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      Capitol attack investigators zero in on far-right Oath Keepers and Proud Boys

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      Capitol attack investigators zero in on far-right Oath Keepers and Proud BoysPanel appears to believe militias coordinated to physically stop certification of Joe Biden’s election victory on 6 January last year The House select committee investigating January 6 appears to believe the Capitol attack included a coordinated assault perpetrated by the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys militia groups that sought to physically stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.Trump says he regrets not marching on Capitol with supporters on January 6 Read moreThe panel’s working theory – which has not been previously reported though the justice department has indicted some militia group leaders – crystallized this week after obtaining evidence of the coordination in testimony and non-public video, according to two sources familiar with the matter.Counsel on the select committee’s “gold team” examining Donald Trump, the “red team” examining January 6 rally organizers, and the “purple team” examining the militia groups, are now expected to use the findings to inform the direction for the remainder of the investigation, the sources said.The panel has amassed deep evidence about the connections between the connections between the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys in recent weeks after it obtained hours of non-public footage of the leaders of the militia groups in Washington ahead of the Capitol attack, the sources said.And the select committee has also now heard testimony from award-winning documentary film-maker Nick Quested on Wednesday about contacts between the militia group leaders, far-right political operatives and the Save America rally organizers, the sources said.The information, which could play a large role in establishing for the select committee whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy as part of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is being viewed internally as a significant breakthrough, the sources added.Most crucially for the panel, it could form part of the evidence to connect the militia groups that stormed the Capitol on 6 January to the organizers of the Save America rally that immediately preceded the attack – who in turn are slowly being linked to the Trump White House.In essence, the sources said, the select committee now appears to have the same degree of evidence as secured by the FBI and the justice department referred to in recent prosecutions for seditious conspiracy and other charges related to the Capitol attack.A spokesperson for the panel declined to comment on witness testimony.The gold, red and purple teams have been focused on the video footage for several weeks, the sources said, with initial attention turned towards a now-infamous meeting between the militia group leaders in a parking garage near the Capitol on 5 January.But the select committee was unable to discern from the video whether the militia group leaders even discussed the Capitol or their plans for January 6 at that rendezvous, the sources said, and suspect the meeting was a set up to provide them an alibi.The panel has reviewed the tape repeatedly, the sources said, and House investigators have come away with an uneasy feeling that Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, sought to have the meeting documented to later absolve himself of wrongdoing.Tarrio last week pleaded not guilty in a separate DoJ prosecution that accuses him of organizing the Capitol attack. The indictment states Tarrio on 4 January told other Proud Boy members: “I didn’t hear this voice note until now, you want to storm the Capitol.”The select committee has instead become more interested recently in communications both between the militia group leaders and the purported January 6 rally organizers, including Ali Alexander and far-right media personality Alex Jones, the sources said.That topic was one of the central lines of inquiry that the gold, red and purple teams attempted to establish during a seven-hour recorded interview with Quested, the source said.At that interview, the select committee also examined in excruciating minute-by-minute detail a 17-minute edited clip of footage shot by Quested that documented the Capitol attack, and video that tracked Alexander’s movements around the Capitol building, they said.TopicsUS Capitol attackThe far rightUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump says he regrets not marching on Capitol with supporters on January 6

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      Trump says he regrets not marching on Capitol with supporters on January 6 Ex-president also rejects suggestions he used ‘burner phones’ on day of the assault in Washington Post interview Donald Trump has said he regrets not marching on the US Capitol building with his supporters on the day of the January 6 insurrection and again rejected suggestions he used “burner phones” on the day of the assault.In a defiant interview with the Washington Post the former president said he had pressed to march with his supporters on January 6, but was blocked from doing so by Secret Service agents. “Secret Service said I couldn’t go. I would have gone there in a minute,” Trump told the Post, later bragging about the size of the “tremendous crowd” at the “Save America” rally that day.Last month CBS News and the Post revealed internal White House phone records from the day of the attack on the Capitol showed a seven-hour-and-37-minute gap in Trump’s phone logs including the period in which the assault occurred. The reports revealed the House committee investigating the attack were examining whether Trump had used burner phones – disposable mobile phones – during that period.Trump has denied doing so and said he did not know the meaning of the term, but last week his former national security adviser John Bolton said the former president had used the term several times in conversations.In his interview with the Washington Post, Trump again denied use of burner phones and said he had not destroyed any call logs. He claimed instead he had not received many phone calls on the day of the assault, but remembered talking to two Republican congressmen, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, and Jim Jordan.“From the standpoint of telephone calls, I don’t remember getting very many,” he told the Post, later adding, “Why would I care about who called me? If congressmen were calling me, what difference did it make? There was nothing secretive about it. There was no secret.”Trump also acknowledged he had communicated with Ginni Thomas, wife of the conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, during his presidency but said he was not aware of her lobbying around the 2020 election results.Text messages obtained by the Washington Post and received by the 6 January committee, revealed Ginni Thomas had repeatedly lobbied Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to push to keep Trump in power after Joe Biden won the election.“First of all, her husband is a great justice. And she’s a fine woman. And she loves our country,” Trump said in his interview with the Post.The former president also said he had not been contacted by the 6 January committee and offered no clear indication of how he would respond if contacted. He branded his daughter Ivanka’s appearance before the committee earlier this week as “shame and harassment” but told the Post he was not aware of what she had said.The interview came as the committee received a cache of 101 emails belonging to the Trump lawyer John Eastman, which are likely to reveal details of the efforts undertaken to block former vice-president Mike Pence from certifying the election result in Congress on 6 January.On Wednesday the House also voted to hold two former senior Trump aides, Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with subpoenas issues by the committee, paving the way for potential criminal prosecution.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

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      House votes to hold Trump duo Navarro and Scavino in contempt of Congress

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      House votes to hold Trump duo Navarro and Scavino in contempt of CongressApproval of contempt resolution over months-long defiance of subpoenas sets pair on path towards criminal prosecution by DoJ The House voted on Wednesday to hold two of Donald Trump’s top advisers – Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino – in criminal contempt of Congress for their months-long refusal to comply with subpoenas issued by the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack.The approval of the contempt resolution, by a vote of 220 to 203, sets the two Trump aides on the path toward criminal prosecution by the justice department as the panel escalates its inquiry into whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.Congressman Jamie Raskin, a member of the select committee who introduced the contempt resolution to the House floor, said the select committee needed the House to advance the measure in order to reaffirm the consequences for defying the January 6 investigation.January 6 panel receives Trump lawyer emails about plan to block Biden victoryRead moreCiting a ruling by a federal judge last week that Trump “likely” committed felonies to return himself to the Oval Office for a second term, Raskin said on the House floor that the panel wanted Navarro and Scavino’s cooperation because they engaged in trying to overthrow an election.But having refused to comply with their subpoenas in any form, Raskin said that “these two witnesses have acted in contempt of Congress and the American people; we must hold them in contempt of Congress and the American people”.The contempt citations approved by the House now head to the justice department and the US attorney for the District of Columbia, Matthew Graves, who is required by law to weigh a prosecution and present the matter before a federal grand jury.Should the justice department secure a conviction against the Trump aides, the consequences could mean up to a year in federal prison, $100,000 in fines, or both – though it would not force their compliance, and pursuing the misdemeanor charge could take months.The subpoena defiance by Navarro and Scavino meant the select committee was ultimately unable to extract information directly from them about Trump’s unlawful scheme to have then-vice president Mike Pence stop Joe Biden’s election win certification on 6 January.But the panel has quietly amassed deep knowledge about their roles in the effort to return Trump to office in recent weeks, and senior staff decided that they could move ahead in the inquiry without hearing from the two aides, say sources close to the inquiry.The determination by the select committee that Navarro and Scavino’s cooperation was no longer essential came when it found it could fill in the gaps from others, the sources said, and led to the decision to break off negotiations for their cooperation.The final decision to withdraw from talks reflected the panel’s belief that it was not worth the time – the probe is on a time crunch to complete its work before the November midterms – to pursue their testimony for potentially only marginal gain, the sources said.House investigators had sought cooperation from Navarro, a former Trump senior advisor for trade policy who became enmeshed in the effort to reverse Trump’s election defeat, for around a month until it became apparent they were making no headway.The select committee issued a subpoena to Navarro since he helped devise – by his own admission on MSNBC and elsewhere – the scheme to have Pence stop Biden’s certification from taking place as part of one Trump “war room” based at the Willard hotel in Washington.Navarro also worked with the Trump campaign’s legal team to pressure legislators in battleground states win by Biden to decertify the results and instead send Trump slates of electors for certification by Congress at the joint session in January 6.But when that plan started to go awry, Navarro encouraged then-Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to call political operative Roger Stone to discuss January 6, the panel said in its contempt of Congress report published last week.The former Trump aide, however, told the select committee – without providing any evidence – that the former president had asserted executive privilege over the contents of his subpoena and would therefore not provide documents or testimony.With Scavino, the select committee first issued Trump’s former deputy White House chief of staff for communications in September last year, since he had attended several meetings with Trump where election fraud matters were discussed, the panel said.But after the panel granted to Scavino six extensions that pushed his subpoena deadlines from October 2021 to February 2022, the former Trump aide also told House investigators that he too would not comply with the order because Trump invoked executive privilege.The select committee rejected those arguments of executive privilege, saying neither Navarro nor Scavino had grounds for entirely defying the subpoenas because either Trump did not formally invoke the protections, or because Biden ultimately waived them.At the business meeting last week where the select committee voted unanimously to recommend that the full House find Navarro and Scavino in contempt of Congress, Raskin delivered an emotional rebuke of the supposed executive privilege arguments.“This is America, and there’s no executive privilege here for presidents, much less trained advisors, to plan coups and organize insurrections against the people’s government in the people’s constitution and then to cover up the evidence of their crimes.“These two men,” Raskin said of Navarro and Scavino, “are in contempt of Congress and we must say, both for their brazen disregard for their duties and for our laws and our institutions.”Attending an event featuring Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday night, Navarro made a point of appearing aloof to his impending referral to the justice department. “Oh that vote,” Navarro said dismissively, the Washington Post reported.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      January 6 panel receives Trump lawyer emails about plan to block Biden victory

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      January 6 panel receives Trump lawyer emails about plan to block Biden victoryHouse panel receives 101 emails belonging John Eastman, concerning plans to obstruct certification of 2020 election result The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol has received a cache of emails belonging to Donald Trump’s lawyer, John Eastman, federal court documents filed on Tuesday show.The 101 emails were released to the committee after Judge David Carter ruled in federal court in California last week that Eastman, a hard-right supporter of the former US president, had not made a sufficient claim to attorney-client privilege.The cache of documents, sent between 4 and 7 January 2021, contains extensive communications between Eastman and others about plans to obstruct the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.These included proposed efforts to pressure Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, to reject or delay counting electoral college votes and weaponizing false allegations of voter fraud in numerous state lawsuits.In one email, which includes a draft memo for Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, recommending Pence reject some states’ electors during the 6 January congressional meeting, Carter ruled for disclosure as the communications were being used to plan criminal activity.“The draft memo pushed a strategy that knowingly violated the Electoral Count Act, and Dr Eastman’s later memos closely track its analysis and proposal,” the ruling says. “The memo is both intimately related to and clearly advanced the plan to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.”Neither Trump nor Eastman have been charged with crimes relating to 6 January and the order on Eastman’s emails was made in civil court.Others references to emails in the judge’s ruling allude to other plans Eastman was involved in.“In a different email thread,” Carter writes, “Dr Eastman and a colleague consider how to use a state court ruling to justify Vice-President Pence enacting the plan. In another email, a colleague focuses on the ‘plan of action’ after the January 6 attacks, not mentioning future litigation.”The sprawling select committee investigation, chaired by the Democratic congressman Bennie Thompson from Mississippi, has interviewed more than 800 people as part of its investigation into the events on January 6.On Tuesday, Thompson confirmed that Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter, had appeared before the committee, marking the first time a member of the immediate Trump family had appeared.Reports indicated her testimony lasted about eight hours. The testimony followed an appearance before the committee by her husband, Jared Kushner, the previous week.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump lawyer discussed plans to block Biden victory, emails reveal

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      Trump lawyer discussed plans to block Biden victory, emails revealJanuary 6 panel receives 101 emails belonging John Eastman, concerning plans to obstruct certification of 2020 election result The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol has received a cache of emails belonging to Donald Trump’s lawyer, John Eastman, federal court documents filed on Tuesday show.The 101 emails were released to the committee after Judge David Carter ruled in federal court in California last week that Eastman, a hard-right supporter of the former US president, had not made a sufficient claim to attorney-client privilege.The cache of documents, sent between 4 and 7 January 2021, contains extensive communications between Eastman and others about plans to obstruct the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.These included proposed efforts to push Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, to reject or delay counting electoral college votes and weaponizing false allegations of voter fraud in numerous state lawsuits.In one email, which includes a draft memo for Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, recommending Pence reject some states’ electors during the 6 January congressional meeting, Carter ruled for disclosure as the communications were being used to plan criminal activity.“The draft memo pushed a strategy that knowingly violated the Electoral Count Act, and Dr Eastman’s later memos closely track its analysis and proposal,” the ruling says. “The memo is both intimately related to and clearly advanced the plan to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.”Neither Trump nor Eastman have been charged with crimes relating to 6 January and the order on Eastman’s emails was made in civil court.Others references to emails in the judge’s ruling allude to other plans Eastman was involved in.“In a different email thread,” Carter writes, “Dr Eastman and a colleague consider how to use a state court ruling to justify Vice-President Pence enacting the plan. In another email, a colleague focuses on the ‘plan of action’ after the January 6 attacks, not mentioning future litigation.”The sprawling select committee investigation, chaired by the Democratic congressman Bennie Thompson from Mississippi, has interviewed more than 800 people as part of its investigation into the events on January 6.On Tuesday, Thompson confirmed that Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter, had appeared before the committee, marking the first time a member of the immediate Trump family had appeared.Reports indicated her testimony lasted about eight hours. The testimony followed an appearance before the committee by her husband, Jared Kushner, the previous week.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Ivanka Trump testifies before panel investigating Capitol attack

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      Ivanka Trump testifies before panel investigating Capitol attackDonald Trump’s eldest daughter, a former senior White House adviser, spoke via video to committee about events of January 6 Ivanka Trump testified before the January 6 committee on Tuesday, the special congressional panel investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol in 2021 in which extremist supporters of Donald Trump attempted in vain to overturn his defeat in the presidential election.‘I didn’t win the election’: Trump admits defeat in session with historiansRead moreThe Mississippi congressman Bennie Thompson, the committee’s chairman, said on Tuesday afternoon that she had been answering investigators’ questions on a video teleconference since the morning and was not “chatty” but had been helpful. “She came in on her own” and did not have to be subpoenaed, Thompson said.Ivanka Trump, who was with her father in the White House that day, is one of more than 800 witnesses the committee has interviewed as it works to compile a record of the attack, the worst on the Capitol in more than two centuries.She is the first of Trump’s children known to speak to the committee and one of the closest people to her father.Whether she gave the committee new information or not, her decision to cooperate was significant for the panel, which has been trying to secure an interview with her since late January.The nine-member panel is particularly focused on what the former president was doing as his supporters broke into the Capitol and interrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s victory for several hours as lawmakers and staff fled for their lives.The Guardian had earlier confirmed that former president Donald Trump’s oldest daughter, and former senior White House adviser, would speak to the panel virtually.Her testimony came after that of her husband and fellow former presidential adviser, Jared Kushner, who spoke to the panel for more than six hours last week.After Kushner’s testimony, Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and a member of the committee, told the Guardian: “There’s a momentum to this process when there’s cooperation. When people see that others are doing the right thing, it gives them the courage to do the right thing.”A bipartisan Senate report linked seven deaths to the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, by supporters Donald Trump told to “fight like hell” in service of his attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection but acquitted when enough Republican senators stayed loyal.The House’s January 6 committee includes two Republicans, Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.As the Guardian reported this week, the committee has identified Ivanka Trump as a senior adviser who would have known her father’s attempt to block certification of electoral college results at the Capitol was unlawful.Referring to a law professor who presented the plan to block certification, a federal judge recently said it was “more likely than not that President Trump and Dr [John] Eastman dishonestly conspired to obstruct the joint session of Congress on January 6 2021”, and thereby committed multiple felonies.Also in Washington on Tuesday, Enrique Tarrio, a former leader of the far-right Proud Boys group, pleaded not guilty to felony charges including conspiracy to block the certification by Congress of electoral college results on January 6. The January 6 committee also hopes Ivanka Trump might help explain a more-than seven-hour gap in White House call logs for the day of the Capitol attack.Ivanka Trump’s role in her father’s administration has long been a lightning rod for controversy. On Monday, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) said: “Here’s a question Ivanka Trump can answer: how did she and Jared make up to $640m while working ‘for free’ in the White House?”TopicsIvanka TrumpJared KushnerDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Ivanka Trump to testify before panel investigating Capitol attack

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      Ivanka Trump to testify before panel investigating Capitol attackDonald Trump’s eldest daughter, a former senior White House adviser, to speak virtually to committee about events of January 6 Ivanka Trump will testify before the January 6 committee on Tuesday.‘I didn’t win the election’: Trump admits defeat in session with historiansRead moreThe Guardian confirmed that former president Donald Trump’s oldest daughter, and former senior White House adviser, will speak to the panel virtually.Her testimony will come after that of her husband and fellow former presidential adviser, Jared Kushner, who spoke to the panel for more than six hours last week.After Kushner’s testimony, Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and a member of the committee, told the Guardian: “There’s a momentum to this process when there’s cooperation. When people see that others are doing the right thing, it gives them the courage to do the right thing.”A bipartisan Senate report linked seven deaths to the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, by supporters Donald Trump told to “fight like hell” in service of his attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection but acquitted when enough Republican senators stayed loyal.The House’s January 6 committee includes two Republicans, Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.As the Guardian reported this week, the committee has identified Ivanka Trump as a senior adviser who would have known her father’s attempt to block certification of electoral college results at the Capitol was unlawful.Referring to a law professor who presented the plan to block certification, a federal judge recently said it was “more likely than not that President Trump and Dr [John] Eastman dishonestly conspired to obstruct the joint session of Congress on January 6 2021”, and thereby committed multiple felonies.The committee also hopes Ivanka Trump might help explain a more-than seven-hour gap in White House call logs for 6 January.Ivanka Trump’s role in her father’s administration has long been a lightning rod for controversy. On Monday, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) said: “Here’s a question Ivanka Trump can answer: how did she and Jared make up to $640m while working ‘for free’ in the White House?”TopicsIvanka TrumpJared KushnerDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘January 6 was a real wake-up call’: US unions fight to save democracy

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      ‘January 6 was a real wake-up call’: US unions fight to save democracyLabor leaders view this year’s elections – and 2024’s – with special urgency, as a goal-line stand to preserve America’s democracy Many union leaders used to pooh-pooh talk about saving democracy, according t0 Shane Larson, the Communications Workers of America’s director of government affairs. All that changed after the January 6 assault on the Capitol and after many Republicans pushed to overturn Biden’s victory in several states.The latest threat to democracy? A Trump-backed candidate willing to ‘find extra votes’Read more“Just a few years ago, some union leaders would complain, ‘Why are we focusing on these do-good democratic issues?’ They’d say we need to focus exclusively on labor rights and jobs, jobs, jobs,” Larson said. “Now no one is complaining about this at all. There’s a real recognition that the entire labor movement has to be involved in this effort, that we have to do something for our democracy or we can lose it.“January 6 was a real wake-up call,” Larson said. “Part of our effort is to hold accountable a number of insurrectionists running for some of these offices.” He mentioned the Arizona and Georgia secretary of state races in particular.With their ability to mobilize tens of thousands of union foot soldiers, unions are one of the nation’s most powerful political forces, and labor leaders view this year’s election – and 2024’s – with special urgency, as a goal-line stand to preserve America’s democracy.Traditionally focusing on presidential and congressional races, unions this year plan to focus far more than usual on state and local races – for instance, to prevent the election of secretaries of state and election commissioners who have embraced Trump’s “big lie” and signaled they might overturn their state’s 2024 vote results if the Democratic presidential nominee is ahead.Unite Here, the hotel workers’ union, is known for being one of the nation’s most politically active unions, and this year it has expanded its political ambitions – not just to elect worker-friendly candidates, but to help preserve America’s embattled democracy.For this year’s elections, Unite Here intends to build on its performance in 2020 when it had 500 full-time canvassers going door to door in Arizona, helping Joe Biden win that state. It also had an army of union members canvassing in Philadelphia, helping deliver Pennsylvania to Biden. That 300,000-member union later sent 200 canvassers to Georgia to help Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff win, giving Democrats control of the Senate.Unite Here has broadened its effort this year, with a stepped-up focus on protecting voting rights – and democracy itself. It is already educating voters in Arizona and Georgia about how to navigate around newly enacted voter restrictions. Like many other unions, it hopes to provide a flock of poll watchers to help ensure that voters, especially voters of color, are not intimidated by the promised army of Trumpist poll watchers. To help Democrats retain control of the Senate, Unite Here plans to deploy hundreds of canvassers to help Mark Kelly of Arizona, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and other Democratic senators win re-election.“Our goal is to get back to what we had in 2020, a steady ramp-up to have 500 people moving around, going door to door, reigniting people to vote,” said Gwen Mills, Unite Here’s secretary-treasurer. “The work of democracy is labor-intensive, is people-intensive.”Union leaders see two parallel strategies to preserve American democracy – one is to battle against efforts that roll back voting rights, reduce the political voice of minorities and enable hyper-partisans to skew, even overturn vote counts. The other strategy is to ensure that Democrats win key battleground states, especially longtime union strongholds Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.“There is no way that Donald Trump or the next Donald Trump or any anti-worker candidate can win the White House without winning those states,” said Steve Rosenthal, former political director of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s main labor federation.Rosenthal said that if union households accounted for 25% to 30% of the vote in those states, as they did a quarter-century ago, instead of 15% 20% as they do now, Trump could not have won those states in 2016, nor win them in 2024. Rosenthal has founded a group, In Union, that is reaching out to hundreds of thousands of former union members in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – they perhaps lost their jobs and union membership when their factories closed. In Union seeks to explain to these voters which candidates are pro-worker and which aren’t. Thus far In Union has communicated with 1.2 million voters in those three states (including many non-union members who support unions) — and hopes to get funding to reach out to another 3 million.Backed by unions and foundations, In Union seeks to build trust with those voters and explain, for instance, how Joe Biden would do more for blue-collar workers than Trump would. “What these voters are yearning for is a place they can go to to get information they trust,” Rosenthal said. “There’s a huge role for unions to play in this right now.”Many labor leaders say Democratic lawmakers have hurt their party’s cause by doing little in recent decades to stop union membership from declining – a trend Joe Biden seems eager to reverse and many Republicans seem eager to accelerate. Unions often help Democrats by explaining to workers which party will do more for them. Unions have also helped prevent workers from growing resentful and embracing rightwing populists like Trump by helping assure economic gains for workers and by reducing racial resentment among white workers.“Unions remain the only set of organizations in the US that can help prevent working-class whites from going conservative,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociology professor at Washington University.Paul Spink, the head of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Wisconsin, said one way to help save democracy would be to re-elect Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor. Spink said Republicans have so gerrymandered Wisconsin’s legislature that they are close to having a veto-proof supermajority even though Republicans often win less than 50% of the statewide vote.“In recent months, there’ve been at least five or six bills the legislature passed to limit voting rights and undermine elections,” Spink said. “We’re trying very hard to keep a Democratic governor in this state to block those.”Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, says her union fights to protect democracy in many ways, for example, by opposing book bans and defending teachers who face punishment for teaching about racism.“In many countries, labor unions have been a bulwark against authoritarianism,” Weingarten said.She said her union might endorse some non-Trumpist Republicans like Lynn Cheney, who oppose the “big lie” and undermining fair elections. That way, in places where Democrats have scant chance of winning, her union might help elect Republicans who oppose many Republicans’ increasing embrace of authoritarianism.Labor’s pro-democracy efforts have taken many forms. The Service Employees International Union ran internet ads that criticized Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines and Home Depot for donating to GOP lawmakers who backed new voting restrictions. Unite Here co-sponsored a “freedom ride” of buses to Washington to urge senators to enact new voting rights legislation.“I feel that work for democracy should be year-round,” said Unite Here’s Mills. “We try to keep a drum beat year in and year out: do democracy at work, do democracy at the doors, do democracy at the polls, do democracy in the capital.”Unite Here trains hotel workers to become leaders, with one winning a seat on the Phoenix city council. It pushed lawmakers to slam the Cyber Ninjas’ much-derided election review in Arizona. United Here says its canvassers knocked on 1m doors in Arizona in 2020 and talked with 125,000 infrequent voters, many of whom voted for Biden. It boasts that that helped assure Biden’s 10,457-vote victory in the state.“I want other unions to have more people canvassing in these races, to do it in every state,” said Susan Minato, co-president of Unite Here Local 11 in Arizona and southern California. “That would be huge.”TopicsUS unionsUS Capitol attackUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More