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      Cheney hits back as Pence says January 6 committee has ‘no right’ to testimony

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      Cheney hits back as Pence says January 6 committee has ‘no right’ to testimonyPanel vice-chair issues statement with chair Bennie Thompson after Trump vice-president gives interview to CBS The chair and vice-chair of the January 6 committee hit back after Mike Pence said they had “no right” to his testimony about the Capitol attack, and claimed they presided over a “partisan” investigation.Trump bills himself as only option but Republicans split on 2024 runRead moreTestimony presented to the panel and to the nation in a series of dramatic public hearings was “not partisan”, Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney said. “It was truthful.”Pence was speaking to CBS, to promote a new book in which he sets out his version of events on the day supporters of his president, Donald Trump, attacked Congress, some chanting that Pence should be hanged.Pence previously said he would consider testifying. But to CBS, he said: “Congress has no right to my testimony on separation of powers under the constitution of the United States.“And I believe it will establish a terrible precedent for the Congress to summon a vice-president of the United States to speak about deliberations that took place at the White House.”Trump supporters attacked Congress after he told them to “fight like hell” to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election win, in service of the lie that it was the result of electoral fraud. Nine deaths have been linked to the riot, including suicides among law enforcement.Trump was impeached a second time but acquitted when Senate Republicans stayed loyal. On Tuesday, he announced a third consecutive presidential run.Pence is also eyeing a run for the Republican nomination. In doing so he must balance promoting his record as vice-president to Trump, thereby appealing to Trump’s supporters, with distancing himself from a former president whose standing is slipping after Republican disappointment in the midterm elections.Pence said he was “closing the door” on the prospect of testifying.“But I must say again, the partisan nature of the January 6 committee has been a disappointment to me. It seemed to me in the beginning, there was an opportunity to examine every aspect of what happened on January 6, and to do so more in the spirit of the 9/11 Commission, non-partisan, non-political, and that was an opportunity lost.”The January 6 committee was appointed by the Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, after the Republican leader in the House, Kevin McCarthy, tried to appoint Trump allies to a 9/11-style panel. Pelosi rejected those appointments, leading McCarthy to withdraw from the process.The January 6 committee consists of seven Democrats and two Republicans, Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, anti-Trump figures who will soon leave Congress.Who’s next? Republicans who might go up against Trump in 2024Read moreThe panel is wrapping up its work, after it was confirmed on Wednesday that Republicans will take control of the House.In their statement, Thompson and Cheney said: “The select committee has proceeded respectfully and responsibly in our engagement with Vice-President Pence, so it is disappointing that he is misrepresenting the nature of our investigation while giving interviews to promote his new book.“Our investigation has publicly presented the testimony of more than 50 Republican witnesses, including senior members of the TrumpWhite House, the Trump campaign, and the Trump justice department.“This testimony, subject to criminal penalties for lying to Congress, was not ‘partisan’. It was truthful.”TopicsMike PenceJanuary 6 hearingsLiz CheneyUS politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump is now effectively in control of the US House of Representatives | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Trump is now effectively in control of the US House of RepresentativesSidney BlumenthalKevin McCarthy will be a mere stooge – that is, until he’s replaced by someone even more Trumpist Even before the midterm elections – when the vaunted “red wave” dried up – influential Republicans, over drinks in Washington, casually discussed the fate of Kevin McCarthy as a short-timer.The man who would be the speaker of the House had already been taking a victory lap before a single vote was counted. “I’m better prepared now,” he recently told New York magazine. “If I’m not going to be acceptable to the body having that scenario this time, no one’s acceptable,” he boasted to Punchbowl News. The failed frozen yogurt shop owner from Bakersfield, California, envisions himself at last standing as the hero of his Horatio Alger success story atop the greasy pole. McCarthy now trumpets that he has won the confidence of the far-right Freedom Caucus that previously opposed his elevation. He clutches its leader, his twitchy former foe Jim Jordan, as a great friend. “Probably my biggest advocate is Jim Jordan,” he has said.McCarthy’s bravado discloses a hint of insecurity. The talk of the steakhouses is that he will not last long.Donald Trump’s ragtag minions of horned madmen and militias could not seize the Capitol on January 6. But when the 118th Congress is sworn in on 3 January, Trump’s coup will have broken through more than a police barrier to enter a new phase. That’s because Trump will, for all intents and purposes, become the de facto speaker of the House. If and when Nancy Pelosi ever so gently passes the gavel to Kevin McCarthy, “it would be hard not to hit her with it,” McCarthy said to the raucous laughter of a Republican crowd in 2021. The ultimate power will be held in the hands of Trump. From his gilded tropical palace, he will phone dictates to Jim Jordan and other acolytes who will transform the House of Representatives into his 2024 presidential campaign committee, virtual law firm and bludgeon for revenge. The House will be his hammer.Who’s next? Republicans who might go up against Trump in 2024Read moreTrump still looms over the party, contemptuous of the bitter Republican finger-pointing blaming him for the midterm disappointment. Rupert Murdoch’s overnight order to Fox News to hype Florida Governor Ron DeSantis cannot suddenly cancel the Trump show Murdoch has been instrumental in producing, though for years he reportedly privately called him “a fucking idiot”. Trump is hardly dislodged.In the 117th Congress, 147 Republicans out of 213 refused to certify the results of the electoral college. The margin of the slim new Republican majority will uniformly be election deniers, who will pad the Freedom Caucus before which McCarthy cowers. When the “red wave” was revealed to be a mirage, while the votes were still being tallied and the House Republican majority still uncertain, representative Matt Gaetz of Florida labeled McCarthy “McFailure”, pledged his eternal fealty to Trump and called for a challenge to McCarthy as speaker. Jason Miller, a former Trump official and his echo, went on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast to declare that if McCarthy “wants a chance of being speaker, he needs to be much more declarative of supporting President Trump”. Bannon, free on appeal from his conviction for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the January 6 committee, replied that “the Maga-centric nature” of the House and the Republican party would intensify.When Trump’s mob ran through the corridors of the Capitol chanting “hang Mike Pence!” and “Nancy! Nancy!” and were yards away from breaking into McCarthy’s office, he desperately reached Trump at the White House to ask him to call it off. “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” Trump said, according to the journalist Robert Draper. “Am I upset? They’re trying to fucking kill me!” McCarthy shrieked. “Who the fuck do you think you are talking to?”In the days after the trauma, McCarthy raised the idea that cabinet members invoke the 25th amendment to remove Trump – then defended Trump from impeachment, which did not preclude Trump calling him a “pussy”, and on 27 January flew to Mar-a-Lago to bend his knee in supplication.McCarthy, even as he tries to balance along a fine line, chronically abases himself. Occasionally, he tries to cover his naked ambition with a transparent fig leaf. In May 2020, when Trump falsely claimed that Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman and an MSNBC TV host critical of Trump, had murdered a young female aide in 2001, despite being 800 miles away when she fell and fatally hit her head, McCarthy responded with a statement he must have thought displayed his political cuteness.“I was not here with Joe Scarborough,” he said. “I don’t quite know about the subject itself.”But abasement in the service of self-interest is not loyalty. Trump, who recalls every slight as lese-majesty, has taken McCarthy’s small measure as “my Kevin”. He knows that McCarthy thinks, as McCarthy blurted to the House Republican conference in 2017, that Putin “pays” Trump – “swear to God”. He will never be judged sufficiently loyal, nor trusted to do absolutely everything he’s ordered to do, especially when those orders are to lay siege to the justice department in a bid to interfere with its investigations of Trump.Kevin McCarthy’s McCarthyism, like the previous McCarthyism, is rooted in personal ambition, but in Kevin McCarthy’s case it is more motivated by a desire to to go along than by the feral instinct displayed by Joe McCarthy, with Roy Cohn whispering in his ear before he got into Trump’s.Kevin McCarthy has always known the score: that Republican mendacity, from little white lies to big lie, is born of sheer cynicism. From time to time, he inadvertently spills the beans. His impulse to babble the truth was uncontrollable in 2015, when he blabbed about the House investigation on Benghazi, revealing its political intent: “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.”McCarthy surely knows that the cruel Republican culture war is hypocrisy. When it comes to Trump’s handpicked senate candidate from Georgia, Herschel Walker – who is facing a runoff election with senator Raphael Warnock, and who allegedly paid for girlfriends’ abortions, allegedly abandoned both his legal and illegitimate children, and allegedly engaged in violence against his ex-wife – McCarthy has maintained radio silence.His passivity in the face of vice is the price he willingly pays to sustain the virtuous sheen of the culture war. While he advances himself through each cowardly act, his performance does not inspire confidence from his own cohort, who see through the cellophane man. He must dance faster and faster just to stand still.McCarthy will obediently issue blanket approval for House committees to launch a thousand inquisitions. Democratic groups engaged in voter turnout efforts will be investigated. Democratic attorneys who defend voting rights will be targeted. Progressive nonprofits involved with elections and criminal justice will have their nonprofit status challenged. Secretaries of state who have frustrated Trump election deniers will be pressured. Biden administration officials, from national security to homeland security, will be subpoenaed to scandalize their policies. Military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, already assailed by the Republican pro-Putin caucus, will be squeezed. No “blank check”, McCarthy has said.Corporations and banks that invest in green energy, or adopt diversity and equity policies, will be pressured. Tech platforms will be hauled before the klieg lights for depositions on alleged political discrimination against conservatives, to intimidate them into following the example of Elon Musk, who attended McCarthy’s private political retreat in Wyoming this past August. (“Elon believes in freedom. Elon is an entrepreneur. Such an American success story,” McCarthy said.)The subpoenas will fly. And, quite predictably, the House will manufacture a conflict over the federal budget to shut down the government in an attempt to enforce its draconian policies, as Republicans have done before as a tactic against Bill Clinton in 1995 to 1996 and against Barack Obama in 2013.Then the House may impeach President Biden – and possibly Vice-President Kamala Harris, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, among others. The writer Barton Gellman recently laid out the coming strategy in the Atlantic. “McCarthy wants to oversee subpoenas and Benghazi-style hearings to weaken the president ahead of the 2024 election, not issue a call for Biden’s removal,” Gellman writes. “But there is little reason to think that McCarthy can resist the GOP’s impulse to impeach once it gathers strength.”Gellman further quotes Ted Cruz, from the senator’s recent podcast, pressing for Biden’s impeachment, “whether it’s justified or not”, as payback for Trump’s two impeachments. Like many Republicans, Cruz uses the word “weaponize” in the same way that Republicans have adopted the word “grooming” to accuse public school teachers of trying to turn children transgender. “The Democrats weaponized impeachment,” said Cruz. “They used it for partisan purposes to go after Trump because they disagreed with him. And one of the real disadvantages of doing that … is the more you weaponize it and turn it into a partisan cudgel, you know, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”After the January 6 committee is disbanded, the House judiciary committee will paint a bull’s eye on the Department of Justice (DoJ). The committee will act as Trump’s team for the defense. As the investigations circling Trump close in, from the fake electors’ scheme to the Mar-a-Lago archives theft, Trump and his allies will intensify their charges that the justice department is “weaponizing” the law. Jim Jordan will claim that the DoJ is unfairly persecuting Trump while failing to investigate properly the “Biden crime family”, only beginning with Hunter Biden.The House Republicans will demand the internal documents and sources in every case the DoJ is pursuing about Trump. When the justice department refuses to hand over materials from ongoing investigations, subpoenas will be issued for them, and when the DoJ invariably declines – because to comply would violate the law and all of its protocols – contempt charges will be filed against attorney general Merrick Garland, his deputy, Lisa Monaco, and individual prosecutors. The dismissal of those contempt filings will have no bearing on the House proceeding to the impeachment of Garland, Monaco, et al.The point for the Republicans will not necessarily be to remove Garland, which would be highly unlikely, but instead to discredit any justice department case against Trump as politically motivated, to portray Trump as the victim, and to rouse the Republican base. Most importantly, the judiciary committee interference would attempt to severely cripple the investigations.If this sounds like conjecture, consider that Jim Jordan wrote to Merrick Garland and the FBI director, Christopher Wray, on 2 November – a week before the election and under the letterhead of the judiciary committee, as if he were already the chairman – demanding information and sources in current cases involving Trump, extremist militias and far-right figures.Trump is running for president again – but these legal battles might stand in the wayRead moreIn his lengthy list of requests, he asked for “all documents and communications between or among employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice, and the executive office of the president referring or relating to classifying or reclassifying domestic violent extremism cases, for the period of January 1 2020, to the present”; “all documents and communications referring or relating to the decision to seek a search warrant for President Trump’s residence”; and “all documents and communications referring or relating to the use of confidential human source(s) in connection with the search of President Trump’s residence”. Jordan followed up by releasing a dense 1,050-page compendium of conspiracy theories – 1,050 rabbit holes he promises to go down.If McCarthy exhibits the slightest queasiness, commits another of his trademark gaffes that reveal too much of the truth, or is simply not militant enough for Trump, his speakership will become unstable. The jackals already surround him, and there is a ready alternative waiting in the wings to replace him. Elise Stefanik, adored by Trump, seamlessly transmogrified from moderate to Maga, emerging as Trump’s defender during his first impeachment. “A new Republican star is born,” Trump tweeted. The 38-year-old congresswoman’s ambition is a raging fever.Once a classic Bush Republican – an assistant to George W Bush’s eminently reasonable chief of staff Josh Bolten, no less – Stefanik has since become Trump’s full-throated champion. She whipped up the purge of Liz Cheney as chair of the House Republican conference for Cheney’s heresy and engineered herself into the job, profusely praising Trump as “the leader”. This year, she introduced a resolution to expunge his second impeachment over the insurrection as “a sham smear”. Since the midterm elections, she has thrice endorsed Trump for president in 2024. The leaning tumbril awaits McCarthy too.Trump declared his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination the third time, after two impeachments and a coup attempt, one week after the Republican midterm debacle, in which many of the loyalists bearing his imprimatur fell before the voters. Nor has he been deterred by the prospect of a contest with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who, to claim the prize, would have to murder the king and be tainted with his blood.It was a grand illusion that Trump would somehow fade away, Biden restore the spirit of civility of the old Senate, and Garland prosecute the January 6 rioters to be done with the mess, shelving the whole episode as a thing of the past, with decency and the rule of law prevailing again.The Republican fear campaign in the midterm elections, projecting the menaces of inflation, crime and trans rights, will dissolve the instant the contest is over. On January 6, Trump waved his mob forward: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.” Trump’s coup, which has never ended, will now continue with the House of Representatives as his chief political tool.TS Eliot, in The Hollow Men, wrote:.css-f9ay0g{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C74600;}Between the ideaAnd the realityBetween the motionAnd the actFalls the ShadowOn 13 September, Trump retweeted a kitsch portrait of himself wearing a “Q” on his lapel, the symbol of the QAnon conspiracy cult that venerates him; its slogan, “The Storm Is Coming”; and the cryptic letters, “WWG1WGA”, which mean “Where We Go One, We Go All”. As Trump tweeted on 23 December 2020 to promote the January 6 insurrection: “Will be wild”.
      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth
      TopicsDonald TrumpOpinionUS midterm elections 2022US politicsUS CongressRepublicansDemocratscommentReuse this content More

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      Q&A: what does a split Congress mean for US politics?

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      ExplainerQ&A: what does a split Congress mean for US politics?With Republicans in control of the House and Democrats holding the Senate, expect a legislative logjam Republicans officially captured control of the House on Wednesday, as the Associated Press called the 218th seat for the party. The House victory ends four years of Democratic control of the lower chamber, handing Republicans the speakership and the chairmanships of key committees, while Democrats will maintain control of the Senate.But the incoming Republican speaker has the unenviable task of attempting to pass legislation with a very narrow majority, where only a few defections within the party will be enough to kill a bill.Republicans had hoped that a “red wave” in the midterm elections would allow them to flip dozens of House seats, giving them a much more comfortable majority. Instead, Republicans were barely about to flip the House, and Democrats may even be able to increase their Senate majority depending on the results of the Georgia runoff next month.With the House and the Senate now both called, Washington is bracing for at least two years of split control of Congress. Here’s what we can expect. :Will Congress be able to pass any bills?It will be extremely difficult for Democrats to advance their legislative agenda. Republicans can use their majority power to block any bills passed by the Democratic Senate from even getting a vote on the House floor.Since Joe Biden took office, some notable bills have passed the House with bipartisan support, including the infrastructure law that the president signed late last year. But the new Republican speaker will probably be hesitant to hand Biden and his party any more policy wins before the 2024 presidential race, which could result in a legislative logjam.How will Republicans use their House majority?Given their very narrow majority, House Republicans may have trouble advancing major legislation through the chamber. Even if they are able to pass something, the bill would almost certainly fail in the Democratic Senate, so it seems likely House Republicans will focus most of their attention on investigations and executive oversight.Even before polls closed last Tuesday, House Republicans had outlined plans to launch a series of investigations into the Biden administration and members of the president’s family. Republican members have expressed keen interest in investigating the administration’s handling of the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden’s oversight of the US-Mexican border and his son Hunter’s overseas business dealings.Some of the far-right members of the House Republican caucus have also threatened to use their new majority to hold up must-pass bills, including a debt ceiling hike. If the debt ceiling – essentially, the maximum amount the US government can borrow – is not raised, it could jeopardize the entire US economy. Some House Republicans have signaled they want to withhold support for a debt ceiling increase until they secure concessions on government spending and entitlement programs.The new House Republican majority could also threaten proposals to send more military aid to Ukraine amidst its war against Russia. The far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has said that “not another penny will go to Ukraine” once Republicans take control, alarming Ukraine’s allies on Capitol Hill and abroad. With such a narrow majority, it only takes a few votes to block bills.Who will replace Nancy Pelosi as House speaker?That is a question that many House Republicans are asking themselves right now as well. The obvious frontrunner for the role – which oversees, manages and directs the majority party in the House – is Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who has served as House minority leader since 2019.But McCarthy has faced some dissent from within his own caucus, and it remains unclear whether he can get the 218 votes needed to become speaker. On Tuesday, the House Republican caucus easily nominated McCarthy as their speaker candidate, but 31 members cast ballots for the far-right Arizona lawmaker Andy Biggs. That tally could spell disaster for McCarthy when the full floor vote is held in January.“My position remains the same until further notice – no one has 218 (or close, as needed),” Chip Roy, a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus who nominated Biggs, told the Texas Tribune on Tuesday. “We have to sit down and establish the fundamental changes needed.”How will Biden work with the new Republican speaker?Before becoming president, Biden built a reputation in the Senate for his ability to reach across the aisle and strike compromise with his Republican colleagues. During the 2020 Democratic primary, Biden boasted about how he was even able to work with hardline segregationists such as James Eastland and Strom Thurmond. Those comments, meant to demonstrate Biden’s collaborative nature, outraged many Democratic primary voters.But in recent months, Biden has become increasingly vocal in his criticism of the modern Republican party, which he says is beholden to Donald Trump and hostile to democratic principles. “Donald Trump and the Maga Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Biden said in September.McCarthy has responded to Biden’s criticism by accusing the president of having “chosen to divide, demean, and disparage his fellow Americans … simply because they disagree with his policies”.So if McCarthy does manage to capture the speakership, he and Biden will not be starting off their new relationship on the best footing. When a reporter asked Biden last week about his relationship with McCarthy, the president deflected.“I think he’s the Republican leader, and I haven’t had much of [an] occasion to talk to him,” Biden replied. “But I will be talking to him.”What can Democrats get done without control of the House?Democrats’ continued control of the Senate ensures that they will still be able to approve Biden’s cabinet and judicial nominations. Their Senate majority will allow Democrats to install more liberal judges in key posts, and it could give them the ability to fill another supreme court seat if one opens up in the next two years.But overall, Democrats’ best opportunity to enact change between now and 2024 may come down to the power of the executive. Biden has already signed more than 100 executive orders since becoming president, according to the Presidency Project at University of California Santa Barbara.Biden has used executive orders to overturn some of Trump’s most controversial policies, such as halting funding for construction of a wall at the US-Mexican border, and to advance progressive proposals that would otherwise stall in Congress. Biden’s order to provide student debt relief of up to $20,000 for millions of borrowers was celebrated by the president’s progressive allies, although the policy is now facing legal challenges.With Republicans now in control of the House, Biden could soon be reaching for his executive pen more frequently.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US CongressRepublicansDemocratsUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesUS SenateexplainersReuse this content More

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      Donald Trump announces 2024 run for president nearly two years after inspiring deadly Capitol riot

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      Donald Trump announces 2024 run for president nearly two years after inspiring deadly Capitol riotTwice-impeached ex-president makes expected election announcement despite shaky midterms and surge from rival Ron DeSantis00:52Donald Trump on Tuesday night announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, likely sparking another period of tumult in US politics and especially his own political party.“In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” Trump said from ballroom of his private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, where he stood on a stage crowded with American flags and Make America Great Again banners.Vowing to defeat Joe Biden in 2024, he declared: “America’s golden age is just ahead.”The long-expected announcement by a twice-impeached president who incited a deadly attack on Congress seems guaranteed to deepen a stark partisan divide that has fueled fears of increased political violence.Who’s next? Republicans who might go up against Trump in 2024Read moreBut it also comes as Trump’s standing in the Republican party has suddenly been put into question. Trump spoke at Mar-a-Lago a week after midterm elections in which his Republican party did not make expected gains, losing the Senate and seeming on course for only a narrow majority in the US House.In his remarks, Trump took credit for Republicans’ performance victory in the House, even though they are poised to capture a far narrower majority than anticipated. “Nancy Pelosi has been fired. Isn’t that nice?” he said. The Associated Press has not yet projected which party will win the majority.In a party hitherto dominated by Trump, defeats suffered by high-profile, Trump-endorsed candidates led to open attacks on the former president and calls to delay his announcement or not to run at all. As Trump’s standing has slipped, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has surged into strong contention after sailing to reelection last week.Trump’s announcement also coincided on Tuesday with the release of Mike Pence’s memoir, So Help Me God, in which the ex-president’s once-faithful lieutenant criticizes him for his conduct on January 6. The former vice-president is also maneuvering toward a possible 2024 run despite falling out of favor with the Maga base.Brushing past Republican setbacks in 2022 and his defeat in 2020, Trump insisted that he was the only candidate who could deliver a Republican victory in 2024.“This is not a task for a politician or a conventional candidate,” he said. “This is a task for a great movement.”His third candidacy comes as he faces intensifying legal troubles, including investigations by the justice department into the removal of hundreds of classified documents from the White House to his Florida estate and into his role in the 6 January attack. Trump has denied wrongdoing and used the attacks to further his narrative that he has been unfairly targeted by his political opponents and a shadowy “deep state” bureaucracy.“I’m a victim,” Trump said, making reference to the Russia investigation and the raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate. On Tuesday, Trump nevertheless pressed forward with his run.Painting a bleak portrait of the United States, with “blood-soaked” city streets and an “invasion” at the southern border, Trump said his campaign was a “quest to save our country.”In the less than two years since Biden took office, a period Trump referred to as “the pause”, he accused his successor of inflicting “pain, hardship, anxiety and despair” with his economic and domestic policies.Trump offered an alternative vision, which he called the “national greatness agenda”. Among the policy proposals he endorsed on Tuesday were the death penalty for drug dealers, term limits for members of Congress and planting an American flag on Mars. And wading into the social fights he enjoys inflaming, Trump promised to protect “paternal rights” and keep transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.Though he made no explicit mention of his stolen-election lies, he promised to overhaul the nation’s voting laws, vowing that a winner would be declared on election night. In close contests, it can take several days before enough votes are tabulated in a state to project a winner, but Trump and his allies have seized on the delay to spread baseless conspiracy theories about results.Despite promising to deliver remarks as “elegant” as the gold-plated room he was standing in, Trump’s rambling, hourlong speech turned to name-calling and ridicule, lashing the “fake news”, mocking the former German chancellor Angela Merkel’s accent and accusing Biden of “falling asleep” at international conferences. At one point, he appeared to confuse the civil war with the reconstruction period that followed and scoffed at climate science.Without acknowledging his 2020 defeat, Trump insisted that beating Biden in 2024 would be much easier because “everybody sees what a bad job has been done.”He called Biden the “face of left-wing failure and government corruption” and accused him of worsening inflation and “surrendering” America’s energy independence. He also slammed the administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan as “the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country”.“Our country is being destroyed before your very eyes,” he said, casting his four years in office as a glowing success, despite leaving behind a nation shaken by disease and political turmoil.Now 76, Trump was long seen as a colorful if controversial presence in American life, a thrice-married New York real-estate mogul, reality TV star and tabloid fixture who flirted with politics but never committed.But in 2015, after finding a niche as a prominent voice for rightwing opposition to Barack Obama – and a racist conspiracy theory about Obama’s birth – Trump entered the race for the Republican nomination to succeed the 44th president.Proving immune to scandal, whether over personal conduct, allegations of sexual assault or persistent courting of the far right, he obliterated a huge Republican field then pulled off a historic shock by beating the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 election.Trump’s presidency was chaotic but undoubtedly historic. Senate Republicans playing political and constitutional hardball helped install three supreme court justices, cementing a dominant rightwing majority which has now removed the right to abortion and weakened gun control laws while eyeing further significant change.Trump is running for president again – but these legal battles might stand in the wayRead moreTrump’s third supreme court pick, replacing the liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Amy Coney Barrett, a hardline Catholic, came shortly before the 2020 election. That contest, with Obama’s vice-president, Joe Biden, was fought under the shadow of protests for racial justice and the coronavirus pandemic, the latter a test badly mishandled by Trump’s administration as hundreds of thousands died.Trump was conclusively beaten, Biden racking up more than 7m more votes and the same electoral college win, 306-232, that Trump enjoyed over Clinton, a victory Trump then called a landslide.But Trump’s refusal to accept defeat, based on his “big lie” about electoral fraud, fueled election subversion efforts in key states, the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol by supporters and far-right groups, a second impeachment for inciting that insurrection (and a second acquittal, if with more Republican defections) and a deepening crisis of US democracy.01:41With a third White House bid, Trump hopes to defy political history. Only one former president, Grover Cleveland, has served two nonconsecutive terms. Cleveland was elected in 1884 and 1892, but, unlike Trump, he won the popular vote in the intervening election of 1888.Trump flirted with announcing a new run throughout Biden’s first two years in power, ultimately delaying until after midterm elections, which did not go as he or his party expected. But while high-profile backers of Trump’s stolen election myth were defeated, among them his choice for Arizona governor, Kari Lake, more than 170 were elected, according to the Washington Post.Until his midterms reversal, Trump dominated polling of potential Republican nominees for 2024. His closest rival in such surveys, DeSantis, reportedly indicated to donors he would not compete with Trump. But the landscape has now changed. DeSantis won re-election by a landslide, gave a confident victory speech to chants of “two more years” and has surged in polling – prompting attacks from Trump. At least one Republican mega donor, Ken Griffin, has said he backs the Florida governor.Should Trump dismiss DeSantis as he has so many other challengers and win the nomination, the 22nd amendment to the US constitution would bar him from running again in 2028. But a rematch of 2020 remains possible. Though Biden will soon turn 80 and has faced questions about whether he should seek a second term himself, he is preparing a re-election campaign.TopicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2024US politicsRepublicansRon DeSantisJoe BidenUS midterm elections 2022newsReuse this content More

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      Are US politics starting to turn towards a more hopeful future? | Gary Gerstle

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      Are US politics starting to turn towards a more hopeful future?Gary GerstleWe might one day look back on this midterm – and on Biden’s first two years – and discern in them a new beginning Last week was amazing for Joe Biden. The Red Wave fizzled. The Democrats kept the Senate. Even if the House slips from the Democrats’ grasp, as it is expected to, Biden will be credited with engineering the strongest midterm showing by an incumbent president’s party since 2002, and the most impressive such performance by a sitting Democratic president since JFK in 1962. Women’s anger at the supreme court’s Dobbs decision hammered the Republicans in key states. Many of Trump’s highest-flying, election-denying candidates fell to earth, damaging the ex-president’s aura of invincibility. Fights and recriminations have now broken out everywhere in Republican ranks.And there’s more from last week to bring a smile to Biden’s face: inflation moderated, the Dow rocketed skyward, and Ukrainians pushed the Russians out of Kherson, a big win not just for Ukraine but for Biden’s European foreign policy. And, oh yes, in America, young people – the country’s future – came out in relatively large numbers and, in critical contests, broke for the Democrats in a big way.And yet, what did this past week of exceptional political success yield for Biden and Democrats? Their majority in the Senate is still razor-thin. If they lose the House, their already narrow path to passing legislation will shrink further. House Republicans are likely to use a new House majority to flood media with an investigation of Hunter Biden and other vulnerable Democratic party figures – payback for the January 6 hearings. Even the most impressively conceived legislative proposals coming from the White House may be greeted with House Republican intransigence.Nevertheless, looking ahead to 2024, there are grounds for optimism, not just that Democrats can win but that they can begin to build bigger and more enduring majorities. Most importantly, three major legislative achievements of the Biden administration to date are likely to have a greater impact on the 2024 election than they did in 2022. The most important of these is the curiously titled Inflation Reduction Act. That bill has not gotten the credit it deserves, in part because of its silly name and in part because it is much smaller than the $5tn Build Back Bill from which it is descended.Watching that original bill get whittled down and carved up across 2021 and 2022 was not a pretty sight. Yet the final version of the legislation contains truly important initiatives in multiple spheres, nowhere more so than the nearly $400bn appropriated for investments in green technology and for tax breaks and subsidies to businesses and homeowners to convert to clean energy. The bill constitutes the biggest single investment that the federal government has made in a green energy future.Of nearly equal importance in Biden’s first two years were two other bills: the trillion-dollar Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, to improve the nation’s crumbling physical infrastructure; and the Chips Act, to re-shore, in a massive way, the research, design and production of semi-conductor computer chips, those tiny, ubiquitous and indispensable components that drive every computer and virtually all of America’s (and the world’s) machines and phones.In these three initiatives, the Democrats have laid down a foundation for a program of political economy that diverges significantly from its neoliberal predecessor. This older vision of political economy, long embraced both by Republicans and Democrats, insisted on freeing markets and capital from government oversight and direction. The Biden program, by contrast, is grounded in the belief that a strong government is necessary to steer – and, in some cases, compel – markets and corporations into serving the public good. It crystallized from the extensive discussions between the Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders wings of the Democratic party across 2020 and 2021. It represents a profound departure from the last 30 of governing practice.The industrial policies being promoted by the Biden administration won’t lead to nationalization; they focus instead on incentivizing the private sector to pursue broadly agreed upon economic aims. Two of the three aforementioned bills – the Chips Act and the Infrastructure Act – passed the Senate with significant Republican support. Quietly, Biden has delivered on his promise to open a new pathway to bipartisanship. There will be opportunities to broaden this bipartisanship, especially in regard to breaking up or regulating the monopoly power of the giant social media companies. Strong support for doing so exists on both sides of the Senate aisle. One key question is whether this incipient senatorial cross-party collaboration can soften the country’s paralyzing political polarization and persuade a few House Republicans to support upper chamber initiatives. Another is whether the Democrats can use their new program of political economy to sell a broad swath of the electorate – including constituencies currently lying beyond Democratic redoubts – on the party’s vision of the good life.Judging by the midterms’ voting patterns alone, one might be tempted to say no. But there are reasons to think otherwise. For one, economic circumstances will be different in 2024 than they are now. Inflation will probably have moderated and thus may have faded as a political flashpoint. The recession that the Fed seems so determined to trigger will have occurred, and a recovery will be under way. Additionally, by 2024, corporate America (as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act) will be more deeply invested in green technology. The conversion to post-fossil fuel economy will have correspondingly accelerated, as America’s robust private sector glimpses the profits to be made in the clean energy revolution. Moreover, by 2024, the first new infrastructural projects should be nearing completion, yielding visible improvements in America’s creaking system of bridges, roads, and transportation hubs and networks. All this investment and building should generate jobs and, perhaps, the promise of a better life for many long denied it. A somnolent US labor movement is reawakening, a development that, if it continues, will help to ensure that future jobs carry with them decent wages. Perhaps word will spread that Democrats are capable of managing America’s dynamic but unruly economy in the public interest.Is this too rosy a picture? Perhaps. Biden will never be a “great communicator”. Trump’s shrinking but still ardent band of zealots will continue to threaten American democracy. The red state-blue state divide endures. House Republicans together with the US supreme court may obstruct further Democratic efforts at reform. And we don’t know what a desperate Putin might inflict on the world if he truly believed that his reign over Russia was about to end.If we take the long view, however, and concede that a progressive political order requires a long march, then we might one day look back on this midterm – and on Biden’s first two years – and discern in them the first steps toward a better future.
      Gary Gerstle is Mellon professor of American history emeritus at Cambridge and a Guardian US columnist. His most recent book is The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era (2022)
      TopicsUS midterm elections 2022OpinionUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansJoe BidenBiden administrationUS CongresscommentReuse this content More

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      US midterms 2022: Democrats’ hopes of keeping House fade as counting continues – live

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      If a president’s party can only keep one chamber of Congress, the Senate is the one to have.The Senate is tasked with approving the White House’s nominations, including cabinet secretaries, federal judges and most crucially, supreme court justices. With Democrats holding the majority for the next two years, Joe Biden is once again guaranteed the ability to get his cabinet secretaries and judges confirmed to post across the government. That will increase the chances Biden’s legislative accomplishments – and those of future Democratic presidents – survive court challenges.But if the House falls to Republicans, Biden’s days of big legislating may have come to an end, at least for now. The chamber’s GOP leadership has shown little interest in working with the president, and it’s unlikely any of their bills make it through the Senate and to the president’s desk. Control of the House also gives the GOP the ability to conduct investigations and issue subpoenas. Expect them to do that to officials involved in the US withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, and to Hunter Biden. Prosecutors say criminal charges not expected from Giuliani raidNew York prosecutors said in a letter to a judge on Monday they do not plan to criminally charge Rudy Giuliani following a probe into his dealings with Ukrainian associates – a development Giuliani’s called “a total victory”. Prosecutors had been investigating whether Giuliani should have been registered as a foreign agent due to his dealings with figures in Ukraine in the run-up to the 2020 election.The investigation, which resulted in raids on his residence in April 2021 and seizure of a number of electronic devices, has concluded, and that criminal charges would not be forthcoming.“In my business, we would call that total victory,” Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, told the Associated Press. “We appreciate what the US attorney’s [office] has done. We only wish they had done it a lot sooner.”Read the full story here. Kari Paul here taking over for the next couple hours, stay tuned for updates. Trump wasn’t keeping all those classified documents at Mar-a-Lago for the money, The Washington Post reports.Rather, the motivation for his alleged retention of government secrets at his south Florida resort was more about Trump’s desire to hang on to keepsakes from his time in the White House, according to the Post, which cited federal investigators. That doesn’t mean he won’t face charges in the case, which is one of many inquiries the former president is involved in nearly two years after he left office. Here’s more from the Post:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}That review has not found any apparent business advantage to the types of classified information in Trump’s possession, these people said. FBI interviews with witnesses so far, they said, also do not point to any nefarious effort by Trump to leverage, sell, or use the government secrets. Instead, the former president seemed motivated by a more basic desire not to give up what he believed was his property, these people said.
      Several Trump advisers said that each time he was asked to give documents or materials back, his stance hardened, and that he gravitated toward lawyers and advisers who indulged his more pugilistic desires. Trump repeatedly said the materials were his, not the government’s — often in profane terms, two of these people said.
      The people familiar with the matter cautioned that the investigation is ongoing, no final determinations have been made, and it’s possible additional information could emerge that changes investigators’ understanding of Trump’s motivations. But they said the evidence collected over a period of months indicates the primary explanation for potentially criminal conduct was Trump’s ego and intransigence.
      A Justice Department spokesman and an FBI spokeswoman declined to comment. A Trump spokesman did not return a request for comment Monday.
      The analysis of Trump’s likely motive in allegedly keeping the documents is not, strictly speaking, an element of determining whether he or anyone around him committed a crime, or should be charged with one. Justice Department policy dictates that prosecutors file criminal charges in cases in which they believe a crime was committed and the evidence is strong enough to lead to a conviction that will hold up on appeal. But as a practical matter, motive is an important part of how prosecutors assess cases and decide whether to file criminal charges.The Guardian’s Kari Paul is now taking over the live blog, and will take you through the latest politics news over the remainder of the day.Another notable Republican has reiterated his support for Donald Trump, Politico reports.Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville said he will back Trump for president in 2024, if he announces:Sen. Tuberville says he will endorse Trump for president when he announces. He also says he’ll support McConnell as GOP leader— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) November 14, 2022
      He also announced that he would back Mitch McConnell as Senate minority leader, the top office available for the GOP in that chamber after they failed to win control in the midterms.CNN reports that the bipartisan group of senators pushing a bill to codify same-sex marriage believes it has enough support to pass the chamber:Multiple sources say the bipartisan group working on legislation to codify same-sex marriage has the votes needed for the bill to pass and is urging leadership to put it on the floor for a vote as soon as possible.w/ @alizaslav— Daniella Diaz (@DaniellaMicaela) November 14, 2022
      The Respect for Marriage Act passed the House earlier this year with some Republican support. Assuming all Democratic senators vote for it, it will need the votes of at least 10 Republicans to overcome a filibuster, but it’s previously been unclear if that support exists.Ahead of the release of his memoir tomorrow, former vice-president Mike Pence sat down with ABC News to talk more about his experience on January 6.Here was his reaction when asked about Trump’s tweet lashing out at Pence on the day of the attack:”It angered me. … The president’s words were reckless. It was clear he decided to be part of the problem.”— Former Vice President Mike Pence, in an ABC News exclusive as he promotes his new book, rebukes Trump’s tweet attacking him on Jan. 6th as the mob stormed the Capitol pic.twitter.com/PqnqUH7vbQ— The Recount (@therecount) November 14, 2022
      In their quest to understand why they performed so poorly in the midterms, some Republicans are pointing the finger at Donald Trump, arguing he has outlived his usefulness to the party.Writing in The American Conservative, JD Vance, a Republican who just won a seat in the Senate representing Ohio, attempted to dissuade the GOP from casting blame on the former president. He argues that Trump serves as a unifying force for Republicans and can offset Democrats’ advantages in fundraising and voter turnout that are going to make it more difficult for the GOP to win House and Senate races.Here’s more from his piece:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}In the long term, the way to solve this is to build a turnout machine, not gripe at the former president. But building a turnout machine without organized labor and amid declining church attendance is no small thing. Our party has one major asset, contra conventional wisdom, to rally these voters: President Donald Trump. Now, more than ever, our party needs President Trump’s leadership to turn these voters out and suffers for his absence from the stage.
      The point is not that Trump is perfect. I personally would have preferred an endorsement of Lou Barletta over Mastriano in the Pennsylvania governor’s race, for example. But any effort to pin blame on Trump, and not on money and turnout, isn’t just wrong. It distracts from the actual issues we need to solve as a party over the long term. Indeed, one of the biggest changes I would like to see from Trump’s political organization—whether he runs for president or not—is to use their incredible small dollar fundraising machine for Trump-aligned candidates, which it appears he has begun doing to assist Herschel Walker in his Senate runoff.
      Blaming Trump isn’t just wrong on the facts, it is counterproductive. Any autopsy of Republican underperformance ought to focus on how to close the national money gap, and how to turn out less engaged Republicans during midterm elections. These are the problems we have, and rather than blaming everyone else, it’s time for party leaders to admit we have these problems and work to solve them. Meanwhile in Georgia, the midterms are very much not over.The Senate race is headed to a run-off election on 6 December, with Republican Herschel Walker challenging Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock for the seat.In a speech today, Walker attacked Warnock for using campaign funds to pay for childcare – as US election law allows:Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker (R) criticizes Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D) parenting:”He paid himself for childcare, all that stuff — why don’t he keep his own kids? Don’t have nobody keep your kids. … I keep my own, even though he lied about me.” pic.twitter.com/C41IJUbA0F— The Recount (@therecount) November 14, 2022
      Left unsaid were reports that Walker paid for two women to have an abortion, even though he supports a nationwide ban on the procedure, without exceptions. He also did not mention one of his son’s claim that he has not been much of a father.It’s just one pollster in one state, but take a look at who CWS Research found was leading among Republican candidates for the White House in 2024.Florida governor Ron DeSantis topped Donald Trump in the poll of Republicans and independents, with 43% support against Trump’s 32%. The survey was conducted from 12 to 13 November, after the midterm elections, and represents a change from a previous poll conducted in mid-October before the vote. Then, Trump led, with 46% support compared to DeSantis’ 29%.Trump is widely expected to announce another campaign for office tomorrow, but DeSantis had a far better midterm election. The Florida governor resoundingly won another term on a day when Republicans performed well in the state overall. Trump, meanwhile, saw several of his handpicked candidates for office rejected by voters in states across the country.Joe Biden’s plan to relieve some student debt has lost again in court and will remain on hold, Politico reports:NEWS – 8th Circuit has blocked Biden’s student debt relief program, siding with GOP states in a 3-0 decision. pic.twitter.com/6gn7UyxmLa— Michael Stratford (@mstratford) November 14, 2022
      The panel of two Trump appointees & a GWB appointee ruled unanimously that Missouri has standing to challenge debt relief program based on injury to the state via MOHELA. pic.twitter.com/FixeqTSmAa— Michael Stratford (@mstratford) November 14, 2022
      But the 10-page decision doesn’t discuss the merits of the case much — other than to say the GOP states have raised “substantial questions of law which remain to be resolved”https://t.co/2WkRX1ozkd pic.twitter.com/0Qs03zL7qh— Michael Stratford (@mstratford) November 14, 2022
      The Guardian’s community team wants to hear from Americans about what they think of the results of Tuesday’s midterm elections. Be you Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, independent or something else, let them know your thoughts:US voters: share your reaction to the midterm results so farRead moreThe dust is settling from Tuesday’s midterm elections. Control of the House is still up for grabs, but the GOP appears on course to eke out a majority, while Democrats have won themselves the Senate for another two years. The 2024 presidential race may very well kick off tomorrow, when Donald Trump is expected to announce another campaign for the White House.Here’s what else is happening today:
      Joe Biden doesn’t believe the House is winnable for Democrats, nor that there’s enough support for a measure to codify abortion rights into law.
      The Senate plans to vote on a measure to codify same-sex marriage rights this week, after a conservative supreme court justice raised the possibility of the court reconsidering its ruling establishing the rights.
      The January 6 committee is cleared to access the phone records of Arizona’s Republican party chair after the supreme court quashed a challenge to the lawmakers’ subpoena.
      Mo Brooks was once one of Donald Trump’s closest allies, but has since joined the ranks of those who have fallen out with the former president.The Alabama Republican congressman will retire at the end of this year, and in an interview with AL.com called on the party to dump the former president.“It would be a bad mistake for the Republicans to have Donald Trump as their nominee in 2024,” said Brooks, who was the first congressman to object to the certification of the 2020 election. “Donald Trump has proven himself to be dishonest, disloyal, incompetent, crude and a lot of other things that alienate so many independents and Republicans. Even a candidate who campaigns from his basement can beat him.”The bad blood between the two men stems from Trump’s withdrawn endorsement of Brooks for Alabama’s Senate seat, which was won last week by Republican Katie Britt. Brooks said Trump asked him to remove Joe Biden from office and elevate the ex-president back to power, which the congressman told him was illegal. The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports on a new justice department filing in the Mar-a-Lago case, which claims Donald Trump kept classified documents at the resort, even after he left the White House:Donald Trump retained documents bearing classification markings, along with communications from after his presidency, according to court filings describing the materials seized by the FBI as part of the ongoing criminal investigation into whether he mishandled national security information.The former US president kept in the desk drawer of his office at the Mar-a-Lago property one document marked “secret” and one marked “confidential” alongside three communications from a book author, a religious leader and a pollster, dated after he departed the White House.The mixed records could amount to evidence that Trump wilfully retained documents marked classified when he was no longer president as the justice department investigates unauthorised possession of national security materials, concealment of government records, and obstruction.Court files show evidence Trump handled records marked classified after presidencyRead moreMike Pence will on Tuesday release a memoir detailing his time in the Trump White House, and Martin Pengelly takes a look at what the former vice president reveals:In his new book, Donald Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, protests his loyalty to his former boss but also levels criticisms that will acquire new potency as Trump prepares to announce another presidential run and the Republican party debates whether to stay loyal after disappointment in last week’s midterm elections.According to Pence, Trump mishandled his response to a march staged by neo-Nazis in Charlottesville in August 2017, a costly error that Pence says could have been avoided had Pence called Trump before a fateful press conference in which Trump failed to condemn “the racists and antisemites in Charlottesville by name”.Also in Pence’s judgment, “there was no reason for Trump not to call out Russia’s bad behaviour” early in his term while beset by investigations of Russian election interference on Trump’s behalf and links between Trump and Moscow.“Acknowledging Russian meddling,” Pence writes, would not have “somehow cheapen[ed] our victory” over Hillary Clinton in 2016.Pence does not stop there. Among other judgments which may anger his former boss, he says Trump’s claimed “perfect call” to Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine in 2019, the subject of Trump’s first impeachment after he withheld military aid in search of political dirt, was in fact “less than perfect” – if not, in Pence’s judgment, impeachable.Pence risks Trump’s wrath by piling on criticisms of ex-president in new bookRead moreThe January 6 committee can access the phone records of the chair of Arizona’s Republican party after the supreme court turned down an attempt to block the lawmakers’ subpoena:NEW: Supreme Court rejects bid by Ariz GOP Chair Kelli Ward to block a Jan. 6 committee subpoena for her phone records. Thomas and Alito dissent. pic.twitter.com/g3IoSuuRuk— Greg Stohr (@GregStohr) November 14, 2022
      Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are two of the court’s most conservative justices, and objected to the court’s order.Arizona was one of the states targeted by Donald Trump and his allies in the weeks after the 2020 election, as part of their effort to tamper with Joe Biden’s election victory.Later this week, Republicans in the House and Senate are set to vote on who their leaders will be for the next two years, but the party’s weak showing in the midterms has sparked calls to delay the election.It appears rightwing lawmakers are trying to punish top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell for failing to retake the chamber, and House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy for the party’s weak showing there. According to Axios, conservative figures outside of Congress will soon release a letter backing the calls for a delay: Per source: collection of prominent conservative movement figures — incl Heritage President Kevin Roberts — will be releasing a letter calling for delay to House and Senate leadership elections. pic.twitter.com/ON8c1dvIyl— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) November 14, 2022
      Among the signatories: Ginni Thomas, wife of rightwing supreme court justice Clarence Thomas. She’s a prominent denier of the facts surrounding Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, and was interviewed by the January 6 committee earlier this year. Lawmakers on the panel said she didn’t have much to offer, and there wasn’t evidence she played a significant role in the insurrection. More

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      Trump for 2024 would be ‘bad mistake’, Republican says as blame game deepens

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      Trump for 2024 would be ‘bad mistake’, Republican says as blame game deepensAlabama congressman Mo Brooks, a once-zealous Trump ally, comments after party fails to retake Congress in midterms Alabama congressman and once-zealous Trump supporter, Mo Brooks, has a remarkable new stance on the political future of his former hero. “It would be a bad mistake for the Republicans to have Donald Trump as their nominee in 2024,” he said.Pence risks Trump’s wrath by piling on criticisms of ex-president in new bookRead moreThe stark judgment from Brooks was indicative of the deepening and brutal blame game among Republicans which continued on Monday, nearly a week after the party failed to retake Congress in the midterm elections and a day before Trump’s expected announcement of a new presidential campaign.Speaking to AL.com, Brooks, an Alabama congressman, added: “Donald Trump has proven himself to be dishonest, disloyal, incompetent, crude and a lot of other things that alienate so many independents and Republicans. Even a candidate who campaigns from his basement can beat him.”That was a reference to Joe Biden and his precautions against Covid in the 2020 election the Democrat won by more than 7m votes and 306-232 in the electoral college.Brooks did not accept that result. On 6 January 2021, he donned body armor and spoke to Trump supporters at a rally near the White House. Repeating Trump’s lie about electoral fraud, he said: “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.” The mob then attacked the Capitol, a riot now linked to nine deaths including suicides among law enforcement.The election subversion Brooks supported is under investigation by the House January 6 committee, the Department of Justice and state authorities. But Brooks broke with Trump earlier this year, when the former president rescinded his endorsement for US Senate, because Brooks publicly urged him to stop re-litigating 2020.Trump’s eventual endorsee in Alabama, Katie Britt, won a Senate seat. But elsewhere last Tuesday high-profile Trump-endorsed candidates failed, ensuring Democrats held the Senate and stayed on course to hold the Republicans to a tight House majority.Trump is almost certain to announce his 2024 run at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Tuesday. But the fire from his own party keeps coming, the barrage widening to include shots at leaders in both houses of Congress.In the Senate, Marco Rubio of Florida, who retained his seat against a highly-rated Democrat, Val Demings, tweeted: “The Senate GOP leadership vote next week should be postponed.”Josh Hawley of Missouri, a potential challenger to Trump in 2024, added: “Exactly right. I don’t know why Senate GOP would hold a leadership vote for the next Congress before this election is finished.”That was a reference to the runoff for the last Senate seat to be decided, in Georgia and between the Trump-endorsed Herschel Walker, a controversial former NFL star, and the incumbent Democrat, Raphael Warnock. Warnock won a tight vote last Tuesday but did not pass 50%, teeing up the runoff.Victories in Pennsylvania – the only Senate seat to flip so far – Arizona and Nevada mean the Democrats will control the Senate even if Warnock loses, thanks to the casting vote of the vice-president, Kamala Harris.The other Florida senator, Rick Scott, is under pressure after leading the Republican election effort. The party leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, is also feeling the heat.On Tuesday, Josh Holmes, a Republican operative who was formerly chief of staff to McConnell, told the Wall Street Journal the Senate campaign “was run basically as a Rick Scott super Pac, where they didn’t want or need to input any Republican senators whatsoever. That’s a huge break from recent history where members have been pretty intimately involved.”Democrats seized on an “11 Point Plan to Rescue America” Scott issued earlier this year, in which the senator, widely thought to have presidential ambitions of his own, proposed that more Americans pay federal income tax and said Congress could “sunset” social security and Medicare within five years.Holmes said McConnell told Scott: “When you are in leadership you don’t have the ability to do something like this without other people carrying your water.”In the House, the defeat of the Trump endorsee, and election-denier, Joe Kent in Washington state quickly came to seem symbolic of Republican failures.In the primary, Kent defeated a six-term incumbent, Jamie Herrera-Beutler, who suffered for being one of 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Trump for inciting the Capitol attack. Kent went on to lose the seat, to the Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez.‘It’s time to move on’: have the US midterms finally loosened Trump’s grip on the Republican party?Read moreThe House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, faces a growing threat from the far-right of the party, jeopardising his hopes of becoming speaker should Republicans take control of the House.Andy Biggs of Arizona, another congressman investigated for his support of Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, is reported to be teeing up a challenge to McCarthy.Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, like Herrera-Beutler a Republican who voted to impeach Trump, announced his retirement rather than face a primary defeat then went on to sit on the House January 6 committee.Amid post-election recriminations on Capitol Hill, he tweeted: “To GOP’ers: if Kevin McCarthy had not gone to Mar-a-Lago, had the Senate convicted, or had any more congressmen actually stood on principle, likely we would have no Trump, the alt-right would be a sick memory, and you could look in the mirror.“Just FYI. Maybe start now.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsDonald TrumpRepublicansUS CongressUS SenateHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden admits Democrats unlikely to maintain control of House

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      Biden admits Democrats unlikely to maintain control of HousePresident at G20 says ‘I don’t think we’re going to make it’ after Republicans triumph in key races and stand on brink of majority Joe Biden on Monday expressed doubts that Democrats can maintain their majority in the US House of Representatives after Republicans won key races over the weekend.US midterms 2022: Democrats’ hope of keeping House fades as counting continues – liveRead more“I think we’re going to get very close in the House, but I don’t think we’re going to make it,” Biden said at a press conference, dedicated to his meeting with China’s Xi Jinping at the G20 summit, in response to a question about abortion legislation following the midterms. Before the midterms, Biden said that the first piece of legislation Democrats would pass if they kept control of both congressional chambers would codify abortion rights established in Roe v Wade.“I don’t think they can expect much of anything other than we’re going to maintain our positions [on abortion],” he said. “I don’t think there’s enough votes to codify unless something [unusual happens] in the House.”Democrats are still largely reveling in their performance in the midterms after retaining control of the US Senate, since many believed the elections were going to favor Republicans. But some sobering news for Democrats has come as more House races were called over the weekend.As of Monday morning, Republicans have won 212 races and are six seats away from taking on a majority. Democrats have 204 seats, and there are 20 races that still need to be called. On Sunday, Republicans won three key toss-up races in Arizona and California. More races in those states, along with Colorado, New York and Oregon, still need to be called but are predicted to go to Republicans.“Dems’ dreams of holding the House majority probably died tonight,” Cook Political Report analyst David Wasserman tweeted on Sunday night.Speaking to CNN on Sunday, Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi said: “We’re still alive. But again, the races are close.”Pelosi still praised Democrats’ overall performance in the election.“Who would have thought two months ago that this red wave would turn into little tiny trickle, if that at all,” Pelosi said.Democrats cinched a slim majority in the Senate, after two key wins in Arizona and Nevada, where incumbents Mark Kelly and Catherine Cortez Masto won their races respectively.With 50 seats, along with Democratic vice-president Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote, the Democrats have a majority in the Senate for the next two years. Still, a runoff election in Georgia between incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker will determine whether Democrats will win a true majority of 51 seats. The runoff is slated for 6 December.Far from celebrating what could be their reclamation of the House, Republicans have been experiencing infighting in the days after the election.Some in the party have started to point their fingers at Donald Trump, who is slated to announce that he will try to retake the Oval Office in 2024. On Fox News, Maryland’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, called the former president an “800lb gorilla”.The lieutenant governor of Virginia, Winsome Earle-Sears, once an advocate for Trump, told Fox Business that “the voters have spoken, and they said they want a different leader”.Discord has also been seen in both chambers of Congress, where Republican leaders have been coming under criticism over the election. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, is slated to run for speaker on Tuesday. But a small fraction of pro-Trump lawmakers said they will withhold their support for leverage.These conservatives want McCarthy to push for a swath of investigations into Biden, including a potential impeachment proceeding, which McCarthy has shown no interest in. McCarthy will need 218 votes to secure the speaker position.Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has also been facing attacks from fellow Republicans, including senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Florida senator Rick Scott, another Republican, told Fox News on Sunday that McConnell failed to have a plan beyond “talking about how bad the Democrats are”.“Why would you do that? What is our plan? What are we running on? What do we stand for?” Scott said. “We’re just going to run it on how bad the Democrats are, and actually then they cave in to the Democrats.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsJoe BidenDemocratsHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressnewsReuse this content More