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Militia attack groups want to ‘blow up Capitol’, police chief warns – video
In alarming testimony to a House subcommittee, the acting chief of Capitol police, Yogananda Pittman, said threats were circulating that directly targeted Joe Biden’s first formal speech to a joint session of Congress – the date of which has not yet been announced.
Militia groups involved in the 6 January insurrection want to stage another attack aiming to ‘blow up’ the complex and kill lawmakers, Pittman has warned
Capitol attack groups want to ‘blow up Capitol’ during Biden speech, police warn More - in Elections
Capitol attack groups want to ‘blow up Capitol’ during Biden speech, police warn
Militia groups involved in the 6 January insurrection want to stage another attack around Joe Biden’s upcoming address to Congress, aiming to “blow up” the complex and kill lawmakers, the acting chief of the US Capitol police has warned.In alarming testimony to a House subcommittee, Yogananda Pittman said that threats were circulating that directly targeted the president’s first formal speech to a joint session of Congress. A date for the event has not yet been announced.“We know that members of the militia groups that were present on Jan 6 have stated their desires that they want to blow up the Capitol and kill as many members as possible,” Pittman said.The police chief’s warning was made in the context of her trying to justify to Congress why exceptional security measures put in place in the wake of the 6 January assault needed to remain until alternatives could be devised. A large area around the Capitol is still surrounded by a 7ft non-scalable fence, and thousands of National Guard members continue to be deployed.“Based on that information, we think that it’s prudent that Capitol Police maintain its enhanced and robust security posture until we address those vulnerabilities going forward,” she said.Her words are also likely to be taken seriously as a clear indication of the ongoing threat posed by the armed militia members who took part in the storming of the Capitol in which five people died and almost 140 police officers were injured. Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter and military veteran, was shot and killed by a Capitol police officer.Several of the most prominent armed militia and extremist groups in the US were at the forefront of the Capitol riot. The assault followed an incendiary rally by Donald Trump to promote his “big lie” that the November election was stolen from him by Biden.A number of militia members have been arrested and charged as part of the giant federal investigation into the events of 6 January. In an indictment handed down last week against six alleged members of the Oath Keepers militia, the justice department charged that the group had planned for several months to prevent Congress from certifying the electoral college results of the presidential election.Several members of the far-right Proud Boys have also been charged with criminal conspiracy.This week’s congressional hearings are the start of what is expected to be a slew of official investigations into the drastic security failures that gave rise to the breach of the Capitol complex. In her testimony Pittman confirmed that some 800 rioters had entered the building and that the total number who were present amounted to as many as 10,000.Pittman has stepped up to lead the Capitol police force after the chief at the time of the storming, Steven Sund, resigned days after the catastrophe. In his evidence to Congress earlier this week, Sund said: “These criminals came prepared for war”.The FBI and other law enforcement agencies are tracking closely far-right online chatter for early warnings on any possible repeat attacks in Washington or other cities. In addition to Biden’s upcoming congressional address, law enforcement will also be on alert on the days leading up to 4 March – the date set by the extreme conspiracy theory QAnon for Trump to return to Washington to start a second term as president.Followers of the crank movement have been growing increasingly agitated by the fantasy around Trump’s comeback on 4 March, the date on which US presidents were originally inaugurated. More
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'We shouldn't still be fighting for equal rights': LGBTQ+ bill faces tough battle ahead
Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterThe US House of Representatives voted to pass a landmark bill that would establish federal anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people, setting up a tough battle in the Senate to turn the proposal into law. “We shouldn’t still be having to fight for equal rights,” said Nic Talbott, a 27-year-old Ohio resident, who was forced to abandon his plans of joining the military due to Donald Trump’s ban on trans service members. “We should be able to go to work, find housing and just live our lives without having to worry about whether or not we’re going to be excluded just for being transgender or gay.”The Equality Act passed the Democratic-led House in a 224-206 vote, with three Republicans joining the Democrats. The bill amends existing civil rights laws to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation and provides clear legal protections for transgender and queer people in employment, housing, education, public accommodations, federally funded programs and other sectors.But the proposal’s future is uncertain. Joe Biden has said signing the bill into law is one of his top priorities, but it first has to clear the Senate, where GOP lawmakers could block the legislation with a filibuster. The Equality Act builds on the landmark US supreme court ruling last year prohibiting employment discrimination against LGBTQ+ workers. Biden has already issued executive orders to defend trans rights, undoing some of Trump’s anti-LGBTQ+ policies and directing federal departments to follow the guidance of the supreme court decision. But advocates say the Equality Act is vital because it would enshrine protections into law beyond employment, and prevent future administrations from rolling back anti-discrimination rules.The act would be particularly significant for LGBTQ+ residents in the 27 states that do not have anti-discrimination laws on the books for trans and queer people, where it is legal to deny them housing based on their identities.“Legislation like this is crucial for shifting the tides for trans folks, especially in red states,” said Aria Sa’id, the executive director of the Compton’s Transgender Cultural District, a community group in San Francisco. Trans people flee to California from other states where they have fewer rights or access to services, she said: “We’re coming from other places in the US where we are not safe. We come to San Francisco for refuge … We should be protected in the law no matter where we live.”The Equality Act fight comes amid unprecedented attacks on trans rights in the US and overseas. Republican lawmakers in at least 20 states are currently pushing local bills targeting trans people, backed by rightwing groups. Many of the bills seek to block trans-affirming healthcare or ban trans youth and adults from certain spaces, including by prohibiting them from using the correct bathroom or participating in sports teams that match their gender.Some extremist GOP members of Congress have supported those efforts and have been promoting misinformation and transphobic hate speech this week as the House debated the Equality Act.David B Cruz, a constitutional law professor at University of California, Los Angeles, said federal protections would, in effect, make it illegal for states to enforce discriminatory rules meant to exclude trans people. The Equality Act would also make it harder for the supreme court, which has become more conservative since last year’s ruling, to carve out trans rights in the next LGBTQ+ discrimination case it reviews, he said.Legislation like this is crucial for shifting the tides for trans folks, especially in red states“It would be a monumental achievement,” said Cruz. “It’s not always simple or easy for people to enforce their statutory rights, but even having a federal law that expressly protects those rights on the books, by itself will deter discrimination against LGBTQ+ people.” It would help disrupt “cycles of poverty, due to anti LGBTQ+ prejudice”, he added.Some Republican legislators are vocally opposing the act by citing concerns about religious freedoms. But Cruz noted that a super-majority of Americans in every state support anti-discrimination laws for LGBTQ+ people, including a majority of Republican voters.Khloe Rios-Wyatt, the president at Alianza Translatinx, a Latinx trans rights group in Orange county, California, said she faced discrimination for being trans when she was terminated from her first job out of college: “It can be traumatizing. You lose your income and then you’re facing potential homelessness.”She said she regularly talks to trans people who were denied housing even though they qualified: “You show up in person and they tell you it’s no longer available. It breaks my heart and it has to change.”Bamby Salcedo, the president of the TransLatin@ Coalition in Los Angeles, noted that 2020 was the deadliest year on record for violence against trans and gender non-conforming people, the majority people of color. While the Equality Act could make a difference for the broader LGBTQ+ community, it would not end discrimination for trans people, she said.“The reality is that even in California and places that are super progressive, trans people continue to experience discrimination while trying to obtain employment, housing, healthcare and the basic things we need to exist … There is still a lot of work that needs to be done.”There are at least nine LGBTQ+ members in the House and two in the Senate, and supporters in Congress spoke of their trans and queer family members while championing the bill. Polling released earlier this week confirmed that more Americans than ever before now identify as LGBTQ+. More
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Bernie Sanders: US sick of subsidizing 'starvation wages' at Walmart and McDonald's
US taxpayers should not be “forced to subsidize some of the largest and most profitable corporations in America”, Bernie Sanders told a Senate hearing on Thursday.As Congress debates the first rise in the minimum wage in over a decade, the Vermont senator said he had “talked to too many workers in this country who, with tears in their eyes, tell me the struggles they have to provide for their kids on starvation wages” even as the chief executives of companies including McDonald’s, Walmart and others take home multi-million dollar pay packages.Executives from Walmart and McDonald’s were invited to the hearing, titled Should Taxpayers Subsidize Poverty Wages at Large Profitable Corporations?They declined to appear.The senators heard from low-wage workers from McDonald’s and Walmart. Terence Wise, a McDonald’s employee from Kansas City, Missouri, said his low pay had led to his family becoming homeless.“My family has been homeless despite two incomes. We’ve endured freezing temperatures in our purple minivan. I’d see my daughter’s eyes wide open, tossing and turning, in the back seat. Try waking up in the morning and getting ready for work and school in a parking lot with your family of five,” said Wise.“That’s something a parent can never forget and a memory you can never take away from your children. You should never have multiple jobs in the United States and nowhere to sleep.”Sanders cited a government accountability office (GAO) report that found nearly half of workers who make less than $15 an hour rely on public assistance programs that cost taxpayers $107bn each year.Walmart spent $8.3bn on stock buybacks in 2017, the Walton family, the chain’s founders, are worth over $200bn and have increased their wealth by $50bn since the start of the pandemic, said Sanders. And yet the company “cannot afford to pay its workers at least $15 an hour”.“If Walmart thinks they’re going to avoid answering that question because they’re not here today, they’re deeply mistaken. The American people are sick and tired of subsidizing the wealthiest family in America,” said Sanders.The hearing comes at a tense moment for minimum wage advocates. Joe Biden campaigned on a pledge to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour from its current level of $7.25. The proposal is part of his $1.9tn Covid stimulus package.But that package faces stiff opposition from in the Senate with the Republican minority set to vote against it and some Democrats opposing the wage rise.A recent Congressional Budget Office concluded 27 million Americans would be affected by an increase in the minimum wage to $15, and that 900,000 would be lifted out of poverty. But the CBO also said the increase would lead to 1.4m job losses and increase the federal budget deficit by $54bn over the next 10 years. The Economic Policy Institute, and others, have called the report “wrong, and inappropriately inflated”.Republican Senator Mike Bruin told the hearing that an increase would be unfair on states with a lower cost of living and would hurt small businesses.“We need to slow it down,” he said. “The main result is you are going to hurt Main Street,” he said. More
The US Senate Is a Global Problem
Watching the Senate conduct the second impeachment trial of former US President Donald Trump brought back a flood of memories from high school. I distinctly remember an earlier incarnation of those Trump-friendly Republican senators taking up their positions at the back of class to snicker, yawn ostentatiously and otherwise disrupt the serious, well-researched presentations of their fellow students. Then, when it was their turn to present, the back-row rowdies were so embarrassingly unprepared that it was hard not to laugh in return.
The slavish devotion of the Senate miscreants to their imperiled leader and their casual dismissal of the January 6 violence, meanwhile, was like a modern-day replay of that grade-school classic “The Lord of the Flies.” In the Senate version, Trump played the part of the pig’s head, Josh Hawley was the pathological Jack, and Mitt Romney was the hopelessly conflicted Ralph who escaped the violence of the mob only thanks to the timely intervention of Officer Eugene Goodman, who stepped in at the last moment just like the British naval officer at the novel’s conclusion.
The Texas Crisis: Tilting at Windmills
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Finally, the acquittal of the former president was like the slap on the hand administered to one of my school’s handsome star athletes for one of his many transgressions. Boys will be boys, Trump will be Trump and, alas, Mitch McConnell will be perpetually “a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack.”
The display of juvenile behavior during the Senate trial was nauseating, and the verdict was an embarrassment. But the Senate poses a much more serious problem than even this impeachment circus suggests.
When it comes to global issues, the Senate has been an enormous impediment to achieving peace, justice and environmental sustainability. More so even than the US president, the Senate has been the chief engine of American exceptionalism. It’s grimly fitting, then, that it has struck out twice in its duty to convict the supreme avatar of exceptionalism in modern American politics, a president who believed himself above democracy, above morality and above the law.
Senate Power
Senators love to call their chamber the “world’s greatest deliberative body.” It’s where the most seasoned politicians, partially protected from the insane election cycle that their House counterparts must face, can mull over the most important issues of the days.
It’s also a glaring example of the inequities of US democracy, with the two senators from Wyoming (population: 578,000) wielding the same power as the two senators from California (population: 39 million). Senate elections have tilted US politics in favor of rural, predominantly white and increasingly conservative voters by a factor of two or three over urban voters. Like the Electoral College, the Senate makes a mockery of the “one-person, one-vote” principle by effectively giving some voters much greater power than others.
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But the Senate is a far bigger problem because of its oversized role in shaping U.S. foreign policy. Presidents have considerable leeway in conducting foreign policy, as the rollout of executive orders over the last years has made plain. Presidents can pull the country in and out of international bodies and multilateral agreements. They can slap tariffs on countries and sanctions on foreign individuals. Despite the limitations of the War Powers Act, they can still wage war for a full two months without any congressional interference.
But the Constitution gives the Senate the sole power to approve, by a two-thirds majority, any treaties that the United States might be considering. As with the filibuster, however, this treaty power has as much influence in its threatened use as in its actual deployment.
Consider the example of the 2015 Paris climate accord. The reason why all the national commitments to reduce carbon emissions are voluntary rather than mandatory is the US Senate. Secretary of State John Kerry, the US negotiator in Paris at the time, insisted on voluntary commitments because he knew that any mandatory requirements would need Senate approval. And the climate deniers in the Senate were sure to nix any such agreement.
The Iran nuclear deal is, similarly, an agreement, not a treaty. This distinction allowed the Obama administration to secure congressional support short of the two-thirds majority required for a treaty. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — also known as the Iran deal — relies on various verification protocols to ensure compliance, not the signatures of the participating parties.
These workarounds are more the rule than the exception. According to one academic study, US presidents negotiated nearly 4,000 executive agreements between 1977 and 1996 but only 300 treaties. Whether you consider these maneuvers to be an unacceptable short-circuiting of checks and balances or a reasonable method of overcoming the American exceptionalism of the Senate has largely depended on which side of the aisle you sit.
The Graveyard of International Cooperation
The Senate is where international treaties go to die. Currently awaiting the “advice and consent” of the body are 37 treaties, beginning with an International Labor Organization convention protecting the right to organize trade unions, which has been hanging out in the Senate for more than 70 years.
Or consider the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), which has been ratified by 162 countries. The United States participated in the international conferences in the 1970s that produced this critical document that covers all aspects of maritime borders, navigation and commerce. US negotiators under three successive administrations — Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter — were instrumental in crafting the language of the working text. After Ronald Reagan’s administration balked at some of the provisions, negotiators even amended the final version to reflect some of the US concerns. But the Reagan administration still wouldn’t sign the agreement.
It would take the collapse of the Soviet Union, certain changes on the ground (actually, on the seabed) and a new administration (Bill Clinton) to bring UNCLOS to the Senate. The late and decidedly not great Jessie Helms said no for he held fast to his position that no foreign entity should impinge on US sovereignty. Lest you think this was a partisan issue, the George W. Bush administration subsequently pushed hard for the Senate to ratify the convention with the support of all living former legal advisers of the State Department. This time, despite the efforts of then-Senator Joe Biden, a different minority of hard-line Republicans, including Jeff Sessions, thwarted the bipartisan campaign.
The United States generally abides by this important convention, so what’s the big deal? As a non-signatory, however, the US cannot participate in key commissions, such as the one on the limits of the continental shelf, where it could otherwise advance its interests or push a conservation agenda. If that irritates you, don’t send your letters of complaint to the United Nations. Send them to the Senate.
The Senate has been a crowded graveyard for arms control initiatives. There you can find gravestones for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), various nuclear-weapon-free zones and the Arms Trade Treaty (which Trump dramatically unsigned in 2019). The CTBT has been signed by 185 countries, but it won’t go into effect until eight specific nations ratify it (including the United States). The Arms Trade Treaty has entered into force, so it is only dead to the US, which is problematic since America is the leading arms exporter in the world by a large margin. The resurrection of these treaties is, of course, possible, but only if the composition of the Senate were to change dramatically.
The Senate also stands in the way of the United States participating in the strengthening of international law and the prosecuting of war criminals — by blocking ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The Senate stands in the way of preserving what remains of the world’s precious biodiversity — by blocking ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Senate stands in the way of upholding the human rights of large swathes of the global population — by blocking treaties on disability rights, on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and on a variety of labor rights.
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.custom-post-from .error{ display: block; color: #ff6461; order: 3 !important;}The Senate is also not above exercising its power on seemingly trivial matters. It has refused, for instance, to support a treaty that protects albatrosses and petrels. Jeez, hasn’t anyone in the Senate read “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”?
Of course, the Senate has displayed its remarkable intransigence in ways that go well beyond its advice-and-consent function on treaties. During the previous administration, among the 250 bills that the House passed and that McConnell blocked in the Senate were several immigration bills (the Dream Act, a measure to protect Venezuelans from deportation), several environmental bills (blocking drilling in the Arctic National Refuge, banning offshore drilling in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico), and a measure to provide visas to Kurds who supported US forces in Syria.
Reform the Senate?
Those who hope to reform the Senate have focused on changes to the rules. With the exception of certain bills, the threat of filibuster has made the Senate even less reflective of popular will by turning a simple majority into a 60-vote wall into which the Democrats are likely to crash into repeatedly over the next two to four years.
“Dear centrist Democrats, you couldn’t even get 10 GOP votes to convict the guy who sent a mob to kill you all. You think you can get them to vote on issues like immigration/climate? Come on,” immigrant rights activist Erika Andiola has tweeted. “You have to end the filibuster and use every tool at your disposal to get things done.”
It’s a good point, but why not think big? What about eliminating the Senate altogether? Roughly half of the world’s sovereign nations have only one legislative body. Plenty of these unicameral systems are democratic, including Costa Rica, Denmark, Greece, South Korea, New Zealand and Norway.
Yes, I know, the smaller US states would put up even more resistance to the elimination of the Senate than they have to the proposed elimination of the Electoral College. Such an upending of the finely balanced compromises of the Founding Fathers would generate yowls of protest from constitutional literalists. Who could ever contemplate such a radical amendment?
Victor Berger, that’s who. In 1911, the Wisconsin congressman introduced a resolution in the House to abolish the Senate. Berger was also the first socialist elected to Congress, so he was accustomed to taking contrarian positions. His proposed amendment to the Constitution began thus:
“Whereas the Senate in particular has become an obstructive and useless body, a menace to the liberties of the people, and an obstacle to social growth; a body, many of the Members of which are representatives neither of a State nor of its people, but solely of certain predatory combinations, and a body which, by reason of the corruption often attending the election of its Members, has furnished the gravest public scandals in the history of the nation…”
Those public scandals have continued all the way up to last weekend’s acquittal of a rogue president. Oh, Victor Berger, who will take up your mantle today?
*[This article was originally published by FPIF.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Texas Republican hypocrisy over federal aid is nothing new – ask Flyin' Ted Cruz | Lloyd Green
Texas has been hit by a disaster of its own making and its Republican office holders expect the rest of the US to pay to clean up the mess. To quote Dana Bash of CNN questioning Michael McCaul, a veteran GOP congressman, on Sunday: “That’s kind of rich, don’t you think?”
For all of their bravado and anti-government rhetoric, in the aftermath of calamities like last week’s deep freeze Lone Star Republicans make a habit of passing the plate. Their suffering is ours too.
But when the shoe is on the other foot, they begrudge kindness to others. Said differently, Ted Cruz is merely a grotesque illustration, not an exception.
Take a walk down memory lane. In October 2012, Hurricane Sandy hammered New York and New Jersey. As the north-east reeled, Texas Republicans stood back, treating the region as if it were another country. As if the civil war had not ended.
After the turn of the year, Cruz, his fellow senator John Cornyn and 23 of two-dozen Texas Republicans in the House gave a thumbs down to Sandy aid. Less reflexively hostile heads prevailed. The relief bill cleared Congress. But the GOP’s Texans had left their mark.
Peter King, then a Republican representative from Long Island, understood malice and stupidity when he saw it. He called for a halt to donations to Republicans who opposed rescuing sister states.
“These Republicans have no problem finding New York when they’re out raising millions of dollars,” King said. “What they did last night was put a knife in the back of New Yorkers and New Jerseyans. It was an absolute disgrace.”
But Cruz in particular is nothing if not performative, ever Janus-faced. After Hurricane Harvey slammed Houston in 2017, he offered this explanation for his vote four years earlier: Sandy relief had become “a $50bn bill that was filled with unrelated pork”.
Cruz also intoned: “What I said then and still believe now is that it’s not right for politicians to exploit a disaster when people are hurting to pay for their own political wish list.”
Other than possibly Cruz’s long-suffering wife, it is unclear whether anyone believed Flyin’ Ted even then.
Cruz may have flown home alone, leaving his family in Cancun, but he is not alone among Texas Republicans in hating Blue America. He is just the most notorious. Unlike congressman Louie Gohmert, Cruz went to Princeton and Harvard. He should and likely does know better.
In 2019, as part of Donald Trump’s overhaul of the tax laws, Kevin Brady, a Texan then chair of the House ways and means committee, virtually eliminated the deductibility of state and local taxes from federal tax returns, in order to pay for an upper-bracket and corporate giveaway. New York and New Jersey are still feeling the bite.
Under Trump, the economy failed to pass 3% growth annually and a much-touted manufacturing renaissance failed to appear. Covid made a bad situation worse.
And now, lo and behold, Texas is forced, cap in hand, to pucker up to a Democratic House, Senate and White House. Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader and a native of Brooklyn, must be suppressing a smile.
To be sure, the federal government and Congress must help Texas. No ifs, ands or buts. Joe Biden is treating the state a whole better than Trump did Puerto Rico. That’s a good thing.
Innocent lives have been lost and upended in the name of retrograde ideology masked as policy. Real people, families and business have been destroyed. Climate change denial comes with a high human cost. Standing apart from the national electric grid isn’t independence. It is a death wish by another name.
Confederacy 2.0.
Alexander Stephens, vice-president of the breakaway states, summed up this attitude in 1861: “If Charleston harbor needs improvement, let the commerce of Charleston bear the burden. If the mouth of the Savannah River has to be cleared out, let the sea-going navigation which is benefited by it, bear the burden.”
Sounds familiar?
Other than when it came to repelling Abraham Lincoln, the Confederacy was not a mutual assistance pact. Before this latest man-made debacle, Republicans were dreaming of drowning government in a bathtub. Hopefully, in Texas that may change. More - in US Politics
Merrick Garland vows to target white supremacists as attorney general
At his Senate hearing on Monday, attorney general nominee Merrick Garland will pledge to prosecute “white supremacists and others” who attacked the US Capitol on 6 January, in support of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his election defeat.The pledge was contained in Garland’s opening testimony for the session before the Senate judiciary committee, released on Saturday night.“If confirmed,” Garland said, ‘I will supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol on 6 January – a heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government.”Five people including a police officer died as a direct result of the attack on the Capitol, before which Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” against the result of the presidential election. Trump lost to Joe Biden by 306-232 in the electoral college and by more than 7m ballots in the popular vote. More than 250 participants in the Capitol riot have been charged. As NPR reported, “the defendants are predominantly white and male, though there were exceptions. “Federal prosecutors say a former member of the Latin Kings gang joined the mob, as did two Virginia police officers. A man in a ‘Camp Auschwitz’ sweatshirt took part, as did a Messianic Rabbi. Far-right militia members decked out in tactical gear rioted next to a county commissioner, a New York City sanitation worker, and a two-time Olympic gold medalist.”In his testimony, Garland made reference to his role from 1995 to 1997 in supervising the prosecution of the perpetrators of the Oklahoma City Bombing, a white supremacist atrocity in which 168 people including 19 children were killed.Trump was impeached for a second time on a charge of inciting an insurrection but was acquitted after only seven Republicans joined Democrats in the Senate in voting to convict, 10 short of the majority needed.“It is a fitting time,” Garland said, “to reaffirm that the role of the attorney general is to serve the rule of law and to ensure equal justice under the law.”The 68-year-old federal appeals judge was famously denied even a hearing in 2016 when Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell blocked him as Barack Obama’s third pick for the supreme court.Biden’s selection of Garland for attorney general is seen as a conciliatory move in a capital controlled by Democrats but only by slim margins, the Senate split 50-50 with Vice-President Kamala Harris the tie-breaking vote.In his testimony, Garland said he would be independent from Biden, being sure to “strictly regulate communication with the White House” and working as “the lawyer … for the people of the United States”.Trump pressured his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to do his bidding, then saw his second, William Barr, largely do so, running interference on the investigation of Russian election interference and ties between Trump and Moscow. If confirmed, Garland will face sensitive decisions over matters including Trump, now exposed to criminal and civil investigation, and Hunter Biden, the new president’s son whose tax affairs are in question as he remains a target for much of the right.Some on the left have expressed concern that Garland might be too politically moderate. Black Lives Matter founder LaTosha Brown, for example, told the Guardian: “My concern is that he does not have a strong civil rights history … even when Obama nominated him, one of the critiques was that he was making a compromise with what he thought was a ‘clean’ candidate to get through.”In his testimony, Garland said justice department civil rights work must be improved.“Communities of colour and other minorities still face discrimination in housing, education, employment, and the criminal justice system,” he said, “and bear the brunt of the harm caused by pandemic, pollution, and climate change.”Garland is expected to be confirmed. More
