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      in US Politics

      'Sedition and conspiracy': prosecutors cite wide-ranging crimes in Capitol attack – video

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      The acting US attorney for the District of Columbia, Michael Sherwin, has indicated that many amid the hundreds of pro-Trump rioters who violently invaded the US Capitol last Wednesday are suspected of a range of crimes including felony murder, sedition and conspiracy.
      At a press conference in Washington, prosecutors said there are at least 160 federal criminal cases open and they are ready to track down individuals across the country and apprehend them wherever possible – potentially arresting hundreds if not thousands of people.
      ‘The range of criminal conduct was unmatched,’ Sherwin said. He warned rioters: ‘You will be charged and you will be found’ More

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      Pompeo scraps Europe trip after EU leader calls Trump 'political pyromaniac'

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      US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has cancelled a trip to Europe at the last minute after European officials were publicly critical of Donald Trump’s role in last week’s storming of the Capitol.The official reason for the cancellation of the trip, originally to Brussels and Luxembourg, was the need to coordinate with a transition team from the incoming Biden administration, but it comes after the unprecedented attack on American democracy that stunned many world leaders and US allies.The Luxembourg leg of the trip was called off on Monday after its foreign minister Jean Asselborn called Trump “criminal” for inciting the attack.Asselborn described the outgoing US president to RTL radio as a “political pyromaniac who must be brought before a court”.Reuters and Fox News both quoted diplomatic sources as saying it was Luxembourg that had called off the meeting, a devastating snub from a tiny country for a secretary of state that continually claims to have restored “swagger” to the state department.Pompeo was also due to meet the Belgian deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Sophie Wilmes, who tweeted while the assault in Washington was underway, “These images are shocking, also because they hurt our democratic ideals.”“They show the extent of President-elect Biden’s task, which will be to unite American society around a common project. We trust him to do that.”Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato secretary general, who was due to have a dinner with Pompeo had described the scenes in Washington as “shocking” and said: “The outcome of this democratic election must be respected.” A Nato spokesperson confirmed that Pompeo had cancelled on Tuesday, giving as a reason the need to focus on the transition.Reuters reported that EU officials had declined to meet Pompeo on his last foreign trip, but a EU spokesperson denied there had been any plan or request for meetings with EU leaders.The state department, in a statement, attributed the cancellation to transition work before President-elect Joe Biden takes office on 20 January, even if until recently Pompeo had been reluctant to unequivocally recognise Biden’s win. Also on Tuesday, the US Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft cancelled a planned visit to Taiwan. The state department declined further comment on European officials’ rejection of meetings with Pompeo.The cold shoulder was a contrast with Pompeo’s previous visits to Brussels, which is home to Nato and EU headquarters, over the past three years, where he has given key-note speeches on US policy and met the EU’s chief executive, even as Europe balked at Trump’s foreign policy. More

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      Congress briefed on fresh security threats ahead of Biden inauguration

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      Members of Congress have been warned that there remain serious threats against their security on inauguration day when they plan to gather in Washington to usher Joe Biden into office as the 46th US president on 20 January.Details of the further threats came amid word that an FBI office in Virginia had reportedly issued an internal warning a day before the deadly riot at the Capitol last week that extremists were preparing to travel to Washington and commit “war”.Democratic congressman Conor Lamb, one of several politicians given a law enforcement briefing on Monday evening relating to security concerns, said that the threats the government is receiving are “very specific”.One domestic terrorist plot uncovered ahead of next week’s inauguration involved thousands of people surrounding the US Capitol building.“They were talking about 4,000 armed ‘patriots’ to surround the Capitol and prevent any Democrat from going in,” Lamb, of Pennsylvania, told CNN earlier on Tuesday.He said they were painting themselves as patriots on a mission to reclaim the country as if they were overthrowing the British colonial power in the American revolution prior to the United States declaring independence in 1776.“They have published ‘rules of engagement’, meaning when you shoot and when you don’t. So this is an organized group that has a plan. They are committed to doing what they’re doing because I think in their minds, you know, they are patriots and they’re talking about 1776 and so this is now a contest of wills,” Lamb said.He said that law enforcement departments in and near Washington were taking the threats seriously and planning for them.Meanwhile Ro Khanna, Democratic congressman of California, told CNN that some Republican members of Congress as well as Democrats have received death threats.And Lamb added, “We are not negotiating with or reasoning with these people. They have to be prosecuted. They have to be stopped. And unfortunately, that includes the president, which is why he needs to be impeached and removed from office.”The House of Representatives will on Wednesday debate the impeachment article introduced against Donald Trump on Monday and are expected to vote to impeach the president for an unprecedented second time.Washington mayor Muriel Bowser, told ABC on Tuesday the pro-Trump mob that invaded the US Capitol last week seeking forcefully to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory are “white supremacist rioters”. More

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      'Totally appropriate': Trump shows no remorse over role in Capitol attack

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterAn unrepentant Donald Trump has denied inciting an insurrection at the US Capitol, in an attempt to shift blame Democrats rejected as “despicable”.The president spoke to reporters for the first time since a pro-Trump mob rampaged through the Capitol last week, leaving five people dead. Democrats accuse him of stoking violence and could vote to impeach him on Wednesday.“So if you read my speech – and many people have done it, and I’ve seen it both in the papers and in the media, on television – it’s been analysed, and people thought that what I said was totally appropriate,” Trump insisted at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, ahead of a trip to Texas to tour his border wall.The president then sought to draw an equivalence with last summer’s mostly peaceful protests against racial injustice, falsely referring to them as “riots”. He said: “If you look at what other people have said – politicians at a high level – about the riots during the summer, the horrible riots in Portland and Seattle, in various other places, that was a real problem – what they said.”It was shortly before noon last Wednesday when Trump gave an incendiary speech to a raucous crowd, insisting his election defeat by Joe Biden could be overturned and urging them to march to the Capitol and “fight much harder” against “bad people”.He said: “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength.”Democrats have directly linked the speech, and previous Trump comments, to the carnage that unfolded when rioters, some carrying Confederate flags, fought with police and looted congressional offices. They have demanded Trump be removed or face a historic second impeachment.As he left the White House on Tuesday, Trump said: “The impeachment is really a continuation of the greatest witch-hunt in the history of politics. It’s ridiculous. It’s absolutely ridiculous. This impeachment is causing tremendous anger and it’s really a terrible thing that they’re doing.”Democrats gave short shrift to Trump’s denial of responsibility. Speaking to reporters in New York, Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, said: “What Trump did today, blaming others for what he caused, is a pathological technique used by the worst of dictators.“Trump causes the anger, he causes the divisiveness, he foments the violence and blames others for it. That is despicable. The technique Trump is using is used by the worst dictators the globe has ever seen. Donald Trump should not hold office one day longer and what we saw in his statements today is proof positive of that.”Federal investigators are warning of additional potential security threats around the inauguration of Biden next week. NBC News reported that extremists are using Telegram, an encrypted communication app, to urge violence and even share knowledge of how to make guns and bombs.Multiple media outlets also confirmed an ABC News report that the FBI expects armed pro-Trump protests in all 50 state capitals and Washington before inauguration day.Trump’s potential to fuel further unrest is a source of anxiety. Behind the scenes, he has reportedly continued his retreat into paranoia and unreality, repeating in a conversation with the House majority leader, Kevin McCarthy, the outlandish lie that so-called “antifa” leftwing activists, not his supporters, were responsible for death and destruction inside the Capitol.“It’s not antifa,” McCarthy reportedly replied. “It’s Maga. I know. I was there.” Maga refers to the Trump slogan “Make America Great Again”.The House was due to vote on Tuesday night on a resolution seeking the use of the 25th amendment, which provides for the removal of a president deemed unfit for office. Dependent on the vice-president, Mike Pence, the gambit seemed sure to fail.After days of silence between the pair, Trump and Pence held a “good conversation” at the White House on Monday evening, an unnamed official told Reuters.Some who responded to Trump’s call to storm the Capitol, prompting clashes in which a police officer was killed, a rioter was shot dead and three others died, were caught on video chanting “Hang Mike Pence”.A House vote to impeach Trump on one article, for incitement of insurrection, is expected on Wednesday. The timetable for an ensuing Senate trial is uncertain. If Trump is convicted after he leaves power, the Senate could decide to disqualify him from running for office again.Unlike Trump’s first impeachment in December 2019, a sizable number of Republicans in the House and a handful in the Senate have signaled support. Those lawmakers included Liz Cheney, the third-ranking House Republican. Republicans expect up to 20 GOP lawmakers to vote for impeachment, Punchbowl reported.Ted Lieu, a Democratic congressman, told the MSNBC network: “We don’t actually need a lot of evidence here because it’s all out in the open. There’s no dispute Donald Trump gave a speech. No dispute there was an attack on the Capitol. No dispute that multiple people died.”Last week’s huge security failure is under growing scrutiny. The Washington Post said it had obtained an internal FBI document from the day before the attack warning extremists were preparing to commit violence and “war”. The report undermined previous claims that the FBI had no intelligence about an imminent attack.Explanations for why Trump himself could not be reached as the Capitol was attacked continued to emerge. According to the Post, quoting an unnamed close adviser, the president was “hard to reach … because it was live TV”.“If it’s TiVo, he just hits pause and takes the calls,” the adviser said. “If it’s live TV, he watches it, and he was just watching it all unfold.”Trump’s Tuesday visit to the Texas border town of Alamo, 240 miles south of the historic Alamo fort, was promoted as a way to highlight work on the border wall and seen as a potential effort to change the narrative.News of Trump’s visit was cause for some confusion with the hugely symbolic Alamo fort in San Antonio, a World Heritage Site where fighters for Texan independence were massacred in 1836.Some observers suggested Trump had booked a venue in error, as his campaign apparently and famously did at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, a business in Philadelphia, in November. Many were worried by the prospect of Trump’s visit to Texas, one writing: “Remember the Alamo [is] a rallying cry.”The former federal cybersecurity chief Chris Krebs, whom Trump fired for saying the election was secure, told CNN: “This is the equivalent of ignoring that pain in your chest for a couple weeks and then all of a sudden you have a catastrophic heart attack.“We are on the verge of what I fear to be a pretty significant breakdown in democracy and civil society here.” More

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      The Guardian view on democracy in America: the threat is real | Editorial

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      The inauguration of Joe Biden as US president on 20 January has become a touchstone moment in the history of American democracy. Following the outrage of last week’s storming of Congress by Donald Trump supporters, at least 10,000 members of the national guard will be deployed in Washington by this weekend. Reports have detailed FBI warnings of possible armed protests in the capital and across the United States in the days ahead. The area around the Washington Monument, close to where Mr Trump urged supporters to “fight” for his right to stay in office, has been closed to the public. The mood is fearful, febrile and somewhat surreal. In the words of one newspaper headline: “Is this America?”Since the foundation of the federal republic, the peaceful transition of power has been fundamental to America’s understanding of itself. In US democracy’s choreography, the presidential inauguration is designed as a moment of civic celebration that transcends partisan differences. That Mr Trump chose to mobilise an insurgency against the handover gives the measure of his narcissism, hubris and deranged will to power. Last week’s riot was not a one-off piece of performance theatre that got out of hand. The pitch for an assault on democracy had been rolled for months. In the autumn, speaking more like a mobster than a president, Mr Trump told the neo-fascist Proud Boys movement to “stand by”, and warned that the Democratic party would try to “steal” the election. Last week’s violent mayhem, which led to five deaths, was the culmination of a strategy to intimidate and discredit the democratic institutions of the country he leads.Democrat members of the House of Representatives are therefore right to launch impeachment proceedings for a second time against a rogue president. As the charge sheet states, Mr Trump incited “violence against the government of the United States”. Assuming Wednesday’s vote to impeach is passed in the Democrat-controlled House, the next stage will take place in the Senate, currently in recess until after Mr Biden’s inauguration. A two-thirds supermajority would be required to convict, but it seems improbable that a sufficient number of Republicans will do the right thing. Another shaming moment looms for a party that has abased itself at Mr Trump’s feet in the pursuit of power and lost its soul in the process.But even if legal process were to deliver Mr Trump his just deserts, the crisis of America’s growing polarisation – of which the president is a symptom as well as a cause – would remain. Tribalism has become a disabling virus in the US body politic, cracking the public square in two. Social media, belatedly under new scrutiny, is used by citizens to sustain alternate, conflicting realities: three in four Republican voters continue to believe that there was widespread voter fraud in November, despite the rulings of close to 100 judges to the contrary. As faith in the neutrality of public institutions declines, studies have shown a disturbing rise in the number of Americans – on both left and right – who believe that political violence is sometimes justified.Against this dismal backdrop, the theme of Mr Biden’s inauguration speech will be “America united”. It seems likely that it will be delivered in the shadow of impeachment proceedings against his predecessor, and a mass military presence. This is a script that should belong to a bingeworthy drama on Netflix during lockdown. Instead, it is America’s dystopian reality. The new president’s healing message will be the right one. Making it heard will be the defining challenge of his long political career. More

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      in Elections

      I've been on Parler. It's a cesspit of thinly veiled racism and hate | Malaika Jabali

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      “Civil war is coming.”I saw this message on the social media platform Parler in November, about two weeks after the election was called for Joe Biden. The ominous post followed an even more harrowing message from a different user. “[O]ur people have guns too … it’s time for us to use it!!! Just like in old days.” The poster embedded a photograph of a noose.Parler, which has since been banned by Apple’s app store and from Amazon, has billed itself as a “free speech” platform for the “world’s town square”. Last fall, without much digging, I learned that this town square is one where an increasingly violent far right digitally dances with mainstream, influential conservatives.The fact that Parler has a vague air of legitimacy – unlike other platforms known for their explicitly far-right user bases – normalizes racist violence against Black people and anyone associated with them. Like the white police officers and “respectable” public servants who joined the Ku Klux Klan after the US civil war, or the white families who partied under the lynched bodies of Black men, white America has continued its intergenerational love affair with public anti-blackness. The methods have simply mutated. Memes calling for our deaths are the lynching postcards of the 21st century. Shared among the masses, they make casual affairs of Black terror. It’s not enough for the sharers of these memes to simply believe in white violence on a personal level; the collective experience is the point.I joined Parler in November, before various tech companies announced plans to take it offline. It didn’t take long to find a bevy of hashtags and posts romanticizing civil war. By late November, there were over 10,000 posts that included the hashtag #civilwar and its variants. The person who posted “Civil war is coming” was replying to a post by Wayne Root, a conservative media personality with more than 100,000 followers on Twitter. Root leveled the same unproven accusations of voter fraud as Donald Trump, using the same calls for battle that white power groups heeded in their storming of the US Capitol the first week of 2021.While some on the far right will probably retreat into the shadows cast by polling booths and hidden by exit polling data that obscures Trump’s popularity, many have not. Any perception of progress for Black people, even if this progress does not substantively exist, perpetuates violence against us and our perceived allies like leftists, Marxists and Democrats – all named by Parler posters as opposing parties in this hypothetical civil war).To say that Parler’s users, or any Americans who revel in white power tropes and violent memes, are “extremist” is a bit of a misnomer. What we call extremism is, if anything, a common American tradition. Millions of Americans, if they don’t proactively endorse the violence, silently concede to it. They vote for it. They dress it in words like “tradition” and “free speech”.I was raised witnessing it. There is a monument honoring Confederate soldiers in my home town of Stone Mountain, Georgia. The monument isn’t an ordinary statue erected in some mundane public square. It’s a nearly half-acre relief carved into the massive quartz and granite stone for which our town is named. It would take a runner five miles to circle around the rock formation’s base. We took field trips to Stone Mountain in high school, as if it were an amusement park and not the largest Confederate memorial in the world.Stone Mountain has now become a flashpoint for conflict. I hiked the mountain on a recent holiday trip with my mom, days before white men wielding guns protested against the widespread movement to remove Confederate statues. We tried to hike another day, but were blocked from entering. It was closed for the day after Black counter-protesters came back with guns of their own.When you talk to white southerners about honoring the Confederacy, you’ll hear a lot about heritage. I’ve heard it all my life. I heard it when our state flag featured the Confederate symbol throughout my childhood and in the debates to remove it. I read about it when I decided to make it one of my debate topics for a summer college class in my last year of high school. But what you’ll seldom hear is when this heritage has been selectively commemorated. Stone Mountain’s Confederate monument opened on the 100th anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination.This is an American tradition of terror – a culture of dehumanizing Blackness that bleeds out into the worldThis, too, is the culture of Parler.“Time to get rid of the yoke calling itself democrats,” someone wrote in response to Wayne Root’s revolution post.“Every town needs to decide on a gather place where an armed citizenry takes over everything … every traitor must be executed,” wrote another.It’s not enough to dismiss the radical right as merely having a difference of opinion, or explain it away as a population of marginalized, working-class white men who can be brought back from the brink by reason and calls for a universal basic income.Universal prescriptions are necessary, but insufficient. This is an American tradition of terror – a culture of dehumanizing Blackness that bleeds out into the world. It is the shots I heard while reporting in Kenosha, blocks from where Kyle Rittenhouse killed two white Black Lives Matter protesters, as it happened. It was the ease of white vigilantes carrying weapons in another public square, Civic Center Park in downtown Kenosha, hours earlier. It is the audacity of those white vigilantes shouting down Philando Castile’s girlfriend, from whom I was mere feet away in the park, as they argued for their right to kill to protect property. Of course, Philando was killed while exercising their revered second amendment right to bear arms, but that right is clearly reserved for some Americans more than others.Parler may be homeless now, but there is an entire world that welcomes the hatred and violence it cultivates. As threatening as it may be, the platform will probably be replaced with something else. It’s the public terror that’s the point. More

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      Neil Young calls for empathy for Capitol attackers: 'We are not enemies'

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      Neil Young has called for empathy towards those who stormed the US Capitol building in Washington DC, arguing they had been “manipulated” into doing so.In a message posted to his website, Young writes:
      I feel empathy for the people who have been so manipulated and had their beliefs used as political weapons. I may be among them. I wish internet news was two-sided. Both sides represented on the same programs. Social media, at the hands of powerful people – influencers, amplifying lies and untruths, is crippling our belief system, turning us against one another. We are not enemies. We must find a way home.
      The veteran rock star has long been critical of Donald Trump, and until recently was suing for using his songs during political rallies. In his new message, he again criticised the outgoing president, saying he “has betrayed the people, exaggerated and amplified the truth to foment hatred”, but said his feelings are now “beyond” Trump.“Resentment of the Democratic party among the insurrectionists at the Capitol was rampant. We don’t need this hate,” he wrote. “We need discussion and solutions. Respect for one another’s beliefs. Not hatred … With social media, issues are turned to psychological weapons and used to gather hatred in support of one side or the other. This is what Donald J Trump has as his legacy.”He also criticised the “double standard” that saw heavy crackdowns against Black Lives Matter protesters in Washington in 2020, and relatively light policing of last week’s Capitol breach.During the 2020 presidential campaign, Young initially backed Bernie Sanders, but also voiced support for Joe Biden after he won the Democratic nomination, saying Biden would bring “compassion and empathy” back to the White House.Last week, Young sold a 50% stake in his entire songwriting catalogue to the publishing company Hipgnosis for an undisclosed fee thought to be around $150m. More

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      Capitol riot prompts top US firms to pull funding for leading Republicans

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      [embedded content]
      Republicans who voted to block Joe Biden’s confirmation as president have been deserted by some of the biggest corporations in the US, as some leading rightwing politicians begin to face potential consequences for the Capitol riot on Wednesday.
      A slew of companies, including Citigroup, one of the biggest banks in the US, and the Marriott hotel chain, said they would halt donations to Republicans who voted against certifying the results of the presidential election.
      The desertion comes after riots at the Capitol on Wednesday. Despite mobs storming the building, egged on by Donald Trump’s spurious claims of voter fraud, 147 Republicans voted to reject Joe Biden’s electoral victory later that same day. Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley were among those to dissent, along with scores of House representatives.
      “At the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, we continuously evaluate our political contributions to ensure that those we support share our values and goals,” said Kim Keck, president and CEO of BlueCross BlueShield, a sprawling healthcare company.
      “In light of this week’s violent, shocking assault on the United States Capitol, and the votes of some members of Congress to subvert the results of November’s election by challenging Electoral College results, BCBSA will suspend contributions to those lawmakers who voted to undermine our democracy.”
      The companies’ donations amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and could have a lasting impact on future elections. The political committee arm of Blue Cross Blue Shield, Bluepac, alone donated $246,750 to Republican officials during the 2020 elections, according to Opensecrets.org.
      In a memo to staff, Citigroup said it had donated $1,000 to Hawley’s campaign – citing a “significant employee presence” in the senator’s state of Missouri, the Wall Street Journal reported. Hawley, with Cruz, has become one of the highest-profile objectors to the certification of Biden’s win, and has perpetuated hoaxes about voter fraud. There are growing calls for both men to resign.
      ‘We want you to be assured that we will not support candidates who do not respect the rule of law,’ wrote Candi Wolff, head of Citi’s global government affairs.
      ‘We intend to pause our contributions during the quarter as the country goes through the presidential transition and hopefully emerges from these events stronger and more united.’
      The Marriott hotel chain said it would also suspend donations from its political action campaign to lawmakers who opposed the presidential election results. Marriott gave $1,000 to Hawley’s election campaign and $1,000 to his leadership committee, Mother Jones reported.
      “We have taken the destructive events at the Capitol to undermine a legitimate and fair election into consideration and will be pausing political giving from our Political Action Committee to those who voted against certification of the election,” the company said in a statement.
      Boston Scientific, a medical device company, and the parent company of Commerce Bank also said they would not donate to the Republicans who attempted to overturn the election result. “At this time, we have suspended all support for officials who have impeded the peaceful transfer of power,” a spokesperson for Commerce Bancshares told the Popular Information newsletter.
      CVS, Exxon Mobil, FedEx and Target all said they were reviewing future political donations, according to multiple reports, as were Bank of America, Ford and AT&T.
      In a further blow to Donald Trump and the Republican party, the digital payment company Stripe said it would stop processing payments for Trump’s campaign website, company sources told the Wall Street Journal.
      Trump has raised more than $200m since the election, as his team has appealed for donations based on Trump’s false claims of election fraud. More