US Congress

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Ex-Trump lawyer Emil Bove confirmed to federal appeals court by US Senate

      by

      The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Emil Bove, a top justice department official and former defense attorney for Donald Trump, to a lifetime seat on a federal appeals court, despite claims by whistleblowers that he advocated for ignoring court orders.The vote broke nearly along party lines, with 50 Republican senators voting for his confirmation to a seat on the third circuit court of appeals overseeing New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and the US Virgin Islands.All Democrats opposed his nomination along with Republican senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. Tennessee senator Bill Hagerty missed the vote.Bove’s nomination for the lifetime position has faced strident opposition from Democrats, after Erez Reuveni, a former justice department official who was fired from his post, alleged that during his time at the justice department, Bove told lawyers that they “would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such court order” blocking efforts to remove immigrants to El Salvador. In testimony before the committee last month, Bove denied the accusation, and Reuveni later provided text messages that supported his claim.Last week, another former justice department lawyer provided evidence to its inspector general corroborating Reuveni’s claim, according to Whistleblower Aid, a non-profit representing the person, who opted to remain anonymous.On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that a third whistleblower alleged Bove misled Congress about his role in the dropping of corruption charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams. Seven veteran prosecutors resigned rather than follow orders to end the prosecution, which Democrats allege was done to secure Adams’s cooperation with Trump’s immigration policies.“Like other individuals President Trump has installed in the highest positions of our government during his second term, Mr Bove’s primary qualification appears to be his blind loyalty to this president,” Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, said in a speech before the vote.The senator said he was trying to get a copy of the complaint made by the anonymous whistleblower who corroborates Reuveni’s allegations, and accused the GOP of pushing Bove’s nomination forward without fully investigating his conduct.“It appears my Republican colleagues fear the answers. That is the only reason I can see for their insistence on forcing this nomination through at breakneck speed before all the facts are public,” Durbin said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn addition to the whistleblower complaint, Democrats have criticized Bove for his role, while serving as acting justice department deputy attorney general, in the firings of prosecutors who worked on cases connected to the January 6 insurrection, as well as for requesting a list of FBI agents who investigated the attack.During his June confirmation hearing, Bove denied suggesting justice department lawyers defy court orders, or that political considerations played a role in dropping the charges against Adams. “I am not anybody’s henchman,” he told the committee.Democrats walked out of the committee earlier this month when its Republican majority voted to advance his nomination, despite their pleas that the whistleblower complaints be further explored. More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      US lawmakers balance security and openness as threats of political violence rise

      by

      “Tell Eric Swalwell that we are coming and that we are going to handle everyone. We are going to hurt everyone. We are coming to hurt them.”The staff at representative Swalwell’s California district office had heard the man’s voice before. He had called twice in previous weeks to leave revolting, racist threats against the Democratic congressman and his wife in voicemails, according to an FBI criminal complaint released on Monday.“So, I’m fine with anything at this point. I’m tired of it. I’ll just set up behind my .308 and I’ll do my job,” he said in one voice recording. The .308 is a reference to a rifle, according to the criminal complaint. “You want a war? Get your war started.”Swalwell’s staff reported the latest threat. This time, the FBI charged the caller with a crime.As threats of political violence escalate – and the impact of the political assassination in Minnesota reverberates across the country – lawmakers like Swalwell are re-evaluating how to manage the balance between openness and security.The instinct of security professionals may be to increase physical security and limit the availability of elected officials to the public. But that approach runs headlong into a conflict with the imperative for politicians to connect with their constituents.“I’m not going be intimidated. I know the aim of this threat is to have me shrink or hide under the bed and not speak out,” Swalwell told the Guardian. “This guy’s terrorizing the members of Congress, law enforcement and staff, and it just has no place in our civil discourse.”Swalwell has had to spend nearly $1m on security over the last two years, he said. That money comes out of his campaign accounts.“When they threaten you and you protect yourself, your family and your staff, you’re dipping into your campaign resources,” Swalwell said. “You have this decision calculus where you can protect your family or you can protect your re-election, but it’s been costly to do both.”The caller, Geoffrey Chad Giglio, was no stranger to the FBI or to the public. Reuters interviewed him in October while looking at violent political rhetoric after the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life, presenting him as a provocateur and an example of the new viciousness.“I push the envelope,” Giglio told Reuters, adding that he would never hurt anyone. “If I have to go to jail because somebody thinks I’m really a threat, oh well, so be it.”View image in fullscreenGiglio’s made his last call to Swalwell’s office on 13 June according to the complaint, apparently undaunted after being interviewed by the FBI about previous threats only a few days earlier.Researchers have been tracking an increase in threats made against lawmakers for years, with the January 6 attack on the Capitol a way station on a dark road.“We see an increase starting around 2017, 2018,” said Pete Simi, a professor of sociology at Chapman University, who in 2024 published a review of a decade of federal data on intimidation charges against federal elected officials. From 2013 to 2016, Capitol police charged an average of 38 people a year for making threats to lawmakers. By 2017 to 2022, the average had grown to 62 charges a year.“It’s hard to know whether there’s an increase in threats to public officials or there’s an increase in the level of enforcement that’s producing more criminal investigations and ultimately more charges filed in prosecution,” Simi said.But surveys of public officials at both the state and federal level also indicate an increase in threats.In a survey of local lawmakers published last year by the Brennan Center for Justice, “substantial numbers” said they thought the severity of the threats was increasing, said Gowri Ramachandran, director of elections and security at the Brennan Center’s elections and government program.“Lawmakers are reporting that it’s kind of getting worse, the severity of what’s being said in these voicemails, these emails, whatever messages people are getting,” Ramachandran said.Best security practices have begun to emerge, but the implementation is inconsistent across states, she said. One recommendation is for a specific law enforcement agency to take charge of monitoring and tracking threats against lawmakers, Ramachandran said. The US Capitol police are tasked with responding to threats to federal lawmakers, who may then refer cases to the FBI and the Department of Justice for prosecution. The responding agency at the state level is often less obvious to elected officials. “A lot of lawmakers we spoke with didn’t even know who they’re supposed to report these things to,” she said.Many elected officials said they wanted to balance security with accessibility, Ramachandran said, citing interviews with dozens of local lawmakers in 2023 about security and threats.“The vast majority of the lawmakers we talked to were really concerned about their constituents not feeling welcome, in terms of coming to visit their offices or going to the state capitol to be heard,” she said. “There was a repeated concern, of course, for safety of their staff and their families and all of that, and the constituents themselves, but also with not wanting things to be on lockdown and wanting to be accessible to constituents.”But the assassination of state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their Minneapolis-area home last month, has provoked a reassessment of that balance.At the federal level, the committee on House administration doubled spending on personal security measures for House members last week, allowing congressional representatives to spend $20,000 to increase home security, up from $10,000, and up to $5,000 a month on personal security, up from $150 a month. The committee’s chair, Bryan Steil, a Republican from Wisconsin, and ranking member Joseph Morelle, a Democrat from New York, also asked the Department of Justice to give the US Capitol police additional federal prosecutors to help investigate and prosecute threats against legislators.Federal campaign finance law, as revised in January, provides a mechanism for federal officeholders to spend campaign money for locks, alarm systems, motion detectors and security camera systems, as well as some structural security devices, such as wiring, lighting, gates, doors and fencing, “so long as such devices are intended solely to provide security and not to improve the property or increase its value”. It also provides for campaign funds to pay for cybersecurity measures and for professional security personnel.Both Democratic and Republican legislators in Oklahoma sent a letter earlier this month to the Oklahoma ethics commission, asking if state law could be similarly interpreted, citing the assassinations in Minnesota.Lawmakers in California are also looking for ways to loosen campaign finance restrictions for candidate spending on security.California has a $10,000 lifetime cap for candidates on personal security spending from election funds – a cap that legislation doubled last year. A proposal by assemblymember Mia Bonta would suspend the cap through 2028, with a $10,000 annual cap after that.Enhanced home security for Minnesota legislators will be covered by a state budget appropriation for any member asking for it, lawmakers decided last week. This is in addition to state rules enacted in 2021 allowing $3,000 in campaign spending toward personal security.Minnesota and several other states – including Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico and North Dakota – almost immediately removed home address data from state government websites after the Minnesota assassinations. New Mexico had already largely restricted this data after a series of drive-by shootings at lawmakers’ homes by a failed Republican candidate in 2022 and 2023.Restricting public information about lawmaker’s residency can be a political headache in some states. Generally, an elected official must live in the district he or she represents. Residency challenges are a common campaign issue, but a challenge cannot be raised if the address of a lawmaker is unknown to the public.“It is something that I think we as a society are going to have to grapple with,” said Ramachandran. “It may not be the best idea to enforce those rules about residency requirements by just having the whole general public know where people live and to be able to go up to their house and see if they really live there, right?”Some states like Nevada are exploring long-term solutions. Nevada’s secretary of state, Francisco Aguilar, is forming a taskforce to look at ways to restrict access to lawmakers’ residential information without interfering in election challenges.“Political violence has no place in our country,” he said in a statement. “People, including elected officials, should be able to have differing opinions and go to work without fear of violence or threats.”The challenge for lawmakers and investigators is crafting a policy to deal with people who because of their behavior are unusual outliers. As angry as people can be about politics, only a tiny few will make a phone call to a legislator to make a threat, and even fewer will carry out that threat.“The vast, vast majority of Americans are reporting on these surveys that they don’t support political violence,” Simi said. “So those that do are an outlier. But there’s some question about whether that outlier is increasing over time. We don’t have great data over time, so that’s a hard question to answer.” More

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump and Powell clash on camera over Federal Reserve renovation cost – US politics live

      by

      Donald Trump just attempted to ambush Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, during his site visit to inspect the renovation of the central bank’s historic headquarters in Washington.When Trump paused before reporters to make a statement, he beckoned Powell over to stand next to him on camera. The president then claimed that the total cost of the renovations to the Federal Reserve buildings was $3.1bn, a higher figure than had previously been reported.As Trump made this claim, Powell nodded his head no, to signal his disagreement.“I’m not aware of that,” Powell said. “I haven’t heard that from anybody at the Fed.”Trump insisted that this new figure “just came out” and removed papers from his coat, as apparent proof, and handed them to Powell.“This came from us?” Powell asked.After Trump said that the new figures had come from his people, Powell discovered why the figure for the renovation was suddenly much larger. “You included a third building,” he said.Trump insisted that the third building was part of the total cost of the renovation he has accused Powell of mismanaging in an effort to find some cause to remove the independent Fed chairman who has refused to lower interest rates at the president’s request.The third building Trump suddenly claimed is part of the renovation, Powell explained, “was built five years ago. It’s not new.”Trump was flanked by his staunch ally, Republican senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who also suggested that the renovations had gone too far over budget.Powell, asked if they expected any further cost overruns, replied, “Don’t expect them” but said that the independent central bank was “ready for them” if necessary.Trump then called on a friendly reporter, who asked him what, as a builder, he “would do with a project manager who is over budget”.“Generally speaking, ”Trump said, “I’d fire him.”As Trump, Powell and Scott stepped away from the media to continue the tour, Trump said that there is something that Powell could do to assuage his concerns about the cost of the renovations. “I’d love him to lower interest rates,” he said.Powell has asserted, repeatedly, that the president does not have the power to fire him, as the head of an independent agency, and that decisions on interest rates must be immune to political pressure.The supreme court on Thursday blocked a lower-court ruling in a redistricting dispute in North Dakota that would gut a landmark federal civil rights law for millions of people.The justices indicated in an unsigned order that they are likely to take up a federal appeals court ruling that would eliminate the most common path people and civil rights groups use to sue under a key provision of the 60-year-old Voting Rights Act.The case could be argued as early as 2026 and decided by next summer.Three conservative justices, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, would have rejected the appeal.The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, Spirit Lake Tribe and individual Native American voters challenging new North Dakota legislative districts drawn after the 2020 census.The complaint alleged that the redrawn districts would dilute the voting strength of Native Americans in the state in violation of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, by giving them a chance to elect the candidate of their choice in just one district in northeastern North Dakota, instead of two.The Campaign Legal Center, which filed the suit with the Native American Rights Fund and other partners, welcomed the stay for “leaving in place fair maps for Native American voters while the cases progresses before the supreme court.”“To make this decision permanent, Campaign Legal Center will be filing a cert petition to formally request that the supreme court hear this case during their next term,” the nonpartisan, legal nonprofit wrote.Donald Trump, standing in a hard hat outside the headquarters of the Federal Reserve, just completed his tour of the renovations he has repeatedly claimed are too expensive, as he seeks an excuse to fire the head of the US central bank, Jerome Powell.Trump, accompanied by Tim Scott, a Republican senator from South Carolina, met assembled reporters by a podium set up for his remarks. Powell, who has repeatedly asserted his independence and resisted Trump’s demands to lower interest rates, was not present.During the tour, Powell took issue with Trump’s claim that the renovation cost $3.1bn, a higher figure than had previously been claimed, and pointed out that the president had added in the cost of another building that was not part of the renovation and had been completed five years ago.“I see a very luxurious situation taking place,” Trump said.“Too expensive,” Scott chimed in. The senator and the president then said that Powell’s refusal to lower interest rates was making it difficult for Americans to afford mortgages on their homes, and suggested that the central banker’s renovation of the bank’s headquarters at the same time was inappropriate.Pressed by a reporter on why Trump does not speed up the lowering of interest rates on mortgages by firing Powell, Trump said he was not inclined to take that unprecedented step. “Because to do that is a big move and I just don’t think it’s necessary,” Trump said.“And I believe that he’s going do the right thing. I believe that the chairman is going to do the right thing,” Trump said.He then repeated his apparently false claim that, on his recent visit to Saudi Arabia, “the king of Saudi Arabia” told him that the United States is now “the hottest country anywhere in the world, and I thought you were dead one year ago”. Trump met the crown prince of Saudi Arabia on his visit in May. There are no published accounts that he met with the 89-year-old king, Salman, who has withdrawn from public life since last year following health concerns.Donald Trump just attempted to ambush Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, during his site visit to inspect the renovation of the central bank’s historic headquarters in Washington.When Trump paused before reporters to make a statement, he beckoned Powell over to stand next to him on camera. The president then claimed that the total cost of the renovations to the Federal Reserve buildings was $3.1bn, a higher figure than had previously been reported.As Trump made this claim, Powell nodded his head no, to signal his disagreement.“I’m not aware of that,” Powell said. “I haven’t heard that from anybody at the Fed.”Trump insisted that this new figure “just came out” and removed papers from his coat, as apparent proof, and handed them to Powell.“This came from us?” Powell asked.After Trump said that the new figures had come from his people, Powell discovered why the figure for the renovation was suddenly much larger. “You included a third building,” he said.Trump insisted that the third building was part of the total cost of the renovation he has accused Powell of mismanaging in an effort to find some cause to remove the independent Fed chairman who has refused to lower interest rates at the president’s request.The third building Trump suddenly claimed is part of the renovation, Powell explained, “was built five years ago. It’s not new.”Trump was flanked by his staunch ally, Republican senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who also suggested that the renovations had gone too far over budget.Powell, asked if they expected any further cost overruns, replied, “Don’t expect them” but said that the independent central bank was “ready for them” if necessary.Trump then called on a friendly reporter, who asked him what, as a builder, he “would do with a project manager who is over budget”.“Generally speaking, ”Trump said, “I’d fire him.”As Trump, Powell and Scott stepped away from the media to continue the tour, Trump said that there is something that Powell could do to assuage his concerns about the cost of the renovations. “I’d love him to lower interest rates,” he said.Powell has asserted, repeatedly, that the president does not have the power to fire him, as the head of an independent agency, and that decisions on interest rates must be immune to political pressure.Donald Trump has said that Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell will be present when he and other officials tour the Fed’s headquarters in Washington this afternoon.“Getting ready to head over to the Fed to look at their, now, $3.1 Billion Dollar (PLUS!) construction project,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.The US government has sued New York City, seeking to block enforcement of several local laws its says are designed to impede its ability to enforce federal immigration laws, Reuters reports.In a complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court, the Trump administration government said the city’s “sanctuary provisions” are unconstitutional, and preempted by laws giving it authority to regulate immigration.Donald Trump will today sign an executive order making it easier for cities and states to remove homeless people from the streets, USA Today reports.Under the executive order, the president will direct attorney general Pam Bondi to “reverse judicial precedents and end consent decrees” that limit local and state governments’ ability to move homeless people from streets and encampments into treatment centers, according to a White House summary of the order reviewed by USA Today.Trump’s order, dubbed “Ending Vagrancy and Restoring Order”, will redirect federal funds to ensure the homeless people impacted are transferred to rehabilitation, treatment and other facilities, the White House said, though it was not immediately clear how much money would be allocated.It will require Bondi to work with the secretaries of health and human services, housing and urban development and transportation to prioritize federal grants to states and cities that “enforce prohibitions on open illicit drug use, urban camping and loitering, and urban squatting, and track the location of sex offenders”.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt in a statement that Trump is “delivering on his commitment to Make America Safe Again and end homelessness across America”.“By removing vagrant criminals from our streets and redirecting resources toward substance abuse programs, the Trump Administration will ensure that Americans feel safe in their own communities and that individuals suffering from addiction or mental health struggles are able to get the help they need,” she said.The White House does not support the request by Republican senators John Cornyn and Lindsey Graham for a special counsel to investigate what they call the “Russia collusion hoax,” NBC News is reporting, citing a source familiar with the matter.“While we appreciate the shared goal of transparency and accountability, the president is confident in the Department of Justice to handle the investigation,” the source told NBC.The Department of Justice announced last night that it was forming a “strike force” to to investigate (baseless) claims that the Obama administration carried out a “treasonous conspiracy” by using false intelligence to suggest Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump.A special counsel appointed during Trump’s first term already investigated the origins of the Russia probe.US district judge James Boasberg has said he may initiate disciplinary proceedings against justice department lawyers for their conduct in a lawsuit brought by Venezuelans challenging their removal to a Salvadoran prison in March.Boasberg, a prominent Washington DC, judge who has drawn Donald Trump’s ire, said during a court hearing that a recent whistleblower complaint had strengthened the argument that Trump administration officials engaged in criminal contempt of court by failing to turn around deportation flights.Boasberg also raised the prospect of referring DOJ lawyers to state bar associations, which have the authority to discipline unethical conduct by attorneys. He said:
      I will certainly be assessing whether government counsel’s conduct and veracity to the court warrant a referral to state bars or our grievance committee, which determines lawyers’ fitness to practice in our court.
      A justice department spokesperson declined to comment.Boasberg has been hearing an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit brought on behalf of alleged Venezuelan gang members removed from the US under the rarely invoked 18th-century Alien Enemies Act. The detainees in the case were returned to Venezuela last week as part of a prisoner exchange, after spending four months in El Salvador’s Cecot prison.The migrants’ lawyers have disputed the gang membership claims and said their clients were not given a chance to contest the government’s assertions.Boasberg said in April that the Trump administration appeared to have acted “in bad faith” when it hurriedly assembled three deportation flights on 15 March at the same time that he was conducting emergency court proceedings to assess the legality of the effort.In court filings, justice department lawyers have disputed that they disobeyed a court order, saying remarks Boasberg made from the bench were not legally binding.In a 2-1 order, a federal appeals court in April temporarily paused Boasberg’s effort to further investigate whether the Trump administration engaged in criminal contempt.Boasberg said during today’s hearing that the delay from the appeals court was frustrating for the plaintiffs, and that a whistleblower complaint from Erez Reuveni, a former DOJ attorney who was fired in April, strengthened the case for contempt.Reuveni described three separate incidents when justice department leaders defied court orders related to the deportation of immigrants living in the country illegally.Attorney general Pam Bondi, in a post on X, called Reuveni a “disgruntled employee” and a “leaker”.The United States will not attend an upcoming UN conference on an Israel-Palestine two-state solution, state department deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott told reporters during a press briefing today.The conference, which has already been rescheduled once, is due to take place next week at the United Nations.The prospects for high-profile announcements on recognition of a Palestinian state had already been dealt a serious blow after it was reported that French president Emmanuel Macron was not expected to attend.Venezuelan men who were deported by the US to the notorious Cecot prison in El Salvador without due process are speaking out about treatment they described as “hell” and like a “horror movie”, after arriving back home.A total of 252 Venezuelan nationals were repatriated in the last week in a prisoner swap deal between the US and Venezuelan governments, with many able to reunite with family after their ordeal in El Salvador.Carlos Uzcátegui tightly hugged his sobbing wife and stepdaughter on Wednesday morning in western Venezuela after he had been away for a year.He was among the migrants being reunited with loved ones after spending four months imprisoned in El Salvador, where the US government had transferred them without due process, sparking uproar over Donald Trump’s harsh anti-immigration agenda. The US had accused all the men, on sometimes apparently flimsy evidence, of being members of a foreign gang living in the US illegally.“Every day, we asked God for the blessing of freeing us from there so that we could be here with family, with my loved ones,” Uzcátegui, 33, said. “Every day, I woke up looking at the bars, wishing I wasn’t there.“They beat us, they kicked us. I even have quite a few bruises on my stomach,” he added before later showing a bruised left abdomen.Arturo Suárez, whose reggaeton songs surfaced on social media after he was sent to El Salvador, arrived at his family’s home in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, on Tuesday. His sister hugged him after he emerged from a vehicle belonging to the country’s intelligence service.“It is hell. We met a lot of innocent people,” Suárez told reporters, referring to the prison he was held in. “To all those who mistreated us, to all those who negotiated with our lives and our freedom, I have one thing to say, and scripture says it well: vengeance and justice is mine, and you are going to give an account to God [the] Father.”Former national security adviser (of Signalgate infamy) Mike Waltz’s nomination as US ambassador to the United Nations is back on track after a Democrat cut a deal to advance him out of committee, Politico reports, marking just the latest development in a rollercoaster day for Donald Trump’s nominee.Despite Republican senator Rand Paul voting no (derailing plans for a committee vote yesterday), ranking member Jeanne Shaheen sided with the other Republicans on the foreign relations committee to vote to advance Waltz, narrowly by 12-10. Having cleared that key hurdle, Waltz now goes to the Senate, where he will likely be confirmed.There was no immediate indication of when the full Senate might consider the nomination. A spokesperson for the chamber’s majority leader John Thune, said there were no scheduling updates.Thune has indicated he might delay the Senate’s annual August recess if Democrats do not allow Republicans to confirm Trump nominees more quickly. In a recent post on his Truth Social platform, Trump urged the Senate to stay in Washington for votes on his nominees.Politico notes: “The partisan swap reflected ideological divides around isolationism: Paul objected to Waltz’s vote to keep troops in Afghanistan, while Shaheen said in a statement that despite some concerns (including the aforementioned Signalgate, which in part cost him his job as national security adviser), she saw Waltz as a potential ‘moderating force’ against the likes of vice-president JD Vance, defense secretary Pete Hegseth and Elbridge Colby. Some Democrats also worried about who might replace Waltz if his nomination failed.”Shaheen said she had worked out a deal with committee Republicans and the state department to unlock $75m in lifesaving foreign aid for Haiti and Nigeria, Axios reports.However, Shaheen said she may not necessarily vote for Waltz’s confirmation. More

    • 175 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Obama’s office issues rare rebuke to Trump’s ‘ridiculous’ allegations about 2016 election – live

      by

      In a statement sent to reporters on Tuesday, a spokesperson for former president Barack Obama dismissed Donald Trump’s “ridiculous” accusation that Obama had committed “treason” in 2016, by directing his administration to reveal, after the 2016 election, that the Russian government had attempted to boost Trump’s candidacy.Here is the full statement from Obama’s spokesperson, Patrick Rodenbush:
      Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.
      Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.
      The statement came after Trump claimed on Tuesday that documents reviewed by his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, prove that Obama was “guilty”.But Gabbard’s accusation is based on the false claim that Obama and officials in his administration had suppressed “intelligence showing ‘Russian and criminal actors did not impact’ the 2016 presidential election via cyber-attacks on infrastructure”.Obama and his administration never made that claim. Instead they made the case that Russia had attempted to interfere in the 2016 election through a social-media influence campaign and by hacking and releasing, via Wikileaks, email from Democratic officials and Hillary Clinton’s campaign aides. That conclusion was borne out by special counsel Robert Mueller’s 2019 report and by a bipartisan 2020 report by the Senate intelligence committee whose members included then senator Marco Rubio.Speaking in the Oval Office during a meeting with the president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, Trump deflected a question about Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender Trump socialized with for more than a decade, calling the uproar over Epstein “sort of a witch hunt”. He then added the baseless claim that, in 2020, Obama and those around him also “tried to rig the election, and they got caught”.“The witch hunt you should be talking about is that they caught President Obama absolutely cold”, Trump added.The senate voted 50-48 on Tuesday to proceed to debate on the nomination of Donald Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, Emil Bove, to fill a vacancy as a judge on a federal appeals court. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the only Republican to join all of the chamber’s Democratic senators in voting against Bove.There has been speculation that Trump wants his former lawyer, who is just 44, to be in place for possible consideration for a spot on the supreme court if either Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas retires soon.After Trump appointed him acting deputy attorney general, Bove ordered federal prosecutors in New York to dismiss corruption charges against the city’s mayor, Eric Adams, in return for his cooperation in immigration enforcement.Danielle Sassoon, the acting US attorney for the southern district of New York, refused and wrote to Bove that the mayor’s lawyers had “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed”.Sassoon also wrote that Bove had scolded a member of her team for taking notes at the meeting with the mayor’s legal team and ordered that the notes be confiscated.As our colleague Chris Stein reported, Bove’s nomination for the lifetime position has faced strident opposition from Democrats, after Erez Reuveni, a former justice department official who was fired from his post, alleged that during his time at the justice department, Bove told lawyers that they “would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such court order” blocking efforts to remove immigrants to El Salvador. In testimony before the committee last month, Bove denied the accusation, and Reuveni later provided text messages that supported his claim.Republicans announced Tuesday that the House of Representatives will call it quits a day early and head home in the face of persistent Democratic efforts to force Republicans into voting on the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.The chamber was scheduled be in session through Thursday ahead of the annual five-week summer recess, but on Tuesday, the Republican majority announced that the last votes of the week would take place the following day. Democrats in turn accused the GOP of leaving town rather than dealing with the outcry over Donald Trump’s handling of the investigation into the alleged sex trafficker.“They are actually ending this week early because they’re afraid to cast votes on the Jeffrey Epstein issue,” said Ted Lieu, the vice-chair of the House Democratic caucus.Republicans downplayed the decision to cut short the workweek, while arguing that the White House has already moved to resolve questions about the case. Last week, Trump asked the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to release grand jury testimony, although that is expected to be only a fraction of the case’s documents.“We’re going to have committee meetings through Thursday, and there’s still a lot of work being done,” said the majority leader, Steve Scalise. “The heavy work is done in committee and there is a lot of work being done this week before we head out.” He declined to answer a question about whether votes were cut short over the Epstein files.Senator Elizabeth Warren said Donald Trump’s claim that he expects to receive $20m in free advertising, public service announcements or similar programming from the new owners of CBS, “reeks of corruption”.Warren was responding to Trump’s boast that he would be paid $20m by the new owners of the network in addition to the $16m from the current owners he received on Tuesday to drop his lawsuit claiming that he had been damaged by the routine editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris last year.On Monday Warren, and fellow senators Bernie Sanders and Ron Wyden, wrote to David Ellison, whose company Skydance needs federal approval to buy CBS owner Paramount, to ask if he struck any “secret side deal” with Trump, or had played any part in the decision to cancel Trump critic Stephen Colbert’s late-night CBS show.After Trump claimed that he did make a deal with Ellison’s company before federal approval was granted, Warren asked Skydance to confirm the news in a social media post of her own.“CBS canceled Late Night with Stephen Colbert—a show they called ‘a staple of the nation’s zeitgeist’—just three days after Colbert called out Paramount for its $16 million settlement with Trump”, Warren wrote in a second post. “Was his show canceled for political reasons? Americans deserve to know.”Later on Tuesday, Congressman Seth Magaziner, a Rhode Island Democrat, responded to Trump’s boast about the $20m he expects from the network’s new owner with the comment: “He’s bragging about taking bribes… In broad daylight.”In a statement sent to reporters on Tuesday, a spokesperson for former president Barack Obama dismissed Donald Trump’s “ridiculous” accusation that Obama had committed “treason” in 2016, by directing his administration to reveal, after the 2016 election, that the Russian government had attempted to boost Trump’s candidacy.Here is the full statement from Obama’s spokesperson, Patrick Rodenbush:
      Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.
      Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.
      The statement came after Trump claimed on Tuesday that documents reviewed by his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, prove that Obama was “guilty”.But Gabbard’s accusation is based on the false claim that Obama and officials in his administration had suppressed “intelligence showing ‘Russian and criminal actors did not impact’ the 2016 presidential election via cyber-attacks on infrastructure”.Obama and his administration never made that claim. Instead they made the case that Russia had attempted to interfere in the 2016 election through a social-media influence campaign and by hacking and releasing, via Wikileaks, email from Democratic officials and Hillary Clinton’s campaign aides. That conclusion was borne out by special counsel Robert Mueller’s 2019 report and by a bipartisan 2020 report by the Senate intelligence committee whose members included then senator Marco Rubio.Speaking in the Oval Office during a meeting with the president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, Trump deflected a question about Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender Trump socialized with for more than a decade, calling the uproar over Epstein “sort of a witch hunt”. He then added the baseless claim that, in 2020, Obama and those around him also “tried to rig the election, and they got caught”.“The witch hunt you should be talking about is that they caught President Obama absolutely cold”, Trump added.

      Despite the best efforts of Donald Trump and his allies to change the subject, the Jeffrey Epstein firestorm – which Trump today derided as “a witch hunt” – just won’t die. This morning, the justice department announced it hopes to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell to find out if she has “information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims” of Epstein. Deputy attorney general Todd Blanche said he anticipated meeting with Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking and other crimes, “in the coming days”. “We are grateful to President Trump for his commitment to uncovering the truth in this case,” David Oscar Markus, an attorney for Maxwell, wrote on X, inspiring suggestions that Maxwell will seek for a pardon or commutation of her sentence from Trump.

      But the New York federal court handling the Epstein and Maxwell case said it would like to “expeditiously” resolve the Trump administration’s request to unseal grand jury testimony, but it could not do so due to a number of missing submissions. The justice department did not submit to the court the Epstein-related grand jury transcripts it wants to unseal, the judge said, and requested that the justice department submit the transcripts by next Tuesday under seal, so that the court can decide on the request to unseal them. The government had also not “adequately” addressed the “factors” that district courts weigh in considering applications for disclosure, including “why disclosure is being sought in the particular case” and “what specific information is being sought for disclosure”, the judge wrote.

      And despite the GOP’s valiant attempts to blame this all on the Democrats, there is ever more proof in the congressional pudding that this is very much a bipartisan issue (let’s not forget, it was Trump’s Maga base that kicked this all off). The embattled House speaker Mike Johnson (who is among those Republicans who have actually called for the evidence to be released) shut down operation of the chamber a day early, scrapping Thursday’s scheduled votes after the party lost control of the floor over bipartisan pressure to vote on releasing Epstein-related files. That means there won’t be any more floor votes until lawmakers return from summer recess in September.

      The House Oversight Committee also voted to subpoena Maxwell for testimony after recess.

      Trump announced that the Philippines will pay a 19% tariff rate following the conclusion of a trade deal with the United States.

      The New York Times defended the Wall Street Journal after the Trump administration decided to bar the global outlet from the White House press pool following its investigative coverage of ties between Donald Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In a public statement, a Times spokesperson said the White House’s actions represented “simple retribution by a president against a news organization for doing reporting that he doesn’t like”, warning that “such actions deprive Americans of information about how their government operates”.

      NPR’s editor-in-chief, Edith Chapin, has told colleagues that she is stepping down later this year. It comes just days after federal lawmakers voted in support of Trump’s plan to claw back $1.1bn from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the umbrella organization that funds both NPR and the non-commercial TV network PBS.

      A US appeals court declined to lift restrictions imposed by Trump’s administration on White House access by Associated Press journalists after the news organization declined to refer to the body of water long called the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

      The state department claimed one of the reasons for the US’s withdrawal from Unesco was the organization’s decision to admit Palestine as a member state, which was “contrary to US policy and contributed to the proliferation of anti-Israel rhetoric within the organization” [a charge the Trump administration frequently directs at the United Nations at large]. The state department also said that remaining in Unesco was not in the national interest, accusing it of having “a globalist, ideological agenda for international development at odds with our America First foreign policy”. Trump pulled the US out of Unesco during his first term too.

      Elon Musk may return to US politics, Bloomberg News is reporting, citing SpaceX documents and people familiar with the content.

      Trump said he had received from CBS parent company Paramount $16m as part of a lawsuit settlement and that he expects to receive $20m more.

      A panel of judges in the US district court in New Jersey declined to permanently appoint Trump’s former lawyer Alina Habba as the state’s top federal prosecutor, according to an order from the court.
      The editor-in-chief of the US public radio network NPR has told colleagues that she is stepping down later this year.Edith Chapin’s announcement comes just days after federal lawmakers voted in support of Donald Trump’s plan to claw back $1.1bn from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the umbrella organization that funds both NPR and the non-commercial TV network PBS.Chapin informed Katherine Maher, NPR’s chief executive, of her intention to step down before lawmakers approved the cuts but will stay on to help with the transition, according to what she told the outlet.Chapin has been with NPR since 2012 after spending 25 years at CNN. She has been NPR’s top editor – along with chief content officer – since 2023.In an interview with NPR’s media reporter, David Folkenflik, Chapin said she had informed Maher two weeks ago of her decision to leave.“I have had two big executive jobs for two years and I want to take a break. I want to make sure my performance is always top-notch for the company,” Chapin told NPR.Nonetheless, Chapin’s departure is bound to be seen in the context of an aggressive push by the Trump administration to cut government support of public radio, including NPR and Voice of America.Trump has described PBS and NPR as “radical left monsters” that have a bias against conservatives. In an executive order in May, the president called for the end of taxpayer subsidization of the organizations.Trump later called on Congress to cancel public broadcaster funding over the next two years via a rescission, or cancellation, request. That was approved by both houses of Congress on Friday, taking back $1.1bn.In an essay published by the Columbia Journalism Review on Tuesday, Guardian writer Hamilton Nolan said that while NPR and PBS will survive, “the existence of small broadcasters in rural, red-state news deserts is now endangered”.Elon Musk, who infamously served as a senior adviser to Donald Trump before a very public – and very spectacular – bust-up with his former buddy, may return to US politics, Bloomberg News is reporting, citing SpaceX documents and people familiar with the content.The company added that the language laying out such “risk factors” in paperwork sent to investors discussing a tender offer, according to Bloomberg. It is also believed to be the first time this language has appeared in these tender offers.Earlier this month, Musk announced his decision to start to bankroll a new US political party – the “America” party – and suggested it could initially focus on a handful of attainable House and Senate seats while striving to be the decisive vote on major issues amid the thin margins in Congress.The tech billionaire had previously stepped back from his role in Trump’s White House as he sought to salvage his battered reputation which was hurting his companies, including Tesla.He then fell out with Trump over the president’s signature sweeping tax and spending bill, which Musk slammed as “bankrupting” the country (the bill also repeals green energy tax credits that benefit the likes of Tesla).Donald Trump said CBS parent company Paramount paid $16m on Tuesday as part of a lawsuit settlement and that he expects to receive $20m more.Paramount earlier this month agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump over an interview with former vice-president Kamala Harris that the network broadcast in October.“We have just achieved a BIG AND IMPORTANT WIN in our Historic Lawsuit against 60 Minutes, CBS, and Paramount… Paramount/CBS/60 Minutes have today paid $16 Million Dollars in settlement, and we also anticipate receiving $20 Million Dollars more from the new Owners,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.A panel of judges in the US district court in New Jersey declined to permanently appoint Donald Trump’s former lawyer Alina Habba as the state’s top federal prosecutor, according to an order from the court.Habba has been serving as New Jersey’s interim US attorney since her appointment by Trump in March, but was limited by law to 120 days in office unless the court agreed to keep her in place. The US Senate has not yet acted on her formal nomination to the role, submitted by Trump this month.The court instead appointed the office’s number two attorney, Desiree Grace, the order said.Last week, the US district court for the northern district of New York declined to keep Trump’s US attorney pick John Sarcone in place after his 120-day term neared expiration. Sarcone managed to stay in the office after the justice department found a workaround by naming him as “special attorney to the attorney general”, according to the New York Times.Habba’s brief tenure as New Jersey’s interim US attorney included the filing of multiple legal actions against Democratic elected officials.Her office brought criminal charges against US representative LaMonica McIver, as she and other members of Congress and Newark’s mayor, Ras Baraka, tried to visit an immigration detention center.The scene grew chaotic after immigration agents tried to arrest Baraka for trespassing, and McIver’s elbows appeared to make brief contact with an immigration officer.Habba’s office charged McIver with two counts of assaulting and impeding a law enforcement officer. McIver has pleaded not guilty.Habba’s office did not follow justice department rules which require prosecutors to seek permission from the Public Integrity Section before bringing criminal charges against a member of Congress for conduct related to their official duties.Her office also charged Baraka, but later dropped the case, prompting a federal magistrate judge to criticize her office for its handling of the matter.Until March, Habba had never worked as a prosecutor.She represented Trump in a variety of civil litigation, including a trial in which a jury found that Trump had sexually abused writer E Jean Carroll in a New York department store changing room 27 years ago.In 2023, a federal judge in Florida sanctioned Trump and Habba and ordered them to pay $1m for filing a frivolous lawsuit which alleged that Hillary Clinton and others conspired to damage Trump’s reputation in the investigation into Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.Donald Trump has said that the Philippines will pay a 19% tariff rate following the conclusion of a trade deal with the United States.“It was a beautiful visit, and we concluded our Trade Deal, whereby The Philippines is going OPEN MARKET with the United States, and ZERO Tariffs,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after Filipino president Ferdinand Marcos’s visit to the White House.“The Philippines will pay a 19% Tariff. In addition, we will work together Militarily,” Trump wrote, referring to Marcos as “a very good, and tough, negotiator”.On this subject, a US appeals court has declined to lift restrictions imposed by Donald Trump’s administration on White House access by Associated Press journalists after the news organization declined to refer to the body of water long called the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America as he prefers.The full US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit kept in place a 6 June decision by a divided three-judge panel that the administration could legally restrict access to the AP to news events in the Oval Office and other locations controlled by the White House including Air Force One.The DC circuit order denied the AP’s request that it review the matter, setting up a possible appeal to the US supreme court.In a lawsuit filed in February, the AP argued that the limitations on its access imposed by the administration violated the constitution’s first amendment protections against government abridgment of free speech.Trump in January signed an executive order officially directing federal agencies to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. The AP sued after the White House restricted its access over its decision not to use “Gulf of America” in its news reports.The AP stylebook states that the Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. AP said that as a global news agency it will refer to the body of water by its longstanding name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen.Reuters and the AP both issued statements denouncing the access restrictions, which put wire services in a larger rotation with about 30 other newspaper and print outlets. Other media customers, including local news outlets with no presence in Washington, rely on real-time reports by the wire services of presidential statements, as do global financial markets.The Trump administration has said the president has absolute discretion over media access to the White House.The AP won a key order in the trial court when US district judge Trevor McFadden, who was appointed by Trump during his first term, decided that if the White House opens its doors to some journalists it cannot exclude others based on their viewpoints, citing the First Amendment.The DC circuit panel in its 2-1 ruling in June paused McFadden’s order. The two judges in the majority, Neomi Rao and Gregory Katsas, were appointed by Trump during his first term in office. The dissenting judge, Cornelia Pillard, is an appointee of Democratic former president Barack Obama.Further to my last post, the New York Times is defending the Wall Street Journal after the Trump administration decided to bar the global outlet from the White House press pool following its investigative coverage of ties between Donald Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.In the public statement, a Times spokesperson said the White House’s actions represented “simple retribution by a president against a news organization for doing reporting that he doesn’t like”, warning that “such actions deprive Americans of information about how their government operates”.“The White House’s refusal to allow one of the nation’s leading news organizations to cover the highest office in the country is an attack on core constitutional principles underpinning free speech and a free press,” the spokesperson said.“Americans regardless of party deserve to know and understand the actions of the president, and reporters play a vital role in advancing that public interest.”The White House is facing backlash after banning the Wall Street Journal from the press pool set to cover Donald Trump’s upcoming trip to his golf courses in Scotland.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the change was made “due to the Wall Street Journal’s fake and defamatory conduct”, referring to the newspaper’s recent article alleging the US president sent Jeffrey Epstein a 50th birthday letter that included a drawing of a naked woman. The US president promptly sued the paper for $10bn. The WSJ has stood by its reporting.“This attempt by the White House to punish a media outlet whose coverage it does not like is deeply troubling, and it defies the First Amendment,” said Weijia Jiang, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, in a statement to the Guardian. She added:
      Government retaliation against news outlets based on the content of their reporting should concern all who value free speech and an independent media.
      We strongly urge the White House to restore the Wall Street Journal to its previous position in the pool and aboard Air Force One for the President’s upcoming trip to Scotland. The WHCA stands ready to work with the administration to find a quick resolution.
      Jiang said the administration had yet to clarify whether the ban was temporary, or if it was permanently barring Wall Street Journal reporters from the press pool.Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement to CNN:
      It’s unconstitutional — not to mention thin-skinned and vindictive — for a president to rescind access to punish a news outlet for publishing a story he tried to kill.
      But hopefully the Journal reporters who were planning to join Trump for his golf trip are relieved that they can spend their newfound free time investigating more important stories, from Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein to his unprecedented efforts to bully the press.
      It marks the second time the Trump administration has punitively barred a publication from the press pool in this way. Earlier this year the White House banned the Associated Press from the Oval Office, Air Force One and other exclusive access after the outlet declined to use Trump’s new moniker for the Gulf of Mexico. A decision for the administration to control the press pool came shortly after. More

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump tax bill to add $3.4tn to US debt over next decade, new analysis finds

      by

      Donald Trump’s new tax bill will add $3.4tn to the national debt over the next decade, according to new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released Monday.Major cuts to Medicaid and the national food stamps program are estimated to save the country $1.1tn – only a chunk of the $4.5tn in lost revenue that will come from the bill’s tax cuts.The cuts will come through stricter work requirements and eligibility checks for both programs. The CBO estimates the bill will leave 10 million Americans without health insurance by 2034.The bill also makes permanent tax cuts that were first introduced by Republicans in Trump’s 2017 tax bill. The cuts included a reduction in the corporate tax rate, from 35% to 21%, and an increase to the standard deduction. It also includes a tax dedication for workers receiving tips and overtime pay, and removes tax credits that support wind and solar power development, which could ultimately raise energy costs for Americans.Increased costs will also come from boosts to immigration and border security funding. The bill allocates nearly $170bn to immigration law enforcement, including the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency and funding for a wall along the southern border.The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that, with interest, the bill will actually add $4.1tn to the deficit. The US national debt currently stands at more than $36tn.“It’s still hard to believe that policymakers just added $4tn to the debt,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in a statement. “Modelers from across the ideological spectrum universally agree that any sustained economic benefits are likely to be modest, or negative, and not one serious estimate claims this bill will improve our financial situation.”Trump signed the bill into law earlier this month after weeks of debate among congressional Republicans. The bill passed the Senate 51-50 before it passed the House 218-214.While Republicans largely celebrated the bill, with Trump calling it “the most popular bill ever signed in the history of the country”, only a quarter of Americans in a CBS/YouGov poll said that the bill will help their family.Democrats meanwhile universally criticized the bill, with Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee saying that while “the GOP continues to cash their billionaire donors’ checks, their constituents will starve, lose critical medical care, lose their jobs – and yes, some will die as a result of this bill.” More

    • 175 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Carol Moseley Braun, first black female senator: ’Sexism is harder to change than racism’

      by

      “Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton … ”Carol Moseley Braun was riding a lift in the US Capitol building when she heard Dixie, the unofficial anthem of the slave-owning Confederacy during the civil war. “The sound was not very loud, yet it pierced my ears with the intensity of a dog whistle,” Moseley Braun writes in her new memoir, Trailblazer. “Indeed, that is what it was in a sense.”The first African American woman in the Senate soon realised that “Dixie” was being sung by Jesse Helms, a Republican senator from North Carolina. He looked over his spectacles at Moseley Braun and grinned. Then he told a fellow senator in the lift: “I’m going to make her cry. I’m going to sing Dixie until she cries.”But clearly, Moseley Braun notes, the senator had never tangled with a Black woman raised on the south side of Chicago. She told him calmly: “Senator Helms, your singing would make me cry even if you sang Rock of Ages.”Moseley Braun was the sole African American in the Senate during her tenure between 1993 and 1999, taking on legislative initiatives that included advocating for farmers, civil rights and domestic violence survivors, and went on to run for president and serve as US ambassador to New Zealand.In a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian from her home in Chicago, she recalls her history-making spell in office, argues that sexism is tougher to crack than racism and warns that the Democratic party is “walking around in a daze” as it struggles to combat Donald Trump.As for that incident with Helms, she looks back now and says: “I had been accustomed to what we now call microaggressions, so I just thought he was being a jerk.”Moseley Braun was born in the late 1940s in the post-war baby boom. Her birth certificate listed her as “white” due to her mother’s light complexion and the hospital’s racial segregation, a detail she later officially corrected. She survived domestic abuse from her father, who could be “a loving advocate one minute, and an absolute monster the next”, and has been guided by her religious faith.In 1966, at the age of 19, she joined a civil rights protest led by Martin Luther King. She recalls by phone: “He was a powerful personality. You felt drawn into him because of who he was. I had no idea he was being made into a modern saint but I was happy to be there and be supportive.“When it got violent, they put the women and children close to Dr King in concentric circles and so I was close enough to touch him. I had no idea at the time it was going to be an extraordinary point in my life but it really was.”Moseley Braun was the first in her family to graduate from college and one of few women and Black students in her law school class, where she met her future husband. In the 1970s she won a longshot election to the Illinois general assembly and became the first African American woman to serve as its assistant majority leader.But when she planned a historic run for the Senate, Moseley Braun met widespread scepticism. “Have you lost all your mind? Why are you doing this? But it made sense to me at the time and I followed my guiding light. You do things that seem like the right thing to do and, if it make sense to you, you go for it.”Moseley Braun’s campaign team included a young political consultant called David Axelrod, who would go on to be a chief strategist and senior adviser to Obama. She came from behind to win the Democratic primary, rattling the party establishment, then beat Republican Richard Williamson in the general election.She was the first Black woman elected to the Senate and only the fourth Black senator in history. When Moseley Braun arrived for her first day at work in January 1993, there was a brutal reminder of how far the US still had to travel: a uniformed guard outside the US Capitol told her, “Ma’am, you can’t go any further,” and gestured towards a side-entrance for visitors.At the time she did not feel that her trailblazing status conferred a special responsibility, however. “I wish I had. I didn’t. I was going to work. I was going to do what I do and then show up to vote on things and be part of the legislative process. I had been a legislator for a decade before in the state legislature so I didn’t at the time see it as being all that different from what I’d been doing before. I was looking forward to it and it turned out to be all that I expected and more.”View image in fullscreenBut it was not to last. Moseley Braun served only one term before being defeated by Peter Fitzgerald, a young Republican who was heir to a family banking fortune and an arch conservative on issues such as abortion rights. But that did not deter her from running in the Democratic primary election for president in 2004.“It was terrible,” she recalls. “I couldn’t raise the money to begin with and so I was staying on people’s couches and in airports. It was a hard campaign and the fact it was so physically demanding was a function of the fact that I didn’t have the campaign organisation or the money to do a proper campaign for president.“I was being derided by any commentator who was like, ‘Look, this girl has lost her mind,’ and so they kind of rolled me off and that made it hard to raise money, hard to get the acceptance in the political class. But I got past that. My ego was not so fragile that that it hurt my feelings to make me stop. I kept plugging away.”Eventually Moseley Braun dropped out and endorsed Howard Dean four days before the opening contest, the Iowa caucuses. Again, she had been the only Black woman in the field, challenging long-held assumptions of what a commander-in-chief might look like.“That had been part and parcel of my entire political career. People saying: ‘What are you doing here? Why are you here? Don’t run, you can’t possibly win because you’re not part of the show and the ways won’t open for you because you’re Black and because you’re a woman.’ I ran into that every step of the way in my political career.”Since then, four Black women have followed in her footsteps to the Senate: Kamala Harris and Laphonza Butler of California, Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware.Moseley Braun says: “I was happy of that because I was determined not to be the last of the Black women in the Senate. The first but not the last. That was a good thing, and so far the progress has been moving forward. But then we got Donald Trump and that trumped everything.”Harris left the Senate to become the first woman of colour to serve as vice-president, then stepped in as Democrats’ presidential nominee after Joe Biden abandoned his bid for re-election.Moseley Braun comments: “I thought she did as good a job as she could have. I supported her as much as I knew how to do and I’m sorry she got treated so badly and she lost like she did. You had a lot of sub rosa discussions of race and gender that she should have been prepared for but she wasn’t.”Trump exploited the “manosphere” of podcasters and influencers and won 55% of men in 2024, up from 50% of men in 2020, according to Pew Research. Moseley Braun believes that, while the country has made strides on race, including the election of Obama as its first Black president in 2008, it still lags on gender.“I got into trouble for saying this but it’s true: sexism is a harder thing to change than racism. I had travelled fairly extensively and most of the world is accustomed to brown people being in positions of power. But not here in the United States. We haven’t gotten there yet and so that’s something we’ve got to keep working on.”Does she expect to see a female president in her lifetime? “I certainly hope so. I told my little grandniece that she could be president if she wanted to. She looked at me like I lost my mind. ‘But Auntie Carol, all the presidents are boys.’”Still, Trump has not been slow to weaponise race over the past decade, launching his foray into politics with a mix of false conspiracy theories about Obama’s birthplace and promises to build a border wall and drive out criminal illegal immigrants.Moseley Braun recalls: “It was racial, cultural, ethnic, et cetera, backlash. He made a big deal out of the immigration issue, which was racism itself and people are still being mistreated on that score.“They’ve been arresting people for no good reason, just because they look Hispanic. The sad thing about it is that they get to pick and choose who they want to mess with and then they do. It’s too destructive of people’s lives in very negative ways.”Yet her fellow Democrats have still not found an effective way to counter Trump, she argues. “The Democratic party doesn’t know what to do. It’s walking around in a daze. The sad thing about it is that we do need a more focused and more specific response to lawlessness.”Five years after the police murder of George Floyd and death of Congressman John Lewis, there are fears that many of the gains of the civil rights movement are being reversed.Over the past six months Trump has issued executive orders that aim to restrict or eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. He baselessly blamed DEI for undermining air safety after an army helicopter pilot was involved in a deadly midair collision with a commercial airliner. Meanwhile, Washington DC dismantled Black Lives Matter Plaza in response to pressure from Republicans in Congress.None of it surprises Moseley Braun. “It should have been expected. He basically ran on a platform of: ‘I’m going to be take it back to the 1800s. Enough of this pandering and coddling of Black people.’”But she has seen enough to take the long view of history. “This is normal. The pendulum swings both ways. We have to put up with that fact and recognise that this is the normal reaction to the progress we’ve made. There’s bound to be some backsliding.More than 30 years have passed since Moseley Braun, wearing a peach business suit and clutching her Bible, was sworn into the Senate by the vice-president, Dan Quayle. Despite what can seem like baby steps forward and giant leaps back, she has faith that Americans will resist authoritarianism.“I’m very optimistic, because people value democracy,” he says. “If they get back to the values undergirding our democracy, we’ll be fine. I hope that people don’t lose heart and don’t get so discouraged with what this guy’s doing.“If they haven’t gotten there already, the people in the heartland will soon recognise this is a blatant power grab that’s all about him and making a fortune for himself and his family and has nothing to do with the common good. That’s what public life is supposed to be about. It’s public service.” More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      US House passes Trump plan to cut $9bn from foreign aid, public broadcasting

      by

      The US’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed president Donald Trump’s $9bn funding cut to public media and foreign aid early on Friday, sending it to the White House to be signed into law.The chamber voted 216 to 213 in favor of the funding cut package, altered by the Senate this week to exclude cuts of about $400m in funds for the global PEPFAR HIV/Aids prevention program.Only two House Republicans voted against the cut – representatives Brian Fitzpatrick from Pennsylvania and Mike Turner from Ohio – along with Democrats.“We are taking one small step to cut wasteful spending, but one giant leap towards fiscal sanity,” said representative Aaron Bean, a Florida Republican.House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries countered that the funding cut “undermines our ability to keep our people safe here and to project America’s soft power all over the globe”, and argued rural Americans’ access to emergency information on public radio will be diminished.The funding vote was delayed for hours amid Republican disagreements about other legislation, and calls from some members of the party for more government transparency about the deceased convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.To satisfy the Epstein-related concerns without holding up the funding cut bill any longer, Republicans on the House rules committee introduced a resolution that calls for the release of Epstein documents by the US attorney general within 30 days.“It’s a sound, good-faith resolution that ensures protections for victims and innocent witnesses,” said representative Virginia Foxx from North Carolina, the Republican leader of the rules committee.But the top Democrat on the rules panel, representative Jim McGovern from Massachusetts, blasted the resolution as a “glorified press release” because it lacks an enforcement mechanism to make the Justice Department comply.When the chamber finally voted on the funding cut, it was the second close House vote on Trump’s request to claw back the funds previously approved by Democrats and his fellow Republicans in Congress.In June, four Republicans joined Democrats to vote against an earlier version of the rescissions package, which passed 214-212.House Republicans felt extra pressure to pass the Senate version as Trump’s administration would have been forced to spend the money if Congress did not approve the cuts by Friday.The $9bn cut is a small fraction of the country’s $6.8tn federal budget.Republicans say the foreign aid funds previously went to programs they deem wasteful, and they say the $1bn in public media funding supports radio stations and PBS television, which they claim are biased against conservative viewpoints.Prior to the vote in the House, the legislation, known as a rescissions package, was approved by a narrow margin of 51 votes to 48 in the Senate. All Democrats opposed the bill.This week’s funding clawback represents only a tiny portion of all the funds approved by Congress that the Trump administration has held up while it has pursued sweeping cuts.Democratic lawmakers say the administration has blocked more than $425bn of spending approved by Congress since Trump’s second term began in January. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Newsom threatens to redraw California House maps in protest at Texas plan

      by

      Seeking to offset a Republican plan to pick up congressional seats in Texas, California Democrats say they are prepared to redraw the state’s 52 congressional districts in a longshot and controversial effort to pick up Democratic seats.Governor Gavin Newsom, seen as a likely presidential candidate in 2028, has been leading the threat in recent days. And Democratic members of California’s delegation in the US House appear to be on board.“We want our gavels back,” Representative Mark Takano, a California Democrat, told Punchbowl News. “That’s what this is about.” Democrats hold 43 of California’s 52 seats and reportedly believe they can pick up an additional five to seven seats by drawing new maps.Newsom is pushing the plan as Texas Republicans are poised to redraw its 38 congressional districts in a special session that begins next week. Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, put redistricting on the agenda at the request of Donald Trump, who wants Republicans to add five seats in Texas as he seeks to stave off a loss in congressional seats next year. The effort has been widely criticized by Democrats as an anti-democratic ploy to make Republicans unaccountable to their voters.Newsom’s plan in California is unlikely to succeed. More than a decade ago, California voters approved a constitutional amendment that stripped lawmakers of their ability to draw congressional districts and gave it to an independent redistricting commission. Newsom has only offered vague ideas for how to get around that requirement. He has suggested the legislature could call a quick voter referendum to potentially strip the commission of its power. He also said on Wednesday there was a possibility of the legislature trying to enact new maps on its own – a novel legal theory.“It’s not lawful in any way,” said Dan Vicuña, a redistricting expert at the watchdog group Common Cause. “It was clear that this was meant to be done one time after the census, through a public and transparent process that centers community feedback, and then to be not touched again until the next decade.”He added: “It’s not an invitation to them to circumvent the independent process and gerrymander maps in the middle of a decade. That would completely undermine the purpose of the independent process voters approved.”California’s independent commission has long been considered a model for making the process of drawing district lines fairer. There has been a bipartisan push in recent years to get more states to adopt commissions such as California’s, where ordinary citizens – Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated – have the power to draw district lines. After the 2020 census, four states – California, Arizona, Michigan and Colorado – used independent commissions. Democrats sought to require all states to use independent redistricting commissions in federal legislation that stalled in the US Senate during Joe Biden’s presidency.Russell Yee, a Republican who served on California’s commission, said that while he understood Newsom’s frustration, the only solution is redistricting reform at the federal level.“To abandon a commitment to fair and equitable election districts for partisan advantage is to sell family treasures at a pawn shop for a wad of quickly spent cash,” he said.Newsom has noted he supported creating the commission, but frames his willingness to redraw maps as the type of hardball Democrats should be more willing to play as Trump and Republicans have openly defied the law.“They’re playing by a different set of rules. They can’t win by the traditional game so they want to change the game,” Newsom said on Wednesday. “We can act holier than thou. We can sit on the sidelines, talk about the way the world should be. Or we can recognize the existential nature that is this moment.”Alex Lee, a state assemblyman who chairs his chamber’s progressive caucus, rejected that argument. “CA independent citizen redistricting (imperfect) is model for the nation,” he wrote in a post on X. “[Republicans] resort to cheating to win. We win by running clear platform for the working class and delivering.”Trying to push through a redrawing of California’s map could also undermine efforts by Democrats to convince voters of the grave dangers of Trump’s attacks on the rule of law. More