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      Biden isn’t serious about forgiving student debt. ‘Means-testing’ is a con | David Sirota

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      Biden isn’t serious about forgiving student debt. ‘Means-testing’ is a conDavid Sirota and Andrew PerezThe Biden administration’s proposal is cynicism masquerading as populism – and it will enrage everyone and hurt the Democrats’ electoral chances During the 2020 Democratic primary, Pete Buttigieg’s personal ambition led him to poison the conversation about education in America. Desperate for a contrast point with his rivals, the son of a private university professor aired ads blasting the idea of tuition-free college because he said it would make higher education “free even for the kids of millionaires.”The attack line, borrowed from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, was cynicism masquerading as populism. It was an attempt to limit the financial and political benefits of a proposal to make college free. Worse, it was disguised as a brave stand against the oligarchs bankrolling Buttigieg’s campaign, even though it actually wasn’t – almost no rich scions would benefit from free college.Buttigieg and copycats like Amy Klobuchar were pushing a larger lie. Call it the means-testing con – the idea that social programs should not be universal, and should instead only be available to those who fall below a certain income level. It is a concept eroding national unity and being carried forward by wealthy pundits and a Democratic party that has discarded the lessons of its own universalist triumphs like social security, Medicare and the GI Bill.This week the Biden administration tore a page from Buttigieg’s book. The White House leaked that it is considering finally following through on Joe Biden’s promise to cancel some student debt – but not the $50,000 pushed by congressional Democrats, and only for those below an income threshold.In trial-ballooning the college debt relief proposal, the president is boosting the media-manufactured fiction that real, universal college debt relief would mostly help rich Ivy League kids – even though data from the Roosevelt Institute conclusively proves that canceling student debt “would provide more benefits to those with fewer economic resources and could play a critical role in addressing the racial wealth gap and building the Black middle class”.As the report points out: “People from wealthy backgrounds (and their parents) rarely use student loans to pay for college.”But setting aside how the media-driven discourse omits those inconvenient facts, what’s noteworthy here is the underlying principle.This latest discussion of means-testing follows Biden and congressional Democrats pushing to substantially limit eligibility for Covid-19 survival checks and the expanded child tax credit. Taken together, it suggests that Democrats’ zeal for means-testing is no anomaly – it is a deeply held ideology that is both dangerous for the party’s electoral prospects and for the country’s fraying social contract.The superficial appeal of means-testing is obvious: it promises to prevent giving even more public money to rich people who don’t need it.But in practice, means-testing is a way to take simple universal programs and make them complicated and inaccessible. Calculating exact income levels and then proving them for eligibility means reams of red tape for both the potential beneficiary and a government bureaucracy that must be created to process that paperwork.Data from the food stamp and Medicaid programs illustrate how means-testing creates brutal time and administrative barriers to benefits, which reduce payouts to eligible populations. In the case of means-testing student debt relief, those barriers may end up wholly excluding large swaths of working-class debtors.This is a feature, not a bug – it is means-testers’ unstated objective. They want to limit benefits for the working class, but not admit that’s their goal.Universal programs like social security and Medicare were what we once defined as “society” or “civilization”. They may be derided as “entitlements”, but the reason they have (so far) survived for so long is because their universality makes them wildly successful in their missions and more difficult to demonize. Their universality also precludes austerians from otherizing and disparaging the programs’ recipients.Means-testing destroys that potential unity. It may initially poll well, but it turns “entitlements” into complicated “welfare” programs only for certain groups, which then makes those programs less popular and makes the beneficiaries easy scapegoats for political opportunists. Think of Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” trope vilifying recipients of means-tested food stamps.Now sure, billionaires are eligible for social security and Medicare, and their kids are eligible for free K-12 education – and that aristocracy doesn’t need that help. But when those programs were created, we accepted that rich people being granted access to those programs along with everyone else was the relatively small price to pay for simplicity, universalism and the attendant national unity that comes with it.Not surprisingly, Democrats’ creation of popular universalist programs coincided with the most electorally successful era in the party’s history.Equally unsurprising: the shift to fake means-test populism has coincided with rising popular hatred of liberal technocrats and the Democratic party they control.What is surprising is that Republicans may be starting to understand all this better than Democrats.For instance, Donald Trump’s signature spending legislation offered direct, non-means-tested aid to small businesses during the pandemic. The former president touted a plan to just pay hospital bills for Covid patients who didn’t have coverage. The programs were hardly perfect, but they were straightforward, universal, relatively successful and extremely popular because they embodied a powerful principle: keep it simple, stupid.When it comes to student debt relief, there’s a rare chance for Democrats to also embrace simplicity – and prevent Republicans from outflanking them.More specifically, they can use the student debt crisis to finally return to their universalist roots – and they don’t have to skimp and provide merely $10,000 worth of relief.Biden could simply send out a one-page letter to every student borrower telling them that their federal student debt is now $0.Yes, Republican lawmakers would try to block it and affluent pundits would tweet-cry about it to each other.But amid all that elite whining and couch-fainting, Democrats would be launching a battle against an immoral system of education debt – and directly helping 40 million voters ahead of a midterm election.It’s so easy and simple – which is probably why they won’t do it.
      David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor-at-large at Jacobin, and the founder of the Lever. He served as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter
      Andrew Perez is a senior editor at The Lever and a co-founder of the Democratic Policy Center
      A version of this piece was first published in the Lever, a reader-supported investigative news outlet
      TopicsUS student debtOpinionUS politicsBiden administrationJoe BidenDemocratsUS CongressUS student financecommentReuse this content More

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      ‘Do something, Democrats’: party struggles to rise to abortion challenge

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      ‘Do something, Democrats’: party struggles to rise to abortion challenge Despite controlling the White House and Congress, Democrats seem powerless to fight the assault on Roe v Wade but hope it will energise midterm votersVisibly shaking with fury and brandishing megaphones and posters, thousands of women defending reproductive rights in America thronged below the marbled columns of the US supreme court to protest against what appears to be the imminent demise of the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling recognizing abortion as a constitutional right.“Do something, Democrats,” the crowd chanted at one point.Tell us: how has Roe v Wade made a difference to your life?Read moreIn the hours that followed, Democrats, who currently control the House, the Senate and the White House, echoed their outrage and vowed a response.The urgency follows a leak late on Monday evening of a draft opinion from the court that a majority of the nine judges on the bench – all conservative-leaning appointees of Republican presidents – support not just more restrictions on abortion services but the overturning of the landmark Roe ruling that guarantees the right to abortion when final opinions are issued in June.“I am furious – furious that Republicans could be this cruel, that the supreme court could be this heartless, that in legislatures across the country, extreme Republicans are ready for their trigger bans to go into effect,” Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat of Washington and a longtime advocate of women’s reproductive rights, said.Speaking from the steps of the US Capitol, she was referring to states that have legislative bans on abortion prepared and waiting to be “triggered” into effect as soon as Roe is overturned. “It is craven and we won’t stand for it,” she said. “I’m not going to sit quietly and neither should any of you.”Yet, infuriatingly for the pro-choice voters who helped elect Joe Biden and a Democratic Congress, the party finds itself largely powerless at present, without a legislative path forward to protect abortion rights in the likely event the court reverses its decision in Roe.Biden said it would be a “radical decision” by the court and called on Congress to act to enshrine the rights afforded by Roe into federal law via legislation.And Vice-President Kamala Harris, speaking to attendees at a gala hosted by Emily’s List, which works to elect Democrats who support abortion rights, railed that a ruling overturning Roe would be a “direct assault on freedom” in America.Barring swift legislative action, nearly half of US states are likely to ban abortion or severely restrict access to the procedure.But the reality of Democrats’ thin congressional majorities is that they don’t have enough support in the evenly divided US Senate to codify abortion protections, nor do they have the votes to eliminate the so-called filibuster rule, thus allowing legislation to pass with a simple majority.Biden has resisted pressure from progressives to use his bully pulpit to call for eliminating the filibuster, following recent demands to do so to pass voting rights legislation. And on Tuesday, he said he was “not prepared” to do so to protect reproductive rights.Nevertheless, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, vowed to forge ahead with a vote on current legislation that is stalled in Congress but, if it could be passed would enshrine a woman’s right to end her pregnancy.But the measure, a version of which passed the Democratic-controlled House last year, was already rejected once this year, when it fell far short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. It didn’t even win the support of all 50 Democrats, so even if the filibuster were scrapped the bill, called the Women’s Health Protection Act, would not have passed in the Senate.Senator Joe Manchin, an anti-abortion Democrat from West Virginia, voted with Republicans to block consideration of the bill. The bill also failed to attract the support of two pro-choice Senate Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who have introduced separate legislation that they say would codify Roe.Yet Schumer argued that it was important to put every senator on the record.“A vote on this legislation is no longer an abstract exercise. This is as urgent and real as it gets,” he said. The leaked draft decision, written by the conservative justice Samuel Alito, would shift the question of whether abortion should be legal to the individual states.The effect would dramatically alter the US landscape almost overnight, with restrictions and bans going into effect across much of the south and midwest while abortion would remain legal in many north-eastern and western states.Emboldened by the supreme court’s conservative super-majority, Republican legislatures have enacted a flurry of new abortion laws as conservative activists begin to lay the groundwork for a nationwide ban.On Tuesday, as the country reeled from the revelation that the supreme court was likely to dismantle Roe, Oklahoma’s Republican governor signed into law a bill that would ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, a copycat version of a Texas law enacted last year.Meanwhile, liberal states have moved to safeguard abortion protections. Last week, Connecticut lawmakers approved a bill that would protect abortion providers in the state. And states like California and New York have vowed to be a “sanctuary” for people seeking reproductive care from places where the procedure is banned.With few options, Democrats have implored Americans shocked and angered by the seemingly impending loss of abortion rights to vote in the midterm elections. Majorities of Americans say they want abortion to remain legal in some or most cases. Few say they want the court to overturn Roe.But Democrats face steep headwinds in November, weighed down by Biden’s low approval ratings, rising inflation and a sour national mood.The Republican reaction to the news that the nation’s highest court was prepared to strike down Roe was relatively subdued. In the Senate, lawmakers were far more focused on the source of the leaked document than the decision, which is the culmination of a decades-long drive by the conservative movement to overturn Roe.The response suggested that there may be some concern that Republicans are worried about provoking a political backlash among more moderate and independent voters who broadly support a constitutional right to abortion.“There’s an answer,” the Illinois senator Dick Durbin, the majority whip, said at a press conference. “The answer is in November.”But many Democrats and activists believe November is too late for millions of women in states where abortion will banned almost immediately. They want the party – from the president on down – to throw every ounce of their political capital at finding a legislative solution.“People elected Democrats precisely so we could lead in perilous moments like these- to codify Roe, hold corruption accountable, & have a President who uses his legal authority to break through Congressional gridlock on items from student debt to climate,” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive Democrat from New York, wrote on Twitter. “It’s high time we do it.”TopicsDemocratsAbortionUS politicsJoe BidenUS SenateUS CongressfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Conservatives don’t want true democracy, and ‘nice’ Republicans are no exception | Thomas Zimmer

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      Conservatives don’t want true democracy, and ‘nice’ Republicans are no exceptionThomas ZimmerEven the few Republicans in Washington who opposed the worst excesses of Trumpism have been unwilling to fight attempts to subvert democracy at the state level It is often said that the US is the world’s oldest democracy. While that is not necessarily incorrect, depending on the definition of “democracy,” it tends to obscure more than it illuminates about the reality of American life. If we start from the assumption that America has been a stable, consolidated democracy for two and a half centuries, the current political conflict seems utterly baffling: where is the anti-democratic radicalization of the Republican party – and so many million Americans – coming from all of a sudden?Is it really plausible to assume that the people who remain united behind Donald Trump and are now openly embracing authoritarianism were fully on board with liberal democracy until recently, before they were driven rightward by the presidency of a moderately liberal politician whose sole “radicalism” consisted of being Black? That the election of a religious elderly white man who has always been a proud centrist pushed them to finally abandon their supposedly “consolidated” democratic convictions?And how can we explain that even those Republican officials who openly stand against Trump seem unwilling to support the necessary steps to strengthen democracy? Earlier this month, Liz Cheney described Russia’s attack on Ukraine as a “reminder that democracy is fragile” and talked about her obligation “to defend our democracy” – yet she doesn’t seem overly concerned with her party’s escalating voter suppression or gerrymandering efforts. Similarly, Mitt Romney warned his audience at a private fundraiser in mid-March that “preserving liberal democracy is an extraordinary challenge” – yet he helped block legislation in the Senate that would have introduced much-needed national standards for voting rights. In general, the few Republican lawmakers in Washington who are opposing the worst excesses of Trumpian authoritarianism have been strikingly unwilling to oppose the ongoing Republican attempts to subvert democracy on the state level.Making sense of the present political conflict requires a more precise understanding of the past and present of US democracy beyond simplistic ideas of “democracy v authoritarianism.” We should start by acknowledging what “democracy” meant in America before the civil rights legislation of the 1960s: a system that was, at least by contemporaneous comparison, fairly democratic if you happened to be a white Christian man – and something else entirely if you were not. The Reconstruction period was a notable exception to this norm. But America’s first attempt at biracial democracy immediately after the civil war was quickly drowned in ostensibly “race-neutral” laws and white reactionary violence from the mid-1870s onwards. After Reconstruction, the country was dominated for decades by a white elite consensus to not only leave the brutal apartheid regime in the south untouched, but to uphold white Christian patriarchal rule within the confines of a restricted version of democracy.By the 1960s, however, that white male elite consensus had started to fracture and America split over the question of whether the country should extend the promise of democracy to all its citizens and finally become a functioning multiracial, pluralistic democracy. Since then, two questions have defined US history: how has the reality and practice of democracy changed? And how has modern political conservatism reacted to those shifting versions of democracy, having emerged in the middle decades of the 20th century very much in opposition to precisely those liberal, multiracial, pluralistic visions?The 1960s civil rights legislation set in motion a process of partisan realignment and ideological sorting – ultimately uniting the forces opposing multiracial pluralism in a Republican party that has been focused almost solely on the interests and sensibilities of white conservatives. And white conservatives tend to define America – “real America” – as a predominantly white, Christian, patriarchal nation. America, to them, is supposed to be a place where traditional authority is revered and white Christian men are at the top. The overriding concern of conservatism as a political project since at least the 1950s, and thus the Republican party’s overriding concern since at least the 1970s, when conservatives became the dominating faction within the party, has been to preserve that version of “real America.” In other words, conservatives’ allegiance has never been to democratic ideals – their acceptance of democracy was always conditional and depending largely on whether would be set up in a way that allowed for the forces of multiracial pluralism to be kept in check.But due to political, cultural, and most importantly demographic changes, the conservative political project has come under enormous pressure. As the country has become less white, less religious, and more pluralistic, the conservative hold on power has become tenuous. Nothing symbolized this threat to white dominance like the election of Barack Obama – an outrageous subversion of what reactionaries understand as America’s natural order. Obama’s presidency dramatically heightened the white conservative fear of demographic change that would supposedly be accompanied by a loss of political and cultural dominance.Republicans understand better than anyone else: in a functioning democracy, they would have to either widen their focus beyond the interests and sensibilities of white conservatives, which they are not willing to do; or relinquish power, which they reject. They are determined to transform the political system in a way that will allow them to hold on to power without majority support, even against the explicit desire of a growing numerical majority of the electorate. It is imprecise to say that conservatives are turning their backs on democracy. Rather than suddenly going from “pro-democratic” to “anti-democratic,” they have been fairly consistent: on board with a restricted version of democracy, but determined to prevent multiracial pluralism.But what about those within the Republican party who are publicly siding against Trump, like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger in the House, or senators Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski, who are rejecting the Republican party’s embrace of the January 6 attack on the Capitol and the attempt to legitimize political violence? I believe their disdain for Trumpism is sincere – but so is their unwillingness to support the necessary measures to defend liberal democracy. Good on them for refusing to cross over into open authoritarianism; but defenders of multiracial, pluralistic democracy they are not.Their actions are indicative of an important conflict that has long shaped the American right. Some parts of the right were never content with accepting the post-1960s reality and railed against what they saw as the acquiescence and appeasement of the forces of multiracial pluralism. Until recently, the established story of modern conservatism’s emergence insisted that those far-right forces had been marginalized, confined to the irrelevant fringe, by the gatekeepers of the “respectable” right. However, as the latest historical scholarship convincingly argues, rightwing extremism was never fully purged from mainstream conservatism. And after Obama was elected president, the idea that Republicans were selling out “real” America, that more drastic action was urgently needed, was spreading fast into the center of conservative politics. In this view, liberals were winning, destroying the country, and Republican appeasement was complicit.The infamous Flight 93 essay, for instance, which the rightwing intellectual Michael Anton published shortly before the 2016 election, provides the clearest articulation of this worldview. Anton presented Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party as a fundamental threat to America, every bit as dangerous as the terrorists who hijacked four airplanes on 11 September 2001. Anton called on the right to embrace Trumpism because Trump would be willing to go much further to stop this “un-American” threat than any of the “ordinary” Republicans who were “merely reactive” and for whom Anton had nothing but contempt. Since Trump wasn’t bound by norms, traditions, or precedents, he alone could be counted on to do whatever was necessary to fight back against “wholesale cultural and political change” – to “charge the cockpit,” in Anton’s crude analogy, like the passengers of Flight 93 who thwarted an attack on the Capitol. As Anton put it, “Trump, alone among candidates for high office in this or in the last seven (at least) cycles, has stood up to say: I want to live. I want my party to live. I want my country to live. I want my people to live.”Democracy? Who cares about democracy when “real America” is under assault and about to be overrun by radical, “un-American” leftist forces? These are not simply the fever dreams of fringe reactionaries. People like Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Matt Gaetz symbolize the rise of far-right extremism within the Republican party, and the widespread siege mentality on the American right is the main reason why their radicalism is widely seen as justified by fellow Republicans.The central fault line on the right is not – and has never been – simply between democracy and authoritarianism. The crucial conflict seems to be between those like Cheney, Kinzinger, and Romney who want to uphold white Christian elite rule from within the confines of a narrowly restricted version of democracy – and those who want to pursue that goal by openly embracing authoritarianism and militant extremism. I am not suggesting that this is a distinction without a difference. It matters whether or not a democratic framework remains in place because, no matter how imperfect, it provides basic protections and some room for real democratization as well as racial and social progress. But the position Cheney, Romney, et al are trying to hold has become untenable. The days of white elite rule within a system of restricted democracy are probably over – America will either slide into authoritarianism or make the leap to multiracial, pluralistic democracy.Public critique of Trumpism matters less than the continued de facto support for an increasingly authoritarian Republican party. The fundamental reality of American politics is that, for now, the Democratic party is the country’s sole significant (small-d) democratic party. In that way, democracy itself has become a partisan issue. It’s a reality with which every lawmaker, every institution, every voter in America has to grapple honestly.
      Thomas Zimmer is a visiting professor at Georgetown University, focused on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United States, and a Guardian US contributing opinion writer
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionRepublicansMitt RomneyUS CongresscommentReuse this content More

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      Approval for Biden Ukraine aid request likely after Pelosi Kyiv visit, McCaul says

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      Approval for Biden Ukraine aid request likely after Pelosi Kyiv visit, McCaul saysRepublican says House likely to approve $33bn but also says Democrats have not acted quickly enough

      Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates
      Joe Biden’s $33bn request to Congress for more aid for Ukraine is likely to receive swift approval from lawmakers, a senior Republican said on Sunday, as the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, made a surprise visit to the war-riven country.Scholz defends Ukraine policy as criticism mounts in Germany Read moreThe president on Thursday had asked for the money for military and humanitarian support for Ukraine as it fights to repulse the Russian invasion now in its third month.Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican and ranking member of the House foreign affairs committee, went on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulous and said he expected the chamber would look favorably on the request in the coming weeks.McCaul’s comments came while Pelosi led a congressional delegation to Kyiv to meet the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and the House speaker promised on behalf of the US: “We are here until victory is won.”McCaul was asked if he believed Congress would quickly pass Biden’s requested package, which includes $20bn in military aid, $8.5bn in economic aid to Kyiv and $3bn in humanitarian relief.“Yes, I do,” McCaul said. “Time is of the essence. The next two to three weeks are going to be very pivotal and very decisive in this war. And I don’t think we have a lot of time to waste. I wish we had [Biden’s request] a little bit sooner, but we have it now.”McCaul added that he believed Republicans, who have supported the Democratic president’s previous financial requests for Ukraine, might have acted more expediently if they held the House majority.The chamber is not sitting during the coming week while members tend to in-district affairs, delaying debate and a vote on the aid package.“If I were speaker for a day, I’d call Congress back into session, back into work,” he said.“Every day we don’t send them more weapons is a day where more people will be killed and a day where they could lose this war. I think they can win it. But we have to give them the tools to do it.”Meanwhile, Bob Menendez, the Democratic New Jersey senator who chairs the upper chamber’s foreign relations committee, echoed Pelosi’s pledge that the US would continue to support Ukraine financially.“We will do what it takes to see Ukraine win because it’s not just about Ukraine, it’s about the international order,” he said on NBC’s Meet the Press.“If Ukraine does not win, if [Russia’s president Vladimir] Putin can ultimately not only succeed in the Donbas but then be emboldened to go further, if he strikes a country under our treaty obligations with Nato, then we would be directly engaged.“So stopping Russia from getting to that point is of critical interest to us, as well as the world, so we don’t have to send our sons and daughters into battle. That ability not to have to send our sons and daughters into battle is priceless.”Menendez said that the US and its allies needed to “keep our eye on the ball” over a possible Russian move into Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria, where explosions were heard in recent days.“I think that the Ukrainians care about what’s going to happen in Transnistria, because it’s another attack point against Ukraine,” he said.“We need to keep our eye on the ball. And that is about helping Ukraine and Ukrainians ultimately being able to defeat the butcher of Moscow. If we do that, the world will be safer. The international order will be preserved, and others who are looking at what is happening in Ukraine will have to think twice.”Samantha Power, administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), laid out the urgent need for Congress to approve the package during an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation.“There are vast swaths of Ukraine that have been newly liberated by Ukrainian forces, where there is desperate need, everything from demining to trauma kits to food assistance, since markets are not back up and running,” she said, noting that from previously approved drawdowns “assistance is flowing”.But she said that 40 million people could be pushed into poverty, and demands for help would only grow.“We’re already spending some of that money, but the burn rate is very, very high as prices spiral inside Ukraine and outside Ukraine,” Power said. “So that’s why this supplemental is so important. It entails $3bn of humanitarian assistance to meet those global needs, which are famine-level, acute malnutrition needs.“And it includes very significant direct budget support for the government of Ukraine, because we want to ensure the government can continue providing services for its people.”“Putin would like nothing more than the government of Ukraine to go bankrupt and not be able to cater to the needs of the people. We can’t let that happen.”TopicsUS CongressRepublicansJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicsUkraineNancy PelosinewsReuse this content More

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      Capitol attack panel set to subpoena Trump allies, Republican Kinzinger says

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      Capitol attack panel set to subpoena Trump allies, Republican Kinzinger saysMembers of Congress involved in attempt to overturn election have refused to testify voluntarily before June public hearings

      This Will Not Pass review: Dire reading for Democrats
      The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol will decide “in the next week or two” whether to issue subpoenas trying to force Republican lawmakers to testify about Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, one of two Republicans on the panel said on Sunday.‘A horrible plague, then Covid’: Biden and correspondents joke in post-Trump return to normalityRead more“If that takes a subpoena, it takes a subpoena,” Adam Kinzinger said.The Illinois congressman also told CBS’s Face the Nation public hearings planned for June will aim to “lay the whole story out in front of the American people … because ultimately, they have to be the judge” of Trump’s attempt to hold on to power.Kinzinger and nine other House Republicans voted to impeach Trump over the Capitol attack, which a bipartisan Senate committee linked to seven deaths.But Senate Republicans stayed loyal, acquitting Trump, and Kinzinger is one of four anti-Trump House Republicans who have since announced their retirements.He and Liz Cheney of Wyoming are the only Republicans on the January 6 committee.The June hearings, Kinzinger said, will involve laying out “what led to January 6, the lies after the election, fundraising, the 187 minutes the president basically sat in the Oval Office [as the Capitol was attacked] … the response by [the Department of Defense].“It’s important for us to be able to put that in front of the American people because ultimately, they have to be the judge. The Department of Justice will make decisions based on information but the American people … have to take the work we’ve done and decide what they want to do with it or what they want to believe.”Majorities of Republicans in Congress and in public polls believe – or choose to support and repeat – Trump’s lie that Biden stole the presidency via electoral fraud.Prominent Trump supporters in Congress who have advanced that lie and were involved in attempts to overturn the election before 6 January have refused to speak to the House committee.“I won’t say who I think we need to talk to yet,” Kinzinger said. “I mean, I think everybody needs to come and talk to us. We’ve requested information from various members.“In terms of whether we move forward with a subpoena, it’s going to be both a strategic tactical decision and the question of whether or not we can do that and get the information in time. Decisions we make every day.”Kinzinger added, “I think ultimately, whatever we can do to get that information. I think if that takes a subpoena, it takes a subpoena.“But I think the key is, regardless of even what some members of Congress are going to tell us, we know a lot of information … we’re going deeper with richer and more detail to show the American people.”Kinzinger said he would “love to see” Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president who ultimately refused to reject electoral college results on 6 January, testify before the committee.“I hope he would do so voluntarily,” he said. “These are decisions I think that we’re going to end up making from a tactical perspective in the next week or two, because we basically pinned down what this hearing schedule is going to look like, the content.“And as we go into the full narrative of this thing. I would hope and think that the vice-president would want to come in and tell this story, because he did do the right thing on that day. If he doesn’t, we have to look at the options we have available to us if there’s information we don’t already have.”Marjorie Taylor Greene accused of lying in hearing in Capitol attack caseRead moreA lawyer for Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a far-right Republican congresswoman shown in court filings by the committee to have been in contact with the White House around 6 January, has claimed she was in fact a victim of the riot.“I’d love to ask her a few questions,” Kinzinger said. “We know some things. I won’t confirm or deny the text messages of course, but let me just say this.“For Marjorie Taylor Greene to say she’s a victim, it’s amazing … I mean, she assaulted I think a survivor … from a school shooting at some point in DC. She stood outside a congresswoman’s office and yelled through a mail slot and said [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] was too scared to come out and confront her.“And then when Marjorie Taylor Greene is confronted she’s all of a sudden a victim and a poor helpless congresswoman that’s just trying to do a job? That’s insane.“We want the information.”TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpMike PenceRepublicansUS politicsTrump administrationDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden’s top border official not worried about Republican impeachment threats

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      Biden’s top border official not worried about Republican impeachment threatsHomeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas forging ahead with plans to ease Covid-related immigration restrictions Joe Biden’s top border official said on Sunday he was unconcerned by threats from the top House Republican that the GOP could impeach him if it regains the majority after the midterm elections, as the Biden administration forges ahead with plans to ease a coronavirus-related immigration restriction.Republicans return to politics of immigration as midterm strategyRead moreSpeaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, addressed the remarks from the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy.“I am incredibly proud to work with 250,000 dedicated and talented personnel and I look forward to continuing to do so,” Mayorkas said.“I am not [concerned about the possibility of impeachment] – I am focused on mission and supporting our incredible workforce.”Republicans are building a key part of their midterm strategy around a byzantine public health order invoked by Donald Trump’s administration in March 2020 to ostensibly control the spread of Covid-19 along the border with Mexico.Faced with pressure from immigration advocates and progressives, the Biden administration wants to lift the so-called title 42 restriction, which allows authorities to immediately expel migrants seeking entry instead of allowing them to remain while their claim for asylum is reviewed.But Republicans, and even some Democrats, argue that the federal government is not prepared for the projected increase in migrants making asylum claims if title 42 is lifted on 23 May as planned.The homeland security department anticipates as many as 18,000 migrants daily at the border in the wake of elimination of Title 42, up from 6,000.On Sunday, Mayorkas acknowledged “that is going to be an extraordinary strain on our system”. He also declined an opportunity to say whether or not he believed title 42 should remain, saying he was “not a public health expert” but rather an enforcer of laws.Nonetheless, Mayorkas insisted the administration was prepared for the consequences of lifting title 42 and expecting cooperation from Mexico and other countries south of the border.“We didn’t just start this,” Mayorkas said, echoing his message in more than eight hours of testimony on Capitol Hill over two days recently. “We’ve been doing it for months.”McCarthy invoked Mayorkas’s name during a trip to the border last month, as Republicans sought to tie the title 42 debate to election themes such as crime and voter fraud.Trump accepted ‘some responsibility’ for Capitol attack, McCarthy audio revealsRead moreThe top Republican in the House had just made headlines over audio recordings of him telling other lawmakers in his party he thought Trump should be impeached – if not resign – over the Capitol attack.McCarthy tried to deny he ever said any of that – before the release of the audio recordings.At the border, McCarthy said it was Mayorkas who should worry about impeachment if the Republicans flip Congress in the midterm elections, unless the homeland security secretary kept title 42 in place.“This is his moment in time to do his job,” McCarthy said. “But at any time if someone is derelict in their job, there is always the option of impeaching somebody.”Mayorkas also addressed criticisms aimed at him over his office’s recent creation of a so-called misinformation governing board tasked with counteracting misleading information about the border, whether from political enemies of the US or smugglers trying to convince migrants to hire them for help crossing into the country despite not having permission.Some lawmakers, mainly Republicans, have argued that the board could stifle free speech. But Mayorkas said the board would simply issue recommendations on how best to combat misrepresentations that in the past have fueled sudden surges of travel to the border and overwhelmed authorities there.“Those criticisms are precisely the opposite of what this small working group … will do,” Mayorkas said.TopicsUS immigrationUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022Biden administrationUS domestic policyUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      Rand Paul promises Covid review if Republicans retake Senate in midterms

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      Rand Paul promises Covid review if Republicans retake Senate in midtermsKentucky senator who has clashed publicly with Dr Anthony Fauci champions lab leak theory in remarks at rally The Kentucky senator Rand Paul promised on Saturday to wage a vigorous review into the origins of the coronavirus if Republicans retake the Senate and he lands a committee chairmanship.This Will Not Pass review: Trump-Biden blockbuster is dire reading for DemocratsRead moreSpeaking to supporters at a campaign rally, the senator denounced what he sees as government overreach in response to Covid-19. He applauded a recent judge’s order that voided the federal mask mandate on planes and trains and in travel hubs.“Last week I was on an airplane for the first time in two years and didn’t have to wear a mask,” he said, drawing cheers. “And you know what I saw in the airport? I saw at least 97% of the other free individuals not wearing masks.”Paul has clashed repeatedly with Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert, over government policies and the origins of the virus.Paul, who is seeking a third term, said he was in line to assume a committee chairmanship if the GOP wins Senate control. The Senate has a 50-50 split, with the vice-president, Kamala Harris, the tie-breaking vote.“When we take over in November, I will be chairman of a committee and I will have subpoena power,” Paul said. “And we will get to the bottom of where this virus came from.”The senator, an ophthalmologist before politics, continued to offer his theory about the origins of the virus.02:49“If you look at the evidence, overwhelmingly, not 100%, but overwhelmingly the evidence points to this virus being a leak from a lab,” Paul said.Many US conservatives have accused Chinese scientists of developing Covid-19 in a lab and allowing it to leak.US intelligence agencies remain divided on the origins of the coronavirus but believe China did not know about the virus before the start of the global pandemic, according a Biden-ordered review released last summer.The scientific consensus remains that the virus most likely migrated from animals. So-called “spillover events” occur in nature and there are at least two coronaviruses that evolved in bats and caused human epidemics, SARS1 and MERS.At the Kentucky rally, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, the state’s senior senator, also pointed to Paul’s opportunity to lead a committee. If that occurs, he said, Paul would become chairman of “one of the most important committees in the Senate – in charge of health, education, labor and pensions”.McConnell was upbeat about Republican prospects in November.“I’ve never seen a better environment for us than this year,” said McConnell, who is in line to again become majority leader.The rally featured other prominent Kentucky Republicans, including several considering running for governor in 2023, when Andy Beshear, a Democrat, will seek a second term.In his speech, Paul railed against socialism, saying it would encroach on individual liberties. The senator was first elected to the Senate in the Tea Party wave of 2010.02:21“When President Trump said he wanted to ‘Make America Great Again’, I said, ‘Amen,’” Paul said. “But let’s understand what made America great in the first place, and that’s freedom, constitutionally guaranteed liberty.”Charles Booker is by far the best known Democrats seeking their party’s nomination for Paul’s seat in the 17 May primary. Paul is being challenged by several little-known candidates. A general election campaign between Paul and Booker would be a battle between candidates with starkly different philosophies.Booker, a Black former state lawmaker, narrowly lost a bid for the Democratic nomination in 2020. He is a progressive who touts Medicare for all, anti-poverty programs, a clean-energy agenda and criminal justice changes.Paul, a former presidential candidate, has accumulated a massive fundraising advantage.Kentucky has not elected a Democrat to the US Senate since Wendell Ford in 1992.TopicsRepublicansRand PaulUS midterm elections 2022CoronavirusUS politicsDemocratsAnthony FaucinewsReuse this content More

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      This Will Not Pass review: Trump-Biden blockbuster is dire reading for Democrats

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      This Will Not Pass review: Trump-Biden blockbuster is dire reading for Democrats Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns have made waves with tapes of Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans – but the president’s party has more to fear from what they revealThis Will Not Pass is a blockbuster. Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns deliver 473 pages of essential reading. The two New York Times reporters depict an enraged Republican party, besotted by and beholden to Donald Trump. They portray a Democratic party led by Joe Biden as, in equal measure, inept and out of touch.The Right review: conservatism, Trump, regret and wishful thinkingRead moreMartin and Burns make their case with breezy prose, interviews and plenty of receipts. After Kevin McCarthy denied having talked smack about Trump and the January 6 insurrection, Martin appeared on MSNBC with tapes to show the House Republican leader lied.In Burns and Martin’s pages, Trump attributes McCarthy’s cravenness to an “inferiority complex”. The would-be speaker’s spinelessness and obsequiousness are recurring themes, along with the Democrats’ political vertigo.On election day 2020, the country simply sought to restore a modicum of normalcy. Nothing else. Even as Biden racked up a 7m-vote plurality, Republicans gained 16 House seats. There was no mandate. Think checks, balances and plenty of fear.Biden owes his job to suburban moms and dads, not the woke. As the liberal Brookings Institution put it in a post-election report, “Biden’s victory came from the suburbs”.Said differently, the label of socialism, the reality of rising crime, a clamor for open borders and demands for defunding the police almost cost Democrats the presidency. As a senator, Biden knew culture mattered. Whether his party has internalized any lessons, though, is doubtful.On election day 2021, the party lost the Virginia governor’s mansion. Republican attacks over critical race theory and Covid-driven school closures and Democrats’ wariness over parental involvement in education did them in. This year, the midterms offer few encouraging signs.This Will Not Pass portrays Biden as dedicated to his belief his presidency ought to be transformational. In competition with the legacy of Barack Obama, he yearns for comparison to FDR.“I am confident that Barack is not happy with the coverage of this administration as more transformative than his,” Biden reportedly told one adviser.Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, is more blunt: “Obama is jealous of Biden.”Then again, Hunter Biden is not the Obamas’ son. Michelle and Barack can’t be too jealous.A telephone conversation between Biden and Abigail Spanberger, a moderate congresswoman from Virginia, captures the president’s self-perception. “This is President Roosevelt,” he begins, following up by thanking Spanberger for her sense of humor.She replies: “I’m glad you have a sense of humor, Mr President.”Spanberger represents a swing district, is a former member of the intelligence community and was a driving force in both Trump impeachments.This Will Not Pass also amplifies the disdain senior Democrats hold for the “Squad”, those members of the Democratic left wing who cluster round Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.Martin and Burns quote Steve Ricchetti, a Biden counselor: “The problem with the left … is that they don’t understand that they lost.”Cedric Richmond, a senior Biden adviser and former dean of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), is less diplomatic. He describes the squad as “fucking idiots”. Richmond also takes exception to AOC pushing back at the vice-president, Kamala Harris, for telling undocumented migrants “do not come.”“AOC’s hit on Kamala was despicable,” Richmond says. “What it did for me is show a clear misunderstanding of what’s going on in the world.”Meanwhile, Cori Bush, a Squad member, has picked a fight with the CBC and led the charge against domestic terror legislation.Burns and Martin deliver vivid portraits of DC suck-ups and screw-ups. They capture Lindsey Graham, the oleaginous senior senator from South Carolina, in all his self-abasing glory.During the authors’ interview with Trump, Graham called the former president. After initially declining to pick up, Trump answered. “Hello, Lindsey.” He then placed Graham on speaker, without letting him know reporters were seated nearby.Groveling began instantly. Graham praised the power of Trump’s endorsements and the potency of his golf game. Stormy Daniels would not have been impressed. The senator, Burns and Martin write, sounded like “nothing more than an actor in a diet-fad commercial who tells his credulous viewer that he had been skeptical of the glorious product – until he tried it”.This Will Not Pass also attempts to do justice to Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona senator and “former Green party activist who reinvented herself as Fortune 500-loving moderate”. In addition to helping block Biden’s domestic agenda, Sinema has a knack for performative behavior and close ties to Republicans.Like Sarah Palin, she is fond of her own physique. The senator “boasted knowingly to colleagues and aides that her cleavage had an extraordinary persuasive effect on the uptight men of the GOP”.Palin is running to represent Alaska in Congress. Truly, we are blessed.Subtitled Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, Burns and Martin’s book closes with a meditation on the state of US democracy. The authors are anxious. Trump has not left the stage. Republican leadership has bent the knee. Mitch McConnell wants to be Senate majority leader again. He knows what the base is thinking and saying. Marjorie Taylor Greene is far from a one-person minority.Martin and Burns quote Malcolm Turnbull, a former prime minister of Australia: “You know that great line that you hear all the time: ‘This is not us. This is not America.’ You know what? It is, actually.”The Republicans are ahead on the generic ballot, poised to regain House and Senate. Biden’s favorability is under water. Pitted against Trump, he struggles to stay even. His handling of Russia’s war on Ukraine has not moved the needle.Inflation dominates the concerns of most Americans. For the first time in two years, the economy contracts. It is a long time to November 2024. Things can always get worse.
      This Will Not Pass is published in the US by Simon & Schuster
      TopicsBooksPolitics booksUS politicsJoe BidenBiden administrationDonald TrumpUS elections 2024reviewsReuse this content More