US Congress

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares42 Views

      in US Politics

      White House announces federal worker layoffs as shutdown nears third week

      by

      The White House announced layoffs of federal workers on Friday, making good on a threat it had made in response to the US government shutdown, which now appears set to stretch into a third straight week.Russell Vought, the director of the White House office of management and budget, wrote on social media that “RIFs have begun”, referring to the government’s reduction-in-force procedure to let employees go.While Vought provided no details on the departments and agencies at which the layoffs were taking place, a treasury spokesperson said notices had been distributed within the department. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told the Guardian that layoffs would also happen at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. And a union representing federal workers confirmed that members at the Department of Education would also be affected by the reduction in force.Union leaders warned the layoffs would have “devastating effects” on services relied upon by millions of Americans, and pledged to challenge the moves in court.“It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country,” said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents 800,000 federal and DC government workers.Vought had warned that federal agencies could slash jobs if the government shuts down, but the Trump administration largely held off after funding lapsed last week. Asked at a press conference before Vought’s announcement why no layoffs had occurred, the top Senate Republican, John Thune, signaled they would happen soon.“The White House has now for 10 days laid off doing anything in hopes that enough Senate Democrats would come to their senses and do the right thing and fund the government,” he said.View image in fullscreen“My expectation is, yes, they’re going to start making some decisions about how to move money around, which agencies and departments are going to be impacted, which programs are going to be impacted, which employees are going to be impacted. That’s what a shutdown does.”The AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, responded to Vought’s post on Friday, saying: “America’s unions will see you in court.”Last week, the AFGE and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) filed for a temporary restraining order to block the Trump administration from carrying out any reductions in force (RIFs) during the shutdown. The unions filed an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order on Friday, following Vought’s post.Lee Saunders, president of the AFSCME, said: “These mass firings are illegal and will have devastating effects on the services millions of Americans rely on every day. Whether it’s food inspectors, public safety workers, or the countless other public service workers who keep America running, federal employees should not be bargaining chips in this administration’s political games.“By illegally firing these workers, the administration isn’t just targeting federal employees, it’s hurting their families and the communities they serve every day. We will pursue every available legal avenue to stop this administration’s unlawful attacks on public service workers’ freedoms and jobs.”Congressional Democrats have refused to vote for a Republican-backed bill to restore funding unless it includes an array of healthcare-centered concessions. After holding seven unsuccessful votes on the parties’ spending bills, the Senate’s Republican leaders have put the chamber in recess until next Tuesday, meaning the standoff is unlikely to be resolved before then.The layoffs came on the same day government employees received only a partial paycheck covering the final days of September but not the beginning of October, since appropriations lapsed at the start of the month.At a Friday-morning press conference, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, blasted Senate Democrats for not supporting the GOP’s bill, which passed his chamber on a near party-line vote.If the government is not reopened by next Wednesday, US military personnel are set to miss a paycheck.“This is the last paycheck that 700,000 federal workers will see until Washington Democrats decide to do their job and reopen the government,” Johnson said.View image in fullscreen“Starting next week, American service members, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, are going to miss a full paycheck. If Democrats don’t end this shutdown by Monday, then that October 15 date will pass us by.”Johnson has kept the House out of session throughout the shutdown in an effort to pressure Senate Democrats into supporting the Republican funding proposal. Earlier this week, a group of House Democrats sent the speaker a letter asking him to allow a vote on legislation that would ensure US troops get paid during a shutdown, but Johnson has refused to bring lawmakers back to Washington.The Senate has become a chokepoint in the funding battle because any legislation needs at least 60 votes to advance in the chamber. In exchange for their support, Democratic senators are demanding that premium tax credits for Affordable Care Act health plans be extended beyond their end-of-the-year expiration date.They are also seeking safeguards against Donald Trump’s rescissions of congressionally approved funding, a restoration of money for public media outlets, and an undoing of cuts to the Medicaid healthcare program for poor and disabled Americans.Max Stier, the president and CEO of the non-profit Partnership for Public Service, condemned the gridlock’s impact on government workers.“It is wrong to make federal employees suffer because our leaders in Congress and the White House have failed to keep our government open and operational,” Stier said.“Our air traffic controllers, VA nurses, smoke jumpers and food inspectors are not responsible for this government shutdown, and they shouldn’t bear the financial burden created by the failures of our elected officials. The irony is that members of Congress and senior White House leaders are continuing to be paid.”Earlier this week, on 7 October, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to provide specifics on the status of any layoff plans, the affected agencies and whether any federal employees have been recalled back to work to carry out layoffs, by Friday, 10 October.A report by the Center for American Progress on 30 September argued that a government shutdown limits the ability of the Trump administration to carry out firings, citing guidance from the office of management and budget that admitted any permanent layoffs need to have been initiated before the shutdown began.“Constraints on permanently firing federal employees during a shutdown largely exist because of the Antideficiency Act and the distinction between ‘shutdown furloughs’ that happen during a lapse in congressional appropriations and ‘administrative furloughs’, which are department and agency procedures on how to permanently let staff go, including – for example – through a RIF,” the report, authored by Greta Bedekovics, associate director of democracy policy at the Center for American Progress, states. “The Trump administration’s threats to layoff federal employees should be understood as a goal of the administration that will be pursued with or without a government shutdown and should not drive lawmakers’ decisions on whether to support government funding bills.”Shrai Popat contributed additional reporting More

    • 213 Shares67 Views

      in US Politics

      Who will run against Trump in 2028? Please step forward now – don’t wait | David Kirp

      by

      The Democratic politicians on the national scene, charged with leading the opposition, continue to bring a butterknife to the ongoing gunfight that is US politics under Donald Trump. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, comes across as a weary grandpa, glasses perched halfway down his nose as he reads his script in sleep-inducing monotone. Quick – who’s the minority leader of the House? You get bonus points if you can identify Hakeem Jeffries. Charismatic he is not.What’s to be done?Democrats cannot afford to play possum and wait for Trump to implode, as onetime political guru James Carville urged in a New York Times opinion piece. That won’t be Trump’s fate – his boast that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without losing any voters isn’t far off the mark.Barack Obama could go toe-to-toe with Trump. He’s the most popular living president – a YouGov poll, taken just before the last election, showed that over half of all Americans would most likely vote for him. Although the two-term president can’t run again, he’d garner the attention that Democrats badly need.But the former president has had next to nothing to say about Trump’s initiatives. While he has scolded Democratic politicians for not speaking out, he has gone silent. He hasn’t appeared at any public event staged by opponents of the president. Instead, he’s producing movies and documentaries, playing golf (as of 2016, he was an “honest 13”) and building an $18m mansion in Hawaii.What’s the alternative?Several presidential hopefuls have already hit the rubber-chicken circuit, making coy noises about their intentions for 2028, but that’s not nearly good enough. These desperate times demand boldness. Here’s my proposition: a leading Democrat, backed by substantial funding, should enter the 2028 presidential race right now.Hear me out before you start laughing.For starters, the reign of the ancien regime and its timid successors like Kamala Harris is finally over. That’s the message delivered by 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani, who trounced septuagenarian Andrew Cuomo, avatar of the past, in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary. Whoever runs for president should take a leaf from Mamdani’s playbook. No more tedious, repetitious TV ads. It is essential to reach voters where they are, knocking on doors, listening to what they say about what matters to them, then turning out a stream of TikTok and Instagram videos, delivering messages that resonate.Goodbye to laundry lists of forgettable nostrums, like the multipoint policy plans that Harris lugged around. My ideal candidate must have the skill to communicate ideas – bold ideas, not small-bore suggestions – in a non-wonky way. As former New York governor Mario Cuomo memorably put it: “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.”While it’s hard to imagine any Democrat winning over the Maga diehards, Republican voters who held their noses and voted for Trump could be swayed by someone who concentrated on meat-and-potato issues, pledging to build millions of units of affordable housing, deliver universal preschool and affordable healthcare, picking up the bill with a fair tax law. That was Mamdani’s message, and a considerable number of Trump backers voted for him after hearing his pitch.My candidate should be prepared to take on some of the Democratic party’s sacred cows. Assailing Israel for the war crimes committed in Gaza comes to mind.The toughest hurdle is raising enough money to be taken seriously, but it isn’t impossible. Billionaires including the Democratic mega-donor George Soros, Bill Gates, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman recently formed a group called Billionaires Against Billionaires to do battle with Trump’s coterie of billionaires. Imagine the impact if these mega-donors join forces with grassroots groups nationwide.The Democratic Party has a deep bench, and there’s no shortage of politicians who could fill the bill. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, Arizona senator Ruben Gallego and Kentucky governor Andy Beshear are among those who come to mind. And while the first profile-in-courage candidate will have first-mover advantage, others may well enter the fray.Let’s be clear – there isn’t a candidate, no matter how artful, who has a prayer of dislodging Trump from his imperial perch. But the presidential hopeful who decides that now is the time to present themself as a genuine alternative will attract attention, and right now, attention is what matters most. Unless someone steps up – and improbable as this scenario is, I haven’t come up with a better alternative – the Democrats will be giving Trump a free pass for the next three and a half years. Think about what this human wrecking ball can achieve in that time.

      David Kirp is professor emeritus at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California-Berkeley More

    • 188 Shares54 Views

      in US Politics

      Why is the US House speaker refusing to seat an elected Democrat? | Moira Donegan

      by

      The people of Arizona’s seventh congressional district – a vast territory extending across the state’s south, along the Mexican border – have been denied representation in Congress for weeks. That’s because Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, has refused to swear in Adelita Grijalva, their representative-elect, who won a special election to fill the seat vacated by her father, the late Raúl Grijalva, in a landslide late last month. Grijalva, a Democrat, has been largely ignored by the speaker. Unlike sworn representatives, she has to go around the Capitol with an escort. There’s an office with her name on the door, but she hasn’t been allowed inside, and has worked instead out of a conference room on another floor.It is an unprecedented abuse of procedural power on the part of the speaker, one that has had the effect of silencing a political opponent and denying representation to the citizens of her district. In refusing to seat Grijalva, Johnson has defied the will of Arizona’s voters, and effectively nullified, at least for the time being, a legitimate congressional election. He has persisted in this even in defiance of his own promises, after saying on Friday he would seat her this week once the House returned to session – and then telling lawmakers they wouldn’t reconvene this week after all. Last week, Grijalva showed up to a three-and-a-half-minute pro forma session, hoping to be sworn in then. (Johnson has sworn in other representatives at pro forma sessions in the past.) But the Republican presiding over the session, Morgan Griffith, ignored the effort. On a weekend talkshow, Grijalva said she had heard “absolutely nothing” from the speaker about the timing of her swearing in.Grijalva thinks she knows why. There is no political calculation that could justify Mike Johnson’s refusal to seat a duly elected member of the House: Grijalva won her race, and both his oath to the constitution and his responsibilities to the body that he leads require Johnson to seat her. But in lieu of deference to these higher aims, Grijalva suspects that Johnson is pursuing a much more cynical one: in refusing to swear her in and allow her to take up the office to which she has been elected, Johnson, Grijalva thinks, is aiming to stop her becoming the final member of Congress whose signature is needed to force a vote on the release of confidential files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Currently, the petition has 217 signatures; it needs only 218. Grijalva has pledged to support it. “Why the rules are different for me – the only thing that I can think of is the Epstein files,” Grijalva told the New York Times.The Epstein scandal, and the ensuing fallout from new and resurfaced revelations about Donald Trump’s deep and longstanding friendship with the deceased child sex trafficker and financier, has long plagued the Trump administration. One of the few genuine threats to Trump’s grip over his coalition came a few months ago, when his justice department refused to release files relating to the case, causing outrage among a group of rightwing podcasters, media personalities and conspiracy theorists who had long traded on speculation about the case and accusations that powerful Democrats were involved in a cover-up.The discharge petition, if passed, would not be likely to result in the actual release of the documents. The move has little support in the Republican-backed Senate; there is no chance that Donald Trump, who has opposed the release of the Epstein files, calling them a “waste” of “time and energy”, would sign a bill into law making them public. But what the move would accomplish is forcing a full chamber vote on the matter, requiring every member of the Republican caucus to go on the record either endorsing the release of the files – and thereby displeasing Trump – or opposing it – thereby displeasing their voters. The Times has reported that Johnson’s delay is giving the White House more time to pressure Republicans who have already signed on to the discharge petition to remove their signatures before the Grijalva is sworn in.And so it seems that Johnson is ignoring the constitution and subverting the will of the voters in order to buy time, in an effort to spare his party embarrassment over their president’s one-time close confidence with a pedophile.But the refusal to seat Grijalva has broader implications. In using his procedural control over the functioning of Congress to deny a seat to an elected Democrat, Johnson is setting a dangerous precedent and raising questions about future transfers of power. If a Democratic majority is elected in 2026, will the outgoing Republican speaker duly swear in its members? Or will he use his procedural powers to delay one, several or many of them from taking their oaths of office – either under the pretext of election fraud or personal ineligibility, or out of sheer, bald unwillingness to hand over power to members of a party that the president and his allies have repeatedly described as illegitimate?These are no longer fanciful questions; they are ones that must be asked. The Republicans who refused to subvert the law for Trump’s benefit on January 6 are now largely gone; the ones who have replaced them appear much more willing to place party before country. Every day that Grijalva is not sworn in, the shadow they cast over 2026 darkens.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

    • 150 Shares54 Views

      in US Politics

      Senate Republicans vote against check on Trump using deadly force against cartels

      by

      Senate Republicans voted down legislation Wednesday that would have put a check on Donald Trump’s ability to use deadly military force against drug cartels after Democrats tried to counter the administration’s extraordinary assertion of presidential war powers to destroy vessels in the Caribbean.The vote fell mostly along party lines, 48-51, with two Republicans, Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski, voting in favor and the Democrat John Fetterman voting against.It was the first vote in Congress on Trump’s military campaign, which according to the White House has so far destroyed four vessels, killed at least 21 people and stopped narcotics from reaching the US. The war powers resolution would have required the president to seek authorization from Congress before further military strikes on the cartels.The Trump administration has asserted that drug traffickers are armed combatants threatening the United States, creating justification to use military force. But that assertion has been met with some unease on Capitol Hill.Some Republicans are asking the White House for more clarification on its legal justification and specifics on how the strikes are conducted, while Democrats insist they are violations of US and international law. It’s a clash that could redefine how the world’s most powerful military uses lethal force and set the tone for future global conflict.The White House had indicated Trump would veto the legislation, and even though the Senate vote failed, it gave lawmakers an opportunity to go on the record with their objections to Trump’s declaration that the US is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels.“It sends a message when a significant number of legislators say: ‘Hey, this is a bad idea,’” said the senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat who pushed the resolution alongside Adam Schiff, a Democrat of California.Wednesday’s vote was brought under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which was intended to reassert congressional power over the declaration of war.“Congress must not allow the executive branch to become judge, jury and executioner,” Paul, a Kentucky Republican who has long pushed for greater congressional oversight of war powers, said during a floor speech.Paul was the only Republican to publicly speak in favor of the resolution before the vote, but a number of Republican senators have questioned the strikes on vessels and said they are not receiving enough information from the administration.The senator Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican, acknowledged “there may be some concern” in the Republican conference about the strikes. However, Republican leaders stridently argued against the resolution on the Senate floor Wednesday, calling it a political ploy from Democrats.“People were attacking our country by bringing in poisonous substances to deposit into our country that would have killed Americans,” said the senator Jim Risch, the chair of the Senate foreign relations committee. “Fortunately most of those drugs are now at the bottom of the ocean.”Risch thanked Trump for his actions and added that he hoped the military strikes would continue.Members of the Senate armed services committee received a classified briefing last week on the strikes, and Cramer said he was “comfortable with at least the plausibility of their legal argument”. But, he added, no one representing intelligence agencies or the military command structure for Central and South America was present for the briefing.“I’d be more comfortable defending the administration if they shared the information,” he said.Kaine also said the briefing did not include any information on why the military chose to destroy the vessels rather than interdict them or get into the specifics of how the military was so confident the vessels were carrying drugs.“Maybe they were engaged in human trafficking, or maybe it was the wrong ship,” Schiff said. “We just have little or no information about who was onboard these ships or what intelligence was used or what the rationale was and how certain we could be that everyone on that ship deserved to die.”The Democrats also said the administration has told them it is adding cartels to a list of organizations deemed “narco-terrorists” that are targets for military strikes, but it has not shown the lawmakers a complete list.“The slow erosion of congressional oversight is not an abstract debate about process,” the senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate armed services committee, said in a floor speech. “It is a real and present threat to our democracy.”The secretary of state Marco Rubio visited the Republican conference for lunch Wednesday to emphasize to senators that they should vote against the legislation. He told the senators that the administration was treating cartels like governmental entities because they had seized control of large portions of some Caribbean nations, according to the senator John Hoeven of North Dakota.Rubio told reporters at the Capitol: “These drug-trafficking organizations are a direct threat to the safety and security of the United States to unleash violence and criminality on our streets, fueled by the drugs and the drug profits that they make. … And the president, as the commander in chief, has an obligation to keep our country safe.”Still, Democrats said the recent buildup of US maritime forces in the Caribbean was a sign of shifting US priorities and tactics that could have grave repercussions. They worried that further military strikes could set off a conflict with Venezuela and argued that Congress should be actively deliberating whenever American troops are sent to war.Schiff said, “This is the kind of thing that leads a country, unexpectedly and unintentionally, into war.” More

    • 175 Shares74 Views

      in US Politics

      Bondi spars over Epstein but stays silent on Comey: takeaways from a tense hearing

      by

      In an often tense hearing before the Senate judiciary committee on Tuesday, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, stood accused by Democrats of weaponizing the US Department of Justice, “fundamentally transforming” the department, and leaving “an enormous stain on American history” that it will take “decades to recover [from]”.Bondi criticized Democratic lawmakers in personal terms as she faced questions over the department’s enforcement efforts in Democratic-led cities, her mishandling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, and inquiries into Donald Trump’s political adversaries. Here are the key takeaways from Bondi’s appearance.1. Democrats criticized Trump’s weaponization of the justice departmentBondi faced questions about her tenure at the department, as Democratic senators condemned the Trump administration for weaponizing the DoJ to investigate and prosecute Trump’s political enemies.“Our nation’s top law-enforcement agency has become a shield for the president and his political allies when they engage in misconduct,” Dick Durbin said. Durbin called Lindsey Halligan, the new US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, part of a “network of unqualified mega-loyalists masquerading as federal prosecutors”.“Attorney General Bondi: in eight short months, you have fundamentally transformed the justice department and left an enormous stain on American history. It will take decades to recover,” Durbin said.When asked by Amy Klobuchar whether she saw the president’s post on Truth Social, urging her to prosecute his political adversaries such as James Comey and Letitia James, as a “directive”, Bondi evaded the question.“President Trump is the most transparent president in American history,” Bondi said.She refused to “discuss personnel issues”, when Klobuchar asked about Bondi’s reported pushback to the president’s pressure campaign to remove Erik Siebert, Halligan’s predecessor. Bondi also refused to discuss the case against Comey, after Siebert said there was insufficient evidence to prosecute the former FBI director.Adam Schiff said that the department, under Bondi’s leadership, had become Trump’s “personal sword and shield to go after his ever growing list of political enemies and to protect himself, his allies and associates”.Schiff is a noted adversary of the president, and served on the House select committee that investigated the Capitol insurrection. Bondi snapped at him when she refused to answer questions about the allegations against Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, for allegedly accepting $50,000 in bribes before Trump took office: “Deputy attorney general [Todd] Blanche and [FBI] director [Kash] Patel said that there was no evidence that Tom Homan committed a crime, yet now you’re putting his picture up to slander him.“If you worked for me, you would have been fired,” Bondi continued. “Will you apologize to Donald Trump for trying to impeach him?”2. Bondi refused to discuss the arrest of James ComeyIn a line of questioning by Richard Blumenthal, Bondi refused to discuss or disclose any conversations she may have had with the president in the lead-up to the indictment of Comey last month. Blumenthal said Bondi attended a dinner with Donald Trump, just days before the former FBI director was criminally charged.Bondi instead pushed back against the Democratic senator from Connecticut. “I find it so interesting that you didn’t bring any of this up during President Biden’s administration, when he was doing everything to protect Hunter Biden, his son,” she said.3. Bondi and Durbin sparred over EpsteinDurbin grilled Bondi as to why she made a public claim that the Epstein “client list” was “sitting” on her desk for review earlier this year, only to “produce already public information and no client list”.Bondi pushed back, saying she had “yet to review” the documents, and reaffirmed that there was no Epstein client list.Bondi sparred with Durbin, questioning why he “refused repeated Republican requests to release the Epstein flight logs in 2023 and 2024”. Durbin said Bondi’s claims were not accurate.“I did not refuse. One of the senators here wished to produce those logs, and I asked her to put it in writing, and she never did,” Durbin said, apparently referring to his Republican colleague Marsha Blackburn.4. Republicans focused on ‘Arctic Frost’ revelationsPam Bondi said that Operation Arctic Frost – an intelligence-gathering effort that led to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the plot to overturn the results of the 2020 election – was “an unconstitutional, undemocratic abuse of power”.On Monday, several Republican lawmakers said the FBI gathered phone records from Republican senators. These records were obtained through a grand jury. Republicans have called this move part of the wider pattern of political weaponization of the previous administration.“This is the kind of conduct that shattered the American people’s faith in our government,” Bondi said at the hearing. “Our FBI is targeting violent criminals, child predators and other law breakers, not sitting senators who happen to be from the wrong political party.”Republican Josh Hawley also chimed in. “I’ve heard them say that Joe Biden never targeted his political enemies,” he said. “Huh? That’s interesting, because I could have sworn that yesterday we learned that the FBI tapped my phone.”5. Bondi said ‘national guard are on the way to Chicago’In a heated exchange with Durbin, Bondi refused to answer a question about whether she was consulted about Trump’s decision to send national guard troops to Illinois – the state that Durbin represents.“You voted to shut down the government, and you’re sitting here. Our law enforcement officers aren’t being paid. They’re out there working to protect you,” Bondi said, after declining to discuss internal conversations with the White House.“I wish you loved Chicago as much as you hate President Trump. Currently the national guard are on the way to Chicago. If you’re not going to protect your citizens, President Trump will.” More

    • 175 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Why does the supreme court keep bending the knee to Trump? | Steven Greenhouse

      by

      Two 0f the world’s best-known authoritarian leaders – Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s president – have each had at least 15 years at their country’s helm to pack the courts with loyalists and to pressure and intimidate judges. And no surprise, judges in those countries have repeatedly done what Orbán and Erdoğan want.Donald Trump has not had the opportunity to pack the US supreme court to nearly the same degree. Nor has he, despite his brash, bullying ways, done much to pressure or browbeat the court’s nine justices. Nevertheless, the court’s conservative supermajority has ruled time after time in favor of Trump since he returned to office. The six conservative justices have fallen into line much like Hungary’s and Turkey’s judges, even though the supreme court’s justices have life tenure to insulate them from political pressures.With the court’s new term beginning on Monday, many Americans are dismayed that the conservative justices have been so submissive to Trump, the most authoritarian-minded president in US history. Notwithstanding the US’s celebrated system of checks and balances, the justices have utterly failed to provide the checks on Trump that many legal scholars had expected. In ruling for Trump, the chief justice, John Roberts, and the other conservatives have let him gut the Department of Education, fire Federal Trade Commission and National Labor Relations Board members, and strip temporary protected status from hundreds of thousands of immigrants. The rightwing supermajority has also let Trump halt $4bn in foreign aid, fire tens of thousands of federal employees despite contractual protections and deport people to countries where they have no connection.In these and other cases, the supermajority has ceded huge power to Trump, for instance, by greatly reducing Congress’s constitutional power over spending as it let Trump unilaterally gut agencies and halt funding approved by Congress. What’s more, the court seems eager to snuff out independent, nonpartisan federal agencies by letting Trump fire agency chairs and commissioners without giving any reason, even though Congress approved laws explicitly saying those officials could only be dismissed for cause. (Pleasing corporate America, the court ordered last Wednesday that Lisa Cook can remain on the Federal Reserve Board, at least temporarily, while litigation proceeds over whether Trump can fire her as part of his effort to end the central bank’s independence.)“The chief justice is presiding over the end of the rule of law in America,” said J Michael Luttig, a highly regarded conservative former federal appellate judge.The conservative justices have repeatedly done Trump’s bidding even though they don’t begin to face the intense pressures that Hungary’s and Turkey’s judges face. Erdoğan has sometimes purged and blackballed judges seen as insufficiently loyal, while Orbán’s high-ranking allies have berated less obedient judges as “traitors”.The US supreme court has ruled for Trump in a startlingly high percentage of cases this year. It has issued 24 decisions from its emergency docket (often without giving any reasons) and ruled in Trump’s favor about 90% of the time.In doing so, the court has repeatedly vacated injunctions that lower courts had issued after concluding that Trump, with his 209 executive orders, had egregiously broken the law. Adam Bonica, a Stanford political science professor, found that in Trump administration cases decided between 1 May and 23 June, federal district courts ruled against Trump 94.3% of the time (82 out of 87 cases), often after looking closely at the facts. In contrast, the supreme court ruled 93.7% of the time for Trump (15 out of 16 cases), often without taking a close look at the facts.“The supreme court has pulled the rug out from under the lower federal courts, and it has done so deliberately and knowingly,” Luttig said, adding that the court is “acquiescing in and accommodating the president’s lawlessness”.With the court siding so often with Trump, a new Gallup poll found that a record high 43% of Americans think the court is too conservative, higher than the 36% who think the court is “about right”. Moreover, the court’s overall approval rating has fallen to its lowest level since Gallup began measuring, dropping below 40% for the first time in August (before climbing slightly) – and down from nearly 60% in the early 2000s.Steven Levitsky, a political science professor at Harvard and co-author of How Democracies Die, voiced bewilderment that the court has been so obliging toward a president who he says is a clear threat to democracy. According to Levitsky, courts come under the thumb of authoritarian governments in several ways. One way is “ideological agreement”. He said the court’s most rightwing members, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, seem in fundamental agreement with Trump, but he said the other conservatives do not love Trump even if they often rule for him. Levitsky suggested that those justices are so hostile toward liberals and liberal arguments that they gravitate towards Trump’s side in case after case.Court packing is another way courts fall under an authoritarian’s sway. Orbán, Erdoğan and their legislative allies have appointed the overwhelming majority of their countries’ judges, while Trump has appointed three of the nine justices. With life tenure, the justices should in theory feel free from political pressure and able to rule against Trump. In the past, many justices have ruled against the presidents and parties that appointed them.Levitsky sees another phenomenon at work: abdication. Pointing to both Congress and the supreme court, he said: “The major institutions that have the authority and responsibility to stand up and stop an authoritarian have declined to do so.”In his view, the conservative justices may have made a major miscalculation. “They are overconfident about the strength of our institutions,” Levitsky said. “They don’t really think our democracy is in danger. They don’t think it can really happen here. I really think a majority of members of the US establishment are in that camp.”The conservative justices have increasingly embraced the unitary executive theory, a once fringe, four-decade-old notion that the president has sole, unlimited authority over the executive branch and should, for instance, be free to fire members of independent agencies along with hundreds of thousands of federal employees. “If they really believed that Trump was a threat to democracy, they wouldn’t be giving him so much power,” Levitsky said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe court’s conservatives, Levitsky and many legal scholars say, are also engaged in appeasement. Roberts and the conservatives are “scared out of their minds that they will have to play chicken with Trump”, Levitsky said. “The worst thing for them is if the government ignores them and they don’t have any authority. They’re just terrified that Trump will trample on them and undermine their authority. Trump is not someone you want to play chicken with. They’re terrified of a big, high-profile fight with Trump.”In other words, the conservative justices are so eager to save face and avoid confrontation that they have often given a green light to what lower courts have seen as Trump’s lawlessness. Meanwhile, the three liberal justices – Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson – have written repeated, often angry dissents that chastise the supermajority for acquiescing to Trump’s lawlessness and steamrolling over parts of the constitution.One theory is that the conservative justices are deliberately giving Trump small victories – vacating lower courts’ injunctions and letting the president’s executive orders proceed and do their damage – as the justices wait for those cases to return to the supreme court, perhaps in a year or two. At that point, those cases would be fully briefed and argued, and the court would issue formal, longer rulings. Legal scholars hope, but are not optimistic, that the thus far compliant court will be more willing to defy Trump when the cases are fully briefed and argued, with the birthright citizenship and tariff cases most often mentioned.“What they’re doing,” Levitsky said, “is giving Trump small victories in an effort to placate him or preserve as much political capital for when the big fights come. It’s appeasement. Appeasement usually doesn’t work when you cede power to an authoritarian executive. It sends signals to society that no one is going to stop the guy. Ceding power to someone like Trump is really dangerous.”After Jair Bolsonaro, a rightwing Trump ally, was elected Brazil’s president in 2019, Alexandre de Moraes, a prominent member of Brazil’s supreme court, feared what he saw as Bolsonaro’s authoritarian tendencies. De Moraes cracked down on Bolsonaro’s efforts to spread disinformation on social media to undermine his opponents. When a mob of Bolsonaro’s allies stormed government buildings in January 2023, pushing for a coup d’etat, de Moraes led efforts to prosecute Bolsonaro. (Last month, Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years in prison after being convicted of plotting a coup.)“When Bolsonaro got elected, de Moraes realized that he’s a threat to democracy,” Levitsky said. “He thought that the Brazilian supreme court could be Chamberlain or Churchill.” (Neville Chamberlain, a British prime minister, agreed to let Adolf Hitler take over a German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia in 1938, as part of the Munich agreement, infamously declaring that the agreement would assure “peace for our time”.)“The [US] supreme court hasn’t wanted to be Churchill.” Levitsky said. “John Roberts has been Chamberlain. I think that is incredible destructive behavior.”

      Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labor and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues More

    • 175 Shares58 Views

      in US Politics

      House speaker says Democrats aren’t serious about shutdown negotiation as Democratic leader blames Republicans

      by

      The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, accused Democrats of being “not serious” in negotiations to end the federal government shutdown, while the Democratic leader accused Republicans of driving the shutdown, now on its fifth day and expected to last at least through next week.Talks between the opposing political parties stalled over the weekend, with no votes anticipated to end the standoff. A CBS poll found just 28% of Democratic voters and 23% of Republicans consider their party’s positions worth shutting down the government.In his comments to NBC’s Meet the Press, Johnson said his body had done its work in passing a measure to keep the government financed but now it was up to the Senate “to turn the lights back on so that everyone can do their work”. He accused Democrats of failing to engage “in a serious negotiation”.“They’re doing this to get political cover because Chuck Schumer is afraid that he won’t win his next re-election bid in the Senate because he’s going to be challenged by a Marxist in New York, because that’s the new popular thing out there,” he said, referring to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Bronx representative who may be looking to challenge Schumer for his Senate seat next year.But Johnson’s counterpart, minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, told the same show JD Vance lied last week when he claimed Democrats were themselves being dishonest claiming they are not trying to give healthcare benefits to undocumented immigrants.“Republicans are lying because they’re losing in the court of public opinion,” Jeffries said, and added his party was “standing up for the healthcare of hard-working American taxpayers, of working-class Americans, of middle-class Americans”.Jeffries also hit back at comments by Donald Trump in a social media post on Thursday in which he called Democrats the party of “the party of hate, evil, and Satan” alongside pictures of party figures, including Ocasio-Cortez, Schumer, speaker emeritus Nancy Pelosi, and former president and first lady Joe and Jill Biden.Asked if he could still negotiate with Trump, Jeffries said the president’s behavior “is outrageous, it’s unhinged, it’s unreasonable, and it speaks for itself. The American people deserve better than lies, than attacks, than deepfake videos and the president spending all of his time on the golf course.”Leaders of the political leadership have not had formal talks for almost a week as both seek to gain a political edge ahead of renewed discussions.Jeffries said that since that meeting last Monday, “Republicans, including Donald Trump, have gone radio silent” and the Democratic party leadership “will continue to make clear, leader Schumer and myself, that we will sit down any time, any place, with anyone to address this issue with the seriousness that it deserves”.The battle for high political ground continued on Sunday with Johnson claiming that the potential for temporary government job suspensions, known as furloughs, hardening into permanent job layoffs “is a regrettable situation that the president does not want”.White House national economic council director Kevin Hassett increased pressure on Democrats, saying the Trump administration will start mass layoffs of federal workers if Trump decides negotiations with Democrats are “absolutely going nowhere”.Hassett told CNN’s State of the Union that Trump and Vought “are lining things up and getting ready to act if they have to, but hoping that they don’t”. But he predicted it is possible that Democrats could back down.“I think that everybody is still hopeful that when we get a fresh start at the beginning of the week, that we can get the Democrats to see that it’s just common sense to avoid layoffs like that,” Hassett said.But some fear Democrats have walked into a trap. Johnson said on Sunday that Trump had asked the Democratic leadership to keep the government open.“In a situation like this, where the Senate Democrats have decided to turn the keys to the kingdom over to the White House, they have to make tough decisions,” he said, pointing to Russ Vought, the director of the office of management and budget.Vought, Johnson said, “has to now look at all of the federal government, recognizing that the funding streams have been turned off and determine what are essential programs, policies, and personnel. That’s not a job that he relishes. But he’s being required to do it by Chuck Schumer.”The spirit of mutual recrimination continued with Schumer telling CBS Johnson “doesn’t want to discuss the real issue, the healthcare crisis facing the American people. So he puts up all these fake lies to try and divert attention.”But in an interview set to broadcast on Monday, Johnson told MSNBC he considers the issue of expiring healthcare subsidies – that Democrats place central to their negotiating position – as one that can be addressed later.“We have effectively three months to negotiate in the White House and in the hall of Congress, that’s like an eternity,” Johnson said. “We need folks in good faith to come around the table and have that discussion. And we can’t do it when the government is shut down,” he added.Adam Schiff, a California senator also speaking to Meet the Press, was asked if his party delegates in the Senate would stay united after three Democratic senators broke away to vote with Republicans. Schiff said he was confident that “all Democrats understand that millions and millions of their constituents are about to be priced out of their healthcare”.“We need a president who can act like an adult, who can come to the table and negotiate an end to their self-imposed healthcare crisis,” Schiff said. “Right now we don’t see that. We see Trump out on the golf course, we see the speaker telling his House colleagues not to even come to session, that there’s no work for the federal government to do, apparently.” More

    • 225 Shares100 Views

      in US Politics

      Mike Johnson hasn’t sworn in this new Democrat. Is it because she wants to release the Epstein files?

      by

      Congress’s newest member, Adelita Grijalva, came to Washington DC this week, expecting to be officially sworn in by the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.Two days later, she returned to her southern Arizona district disappointed, if not a little confused. No swearing-in ceremony had been organized, meaning Grijalva, a Democrat who easily won a special election last month to replace her late father, Raúl M Grijalva, was not able to start her new job.Trapped in the purgatorial status of representative-elect, she had to be escorted around the Capitol building by her soon-to-be-colleagues, like any other member of the public. Her name is on the door of her new office, but she does not have the keys.“I want to get to work and I can’t,” Grijalva said.She thinks she knows the reason why Johnson is in no rush to administer the oath: in addition to co-sponsoring bills on the environment, public education and other issues she campaigned on addressing, Grijalva plans to provide the final signature on a petition that would force a vote on legislation to release files related to accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein – which the speaker and Donald Trump oppose.“I can’t think of any other reason. It’s not like my being sworn in changes the majority,” she said.The matter of the Epstein files has for months been a thorn in the side of the president and his allies in Congress. Though Trump has decried it as a “Democrat hoax”, a small group of dissident Republicans have joined with all of the Democrats in the House of Representatives to pursue the legislative maneuver, known as a discharge petition. It just needs the signatures of 218 lawmakers to succeed, and has currently received 217 – Grijalva’s would be the last one.The petition is a rare instance of defiance among congressional Republicans, who have given Trump much of what he wants ever since he returned to the White House. But even if it succeeds and the legislation passes the House, it is unlikely to go far. The Senate’s Republican leaders have shown little interest in the issue, and it is difficult to imagine Trump signing the bill.Another complication, both for the petition and Grijalva’s hopes to taking her seat: the House was out of session all this week. Johnson last month called off planned work days to pressure Senate Democrats into voting for legislation the chamber has approved to fund the government and end the ongoing shutdown.However, the House did hold a three-and-a-half-minute procedural session on Tuesday – one Grijalva attended along with dozens of Democrats, in hopes of getting Johnson to swear her in. No luck, even though Johnson administered the oath to two Republicans who won special elections in Florida during a similar session earlier this year.“That doesn’t make sense, why I wouldn’t be sworn in, in the same pace that they were?” Grijalva said. “And who is losing out are the constituents that need a Congress to work for them.”A spokesperson for Johnson pointed to his comments signaling that Grijalva will be sworn in when the House returns to session, but that will not happen until funding is restored to the government.“The House will come back into session and do its work as soon as Chuck Schumer allows us to reopen the government,” Johnson said today, referring to the top Senate Democrat whom the Republicans blame for the funding lapse.Grijalva along with her family had planned to be in Washington again by Tuesday of next week, in hopes the House would be back to work. On Friday afternoon, Johnson announced that it would take the whole week off.“Now I have to change, blow up all of the travel plans that I made for everybody,” she said. “So, that’s frustrating.” More