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      ‘Republicans are defunding the police’: Fox News anchor stumps congressman

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      The Fox News anchor Chris Wallace made headlines of his own on Sunday, by pointing out to a senior Republican that he and the rest of his party recently voted against $350bn in funding for law enforcement.“Can’t you make the argument that it’s you and the Republicans who are defunding the police?” Wallace asked Jim Banks, the head of the House Republican study committee.The congressman was the author of a Fox News column in which he said Democrats were responsible for spikes in violent crime.“There is overwhelming evidence,” Banks wrote, “connecting the rise in murders to the violent riots last summer” – a reference to protests over the murder of George Floyd which sometimes produced looting and violence – “and the defund the police movement. Both of which were supported, financially and rhetorically, by the Democratic party and the Biden administration.”Joe Biden does not support any attempt to “defund the police”, a slogan adopted by some on the left but which remains controversial and which the president has said Republicans have used to “beat the living hell” out of Democrats.On Fox News Sunday, Banks repeatedly attacked the so-called “Squad” of young progressive women in the House and said Democrats “stigmatised” law enforcement and helped criminals.“Let me push back on that a little bit,” Wallace said. “Because [this week] the president said that the central part in his anti-crime package is the $350bn in the American Rescue Plan, the Covid relief plan that was passed.”Covid relief passed through Congress in March, under rules that meant it did not require Republican votes. It did not get a single one.Asked if that meant it was “you and the Republicans who are defunding the police”, Banks dodged the question.Wallace said: “No, no, sir, respectfully – wait, sir, respectfully … I’m asking you, there’s $350bn in this package the president says can be used for policing …“Congressman Banks, let me finish and I promise I will give you a chance to answer. The president is saying cities and states can use this money to hire more police officers, invest in new technologies and develop summer job training and recreation programs for young people. Respectfully, I’ve heard your point about the last year, but you and every other Republican voted against this $350bn.”Turning a blind eye to Wallace’s question, Banks said: “If we turn a blind eye to law and order, and a blind eye to riots that occurred in cities last summer, and we take police officers off the street, we’re inevitably going to see crime rise.”Wallace asked if Banks could support any gun control legislation. Banks said that if Biden was “serious about reducing violent crime in America”, he should “admonish the radical voices in the Democrat [sic] party that have stigmatised police officers and law enforcement”.Despite working for Republicans’ favoured broadcaster, Wallace is happy to hold their feet to the fire, as grillings of Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy have shown.He has also attracted criticism, for example for failing to control Trump during a chaotic presidential debate last year which one network rival called “a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck”.Last year, Wallace told the Guardian: “I do what I do and I’m sitting there during the week trying to come up with the best guests and the best show I possibly can and I’m not sitting there thinking about how do we fit in some media commentary.“We’re not there to try to one-up the president or any politician.” More

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      Republicans will ‘move forward’ on infrastructure after Biden veto threat

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      A lead Republican negotiator has welcomed Joe Biden’s withdrawal of his threat to veto a $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure bill unless a separate Democratic spending plan also passes Congress.Senator Rob Portman of Ohio said on Sunday he and fellow Republicans were “blindsided” by Biden’s comment, which the president made on Thursday after he and the senators announced a rare bipartisan compromise on a measure to fix roads, bridges and ports.“I was very glad to see the president clarify his remarks because it was inconsistent with everything that we had been told all along the way,” Portman told ABC’s This Week.Moments after announcing the deal, Biden appeared to put it in jeopardy by saying it would have to move “in tandem” with a larger bill that includes a host of Democratic priorities and which he hopes to pass along party lines.Biden said of the infrastructure bill on Thursday: “If this is the only thing that comes to me, I’m not signing it.”The comments put party pressure on the 11 Republicans in the group of 21 senators who endorsed the infrastructure package. One Republican, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, told Politico Biden had made his group of senators look like “fucking idiots”.Biden issued a statement on Saturday that said he had “created the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to, which was certainly not my intent … The bottom line is this. I gave my word to support the infrastructure plan and that is what I intend to do.”The White House said Biden would tour the US to promote the plan, starting in Wisconsin on Tuesday.“We were glad to see them disconnected and now we can move forward,” Portman said.A key Democrat, the West Virginia centrist Joe Manchin, told ABC he believed the bipartisan proposal could reach the 60 votes needed to become law.“This is the largest infrastructure package in the history of the United States of America,” Manchin said. “And there’s no doubt in my mind that [Biden] is anxious for this bill to pass and for him to sign it. And I look forward to being there when he does.”Manchin also appealed to progressives to support the bill as part of a process which will see Democrats attempt to pass via a simple majority a larger spending bill containing policy priorities opposed by Republicans.“I would hope that all my colleagues will look at [the deal] in the most positive light,” Manchin said. “They have a chance now to review it. It has got more in there for clean infrastructure, clean technology, clean energy technology than ever before, more money for bridges and roads since the interstate system was built, water, getting rid of our lead pipes. It’s connecting in broadband all over the nation, and especially in rural America, in rural West Virginia.”Another Republican, Mitt Romney of Utah, said he trusted Biden. He also delighted in needling Democrats over the separate spending package.“This is a bill which stands on its own,” Romney told CNN’s State of the Union about the infrastructure deal. “I am totally confident the president will sign up if it comes to his desk. The real challenge is whether the Democrats can get their act together and get it on his desk.”Romney said Republicans “are gonna support true infrastructure that doesn’t raise taxes”. Another Republican negotiator, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, told NBC’s Meet the Press he thought the minority leader Mitch McConnell, “will be for it, if it continues to come together as it is”.But, Romney, said, “Democrats want to do a lot of other things and I think they’re the ones that are having a hard time deciding how to proceed.”A leading House progressive, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, told NBC it was “very important for the president to know that … the Democratic caucus is here to ensure that he doesn’t fail.“And we’re here to make sure that he is successful in making sure that we do have a larger infrastructure plan. And the fact of the matter is that while we can welcome this work and welcome collaboration with Republicans … that doesn’t mean that the president should be limited by Republicans, particularly when we have a House majority, we have 50 Democratic senators and we have the White House.“I believe that we can make sure that [Biden] is successful in executing a strong agenda for working families.” More

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      ‘First of all, I’m taller’: AOC dismisses Greene’s ‘little communist’ attack

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has dismissed comments in which the Georgia Republican extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene called her a “little communist” and said she should be locked up, tweeting: “First of all, I’m taller than her.”Greene is a far-right congresswoman and controversialist who was stripped of committee assignments for comments including advocating violence against political opponents. This month, she apologised for comparing public health rules to combat the coronavirus to the Holocaust.Greene has harassed Ocasio-Cortez on Capitol Hill, prompting the prominent progressive to raise concerns for her security and that of others.Greene was speaking on Saturday evening to supporters of Donald Trump at a rally outside Cleveland, staged to bring the former president back to the campaign trail and to target an Ohio Republican who voted for Trump’s second impeachment.Referring to Ocasio-Cortez as “the little communist from New York City”, Greene responded to boos and remarks from the crowd when she said: “Right. Yeah, lock her up too, that’s a good idea.”Chants of “lock her up”, aimed at Hillary Clinton, were a salient and to many observers troubling feature of Trump rallies in the 2016 and 2020 elections.“She’s not an American,” Greene said of Ocasio-Cortez, who was born in the Bronx, to parents born in New York and Puerto Rico. “She really doesn’t embrace our American ways. You want to know why? She has something called the Green New Deal.”Ocasio-Cortez responded with the dismissive tweet.According to another tweet, from 2019, Ocasio-Cortez is 5ft 4in. A CrossFit profile for Greene says she is 5ft 3in.In May, Ocasio-Cortez offered rather more words in response to harassment by Greene in the halls of Congress.According to the Washington Post, two reporters saw Greene shout: “You don’t care about the American people. Why do you support terrorists and antifa?”Speaking to reporters, Ocasio-Cortez referred to the deadly assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters on 6 January.She said: “I refuse to allow young women, people of colour, people who are standing up for what they believe to see this kind of intimidation attempt by a person who supports white supremacists in our nation’s Capitol.“I’m not going to let kids see that we’re going to be intimidated out of our fight for justice.” More

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      Mike Gravel, former Alaska senator and anti-war campaigner, dies aged 91

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      Mike Gravel, a former US senator from Alaska who read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record and confronted Barack Obama about nuclear weapons during a later presidential run, has died. He was 91.Gravel, who represented Alaska as a Democrat from 1969 to 1981, died on Saturday, according to his daughter, Lynne Mosier. Gravel had been living in Seaside, California, and was in failing health, said Theodore W Johnson, a former aide.Gravel’s two terms came during tumultuous years when construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline was authorized and when Congress was deciding how to settle Alaska Native land claims and whether to classify enormous amounts of federal land as parks, preserves and monuments.He had the unenviable position of being an Alaska Democrat when some residents were burning President Jimmy Carter in effigy for his measures to place large sections of public lands in the state under protection from development.Gravel feuded with Alaska’s other senator, Republican Ted Stevens, on the land matter, preferring to fight Carter’s actions and rejecting Stevens’ advocacy for a compromise. In the end, Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, a compromise that set aside millions of acres for national parks, wildlife refuges and other protected areas. It was one of the last bills Carter signed before leaving office.Gravel’s tenure also was notable for his anti-war activity. In 1971, he led a one-man filibuster to protest the Vietnam-era draft and he read into the Congressional Record 4,100 pages of the 7,000-page leaked document known as the Pentagon Papers, the Defense Department’s history of the country’s early involvement in Vietnam.Gravel re-entered national politics decades after his time in the Senate to twice run for president. Gravel, then 75, and his wife, Whitney, took public transportation in 2006 to announce he was running for president as a Democrat in the 2008 election ultimately won by Obama.He launched his quest for the 2008 Democratic nomination as a critic of the Iraq war.“I believe America is doing harm every day our troops remain in Iraq – harm to ourselves and to the prospects for peace in the world,” Gravel said. He hitched his campaign to an effort that would give all policy decisions to the people through a direct vote, including health care reform and declarations of war.Gravel garnered attention for his fiery comments at Democratic forums. In one 2007 debate, the issue of the possibility of using nuclear weapons against Iran came up, and Gravel confronted Obama, then a senator from Illinois.“Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?” Gravel said.Obama replied: “I’m not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike.“Gravel ran as a Libertarian after he was excluded from later debates. In an email to supporters, he said the Democratic party “no longer represents my vision for our great country”.“It is a party that continues to sustain war, the military-industrial complex and imperialism – all of which I find anathema to my views,” he said.He failed to get the Libertarian nomination.Gravel briefly ran for the Democratic nomination in 2020. He again criticized American wars and vowed to slash military spending. His last campaign was notable in that both his campaign manager and chief of staff were just 18 at the time.“There was never any … plan that he would do anything more than participate in the debates. He didn’t plan to campaign, but he wanted to get his ideas before a larger audience,” Johnson said.Gravel failed to qualify for the debates. He endorsed Vermont senator Bernie Sanders in the contest eventually won by now-President Joe Biden.Gravel was born Maurice Robert Gravel in Springfield, Massachusetts on 13 May 1930. In Alaska, he served as a state representative, including a stint as House speaker, in the mid-1960s. He won his first Senate term after defeating incumbent Ernest Gruening, a former territorial governor, in the 1968 Democratic primary.Gravel served two terms until he was defeated in the 1980 primary by Gruening’s grandson, Clark Gruening, who lost the election to Republican Frank Murkowski. More

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      in Elections

      ‘I need a drink’ after Republican talks, says officer beaten in Capitol attack

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      A Washington police officer who suffered a heart attack and a brain injury after being beaten by Trump supporters during the deadly Capitol attack emerged from meeting House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy on Friday to tell reporters: “I need a drink.”“This experience for me is not something that I enjoy doing,” Michael Fanone said. “I don’t want to be up here on Capitol Hill. I want to be with my daughters.”Ten Republicans in the House voted to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the attack on 6 January. But Trump was acquitted in the Senate and under McCarthy the House caucus has remained in line behind the former president and his lie that his defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud.Fanone, of the Washington Metropolitan police, rushed to the Capitol when the mob attacked. Beaten and hit with a stun gun, he has since become a leading voice seeking accountability.He visited McCarthy on Friday with Harry Dunn, a member of the US Capitol police, and Gladys Sicknick, the mother of Brian Sicknick, a Capitol police officer who died after the attack.Fanone said he asked the minority leader to “denounce the 21 House Republicans that voted against the gold medal bill”, a move by Congress to recognise the bravery of those who fought to defend it.He also said he asked McCarthy to publicly disavow a comment by Andrew Clyde, a congressman from Georgia who claimed the mob were as well-behaved as tourists.“I found those remarks to be disgusting,” said Fanone, who said earlier this month Clyde refused to talk to him when confronted on Capitol Hill.“I also asked [McCarthy] to publicly denounce the baseless theory that the FBI was behind the 6 January insurrection,” Fanone said.Tucker Carlson, a primetime Fox News host, is among those who have spread that conspiracy theory.McCarthy “said he would address it at a personal level, with some of those members,” Fanone said. “I think that as the leader of the House Republican party, it’s important to hear those denouncements publicly.”McCarthy did not comment. Earlier in the week, the minority leader said Fanone had not attempted to schedule a meeting. Fanone said that was “bullshit”.Some rioters sought lawmakers, including then Vice-President Mike Pence, to capture or kill. Some brought weapons and explosives to Washington. This week the attorney general, Merrick Garland, said 500 people have been arrested. Christopher Wray, the FBI director, said there are “hundreds more investigations still ongoing”.Nonetheless, last month Senate Republicans blocked the formation of an independent, 9/11-style investigatory commission. On Thursday Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House speaker, said she would form a select committee.Dunn told reporters McCarthy “did commit to taking [the committee] serious, once he heard from the speaker about it”.Fanone said he saw his efforts “as an extension of my service on 6 January”. More

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      Biden reaches bipartisan infrastructure deal after meeting with senators

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      Joe Biden announced on Thursday that “we have a deal”, signaling a bipartisan agreement on a $953bn infrastructure plan that would achieve his top legislative priority and validate his efforts to reach across the political aisle.Biden made a surprise appearance in front of the cameras with members of the group of senators, Republicans and Democrats, after an agreement was reached on Thursday. Details of the deal were scarce to start, but the pared-down plan, with $559bn in new spending, has rare bipartisan backing and could open the door to the president’s more sweeping $4tn proposals later on.The president said not everyone got what they wanted and that other White House priorities would be done separately in a congressional budget process known as reconciliation.“We’ve struck a deal,” Biden then tweeted. “A group of senators – five Democrats and five Republicans – has come together and forged an infrastructure agreement that will create millions of American jobs.”The senators have struggled over how to pay for the new spending but left for the White House with a sense of confidence that funding issues had been addressed.Biden’s top aides had met with senators for back-to-back meetings on Capitol Hill and later huddled with the House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer.The agreement comes with a complex legislative push. Pelosi on Thursday welcomed the bipartisan package, but she warned that it must be paired with the president’s bigger goals now being prepared by Congress under a separate so-called the budget reconciliation process.“This is important,” Pelosi said. “There ain’t going to be a bipartisan bill without a reconciliation bill.” The Democratic leader vowed the House would not vote on it until the Senate had dealt with both packages.The major hurdle for a bipartisan agreement has been financing. Biden demanded no new taxes on anyone making less than $400,000, while Republican lawmakers were unwilling to raise taxes beyond such steps as indexing the gasoline tax to inflation. Biden has sought $1.7tn in his American Jobs Plan, part of nearly $4tn in broad infrastructure spending on roads, bridges and broadband internet but also including the so-called care economy of child care centers, hospitals and elder care.With Republicans opposed to Biden’s proposed corporate tax rate increase, from 21% to 28%, the group has looked at other ways to raise revenue. Biden rejected their idea to allow gas taxes paid at the pump to rise with inflation, viewing it as a financial burden on American drivers.The broad reconciliation bill would likely include tax increases on the wealthy and corporations, so a tension still exists over funding for some Republicans and business groups.According to a White House readout of the Wednesday meeting with Schumer and Pelosi, the leaders talked with acting budget director Shalanda Young, National Economic Council director Brian Deese and Domestic Policy Council director Susan Rice, and they discussed the two-track approach – the smaller bipartisan deal now emerging and the more sweeping plan of Democratic priorities.Schumer said the leaders “support the concepts” they have heard from the bipartisan negotiations.The Democratic leaders also insisted on the two-part process ahead, starting with initial votes in July to consider the bipartisan deal and to launch the lengthy procedure for the Democrats’ proposal, now drafted at nearly $6tn t.The Democrats’ bigger proposal would run through the budget reconciliation process, which would allow passage of Biden’s priorities by majority vote, without the need for support from Republicans to overcome the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. It would require multiple rounds of voting that are likely to extend into fall.Like Pelosi, Schumer said, “One can’t be done without the other.” More

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      Don’t despair over the Senate: a new voting rights law has never been closer | David Litt

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      This week, the For the People Act – the most sweeping voting-rights legislation in more than 50 years – came before the United States Senate, a place known, especially to itself, as “world’s greatest deliberative body”. Yet Republican senators refused to even debate the measure. Despite having the support of every member of the Democratic majority – a group of 50 senators that represents 40 million more constituents than their Republican counterparts – the bill failed to reach the 60-vote threshold for breaking a filibuster. It didn’t even come close.Given the stakes, it’s hardly surprising that some have rushed to portray For the People Act’s failure to pass the Senate as a political setback, a strategic misstep, or a presidency-defining blunder.To understand why American democracy still has a fighting chance, it’s important to consider three major developmentsBut such doomsday thinking ignores the big picture. Of course democracy advocates are disappointed – in theory, the Senate just blew a big chance to protect the republic from the greatest onslaught of authoritarianism the United States has ever faced. In practice, however, no voting-rights bill was ever going to pass the Senate on the first try. The important question has never been whether the For the People Act will win over 10 Republicans. The question is whether 50 Democrats can be convinced to end or alter the filibuster and then pass the For the People Act via a simple majority vote.Seen through this lens, this week’s vote was a step forward, not backward. Major voting-rights legislation has never been closer to becoming law.To understand why American democracy still has a fighting chance – and better-than-ever odds of prevailing – it’s important to consider three major developments, none of which was guaranteed when Democrats took the Senate with the slimmest of majorities six months ago.The first is that, despite President Trump’s attempt to overturn a legitimate election, his party’s unwillingness to stop him, and a well-funded campaign to turn voters against the For the People Act, democracy remains popular with the American people. According to one recent poll, 71% of Americans believe in-person early voting should be made easier, 69% support establishing national guidelines for voting, and a majority support expanding vote-by-mail as well.Thanks to a smart compromise proposal from Senator Joe Manchin, Democrats have even robbed Republicans of their one popular (if disingenuous) talking point in the debate over elections: support for voter ID. Mitch McConnell, the Koch political organization, and their conservative allies were hoping to turn voting rights into a political liability for Democrats, thus encouraging their members to drop the subject. Instead, the opposite has occurred. Continuing the fight to protect democracy is the right thing to do – and for Democratic senators, it’s the politically sensible thing to do as well.The moral and political case for protecting democracy has only been made more urgent by Republican overreach since the election. This wasn’t inevitable. In the wake of a closer-than-expected presidential race, and surprising strength in the House, state and local Republicans could have decided to appeal to moderate voters and enjoy their existing structural advantages, such as a rightwing majority on the supreme court and a large head start in the 2020 round of redistricting.Instead, Republicans doubled down on Trump’s authoritarian impulses. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, 389 bills restricting voting have been put forward in 48 states. These bills go far beyond previous voter suppression efforts, ensuring lengthy, public court battles and risking a backlash. Already, voting-restriction laws such as the one passed in Georgia have proven so audacious and so egregious that some of America’s largest corporations – who are rarely keen to criticize the GOP’s top priorities – have come out against them.In the face of threats that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago, Americans may yet save their democracyThe business community lending its support to voting rights, even in the abstract, has in turn given on-the-fence Democrats more room to maneuver. West Virginia’s Manchin, one of the filibuster’s most ardent defenders, joined voting-rights negotiations by proposing a version of the For the People Act he believes ought to receive substantial bipartisan support – and strongly implying he’ll consider reforming the filibuster if his proposal does not receive the support he thinks it deserves. Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, another filibuster holdout, has signaled a willingness to debate the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, even as she defends it. That leaves open the possibility that she may, eventually, support some kind of reform.Even some Republicans have inched, however slowly and subtly, toward supporting voting rights. While the Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski didn’t vote to break the filibuster against the For the People Act, she went out of her way to say that she supported certain key aspects of the bill. If the filibuster were no longer an impediment – if democracy advocates were trying to get to 51 rather than 61 – Murkowski’s vote would probably be in play. As recently as 4 January, when Republicans seemed likely to hold the Senate, the idea of a sweeping, bipartisan bill to end voter suppression and expand voting rights seemed wildly far-fetched. Today, it’s distinctly possible.Of course, just because something is possible does not make it likely. Democrats are racing against the clock. Campaign season will soon be upon us. Given the age of many in their caucus, there’s a chance Democrats’ Senate majority will be cut grimly short by a premature retirement or death. Manchin, Sinema and other lawmakers hoping to be prodded toward progress risk being too clever by half.But on the other hand, the slow-but-steady approach might just work – if activists continue to apply public pressure; if state-level GOP politicians continue to egregiously attack the vote; if public attention remains focused on the health of our democracy; if 50 Democrats reach a compromise that preserves the filibuster while allowing life-and-death legislation to pass. None of these things is certain to happen. But none of them is outside the realm of possibility. And all of them are more likely in the wake of this week’s vote.The path we’re on will never bring the sweeping, triumphant, day-one change that Democrats like me hoped for in the weeks before the election. But, in the face of threats that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago, Americans may yet save their democracy. And saving democracy would be more than good enough.
      David Litt is a former Obama speechwriter and New York Times bestselling author, and writes the newsletter How Democracy Lives More