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      Democrats plan to unveil legislation to expand the US supreme court by four seats

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterDemocrats are planning to introduce a bill to expand the supreme court – proposing to add four justices to the US’s highest court.Senator Ed Markey, and representatives Jerrold Nadler, Hank Johnson and Mondaire Jones plan to present their legislation Thursday at a news conference. The measure would expand the number of justices from nine to 13, according to Reuters, which reviewed a copy of the bill in advance of it being released publicly. Although Joe Biden announced a commission to study supreme court expansion and reform, the politically incendiary question of changing the court is unlikely to be approved.Progressives have been pushing to expand the supreme court, after Donald Trump’s three appointees tilted the judicial body sharply to the right. One of the positions that Trump filled was a seat that Republicans had blocked his predecessor, Barack Obama, from filling in 2016 – arguing that the winner of that year’s election should choose whom to nominate for the vacant. But last year, Republicans reversed course – rushing to approve ultra-conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett weeks before the 2020 election.Discussions over reforming the court have taken on new urgency in recent months as the court is poised to address key questions on voting rights, reproductive rights and environmental protections.Who agrees that we should expand the Supreme Court?— Ed Markey (@EdMarkey) April 15, 2021
      Republicans and many moderate Democrats have opposed the idea of expanding the court, or what they sometimes call “court packing”.The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said the idea of expanding the court was “a direct assault on our nation’s independent judiciary and yet another sign of the Far Left’s influence over the Biden administration”.Biden has not taken a clear position on expansion. In the past, he has said he’s “not a fan” of the idea.Last week, he created a bipartisan, 36-member commission aimed at studying the history of the court and analyzing the potential consequences to altering its size. The commission is lead by Bob Bauer, the former White House counsel for Obama, and Cristina Rodriguez, a Yale Law School professor who served as deputy assistant attorney general in Obama’s Office of Legal Counsel. But it is unclear what the impact for the commission would be – as it is not required to produce definitive recommendations. More

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      Clyburn offers Manchin history lesson to clear Senate path for Biden reforms

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      Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip, said on Sunday he intends to give Joe Manchin a lesson in US history as he attempts to clear a path for Joe Biden on voting rights and infrastructure.Manchin, a moderate Democratic senator from West Virginia, has emerged as a significant obstacle to the president’s ambitious proposals by insisting he will not vote to reform or end the Senate filibuster, which demands a super-majority for legislation to pass, to allow key measures passage through the 50-50 chamber on a simple majority basis.His stance has drawn praise from Republicans: Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, hailed Manchin as the politician “almost singlehandedly preserving the Senate”.But Democrats appear to be losing patience – and none more vociferously than Clyburn.“I’m going to remind the senator exactly why the Senate came into being,” Clyburn, from South Carolina, told CNN’s State of the Union, refreshing criticism of Manchin that has included saying he feels “insulted” by his refusal to fully embrace voting rights reform.“The Senate was not always an elective office. The moment we changed and made it an elective office [was because] the people thought a change needed to be made.“The same thing goes for the filibuster. The filibuster was put in place to extend debate and give time to bring people around to a point of view. The filibuster was never put in place to suppress voters … It was there to make sure that minorities in this country have constitutional rights and not be denied.”Clyburn has assailed Manchin for promoting a bipartisan approach to voting rights and refusing to endorse the For the People Act, a measure passed by the US House and intended to counter restrictive voting laws targeting minorities proposed by Republicans in 47 states and passed in Georgia last month.“You’re going to say it’s more important for you to protect 50 Republicans in the Senate than for you to protect your fellow Democrat’s seat in Georgia? That’s a bunch of crap,” Clyburn told Huffpost this month, referring to Senator Raphael Warnock’s 2022 re-election battle that supporters feel has become much harder due to the new voting laws.On Sunday Clyburn also reached into history to repeat his contention that the Georgia law is “the new Jim Crow”, a claim repeated by Biden but which Republicans say is unfair.“When we first started determining who was eligible to vote and who was not,” Clyburn said, “they were property owners. They knew that people of colour, people coming out of slavery did not own property.“…And then they went from that to having disqualifiers. And they picked those offences that were more apt to be committed by people of colour to disqualify voters.“The whole history in the south of putting together those who are eligible to vote is based upon the practices and the experiences of people based upon their race. So, I would say to anybody, ‘Come on, just look at the history … and you will know that what is taking place today is a new Jim Crow. It’s just that simple.”Despite the urging of Clyburn and others, Manchin remains steadfast in his belief bipartisanship is Biden’s best path to implementing his agenda. In a CNN interview last week, the senator said the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol “changed me”, and said he wanted to use his power as a swing vote in the 50-50 Senate “to make a difference” by working with Republicans and Democrats.“Something told me, ‘Wait a minute. Pause. Hit the pause button.’ Something’s wrong. You can’t have this many people split to where they want to go to war with each other,” he said, of watching a riot mounted by supporters of Donald Trump seeking to overturn his election defeat on the grounds it was caused by voter fraud – a lie without legal standing.Manchin said he had a good relationship with the White House and wanted to meet Warnock and Georgia’s other Democratic senator, Jon Ossoff, to discuss voting rights.On Sunday, Clyburn said the riot also had “a tremendous effect” on him.“When I saw that Capitol policeman complain about how many times he was called the N-word by those people, who were insurrectionists out there, when I see [the civil rights leader] John Lewis’s photo torn to pieces and scattered on the floor, that told me everything I need to know about those insurrectionists, and I will remind anybody who reflects on 6 January to think about these issues as well,” he said.Clyburn was among the first major figures to endorse Biden last year, helping nurse him through bleak times after rejections in early primaries.The congressman has Biden’s ear and in an interview with the Guardian in December promised to keep pressure on his friend to fulfill a promise in his victory speech directed to African Americans: “They always have my back, and I’ll have yours.”“I think he will,” Clyburn said. “I’m certainly going to work hard to make sure that he remembers that he said it.” More

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      ‘Dumb son of a bitch’: Trump attacks McConnell in Republican donors speech

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      Donald Trump devoted part of a speech to Republican donors on Saturday night to insulting the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. According to multiple reports of the $400,000-a-ticket, closed-press event, the former president called the Kentucky senator “a dumb son of a bitch”.Trump also said Mike Pence, his vice-president, should have had the “courage” to object to the certification of electoral college results at the US Capitol on 6 January. Trump claims his defeat by Joe Biden, by 306-232 in the electoral college and more than 7m votes, was the result of electoral fraud. It was not and the lie was repeatedly thrown out of court.Earlier, the Associated Press reported that it obtained a Pentagon timeline of events on 6 January, which showed Pence demanding military leadership “clear the Capitol” of rioters sent by Trump.Trump did nothing and around six hours passed between Pence’s order and the Capitol being cleared. Five people including a police officer died and some in the mob were recorded chanting “hang Mike Pence”. More than 400 face charges.In his remarks at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Saturday, amid a weekend of Republican events in Florida, some at Trump properties, the former president also mocked Dr Anthony Fauci.“Have you ever seen somebody who is so full of crap?“ Trump reportedly said about the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Joe Biden’s top medical adviser who was a key member of Trump’s coronavirus taskforce.Trump also said Covid-19 vaccines should be renamed “Trumpcines” in his honour.According to Politico, the attack on McConnell concerned the senator’s perceived failure to defend Trump with sufficient zeal in the impeachment trial which followed the Capitol riot.Trump, who told supporters to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell”, was charged with inciting an insurrection. He was acquitted when only seven Republican senators voted to convict, not enough to reach the super-majority needed. McConnell voted to acquit, then excoriated Trump on the Senate floor.Of the certification of the election result on 6 January, according to the Washington Post, Trump said: “If that were [Chuck] Schumer [the Democratic Senate leader] instead of this dumb son of a bitch Mitch McConnell, they would never allow it to happen. They would have fought it.”Trump also attacked McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, who was transportation secretary until she resigned over the Capitol riot, just before the end of Trump’s term.“I hired his wife,” Trump said, according to the Post. “Did he ever say thank you?”He also ridiculed her decision to resign – “She suffered so greatly,” the Post reported him saying, his “voice dripping with sarcasm” – and said he had won her husband’s Senate seat for him.Trump has attacked McConnell before, in February calling him a “dour, sullen and unsmiling political hack”. On Saturday night he also reportedly called him a “stone cold loser”. McConnell did not immediately comment.The former president remains barred from social media over the Capitol riot but he retains influence and has begun to issue endorsements for the 2022 midterms. Most have been in line with the party hierarchy, including backing Marco Rubio, a Florida senator and former presidential rival many expected would attract a challenge from Trump’s daughter Ivanka.Trump’s acquittal in his second impeachment left him free to run for the White House. He regularly tops polls of Republican voters regarding possible candidates for 2024. On Saturday night, he reportedly left that possibility undiscussed.On Sunday morning, the Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson was asked if Trump’s remarks – and their reported enthusiastic reception by party donors and leaders – helped or hindered the Republican cause.“Anything that’s divisive is a concern,” Hutchinson told CNN’s State of the Union, “and is not helpful for us fighting the battles in Washington and at the state level.“In some ways it’s not a big deal what he said. But at the same time whenever it draws attention, we don’t need that. We need unity, we need to be focused together, we have … slim numbers in Washington and we got battles to fight, so we need to get beyond that.”At Mar-a-Lago, the Post said, the former president told Republicans to stick together.“We can’t have these guys that like publicity,” he said. More

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      ‘Putin-style democracy’: how Republicans gerrymander the map

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      Republicans believe they have a great chance to win control of the US House of Representatives in 2022, needing a swing of about six seats to depose Nancy Pelosi as speaker and derail Joe Biden’s agenda.To help themselves over the top, they are advancing voter suppression laws in almost every state, hoping to minimize Democratic turnout.But Republicans are also preparing another, arguably more powerful tool, which experts believe could let them take control of the House without winning a single vote beyond their 2020 tally, or for that matter blocking a single Democratic voter.That tool is redistricting – the redrawing of congressional boundaries, undertaken once every 10 years – and Republicans have unilateral control of it in a critical number of states.“Public sentiment in 2020 favored Democrats, and Democrats retained control of the House of Representatives,” said Samuel Wang, a professor of neuroscience and director of the Princeton gerrymandering project. “[But] because of reapportionment and redistricting, those factors would be enough to cause a change in control of the House even if public opinion were not to change at all.”While redistricting gives politicians in some states the opportunity to redraw political boundaries, reapportionment means there are more districts to play with. After each US census, each of the 50 states is awarded a share of the 435 House seats based on population. States gain or lose seats in the process.The threat of extreme gerrymandering is more acute today than it has ever beenOwing to population growth, Republican states including Texas, Florida and North Carolina are expected to gain seats before 2022, although the breakdown has not been finalized, with the 2020 census delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.Republican-controlled legislatures will have the power to wedge the new districts almost wherever they see fit, with a freedom they would not have enjoyed only 10 years ago, owing to a pair of controversial supreme court rulings.“The threat of extreme gerrymandering is more acute today than it has ever been because of the combination of an abandonment of oversight by the courts and the Department of Justice, combined with new supercomputing powers,” said Josh Silver, director of Represent.us. The non-partisan group issued a report this month warning that dozens of states “have an extreme or high threat of having their election districts rigged for the next decade”.“Frankly,” Silver said, “what we’re seeing around gerrymandering by the authoritarian wing of the Republican party is part of the Putin-style managed democracy they are promoting – that combination of voter suppression and gerrymandering.”Rules for who controls redistricting vary from state to state. The process can involve state legislatures acting alone, governors or independent commissions. Maps are meant to stand for 10 years, although they are subject to legal challenges that can result in their being thrown out.The new Republican gerrymandering efforts are expected to focus on urban areas in southern states that are home to a disproportionate number of voters of color – meaning those voters are more likely to be disenfranchised.In Texas, mapmakers could try to add districts to the growing population centers of Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth without increasing representation of the minority and Democratic voters who account for that growth. In Florida they might add Republican voters to a growing Democratic district north of Orlando. In North Carolina, where the Democratic governor is shut out of the process, Republican mapmakers might seek to add a district in the Democratic-leaning Research Triangle, in a way that elects more Republicans.Republicans could also seek to repay voters of colors in Atlanta who boosted Biden to victory and drove the defeat of two Republican senators in special elections in Georgia in January, by cracking and packing those voters into new districts.“Republicans could net pick up one seat by rearranging the lines around Black people and other Democrats in the Atlanta area,” Wang said.Racial gerrymandering – or using race as the central criterion for drawing district lines, as opposed to party identification or some other signifier – remains vulnerable to federal court challenges, unlike gerrymandering along partisan lines, which was declared “beyond the reach of the federal courts” by the supreme court chief justice, John Roberts, in 2019.A separate decision by Roberts’s court, in Shelby County v Holder from 2013, is seen as adding to the likelihood of gerrymandering. The ruling released counties with acute histories of racial discrimination against voters from federal oversight imposed by the 1965 Voting Rights Act. That means that in 2021, some southern legislators will draw district boundaries without such oversight for the first time in 50 years.‘Much more national awareness’Potential legal challenges aside, the success of Republican mapmakers is not a given. Turnout in future elections – higher or lower – could foil expectations based on historic patterns. The partisan mix of voters in any district can change unpredictably. And stretching a map to wring out an extra seat could leave incumbents vulnerable.Public awareness of such anti-democratic efforts has grown, said Wang, since a 2010 Republican effort called Redmap harvested dozens of “extra” seats.“There’s much more national awareness of gerrymandering,” Wang said. “And citizen groups are now much more in the mix than they were 10 years ago.”Silver said the gerrymandering threat has redoubled the urgency of advancing voting rights legislation that passed the US House but has stalled in the Senate.“This is why we have to pass the For the People Act, which is federal legislation that with one pen stroke by the president would create independent commissions in all 50 states, end voter suppression and restore representative democracy in the United States,” he said.“We have to stop gerrymandering, or there will be no representative democracy in America, period – only preordained and symbolic election results.” More

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      Republican ‘attacks’ on corporations over voting rights bills are a hypocritical sham | Robert Reich

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      For four decades, the basic deal between big American corporations and politicians has been simple. Corporations provide campaign funds. Politicians reciprocate by lowering corporate taxes and doing whatever else corporations need to boost profits.The deal has proven beneficial to both sides, although not to the American public. Campaign spending has soared while corporate taxes have shriveled.In the 1950s, corporations accounted for about 40% of federal revenue. Today, they contribute a meager 7%. Last year, more than 50 of the largest US companies paid no federal income taxes at all. Many haven’t paid taxes for years.Both parties have been in on this deal although the GOP has been the bigger player. Yet since Donald Trump issued his big lie about the fraudulence of the 2020 election, corporate America has had a few qualms about the GOP.After the storming of the Capitol, dozens of giant corporations said they would no longer donate to the 147 Republican members of Congress who objected to the certification of Biden electors on the basis of the big lie.Then came the GOP’s wave of restrictive state voting laws, premised on the same big lie. Georgia’s are among the most egregious. The chief executive of Coca-Cola, headquartered in the peach tree state, calls those laws “wrong” and “a step backward”. The chief executive of Delta Airlines, Georgia’s largest employer, says they’re “unacceptable”. Major League Baseball decided to take its annual All-Star Game away from the home of the Atlanta Braves.The basic deal between the GOP and corporate America is still very much aliveThese criticisms have unleashed a rare firestorm of anti-corporate Republican indignation. The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, warns corporations of unspecified “serious consequences” for speaking out. Republicans are moving to revoke MLB’s antitrust status. Georgia Republicans threaten to punish Delta by repealing a state tax credit for jet fuel.“Why are we still listening to these woke corporate hypocrites on taxes, regulations and antitrust?” asks the Florida senator Marco Rubio.Why? For the same reason Willie Sutton gave when asked why he robbed banks: that’s where the money is.McConnell told reporters corporations should “stay out of politics” but then qualified his remark: “I’m not talking about political contributions.” Of course not. Republicans have long championed “corporate speech” when it comes in the form of campaign cash – just not as criticism.Talk about hypocrisy. McConnell was the top recipient of corporate money in the 2020 election cycle and has a long history of battling attempts to limit it. In 2010, he hailed the supreme court’s Citizens United ruling, which struck down limits on corporate political donations, on the dubious grounds that corporations are “people” under the first amendment to the constitution.“For too long, some in this country have been deprived of full participation in the political process,” McConnell said at the time. Hint: he wasn’t referring to poor Black people.It’s hypocrisy squared. The growing tsunami of corporate campaign money suppresses votes indirectly by drowning out all other voices. Republicans are in the grotesque position of calling on corporations to continue bribing politicians as long as they don’t criticize Republicans for suppressing votes directly.The hypocrisy flows in the other direction as well. The Delta chief criticized the GOP’s voter suppression in Georgia but the company continues to bankroll Republicans. Its Pac contributed $1,725,956 in the 2020 election, more than $1m of which went to federal candidates, mostly Republicans. Oh, and Delta hasn’t paid federal taxes for years.Don’t let the spat fool you. The basic deal between the GOP and corporate America is still very much alive.Which is why, despite record-low corporate taxes, congressional Republicans are feigning outrage at Joe Biden’s plan to have corporations pay for his $2tn infrastructure proposal. Biden isn’t even seeking to raise the corporate tax rate as high as it was before the Trump tax cut, yet not a single Republicans will support it.A few Democrats, such as West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, don’t want to raise corporate taxes as high as Biden does either. Yet almost two-thirds of Americans support the idea.The basic deal between American corporations and American politicians has been a terrible deal for America. Which is why a piece of legislation entitled the For the People Act, passed by the House and co-sponsored in the Senate by every Democratic senator except Manchin, is so important. It would both stop states from suppressing votes and also move the country toward public financing of elections, thereby reducing politicians’ dependence on corporate cash.Corporations can and should bankroll much of what America needs. But they won’t, as long as corporations keep bankrolling American politicians. More

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      ‘Clear the Capitol’: Pence plea amid riot retold in dramatic Pentagon document

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      A previously undisclosed document prepared by the Pentagon for internal use reveals dramatic new details about how authorities sought to quell the attack on the Capitol on 6 January and re-establish order – and how such help took agonising hours in coming.Two hours after the Capitol was breached, as supporters of Donald Trump pummelled police and vandalised the building, Vice-President Mike Pence tried to assert control. In an urgent phone call to the acting defense secretary, he issued a startling demand.“Clear the Capitol,” Pence said.The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, were making a similarly desperate appeal, asking the army to deploy the national guard.“We need help,” Schumer said, more than an hour after the Senate chamber had been breached.At the Pentagon, officials were discussing reports that state capitals were facing violence in what had the makings of a national insurrection.“We must establish order,” said Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, in a call with Pentagon leaders. But order would not be restored for hours.The Pentagon document was obtained by the Associated Press. It adds another layer of understanding about the fear and panic while the insurrection played out, lays bare the inaction by Trump, and shows how his refusal to call off his supporters contributed to a slowed response by the military and law enforcement.It shows that intelligence missteps, tactical errors and bureaucratic delays were eclipsed by the government’s failure to comprehend the scale and intensity of a violent uprising by its own citizens.With Trump not engaged, it fell to Pentagon officials, a handful of senior White House aides, the leaders of Congress and Pence, holed up in a secure bunker, to attempt to manage the chaos.Along with hours of sworn testimony, the Pentagon document provides a still incomplete picture about how the insurrection advanced with such swift and lethal force, interrupting the congressional certification of Joe Biden as president and delaying the peaceful transfer of power.Five people, including a police officer, died as a direct result of the riot. More than 400 people have been charged. Lawmakers, still protected by national guard troops, will hear from the inspector general of the Capitol police this week.“Any minute that we lost, I need to know why,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, chair of the Senate rules committee, which is investigating the siege, said last month.The Pentagon document provides a timeline that fills in some gaps.Just before noon on 6 January, Trump told supporters at a rally near the White House they should march to the Capitol. The crowd was at least 10,000 strong. By 1.15pm, the procession was well on its way. Some immediately became violent, busting through barriers and beating up officers who stood in their way.At 1.49pm, as violence escalated, the then Capitol police chief, Steven Sund, called Maj Gen William Walker, commander of the DC national guard, to request assistance. Sund’s voice was “cracking with emotion”, Walker later told a Senate committee. Walker immediately called army leaders to inform them of the request.Twenty minutes later, around 2.10pm, rioters broke through the doors and windows of the Senate. They marched through the halls in search of lawmakers counting electoral votes. Alarms announced a lockdown.Sund asked for at least 200 guard members “and more if they are available”. But no help was immediately on the way. The Pentagon document details nearly two hours of confusion and chaos as officials attempted to work out a response.By 4.08pm, as rioters roamed the Capitol yelling for Pence to be hanged, the vice-president called Christopher Miller, the acting defense secretary, to demand answers. The call lasted only a minute. Pence asked for a deadline for securing the building.Trump broke his silence at 4.17pm, tweeting that his followers should “go home and go in peace”. By about 4.30pm, the military plan was finalized. Reports of state capitals breached turned out to be bogus.At about 4.40pm, Pelosi and Schumer were again on the phone with Gen Milley and Pentagon leaders. The congressional leadership “accuse[d] the national security apparatus of knowing that protesters planned to conduct an assault on the Capitol”, the Pentagon timeline says.The call lasted 30 minutes, including a discussion of intelligence failures. It would be another hour before the first 155 national guard members arrived. Dressed in riot gear, they started moving out the rioters. There were few if any arrests.At 8pm, the Capitol was declared secure. More

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      Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw ‘virtually blind’ after eye surgery

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      The Texas Republican congressman Dan Crenshaw said on Saturday that he had undergone eye surgery and would be “effectively blind” for a month.Crenshaw, 37, is a veteran of the elite navy Seals force. He lost his right eye and sustained damage to his left eye in Afghanistan in 2012, when a bomb exploded.“The blast from 2012 caused a cataract, excessive tissue damage, and extensive damage to my retina,” Crenshaw said in a statement. “It was always a possibility that the effects of the damage to my retina would resurface, and it appears that is exactly what has happened.”Crenshaw said the retina to his left eye was found to be detaching after he went to an ophthalmologist because of dark, blurry vision, and that he underwent surgery on Friday.“The surgery went well, but I will be effectively blind for about a month,” according to Crenshaw.Crenshaw, a staunch conservative who has stoked controversy on the national stage, was re-elected in November representing Texas’ 2nd district, in the Houston area. More

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      ‘Truth will prevail’: Matt Gaetz takes break from scandal to speak at Trump club

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      The Florida congressman Matt Gaetz insisted on Friday “the truth will prevail” over allegations of sex trafficking and illegal drug use which have pitched him into the centre of a congressional scandal.Reaching for Trumpian rhetoric at the Trump National Doral Miami golf course, the Republican told an event organised by Women for America First: “I know this. Firebrands don’t retreat, especially when the battle for the soul of our country calls.”Women for America First helped stage a rally near the White House on 6 January where Donald Trump told supporters to fight to overturn his election defeat. A crowd attacked and breached the US Capitol. Five people died, including a police officer.Gaetz supported Trump’s attempts to overturn the election and offered to resign from Congress and defend the former president in his subsequent impeachment. The offer was not taken up and Trump was acquitted.The New York Times reported this week that in the final weeks of the Trump administration, Gaetz sought a blanket pre-emptive pardon. It was not forthcoming.Late last month, Gaetz floated retiring from Congress after a third term and entering conservative TV. That prospect seems to have receded.Multiple reports have linked the 38-year-old to an ally indicted on a federal sex trafficking charge and for other offences. Gaetz is reportedly being investigated for paying women for sex, for possibly trafficking a 17-year-old girl and for sharing nude images of women with colleagues in the US House. His ally, former tax collector Joel Greenberg, is reported to be nearing a deal with prosecutors.On Friday, the House ethics committee said it was opening an investigation. In a statement, the committee said it was aware of allegations Gaetz may have engaged in “sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift, in violation of House Rules, laws, or other standards of conduct.”Gaetz denies all allegations and has claimed he is the victim of attempted extortion. He has hired lawyers who have defended Trump and Eric Schneiderman, a New York state attorney general who stepped down amid allegations of violence towards women.Speaking to a small crowd on Friday, Gaetz said: “Big government, big tech, big business, big media – they’d all breathe a sigh of relief if I were no longer in the Congress fighting for you.”That was Republican boilerplate but most Republicans, including Trump, have stayed silent on the affair. Gaetz has attacked Republicans who do not support Trump. On Thursday Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois representative who voted to impeach the former president, called for Gaetz to resign.In Florida, Gaetz said the media “lie about me because I tell the truth about them, and I’m not gonna stop. So when you see the leaks and the lies and the falsehoods and the smears, when you see the anonymous sources and insiders forecasting my demise, know this. They aren’t really coming for me. They’re coming for you. I’m just in the way.”He also said he would not “be intimidated by a lying media … The truth will prevail.”The New York Times said: “A number of current and former congressional officials have described … occasions when Mr Gaetz smelled of marijuana on the House floor or shared videos and images of women with whom he claimed to be having sex.” More