guerrilla war and ethnic cleansing will be waged from sea to shining sea. In the end, race and racism will lead to another very American conflagration.TopicsUS politicsThe ObserverUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpThe far rightJanuary 6 hearingsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      House January 6 panel grants Trump’s request for extension to subpoena

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      House January 6 panel grants Trump’s request for extension to subpoenaThe ex-president sought more time to produce responsive records and cooperate with the committee’s Capitol attack investigation Donald Trump responded to the House January 6 select committee’s subpoena deadline for documents with a letter that sought more time to produce responsive records and cooperate with the investigation into the Capitol attack, according to a source familiar with the matter and a statement from the panel.The details of the former president’s requests were not clear. But the select committee, appearing to grant Trump an extension, informed Trump’s lawyers that he must produce documents next week and that he the summons for his appearance under oath remains in place.Will he testify? Trump’s lawyers accept subpoena from Capitol attack panelRead more“We have received correspondence from the former president and his counsel in connection with the select committee’s subpoena. We have informed the former president’s counsel that he must begin producing records no later than next week and remains under subpoena for deposition testimony,” the select committee said.The letter from Trump’s lawyers appears to indicate that the former president is engaging in negotiations with the select committee to stave off the threat of a potential contempt of Congress referral to the justice department, while at the same time slow-walking his cooperation.Trump has been counseled in recent days that he might not need to cooperate with the panel, depending on the results of the midterm elections next Tuesday, the source said, since any contempt referral would almost certainly be withdrawn by Republicans if they take control of Congress in January, the source said.But if Democrats retained their House majority, the former president has been told, then he might need to more seriously consider the extent of his cooperation with the panel – while also making sure his responses to the select committee’s questions do not leave him with potential legal exposure, for instance by making false statements.Back at his Mar-a-Lago resort for the winter, Trump has for weeks been at the center of diverging advice from a coterie of lawyers and aides, who have suggested everything from ignoring the subpoena in its entirety to make good on his own idea about testifying as long as he could do so before a live public audience.The former president, at least for now, appears to have empowered the lawyers suggesting a cautious approach until the midterms. The Dhillon Law Group has been retained to lead talks with the select committee and drafted the letter, which has not been made public, the source said.A Trump spokesman did not respond to a request for comment and a spokesman for the select committee declined to comment further on the former president’s letter.Last month, the select committee transmitted a historic subpoena to Trump and his lawyers making sweeping demands for documents and testimony, raising the stakes in the highly-charged congressional investigation into the Capitol attack that could yet end up before the supreme court.The panel demanded that Trump turn over records of all January 6-related calls and texts sent or received, any communications with members of Congress, as well as communications with the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, extremist groups that stormed the Capitol. The expansive subpoena ordered Trump to produce documents by 4 November and testify on 14 November about interactions with key advisers who have asserted their fifth amendment right against self-incrimination, including the political operatives Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.“Because of your central role in each element,” the panel’s chairman, Bennie Thompson, and vice-chair, Liz Cheney, wrote, “the select committee unanimously directed the issuance of a subpoena seeking your testimony and relevant documents in your possession on these and related topics.”The subpoena also sought materials that appeared destined to be scrutinized as part of an obstruction investigation conducted by the select committee, such as one request that asked for records about Trump’s efforts to contact witnesses and their lawyers before their depositions.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Pence blames Trump for events leading to January 6 in new memoir

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      Pence blames Trump for events leading to January 6 in new memoirFormer vice-president says meeting at which advisers led by Giuliani urged Trump to not accept election defeat was ‘a new low’ A post-election meeting at which advisers led by Rudy Giuliani attacked campaign lawyers and urged Donald Trump not to accept his election defeat was “a new low” for a president “well acquainted with rough-and-tumble debates”, Mike Pence writes in a forthcoming memoir.Of the meeting in November 2020, the former vice-president writes: “In the end, that day the president made the fateful decision to put Giuliani and [attorney] Sidney Powell in charge of the legal strategy … The seeds were being sown for a tragic day in January.”‘Lachlan gets fired the day Rupert dies’: Murdoch biography stokes succession rumorsRead moreBy openly blaming Trump for events leading to the January 6 insurrection, when a pro-Trump mob attacked the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory, Pence risks angering Republicans he must court as he considers the next nomination for president.His memoir, So Help Me God, will be published on 15 November. Axios published a short excerpt on Monday.Pence writes: “What began as a briefing that Thursday afternoon quickly turned into a contentious back-and-forth between the campaign lawyers and a growing group of outside attorneys led by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, an attorney who had represented Gen Mike Flynn [Trump’s first national security adviser, fired for lying to the FBI].“After the campaign lawyers gave a sober and somewhat pessimistic report on the state of election challenges, the outside cast of characters went on the attack … Giuliani told the president over the speakerphone, ‘Your lawyers are not telling you the truth, Mr President.’“Even in an office well acquainted with rough-and-tumble debates, it was a new low …. [and] went downhill from there.”Trump’s culpability for the Capitol attack has been examined and presented by the House January 6 committee and is being investigated by the US justice department.The former president is in legal jeopardy on other fronts: election subversion, the unauthorized retention of White House papers after the end of his presidency, his business affairs and a defamation lawsuit from a writer who alleges he raped her.Trump denies wrongdoing and remains dominant in polls for 2024. He is reported to be seeking campaign hires while waiting until after the midterm elections next week to make a formal announcement.Pence’s presidential ambition is no secret but although the January 6 committee has presented him as a hero for refusing to cooperate with Trump’s election subversion, he has work to do if he is to persuade Republican voters he is the man to take on Biden.Polling gives Trump huge leads over his nearest challenger, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis. If Trump is removed from the equation, DeSantis enjoys healthy leads over figures including Pence, the Texas senator Ted Cruz and Donald Trump Jr.TopicsPolitics booksMike PenceDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Judge warns of ‘dark shadow of tyranny’ as Capitol rioter jailed for 90 months

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      Judge warns of ‘dark shadow of tyranny’ as Capitol rioter jailed for 90 monthsAlbuquerque Head, who pleaded guilty to assaulting officer Michael Fanone on January 6, sentenced to seven and a half years Sentencing a January 6 rioter who assaulted a police officer to 90 months in prison, a judge warned the “dark shadow of tyranny” continues to loom nearly two years since the Capitol insurrection that attempted to overthrow the results of the US presidential election.Will he testify? Trump’s lawyers accept subpoena from Capitol attack panelRead moreAlbuquerque Head of Tennessee was sentenced on Thursday to the second-longest punishment of anyone involved in the Capitol attack so far. Head had already pleaded guilty to dragging officer Michael Fanone away from the police line while shouting “I got one!”Shortly after, other violent protesters grabbed Fanone, tasered him and stole his radio and badge.During Thursday’s sentencing hearing, Fanone testified that he suffered a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury as a result of the attack, later quitting his job, reported the Detroit News.“I would trade all of this attention to return to policing, but I can’t do that,” Fanone said. “And the catalyst for my loss of career and the suffering that I’ve endured in the past 18 months is Albuquerque Head.”During sentencing, US district court judge Amy Berman Jackson, who has handled several politically significant court cases during the Trump era, called Head’s behavior some of the most chilling to come out of the January 6 riots.“He was your prey … He was your trophy,” Jackson told Head of his attitude to Fanone.“The dark shadow of tyranny unfortunately has not gone away,” she said. “Some people are directing their vitriol at Officer Fanone and not at the people who summoned the mob in the first place.”Thomas Webster, a former New York police officer, is the only person to receive a lengthier punishment than Head. Webster was sentenced by US district court judge Amit Meht to 10 years in prison last month for attempting to break the police line during the Capitol riot, including swinging a metal flagpole at an officer and choking him with his helmet chinstrap.When deciding his sentence, Jackson noted that Head admitted his guilt and had a finance and three children. She also reiterated, however, that Head was to blame.“The people who are upset need to understand that no matter how outraged they are … when they decide to do battle with the officers who are doing their duty, they will be held accountable,” the judge said.TopicsUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsWashington DCnewsReuse this content More

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      Ted Cruz took refuge in supply closet during January 6 riot, book reveals

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      Ted Cruz took refuge in supply closet during January 6 riot, book revealsTexas senator wrote he ‘vehemently disagreed’ with colleagues’ call to allow certification of 2020 election As a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol during the January 6 attack in a desperate attempt to keep him in the Oval Office, Ted Cruz hid in a closet next to a stack of chairs, but he never thought twice about continuing to sow doubt about the former president’s electoral defeat, the Republican senator from Texas has revealed.Cruz revealed his whereabouts on the day of the deadly Capitol attack – which unsuccessfully aimed to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential election – in a new book. The news was first reported by Newsweek.The book – titled Justice Corrupted – recounts how Cruz was listening to his colleague James Lankford of Oklahoma speak in the Senate chamber when a terrible commotion erupted outside. Capitol police rushed in to escort Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, whom the mob wanted to hang, off the dais, and the session was paused.“In the fog of the confusion, it was difficult to tell exactly what was happening,” Cruz wrote. “We were informed that a riot had broken out and that rioters were attempting to breach the building.“At first, Capitol Police instructed us to remain on the Senate floor. And so we did. Then, a few minutes later, they instructed us to evacuate rapidly.”Cruz said he was met with hot tempers after he and his fellow senators were led to a secure location, with some blaming him and his allies in the chamber “explicitly for the violence that was occurring”. After all, Cruz was among those who had helped spread the ousted Republican president’s lies that the election had been stolen from him, fueling the mob that now was invading the Capitol.“While we waited for the Capitol to be secured, I assembled our coalition in a back room (really, a supply closet with stacked chairs) to discuss what we should do next,” Cruz continued, according to Newsweek.Cruz said several of those in his coalition wanted to suspend their objections to the certification, but he “vehemently disagreed”.“I understood the sentiment,” Cruz added. “But … I urged my colleagues that the course of action we were advocating was the right and principled one.”Cruz later was one of just six Republican senators who voted against certifying Trump’s electoral college defeat in Arizona. He was one of seven GOP senators who voted against certifying Trump’s electoral college loss in Pennsylvania.Such stances have helped make Cruz unpalatable in some quarters. He attended a baseball playoff game Sunday between his home state’s Houston Astros and the New York Yankees in the Bronx.One cellphone video showed New York fans roundly booing Cruz, flipping him off and cursing him out, including one who called him a “loser,” before the Astros won and eliminated the Yankees.Officials have since linked nine deaths, including suicides among traumatized law enforcement officers, to the Capitol attack. More than 900 rioters have been charged in connection with the attack, some with seditious conspiracy.In a series of televised hearings this year, a bipartisan US House committee has publicly aired evidence seeking to establish that Trump had a direct role in the Capitol attack. That committee recently issued a subpoena to the former president ordering him to testify before the panel as well as produce documents.Cruz’s term doesn’t end until 2025, meaning his office is not at risk during the 8 November midterm elections in which Biden’s fellow Democrats are trying to preserve thin numerical advantages in both congressional chambers.TopicsTed CruzUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Trump should be held accountable’: Guardian readers on the Capitol attack hearings

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      ‘Trump should be held accountable’: Guardian readers on the Capitol attack hearingsThe final public hearing has wrapped up – we asked our readers to give their thoughts on whether the evidence stacked up The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol ended its likely final public hearing last week by subpoenaing Donald Trump to give evidence.Here, Guardian readers in the US share their views of the hearings, what they thought of the evidence given and if it had changed their mind.‘The committee was convincing’I think that the hearings solidified what most people thought already: that Donald Trump and his allies coordinated to assault the foundations of democracy on January 6 because they were unhappy with the result of the 2020 election. The juxtaposing of previously aired and unaired video clips helped provide clearer and fuller picture of the chaos that unfolded that day.I believe that anyone who tuned in to the hearings with an open mind saw January 6 for what it was: a disgraceful attack on American democracy that amounts to treason. I believe the committee was convincing in their effort to show premeditation by the president and his followers.I am worried that those who believe January 6 was justified will use this committee as an example as of how “the Democrats/liberals” are out to get the president and his followers. They demonstrate this belief daily as they continue to call for violence against elected officials and refuse to believe the truth that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.It feels like their position is: either we won, or we were cheated. I fear that the upcoming elections in November will only be a taste of what kinds of vitriol await during the 2024 election. Patrick, 29, public school teacher from Chicago‘The hearings were preaching to the choir for me’I work in DC, on one of the main arteries leading into the city. On the morning of January 6, my co-workers and I watched a steady stream of cars and trucks flying Trump flags heading into the city.The sight put everyone on edge – it felt like an assault even then.Later, at home, I watched the assault on the Capitol in real time with a mixture of horror, sadness and anger. Seeing the Trump flags again, now among the crowd attacking with impunity … there was no doubt where the responsibility for things lay.All this to say the hearings were preaching to the choir for me. But I watched them all, and the images and videos never lost their power to upset and anger. And I always thought: surely this devastating video will sway people’s opinions about Trump and the danger he poses! But, sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case. David, 53, retail buyer from Washington DC‘The committee members are some of the very few politicians I still respect’The January 6 committee is doing the only the honest, ethical, honorable, trustworthy political work that has gone on in Congress for a very long time. I support the committee 100%, and thank them for their courage in standing up to the lies of thugs and shameless traitors trying to undermine American democracy.The committee members are some of the very few politicians that I still respect anywhere in this country. They belong proudly alongside other awesome patriots like Bernie Sanders, Beto O’Rourke, Pete Buttigieg, Michelle Lujan Grisham, Stacy Abrams, and Gretchen Whitmer.Too many other people in US politics today, most openly within the Republican party, are self-serving and destructive players interested only in amassing fortunes and power, and transforming America into an openly and irreparably racist, misogynist, gun-toting Christian nation.The committee has done amazing and thorough investigative work. It has presented its findings in well-presented and publicly available hearings. But actions taken or not taken are clearly out of the committee’s control. Dr M Mathewson, 78, retiree from New Mexico‘People saw what a sham it was’Nothing of value was presented that wasn’t known, and I doubt really anyone changed their mind on it. I think many people saw what a sham it was. The other side didn’t get to present witnesses or cross-examine. Why wasn’t Pelosi called? Why haven’t we heard if FBI or other government agency had agents in the crowd?My concern is for the future of this country. We are ruled by people controlled by special interest. We are sending billions overseas in the name of humanitarian aid when it is military equipment. We need that assistance here for our people. Los Angeles has a lot of homeless people. Crime is rocketing and people are killing each other in the streets.Our leaders promote and push identity politics to further divide the country. Diverting the attention from the problems and making us hate our neighbors. The biggest threat to Democracy are our current “leaders”. Joe, 35, healthcare worker from Michigan‘I’m worried about retaliation against witnesses’I watched all the hearings, and I thought the committee did an excellent job. What they presented aligned with what I saw on January 6, and it let us see what was going on behind the scenes, namely the actions Trump took to aid and abet the insurrectionists.The hearings also demonstrated just how close our government came to falling that day, and the need to strengthen the systems designed to protect the peaceful transfer of power.I’m afraid that despite the evidence, Trump and his cronies may still escape unscathed. I’m worried about potential retaliation against January 6 witnesses if Republicans take the House and/or Senate in November. And I’m afraid of just how unhinged Trump will be if he is allowed to run again and, God forbid, wins – his entire focus will be on revenge against those who crossed him. Mitzi Hicks, 56, non-profit controller from Colorado‘It was boring political theater’The hearings came across as boring political theater to me, calling attention to the obvious guilt of Trump, his narcissism, the prevalence of fascism among men in the US who see little alternative. The Democrats have abandoned their natural and historical constituency in favor of embracing the current cause du mois to obscure their obeisance to corporations and corporate money.Most folks I know are far more worried about the price of gasoline, food, and utilities than about Trump. In fact, they’re totally weary of him and think he’d go away if the media would stop advertising him.Bill Clinton is far from my favorite president, but he got it right about voter motivation: “It’s the economy, stupid.” If the Republicans prevail next month it will be because of the Democrat failure to address economic problems meaningfully. Screaming that the narcissistic would-be dictator Trump is a narcissistic would-be dictator won’t help Democratic candidates. Tom Wells, 77, from Bloomington, Indiana‘Trump is unfit to lead and should be held accountable’The facts speak for themselves. The committee members certainly have their own political and personal ambitions, but they have presented a just narrative. Trump is certainly unfit to lead and should be held accountable for the betrayal of the people of the USA.The support of fascism within the Republican party is pernicious. Unfortunately, it remains a possibility that through fear and anger the events of January 6 may foreshadow even greater violence and loss of the true guiding principles of our constitution, being the compromise of power to the will of the citizens.Democracy has always been a hope in the USA and has been, is, and will be eroded by greedy, short-sighted minds. The question is obvious: if we do not demand accountability and regulation for violent politics and monied interests, what is the alternative? Brian, 37, unemployed from CincinnatiTopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpfeaturesReuse this content More

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      ‘A nutso proposition’: Robert Draper on Trump, Republicans and January 6

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      ‘A nutso proposition’: Robert Draper on Trump, Republicans and January 6 The New York Times reporter’s new book considers the Capitol attack and after: the fall of Liz Cheney, the rise of MTG and moreIn mid-December 2020, Robert Draper signed to write a book about the Republican party under Donald Trump, who spent four wild years in the White House but had just been beaten by Joe Biden.‘Devoid of shame’: January 6 cop Michael Fanone on Trump’s Republican partyRead more“Trump hadn’t conceded,” Draper says, from Washington, where he writes for the New York Times. “But the expectation was that he would. The notion of the ‘Be there, will be wild’ January 6 insurrection had not yet taken root. And so I thought that the book would be about a factionalised Republican party, more or less in keeping with When the Tea Party Came to Town, the book I did about the class of 2010.”“All that changed on my first day of reporting the job, which happened to be January 6, when I was inside the Capitol.”The book became Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind. It is a detailed account of Republican dynamics since 2020, but it opens with visceral reportage from the scene of what Draper calls the “seismic travesty” of the Capitol attack.Draper says: “I still get chills, thinking about that day. It’s a Rashomon kind of experience, right? There were a lot of people in the Capitol and they all have different viewpoints that are equally valid.“Mine was that of someone who just showed up figuring I would cover this routine ceremony of certification, ended up not being able to get into the press gallery, wandered around to the west side of the building and suddenly saw all of these police officers under siege, getting maced and beaten. After being there for a while, I escaped through the tunnels and went to the east side of the Capitol, and watched people push their way in.”In their book The Steal, Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague observe that those who attacked the Capitol had no more chance of overturning the election than the hippies of 1967 had of seeing the Pentagon levitate. Draper’s term “seismic travesty” points in the same direction. But he does not diminish the enormity of the attempt, of Trump’s rejection of democracy and the threat posed by those who support him.His book joins a flock on January 6. One point of difference is that each chapter starts with an image by the Canadian photographer Louie Palu, of January 6 and the days after it. Rioters surge. Politicians stalk the corridors of power.Draper says: “There’s a reason why the subtitle isn’t how the Republican party lost its mind, but instead when the Republican party did. It is about a snapshot in time. I happen to think it is an incredibly momentous snapshot, but this is not a dry historical recitation of how the Republican party over decades moved from one mode of thought to another.”“It’s important for me to impress upon readers that this is a discrete moment worth considering, a moment when the Republican party … rather than decide, ‘Wow, we’ve been co-conspirators, intended or not, to a horrific event, and we’ve got to do better,’ instead went in a different direction.“And that to me is a moment when democracy is now shuttered and therefore has to be contemplated.”Draper interviewed most major players, among them Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader with his eye on the speaker’s gavel after next month’s midterms. Asked if the man who courted Trump with red and pink Starbursts and genuflections at Mar-a-Lago is the leader Republicans deserve, Draper answers carefully.“So two operative words there are ‘leader’ and ‘deserves’. It depends on how you define either. He would be the leader in the sense of that they’ll probably vote for him for speaker … but it’s an open question as to whether he really will lead or whether he really has ever led.“The important word is ‘deserves’. And obviously, that requires a judgment on my part. But I do think that what Kevin McCarthy embodies to me is the human refutation to the argument that Donald Trump hijacked the Republican party, because to imagine that metaphor, you imagine the Republican party as an airplane seized by force, without any complicity, and that the plane was a perfectly well-functioning plane before then. McCarthy is here to disprove all of that.“McCarthy has been an absolute enabler of Donald Trump. He has never refuted the kinds of lies his party has embraced. He has winked and nodded along. People have told me that he’s offered to create for Marjorie Taylor Greene a new leadership position. At minimum, she’s likely to get plum committee assignments.”Greene, a far-right, conspiracy-spouting congresswoman from Georgia, was elected as Draper began work.“I thought she would be just kind of marginalised, sitting at the Star Wars bar of Republican politics, kind of a member of Congress who would be ousted after one term. But in a lot of ways, tracing her trajectory was a way of tracing the trajectory of the post– Trump presidency Republican party after January 6. Now, Trump is without question the dominant party leader, and more to the point, Trumpism is the straw that stirs the drink.”Some in the media say Greene should not be covered. Some say strenuously otherwise. Draper spent time with her.“This is the advantage of doing a book as opposed to daily journalism. It took me a year to get my first interview with her. You have to understand, to her, the mainstream media is, as Trump has delicately put it, the enemy of the American people. She thinks we habitually lie. We merit nothing but disgust, minimum, and contempt, maximum.“And so to get her to kind of cross that psychological Rubicon and be willing to talk to me was a real process. But I do find in journalism and anthropology that people generally speaking want to let the rest of the world know why they are the way they are. They want to reveal themselves. And if you place them in a comfortable zone, where they feel like they can do that, and trust that they will not be made to pay for it immediately, then they often will, if only in increments, begin to reveal themselves. And that’s what happened with Greene and me.”Democracy on the vergeLiz Cheney is in some ways Greene’s opposite. The daughter of Dick Cheney, vice-president under George W Bush, she is an establishment figure who broke from Trump only over the Capitol attack. Ejected from party leadership, she is one of two Republicans on the House January 6 committee but lost her seat in Wyoming to a Trump-backed challenger.To Draper, it is “remarkable that we’re talking about those two female Republicans in the same breath, implicitly recognising these improbable opposite trajectories.“In December 2020, if you and I were talking about Liz Cheney and saying, ‘What’s going to happen to her next,’ we wouldn’t say she’s going to be exiled from the party. And if we said, ‘What’s going to happen to Marjorie Taylor Greene next,’ we wouldn’t say she would basically be a more influential figure in the Republican party than Liz Cheney. It would seem a nutso proposition and yet that’s exactly what happened.“Cheney stood almost alone in her view that not only did the party need to move on from Trump, but that it needed to see to it that Trump would no longer be a powerful force within the GOP. That put her on an island along with Adam Kinzinger and precious few others. She’s paid a heavy political price.”Draper’s previous book, To Start a War, showed how Cheney’s father and his boss sold the Iraq war, citing weapons of mass destruction which did not exist. How did Cheney feel about that?“She said, ‘You and I probably disagree on whether or not it was the right thing to do to go into Iraq.’ I remember saying to her, ‘You mean, I’m not a warmonger like you are?’ And she laughed, but she happens still to believe that was a viable proposition. And I think my book reaches the inexorable conclusion that [it] was a very foolish proposition.“But it’s worth bringing that up, because … the subject at hand was not just Donald Trump, but also the Republican party and its tenuous grip on the truth. And it has been an eye-opener, I think, for a lot of us that Liz Cheney … stands for other things beyond ideology, and among them are the preservation of democracy.”Before the Capitol was attacked, Cheney read Lincoln on the Verge, Ted Widmer’s account of Abraham Lincoln’s perilous rail journey to Washington in 1861.Draper writes: “As the nation teetered on the brink of civil war, Lincoln avoided two assassination attempts on the journey, while the counting of electoral college votes in the Capitol was preceded by fears that someone might seize the mahogany box containing the ballots and thereby undo Abe Lincoln’s presidency before its inception.“Cheney had shuddered to think what would have happened had the mob gotten their hands on the mahogany boxes on January 6, 2021.”Unchecked review: how Trump dodged two impeachments … and the January 6 committee?Read moreWidmer is a historian but plenty of books have suggested that with America deeply polarised and Trumpism rampant, we could be close to a second civil war. To Draper, “tragically it is not out of the question”.“It’s certainly clear to me that when you’ve got a third of the voting public in America that believes that the election was stolen … [that’s] not something that you take with a grain of salt.“America really is beset by fractures that could metastasize into something violent. I hope to hell that’s not the case. But but I’m not gonna look at you and say there’s no way it’ll happen.”
      Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind is published in the US by Penguin Press
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      Donald Trump formally subpoenaed by January 6 committee

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      Donald Trump formally subpoenaed by January 6 committeeFormer US president will be compelled to provide accounting under oath about his potential foreknowledge of the Capitol attack The House January 6 select committee has formally transmitted a subpoena to Donald Trump, compelling the former president to provide an accounting under oath about his potential foreknowledge of the Capitol attack and his broader efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Steve Bannon given four months in prison for contempt of CongressRead moreThe subpoena made sweeping requests for documents and testimony, dramatically raising the stakes in the highly charged congressional investigation and setting the stage for a constitutionally consequential legal battle that could ultimately go before the supreme court.“Because of your central role in each element,” the panel’s chairman, Bennie Thompson, and vice-chair, Liz Cheney, wrote, “the select committee unanimously directed the issuance of a subpoena seeking your testimony and relevant documents in your possession on these and related topics.”Most notably, the committee demanded that Trump turn over records of all January 6-related calls and texts sent or received, any communications with members of Congress, as well as communications with the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, extremist groups that stormed the Capitol.The expansive subpoena ordered Trump to produce documents by 4 November and testify on 14 November about interactions with key advisers who have asserted their fifth amendment right against self-incrimination, including the political operatives Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.“You were at the center of the first and only effort by any US president to overturn an election and obstruct the peaceful transfer of power,” the panel’s leaders wrote in making the case to subpoena Trump. “The evidence demonstrates that you knew this activity was illegal.”The subpoena also sought materials that appeared destined to be scrutinised as part of an obstruction investigation conducted by the select committee.One of the document requests, for instance, was for records about Trump’s efforts to contact witnesses and their lawyers.The documents request was specifically drafted to cover materials Trump would be able to turn over. The subpoena added: “The attached schedule is narrowly focused on records in your custody and control that you are uniquely positioned to provide to the select committee.”Thompson transmitted the subpoena after investigators spent days drafting the order and attorneys for the select committee contacted multiple lawyers working for Trump to ascertain who was authorized to accept its service.“We do not take this action lightly,” the subpoena said, noting the historical significance of the moment. But, the subpoena added, this was not the first time that a former president had been subpoenaed – and multiple former presidents have testified to Congress.Whether Trump will testify remains unclear. Though he has retained the Dhillon Law Group to handle matters relating to the subpoena, the final decision about his cooperation will be based to a large degree on his own instincts, sources close to the former president suggested.The driving factor pushing Trump to want to testify has centered around a reflexive belief that he can convince investigators that their own inquiry is a witch-hunt and that he should be exonerated over January 6, the sources said.Trump has previously expressed an eagerness to appear before the select committee and “get his pound of flesh” as long as he can appear live, the sources said – a thought he reiterated to close aides last week after the panel voted to issue the subpoena.But Trump also appears to have become more attuned to the pitfalls of testifying in ongoing investigations, with lawyers warning him about mounting legal issues in criminal inquiries brought by the US justice department and a civil lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general.The former president invoked his fifth-amendment right against self-incrimination more than 400 times in a deposition with the office of the New York attorney general before the office filed a giant fraud lawsuit against him, three of his children and senior Trump Organization executives.Trump also ultimately took the advice of his lawyers during the special counsel investigation into ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia, submitting only written responses to investigators despite initially telling advisers he wanted to testify to clear his name.That recent caution has come with the realization that Trump could open himself up to legal peril should he testify under oath, given his penchant for misrepresenting or outright lying about events of any nature – which is a crime before Congress.Any falsehoods from Trump would almost certainly be caught by the select committee. The subpoena letter said the panel intended to have the questioning conduct by attorneys, many of whom are top former justice department lawyers or federal and national security prosecutors.The former president’s testimony and transcript would almost certainly be reviewed by the justice department as part of its criminal probe into various efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which the select committee has alleged was centrally orchestrated by Trump.But the move to subpoena Trump comes with inherent risks for the panel itself. If it were to allow Trump for instance to testify live, they would be faced with a witness who might self-incriminate, but could also use proceedings to repeat lies about the 2020 election that led to the Capitol attack.The select committee might also face a difficult choice of how to proceed should Trump simply ignore the subpoena, claiming the justice department’s internal legal opinions for instance indicate that presidents and former presidents have absolute immunity from testifying to Congress.Investigators would then have to decide whether to seek judicial enforcement of the subpoena, though such an effort would likely take months – time that the select committee does not have, given it will almost certainly be disbanded at the end of the current Congress in January 2023.Should the panel instead simply move to hold Trump in contempt of Congress for defying the subpoena – his former strategist Steve Bannon was sentenced Friday to jail for his recalcitrance – it remains unclear whether the justice department would prosecute such a referral.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More