US Congress

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Donald Trump is a symptom, not the cause’: Tim Kaine’s journey to healing

      by

      Jack Kemp. Joe Lieberman. John Edwards. Sarah Palin. Paul Ryan. All ran for vice-president of the United States and fell short. All had to confront the question: what next? The same fate befell Tim Kaine, whose turn as running mate to Hillary Clinton in 2016 ended in a catastrophic defeat by Donald Trump and Mike Pence. The US has not recovered, as polarisation, rancour and looming criminal trials testify. But Kaine has.At 7.30am on the Monday after the 2016 election, the Virginia senator was back at work in his office. With Trump in the White House, the work of the Senate proved critical, including preserving Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law. But as time wore on, Kaine found ways to nourish his soul – not on the campaign trail but the nature trail.To mark his 60th birthday and 25th year in public office, he invented his own triathlon in Virginia. On weekends and in Senate recess weeks, Kaine hiked (mostly solo) the 559 miles (900km) of the Appalachian Trail, biked 321 miles (517km) along the crest of the Blue Ridge mountains and canoed all 348 miles (560km) of the James River. He kept a 100-word-a-day diary on his phone, raw material for his first book, Walk, Ride, Paddle.The hike was the toughest, he recalls, averaging about 14 miles (22km) a day with a 30lb (14kg) backpack, mostly in the heat of August.“I’d have two litre bottles and I’d be getting down to no water and I’ve got to get to this next stream and I’d get there and it’d be bone dry and then oh, man, talk about depressing!” the 66-year-old tells the Guardian.“The physical challenge of the hike was very difficult. It wasn’t probably till I got to mile 300 that I quit thinking about ‘I don’t need to do this whole thing. Why be so type-A about it?’ But when I passed mile 300 and I only had 260 left, it’s like, I’m going to finish this but I don’t have to rush.”A former teacher and civil rights lawyer, Kaine is one of only 30 people in US history to have been a mayor, governor and senator. In person, in a conference room on Capitol Hill, he lives up to adjectives that often tail him: affable, genial, nice. Only in politics does that count as an insult.In 2016, the New Republic ran a headline: “Tim Kaine Is Too Boring to Be Clinton’s Running Mate.” The Washington Post wondered: “What’s a nice guy like Senator Tim Kaine doing in a campaign like this?” Kaine himself quipped on NBC: “I am boring. Boring is the fastest-growing demographic in this country.”True to form, no one should look to Walk, Ride, Paddle for tales of Teddy Roosevelt-esque derring-do. Like other vice-presidential near misses, Kaine never quite became a celebrity. To those who encountered him in the great outdoors, he was just another guy in baseball cap and hiking shorts.He recalls: “I would say maybe a quarter recognised me and of that quarter, half didn’t say they recognised me. You’re out on the trail to relax and they get that. I learned there’s a beautiful Emily Dickinson poem about once being famous:
      Fame is a bee.
      It has a song—
      It has a sting—
      Ah, too, it has a wing.
      “People would see me and if you see somebody and they’re not dressed the way you normally see them, you’re like, ‘I think I kind of know you, but I’m not sure.’ Sometimes people would know me. Most often they wouldn’t. And then sometimes they were, ‘I think I know you. What do you do?’ ‘I work in Washington.’ ‘What do you do in Washington?’ ‘I do some stuff in politics’. ‘What?’ ‘I’m a United States senator.’”The journey took about 30 months, from May 2019 to October 2021, a jaw-dropping period of American history that spanned two impeachment trials, a global pandemic, racial justice protests, a presidential election and the January 6 attack on the Capitol. When the Senate was in session, Kaine had a key part to play. When in nature, he could tune out the noise and contemplate his faith in friendship, God (he grew up in an Irish Catholic household) and America.View image in fullscreenHe likens the experience to a camper who wakes up, stuffs everything into their backpack and gets going.“I realised in the course of the hike that’s how I dealt with 2016. I showed up right back to work. I started working. I said, ‘I’ll sort it all out later.’“The hike was primarily by myself. That extended time, both the solitude but also the appreciation of nature and your humility in the grand scheme of things, was helpful in taking the stuff out of the pack that needed to be washed and folded and put away the right way.”His epiphany came not around how Trump won, or relitigating what mistakes the Clinton-Kaine campaign might have made, but reckoning with a deeper question: why is America going through this dark chapter? Early one morning, Kaine was hiking alone in fog and rain and nearing Mount Rogers, the highest peak in Virginia, when he thought about the biblical Book of Job.A faithful man who has it all, Job starts to lose his family, his business, his money and his health, compelling him to ask if the universe is pointless and neighbours to assume he is suffering divine retribution.Kaine says: “There’s two explanations of why people or maybe nations suffer: because you did something wrong or maybe it’s just all pointless and random. The reader of the story knows that neither is the case: Job’s being tested. The end of the story is, as mad as he is at God, he still is true to his principles and then what was lost to him is restored.”Kaine was just days away from Trump’s first Senate impeachment trial.“I’d never been on a jury ever in my life, even on a traffic case. I’m just like, I’m 61 years old and I thought I understood this country. What’s going on here?“It’s not necessarily punishment and it’s not necessarily random, but it could be a test. So we stay true to our principles. Belief in religious equality – are we going to kick Muslims around? Our belief in free press – are we going to expose journalists to intimidation, rule of law? No person should be above the law.“I started to think about the virtues that we claim about ourselves, some of which are truer than others, none of which we can perfectly attain. But maybe this is one of these moments to see whether we’re going to stay true to principle or abandon principle, and if we stay true to principle, maybe we’ll end up sadder but wiser but we’ll turn a corner and feel like we’ve passed. I think we’re surviving the test but I don’t think we passed it yet.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNo test was more severe than January 6, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s win. Having become less addicted to his phone during his communions with nature, Kaine forgot to take it into the Senate chamber.“It was hours after the beginning of the attack, when we were finally over in a committee room and they turned on TV monitors, that I realised, ‘Oh, man, this is what my parents are seeing, this what my kids are seeing, this is what my wife was seeing.’ So, ‘[Senator] Martin Heinrich [of New Mexico], give me your phone, I got to call people quick!’“It was a day that I never would have imagined, never will forget and hope is never repeated. It was very powerful and my overwhelming emotion was anger. There was a moment when we were in the committee room that CNN called the Georgia Senate race for Jon Ossoff, which meant that the Dems now had the Senate, and it was very much like, in the middle of this attack, the American public are saying, ‘OK, we’ve seen enough here, you guys take the wheel for a while.’ They handed the keys to us.”View image in fullscreenKaine went up to the Republican senator Lindsey Graham and told him Democrats would not have taken the majority but for Trump’s lies. Graham did not disagree. Kaine said the same thing to the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, and saw a level of anger in his eyes he had never witnessed before.“The other thing that happened about three hours after we were in the room, the Virginia state police cruisers arrive to help the Capitol police. I went over to [fellow Virginia senator] Mark Warner and said the last time there was an insurrection against the United States, Virginia was leading it. Now here there’s an insurrection that’s being inspired by the president of the United States and Virginia is coming to the rescue of the union. We were both very emotional as we thought about that.”In his book, Kaine, a senator since 2013, acknowledges painful lessons about a country he thought he understood. While he has always been an optimist, he writes, Trump is “a symptom of a national sickness”. Trump is energising and galvanising for Democrats but also brings “a level of dread and tension” to everyday life.Kaine explains: “I was a missionary in Honduras when I was a young man and it was a military dictatorship and it made me be less naive: this authoritarian thing is still real, a lot of people live that way. But even then, when I came back, I still was naive because I thought that would never be something we would see in the United States, the authoritarian impulse.“But it’s Donald Trump and it’s [Nayib] Bukele [of El Salvador] and [Viktor] Orbán [of Hungary] and [Vladimir] Putin [of Russia]. You just go place to place, continent to continent, you’re going to see examples of this. The struggle between the authoritarianism and the democratic impulses is very live right now here and everywhere. That’s the global sickness that I’m talking about. Donald Trump is a symptom. He’s not the cause.”Kaine is one of a small group to have run on a US presidential ticket. His advice to Biden and Kamala Harris: continue to emphasise democracy and freedom, which connect January 6, Russia’s war on Ukraine and rightwing threats to reproductive rights. He also believes they have accomplishments to sell, including the best post-Covid recovery of any major economy.“People aren’t feeling the vibe yet,” Kaine admits, attributing this to a Covid “hangover”.“As I travel around Virginia, this is such a common phrase: ‘I’m doing pretty well but I’m not so sure about three months from now.’ They acknowledge first that economically things are OK but, just around the corner, ‘I’m sure what I’m going to see.’ The Biden-Harris ticket – and I’m on the ticket too because I’m running in 2024 – we just have to sell, sell, sell. The good news is we have a lot to sell.”The alternative, a replay of 2016, putting Trump back in the White House, is too much to bear.“I don’t want to contemplate it. We’re coming up on celebrating our 250th birthday in 2026. I want there to be a vigorous democracy for our kids and grandkids to inherit. And by vigorous, that doesn’t mean just do it the way we did it. Each generation has to decide how to renew these traditions and make them better.“But I don’t view Donald Trump as a guy who’s committed to institutions: one man one vote, free press, independent judiciary, professionalised civil service, civilian control of the military. Donald Trump is committed to himself but he’s not committed to democratic institutions and virtues. He’s done enormous harm to them.“We can wake up from that and, like Job, stick to our principles, become sadder and wiser but still pass the test that is before us. But he will do enormous damage to this nation and to others in the world with a second term.”
      Walk, Ride, Paddle: A Life Outside is published in the US by Harper Horizon More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump boasts ‘We broke Roe v Wade’ as abortion dogs GOP election hopes

      by

      Facing the press alongside the House speaker, fellow Republican Mike Johnson, Donald Trump bragged: “We broke Roe v Wade.”The former president made the stark admission about his dominant role in attacks on abortion rights at the end of a week in which the rightwing Arizona state supreme court ruled that an 1864 law imposing a near-total ban could go back into effect.Abortion rights were removed at the federal level in 2022 when a US supreme court to which Trump appointed three justices overturned Roe, which had stood since 1973. The issue has fueled Democratic wins at the ballot box ever since. This week, the Arizona ruling sent Republicans scrambling to minimise damage.Trump repeated his contention that the issue should rest with the states and there is no need for a national ban, a demand of the US’s political right. But he could not resist a boast on which his opponents are sure to seize.“We broke Roe v Wade,” Trump said. “Nobody thought was possible. We gave it back to the states and the states are working very brilliantly, in some cases conservative, in some cases not conservative, but they’re working. And it’s working the way it’s supposed to.“Every … real legal scholar wanted to have it go back to the states,” Trump claimed without offering evidence. “Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative. And we were able to do that … and now the states are working their way through it.“And you’re gonna, you’re having some very, very beautiful harmony, to be honest with you. You have, well, you have some cases like Arizona that went back to like 1864 or something like that. And a judge made a ruling, but that’s going to be changed by government. They’re going to be changing that. I disagree with that.”At the time of Trump’s remarks, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, was speaking in Arizona, hammering home Democratic attacks on Republican threats to reproductive rights. Her key message: Trump is to blame.“And just minutes ago, standing beside Speaker Johnson, Donald Trump just said the collection of state bans is, quote: ‘working the way it is supposed to’,” Harris said. “And as much harm as he has already caused, a second Trump term would be even worse.”Trump and Johnson appeared together at a time of intense legal jeopardy for the former president and great political danger for the House speaker that meant their intended message – a supposed need to focus on the canard of “election integrity” – seemed guaranteed to be drowned out.In New York on Monday, Trump will face trial on 34 of 88 pending criminal charges. The first ever criminal trial involving a former president will concern hush-money payments to an adult film star who claimed an affair.In Washington, Johnson must manage Congress with a tiny majority under pressure from an unruly Republican House caucus dominated by the pro-Trump right. The Georgia extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene has filed a motion to remove him.Opening the press conference at his Mar-a-Lago home, Trump exhibited his signature rhetoric on immigration, increasingly dehumanizing and vicious.View image in fullscreenJohnson said Republicans would seek to introduce legislation to “require proof of citizenship to vote”, claiming that if “hundreds of thousands” of migrants cast votes, it could affect the result of the elections.In reality, non-citizens voting is not even close to a problem.Some cities allow non-citizens to vote in municipal and non-federal polls. But non-citizen voting in federal elections is already illegal under a 1996 law. Offenders can be fined and jailed for up to a year. Deportation is possible.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Bipartisan Policy Center points to research by groups on the right and left which says non-citizen voting is exceptionally rare, saying: “Any instance of illegally cast ballots by non-citizens has been investigated by the appropriate authorities, and there is no evidence that these votes – or any other instances of voter fraud – have been significant enough to impact any election’s outcome.”Nonetheless, Johnson has long shown willingness to back Trump’s claims about elections regardless of reality, playing a key role in supporting the former president’s attempts to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020.In a recent memoir, the anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney said Johnson “played bait-and-switch” with colleagues to get them to support his legal efforts to have key state results thrown out while misrepresenting himself as a constitutional lawyer.Johnson said Cheney was “not presenting an accurate portrayal”. His legal work failed but even after the deadly January 6 attack on Congress by Trump supporters in early 2021, he was among 147 Republicans who voted to object to results in Pennsylvania and Arizona.On Friday, a statement released by the Trump campaign said Johnson had “agreed to hold a series of public committee hearings over the next two months … in advance of potential legislation to further safeguard our elections from interference”.Subjects of supposed concern included “mail-in voting processes and mail-ballot handling”, “voter registration list maintenance and how states will … prevent illegal immigrants and noncitizens from voting in the 2024 presidential election”; and “general preparations” for Trump’s rematch with Biden.Reporters raised other issues that have roiled Republican politics. Earlier, in Washington, Johnson oversaw passage of a bill to reauthorise the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or Fisa, including a key measure that allows for warrantless surveillance of American citizens. Trump and allies opposed the renewal, arising from his complaints about investigations of Russian election interference on his behalf in the 2016 race that sent him to the White House.Asked about the House bill, Trump said he still didn’t like Fisa and repeated his complaints about 2016. Johnson nodded behind him.Trump also opposes new aid for Ukraine, passed by the Senate but held up in the House. Johnson has said he wants to pass aid for Ukraine – but that could cause his downfall.At Mar-a-Lago, Trump kept the subject at arm’s length, verbally abusing Biden and claiming conflicts around the world would not have happened on his watch.He also castigated those prosecuting him criminally, including in the hush-money trial due to start in New York on Monday, over which he also complained about the judge. He was, he said, “absolutely” willing to testify in his own defence. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      What is Fisa, and what does it mean for no-warrant spying?

      by

      Congress spent the past week in a fractious debate over a major government surveillance program that gives US authorities the ability to monitor vast swaths of emails, text messages and phone calls without a warrant. In a vote on Friday, lawmakers ultimately decided to keep that warrantless surveillance intact and passed a two-year reauthorization of the law, known as section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or Fisa.The law has long been contentious among both progressives and libertarian-leaning conservatives who view it as a violation of privacy rights and civil liberties. Donald Trump has likewise lambasted it out of personal grievance. Its defenders, which include intelligence agencies and Joe Biden’s administration, argue that it is an important tool in stopping terrorist attacks, cybercrime and the international drug trade.What is section 702 of Fisa?Section 702 is a measure added in 2008 to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, first passed in 1978, which allows authorities, including government agencies such as the NSA and FBI, to collect and monitor communications. More specifically, it gives them the authority to surveil the messaging of foreign citizens outside US soil and to do so without requesting a warrant.Although section 702 was ostensibly intended to be used to monitor foreign terrorist groups and criminal organizations, law enforcement agencies have also used its authority to collect and surveil US citizens’ communications. This is because Americans messaging with people abroad are also liable to have their data accessed, which has led to improper use of the law and allegations from civil liberties groups that it gives authorities a backdoor into warrantless searches.The law emerged from the George W Bush administration’s post-9/11 surveillance policies, adding government oversight to a secret program that had been monitoring foreign communications for years without formalized congressional approval.Why is section 702 so divisive?Section 702 has opponents on both sides of the political spectrum, with its critics especially concerned over the law’s ability to conduct warrantless searches of American citizens’ communications and law enforcement’s tendency to improperly overreach in its use.Under section 702, authorities are only supposed to be able to search databases of communications for US citizens if they believe that the query could yield intelligence on malicious foreign actors or proof of a crime. But between 2020 and early 2021, the FBI improperly used section 702 almost 300,000 times in searches that targeted January 6 suspects, racial justice protesters and other American citizens, according to documents from Fisa court.That misuse gave new life to calls for reforming section 702, potentially including requiring authorities to get a warrant from a judge before accessing US citizens’ communications. Civil liberties groups demanded numerous revisions, including closing loopholes that allowed the government to purchase information on US citizens through third-party data brokers.Donald Trump’s campaign also reignited criticism of section 702, especially among far-right Republicans who tend to operate in lockstep with his pronouncements. The former president demanded that lawmakers “KILL FISA” in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday and accused authorities of using it to spy on his campaign – an apparent reference to an FBI investigation of a former campaign adviser of his that was unrelated to section 702.Defenders of the law argued that there were already adequate provisions for stopping its misuse, and that requiring warrants or killing section 702 entirely would severely limit authorities’ ability to stop terrorist attacks and other crimes. Administration officials and backers of the reauthorization cited numerous US adversaries, from Chinese government spying operations to Islamist extremist groups, as reasons that warrantless surveillance was necessary for stopping urgent threats.What happens to section 702 now?The reauthorization of Fisa on Friday means that the program and warrantless surveillance will be able to continue for at least another two years. An amendment that would have required authorities to get a warrant for searches of US citizens narrowly did not pass, with a House vote ending in a 212-212 tie that resulted in its failure.While the law was originally intended to be renewed for five years, Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the house, was forced to seek only a two-year reauthorization to mollify far-right GOP members who threatened to quash the bill entirely. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      House votes to reapprove law allowing warrantless surveillance of US citizens

      by

      House lawmakers voted on Friday to reauthorize section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or Fisa, including a key measure that allows for warrantless surveillance of Americans. The controversial law allows for far-reaching monitoring of foreign communications, but has also led to the collection of US citizens’ messages and phone calls.Lawmakers voted 273–147 to approve the law, which the Biden administration has for years backed as an important counterterrorism tool. An amendment that would have required authorities seek a warrant failed, in a tied 212-212 vote across party lines.Donald Trump opposed the reauthorization of the bill, posting to his Truth Social platform on Wednesday: “KILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!”The law, which gives the government expansive powers to view emails, calls and texts, has long been divisive and resulted in allegations from civil liberties groups that it violates privacy rights. House Republicans were split in the lead-up to vote over whether to reauthorize section 702, the most contentious aspect of the bill, with Mike Johnson, the House speaker, struggling to unify them around a revised version of the pre-existing law.Republicans shot down a procedural vote on Wednesday that would have allowed Johnson to put the bill to a floor vote, in a further blow to the speaker’s ability to find compromise within his party. Following the defeat, the bill was changed from a five-year extension to a two-year extension of section 702 – an effort to appease far-right Republicans who believe Trump will be president by the time it expires.Section 702 allows for government agencies such as the National Security Administration to collect data and monitor the communications of foreign citizens outside of US territory without the need for a warrant, with authorities touting it as a key tool in targeting cybercrime, international drug trafficking and terrorist plots. Since the collection of foreign data can also gather communications between people abroad and those in the US, however, the result of section 702 is that federal law enforcement can also monitor American citizens’ communications.Section 702 has faced opposition before, but it became especially fraught in the past year after court documents revealed that the FBI had improperly used it almost 300,000 times – targeting racial justice protesters, January 6 suspects and others. That overreach emboldened resistance to the law, especially among far-right Republicans who view intelligence services like the FBI as their opponent.Trump’s all-caps post further weakened Johnson’s position. Trump’s online remarks appeared to refer to an FBI investigation into a former campaign adviser of his, which was unrelated to section 702. Other far-right Republicans such as Matt Gaetz similarly vowed to derail the legislation, putting its passage in peril.Meanwhile, the Ohio congressman Mike Turner, Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee, told lawmakers on Friday that failing to reauthorize the bill would be a gift to China’s government spying programs, as well as Hamas and Hezbollah.“We will be blind as they try to recruit people for terrorist attacks in the United States,” Turner said on Friday on the House floor. The California Democratic representative and former speaker Nancy Pelosi also gave a statement in support of passing section 702 with its warrantless surveillance abilities intact, urging lawmakers to vote against an amendment that would weaken its reach.“I don’t have the time right now, but if members want to know I’ll tell you how we could have been saved from 9/11 if we didn’t have to have the additional warrants,” Pelosi said.Debate over Section 702 pitted Republicans who alleged that the law was a tool for spying on American citizens against others in the GOP who sided with intelligence officials and deemed it a necessary measure to stop foreign terrorist groups. One proposed amendment called for requiring authorities to secure a warrant before using section 702 to view US citizens’ communications, an idea that intelligence officials oppose as limiting their ability to act quickly. Another sticking point in the debate was whether law enforcement should be prohibited from buying information on American citizens from data broker firms, which amass and sell personal data on tens of millions of people, including phone numbers and email addresses.Section 702 dates back to the George W Bush administration, which secretly ran warrantless wiretapping and surveillance programs in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks. In 2008, Congress passed section 702 as part of the Fisa Amendments Act and put foreign surveillance under more formal government oversight. Lawmakers have renewed the law twice since, including in 2018 when they rejected an amendment that would have required authorities to get warrants for US citizens’ data.Last year Merrick Garland, the attorney general, and Avril Haines, director of national intelligence, sent a letter to congressional leaders telling them to reauthorize section 702. They claimed that intelligence gained from it resulted in numerous plots against the US being foiled, and that it was partly responsible for facilitating the drone strike that killed the al-Qaida leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in 2022. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Japanese leader asks US to overcome ‘self-doubt’ about global leadership

      by

      Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, on Thursday called on Americans to overcome their “self-doubt” as he offered a paean to US global leadership before a bitterly divided Congress.Warning of risks from the rise of China, Kishida said that Japan – stripped of its right to a military after the second world war – was determined to do more to share responsibility with its ally the United States.“As we meet here today, I detect an undercurrent of self-doubt among some Americans about what your role in the world should be,” Kishida told a joint session of the House of Representatives and Senate during a state visit to Washington.“The international order that the US worked for generations to build is facing new challenges, challenges from those with values and principles very different from ours,” Kishida said.Kishida said he understood “the exhaustion of being the country that has upheld the international order almost single-handedly” but added: “The leadership of the United States is indispensable.“Without US support, how long before the hopes of Ukraine would collapse under the onslaught from Moscow?” he asked.“Without the presence of the United States, how long before the Indo-Pacific would face even harsher realities?”He sought to remind lawmakers of the leading role the US has played globally since the second world war. After dropping two nuclear weapons on Japan to end the war, the US helped rebuild Japan, and the nations transformed from bitter enemies to close allies. “When necessary, it made noble sacrifices to fulfill its commitment to a better world,” Kishida said of the US.While he was careful not to touch on US domestic politics, Kishida’s address comes amid a deadlock in Congress on approving billions of dollars in additional military aid to Ukraine, due to pressure from hard-right Republicans aligned with their presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump.Kishida met on Wednesday with Joe Biden where they pledged to step up cooperation, including with new three-way air defenses involving the United States, Japan and Australia.Sending a clear signal toward China, Kishida meets again with the president on Thursday for a three-way summit with President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, which has been on the receiving end of increasingly assertive Chinese moves in dispute-rife waters.Kishida said that China’s military actions “present an unprecedented, and the greatest, security challenge”.China’s actions pose challenges “not only to the peace and security of Japan but to the peace and stability of the international community at large”, he said.Kishida’s speech, from the dais where Biden delivered a raucous State of the Union address a month ago, marked a rare moment of bipartisan unity in Congress.Lawmakers across party lines offered repeated standing ovations as Kishida reaffirmed support for Ukraine, warned of Chinese influence and highlighted Japanese investment in the United States.The prime minister, who spent part of his childhood in New York City, read his address in fluent English, after speaking in Japanese at his news conference with Biden.He mentioned how he watched the classic cartoon The Flintstones as a child in New York.“I still miss that show, although I could never translate, ‘Yabba Dabba Doo’,” he said. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Mitt Romney says Alejandro Mayorkas’s actions do not merit impeachment

      by

      Alejandro Mayorkas is not guilty of a high crime or misdemeanour, the Republican senator Mitt Romney said, making clear he will not vote to remove the US homeland security secretary from office if his impeachment goes to a trial.“Secretary Mayorkas is following the position of his party and of the president who was elected,” Romney, from Utah and his party’s nominee for president in 2012, told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday.“We have pointed out that President Biden is for open borders, as are the Democrats, and Mayorkas is simply following that policy. It’s the wrong policy, it has a huge damaging effect on the country – but it’s not a high crime or misdemeanour.”Republicans have zeroed in on undocumented migration and the southern border as campaign issues in an election year.House Republicans impeached Mayorkas in February but have not yet formally sent the articles of impeachment across the Capitol to the Senate. On Tuesday, John Kennedy, a Republican senator from Louisiana, told reporters that process would now be delayed until Monday.Under article two, section four of the US constitution, “the president, vice-president and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanours”.Debate over what exactly constitutes “high crimes and misdemeanours” is a constant of US political life.Impeachment is meant to be rare: from the founding until Donald Trump only two presidents were impeached and both, Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, were acquitted at trial.Donald Trump, however, was impeached twice: first for seeking to blackmail Ukraine for dirt on political rivals, second for inciting an insurrection, the attack on Congress of 6 January 2021.Romney was the only Republican to vote to convict both times. Now a lonely anti-Trump Republican voice, he will quit Congress this year.Democrats control the Senate, making conviction and removal of Mayorkas a near impossibility. But Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, must still decide what to do. Republicans are pressing for a trial. Schumer has indicated Democrats will do so, though they do not have to.Romney said: “Precedent is a matter of interpretation in this case. There have been impeachments that have been brought forward that did not go to trial in part because the people left office.”The last impeachment of a cabinet official concerned William Belknap, secretary of war to President Ulysses S Grant, in 1876. Belknap resigned, was tried anyway on charges of corruption, and acquitted.Romney did not say if he would vote to table the articles of impeachment, thereby avoiding a trial.“What does one do will depend on what the legal options are,” he said. “When to vote and how is uncertain at this stage. I believe a high crime or misdemeanour has not been alleged.” More

    • 263 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      US defense secretary rejects Israel genocide accusations; Blinken and Cameron urge US House to pass Ukraine aid – as it happened

      by

      The US has seen no evidence that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, has said.Austin, addressing a Senate armed services committee during a budget hearing today, said:
      We don’t have any evidence of genocide being created.
      He also avoided referring to the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on 7 October as a genocide, calling it a “horrific terrorist attack” and “certainly … a war crime”.Austin’s testimony was interrupted several times by protesters calling for the US to stop funding the war.
      Arizona’s supreme court ruled to let a law banning almost all abortions in the state go into effect. The justices said Arizona could enforce a 1864 near-total abortion ban that went unenforced for decades after the US supreme court legalized abortion nationwide in the 1973 decision Roe v Wade.
      Arizona governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said Tuesday was a “dark day” for the state and implored abortion rights supporters to make their voices heard in November.
      Joe Biden criticized the Arizona supreme court ruling, blaming “the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom” and calling the ban “cruel”.
      Kamala Harris, in response to the ruling by the Arizona supreme court, said the state had “rolled back the clock to a time before women could vote”, and said Donald Trump was resopnsible for the ruling. Harris will travel to Arizona on Friday.
      Secretary of state Antony Blinken and his UK counterpart, foreign secretary David Cameron, urged Congress to approve new military aid for Ukraine after talks in Washington during a joint press conference following talks in Washington on Tuesday.
      Blinken said the supplemental budget request that the president has made of Congress is “urgent” and should be taken to a vote “as quickly as possible”. Victory for Ukraine is “vital for American and European security”, Cameron said.
      Cameron also met with Trump over dinner on Monday at his Mar-a-Lago estate. During the briefing with Blinken, Cameron defended the meeting as a standard encounter with an opposition figure and said it covered a number of pressing global issues but did not elaborate. “These things are entirely proper,” he said.
      Trump’s campaign said the former president and Cameron discussed the Ukraine war and “the need for Nato countries to meet their defense spending requirements”.
      Defense secretary Lloyd Austin said the US has seen “no evidence” that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. Austin addressed a Senate armed services committee during a budget hearing and was interrupted several times by protesters calling for the US to stop funding Israel’s war in Gaza.
      A New York appeals court judge rejected the latest bid by Trump to delay his 15 April trial on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to an adult film star.
      Republican far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene escalated her threat to oust Mike Johnson, issuing a searing indictment of the House speaker in a letter explaining her decision to file a motion to oust him.
      Kamala Harris will travel to Arizona on Friday just days after the state’s supreme court upheld a near-total abortion ban.The vice president’s trip to Arizona, her second this year, was already in the works prior to Tuesday’s court decision and will likely take on a heightened focus on abortion rights and access, Politico reported.The White House said Harris will use her visit “to continue her leadership in the fight for reproductive freedoms”.Fifteen prominent historians filed an amicus brief with the supreme court, rejecting Donald Trump’s claim in his federal election subversion case that he is immune to criminal prosecution for acts committed as president.Authorities cited in the document include the founders Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Adams, in addition to the historians’ own work.Trump, the historians said, “asserts that a doctrine of permanent immunity from criminal liability for a president’s official acts, while not expressly provided by the constitution, must be inferred.
      To justify this radical assertion, he contends that the original meaning of the constitution demands it. But no plausible historical case supports his claim.
      Despite widespread legal and historical opinion that Trump’s immunity claim is groundless, the supreme court, to which Trump appointed three justices, will consider the claim.Oral arguments are scheduled for 25 April. The court recently dismissed attempts, supported by leading historians, to remove Trump from ballots under the 14th amendment, passed after the civil war to bar insurrectionists from office.As we reported earlier, defense secretary Lloyd Austin told the Senate earlier today that the US government has seen “no evidence” that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.Austin addressed a Senate armed services committee during a budget hearing and was interrupted several times by protesters calling for the US to stop funding Israel’s war in Gaza.The UK also confirmed in meetings with US counterparts that there would be no changes to arms exports to Israel, although it would be kept under review.Here’s the clip:Louisiana’s Republican-controlled senate advanced a bill on Monday that would empower state and local law enforcement to arrest and jail people in the state who entered the US illegally, similar to embattled legislation in Texas.Amid national fights between Republican states and Joe Biden over how and who should enforce the US-Mexico border, Louisiana joins a growing list of legislatures seeking to expand states’ authority over border enforcement.Proponents of the bill, such as the legislation’s author, GOP state senator Valarie Hodges, say Louisiana has the “right to defend our nation”. Hodges has accused the federal government of neglecting responsibilities to enforce immigration law, an argument heard from GOP leaders across the country.Opponents argue the bill is unconstitutional, will not do anything to make the state safer, and will only fuel negative and false rhetoric directed toward migrants.Across the nation, reliably red legislatures have advanced tougher immigration enforcement measures.The Oklahoma house passed a bill that would prohibit state revenue from being used to provide benefits to those living in the state illegally. A bill in Tennessee, which is awaiting the governor’s signature, would require law enforcement agencies in the state to communicate with federal immigration authorities if they discover people who are in the country illegally. Measures that mirror parts of the Texas law are awaiting the governor’s signature in Iowa, while another is pending in Idaho’s statehouse.Lawmakers and climate advocates called on utilities to “ditch the American Gas Association” at a press conference at the US Capitol on Tuesday.“Americans are already paying the price of climate change,” said Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts.
      They shouldn’t have to pay the salaries of those who are fueling it.
      A trade association representing more than 200 US utilities, the AGA has a well-documented history of lobbying against climate regulations and policies – activity funded in part by members’ ratepayers’ utility bills. It’s a “dirty game,” said Xavier Boatwright of the Sierra Club.Both the event and a protest outside the AGA’s headquarters earlier Tuesday were led by the anti-gas nonprofit organization the Gas Leaks Project.“There’s nothing natural about natural gas,” said the group’s senior communications director Maria Luisa Cesar.The extraction and use of gas, called natural gas by industry interests, emits planet-heating and toxic pollution. Reports show the AGA has been aware of these dangers for 50 years, but has continued to undercut climate efforts. Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse said:
      The fossil fuel industry depends in roughly equal parts on hydrocarbons and lies.
      In August, the New England utility Eversource cut ties with the American Gas Association. Advocates are calling on other utilities to follow its lead. Four states have also passed legislation to prevent the use of ratepayer dollars to fund political activity.Also in Arizona, Eva Burch, a Democratic state lawmaker who drew national attention after announcing her decision to seek an abortion earlier this month, said today’s court decision to enforce a ban – using a law that was originally drafted in the 19th Century before women could vote and before Arizona was a state – would have devastating consequences for women such as her.“A couple of weeks ago I had an abortion – a safe legal abortion here in Arizona for a pregnancy that I very much wanted,” Burch said.
      Somebody gave me a procedure so that I wouldn’t have to experience another miscarriage – the pain, the mess, the discomfort. And now we’re talking about whether or not we should put that doctor in jail. This is outrageous.
      Burch predicted the ruling would backfire on conservatives who have fought to allow the ban to be enforced.“The people of Arizona have had enough,” Burch said.
      We are electing pro-choice candidates in November. Watch it happen.
      Kamala Harris has responded to a ruling by the Arizona supreme court to let a law banning almost all abortions in the state go into effect, saying the state had “rolled back the clock to a time before women could vote”.In a statement, the vice president said there was “one person responsible” for the ruling, which will allow a law first passed in 1864 to go into effect, “by his own admission … Donald Trump”.Harris said the “extreme and dangerous” ban criminalizes almost all abortion care in the state and “puts women’s lives at risk”, adding:
      It’s a reality because of Donald Trump, who brags about being ‘proudly the person responsible’ for overturning Roe v. Wade, and made it possible for states to enforce cruel bans.
      She added:
      The alarm is sounding for every woman in America: if he has the opportunity, Donald Trump would sign off on a national abortion ban. He has called for punishing women and doctors. If he wins, he and his allies have plans to ban abortion and restrict access to birth control, with or without Congress.
      Arizona governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, called today’s news from the state’s supreme court on an abortion ban a “dark day” for the state and implored abortion rights supporters to make their voices heard in November.Hobbs vowed to do everything in her power to preserve access to reproductive care and contraception in the state, pointing to actions she has already taken. After winning the election in 2022, Hobbs last year issued a sweeping executive order banning county attorneys from prosecuting women who seek abortions and doctors who perform them.Asked about the possibility that her directive could be challenged in court, Hobbs said: “Bring it on.”At the news conference, held moments after the state supreme court released its decision, Hobbs called on the Republican-led state legislature to “immediately” repeal the ban. But the legislature is unlikely to do so. The leaders of both chambers joined anti-abortion activists in favor of allowing the territorial-era ban to take effect.“The legislature has ignored the will of the voters on this issue for decades,” she said.
      The ballot box is the way that voters can have their say and overrule the legislature on this issue that the vast majority of Arizonans support.
      The national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, just said that US government agencies were still involved in an “informal review” of the Israel Defense Forces’ review of the killing by the Israeli military of seven aid workers with the group World Central Kitchen in Gaza earlier this month.Sullivan said that the CIA director, Bill Burns, was involved in further talks in Cairo in Egypt at the weekend, where states such as the US and Qatar are trying to broker a ceasefire in Israel’s war in Gaza and the return of the remaining hostages held by Hamas since the massacre it perpetrated in southern Israel last 7 October.Sullivan said the US “has seen Israel take some steps forward” in the talks, while the latest statements from Hamas were regarded as “less than encouraging”.He said more humanitarian aid was reaching Gaza, which he said was “good, but not good enough”, amid Israel’s blockade and siege of the Palestinian territory.And amid Israel pulling troops out of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, in a pause in its offensive actions, Sullivan said the US has still not seen “a credible and executable” plan from Israel about what it would do to move or protect Palestinians in the event that, as it has pledged to do, it invades Rafah.Joe Biden has just arrived back at the White House after a very short trip to Washington’s main Union Station rail hub, to deliver remarks about healthcare.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was originally due to brief the media at 1.30pm in the regular daily session in the west wing, but obviously everything is being pushed back because the president’s schedule shifted later than originally expected, also. The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, will join the briefing. It’s getting underway now.We’ll bring you highlights from the briefing. There has been a lot of international-facing news today, especially with the latest on high-level talks in the Middle East about Israel’s war in Gaza and US secretary of state Antony Blinken and the UK foreign secretary, David Cameron meeting in Washington, DC, and urging the US Congress to approve new military aid for Ukraine.Joe Biden has criticized the Arizona supreme court ruling from earlier today to let an old law on the books banning almost all abortions in the state go into effect – albeit with a 14-day delay to allow further legal challenges before it does.The US president blamed “the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom” and called the ban “cruel”.In a statement issued from the White House moments ago, Biden said: “Millions of Arizonans will soon live under an even more extreme and dangerous abortion ban, which fails to protect women even when their health is at risk or in tragic cases of rape or incest. This cruel ban was first enacted in 1864 – more than 150 years ago, before Arizona was even a state and well before women had secured the right to vote.”The statement ended with: “Vice-President Harris and I stand with the vast majority of Americans who support a woman’s right to choose. We will continue to fight to protect reproductive rights and call on Congress to pass a law restoring the protections of Roe v Wade for women in every state.”Kamala Harris has taken a strong lead in recent months on efforts by the Biden administration and the Biden-Harris re-election campaign to win support for protecting reproductive rights.This follows, in particular, the landmark overturning of the federal right to abortion by the conservative-dominated supreme court in 2022 and further attacks on rights ranging from abortion pills to contraception to IVF by the hard right.The Arizona supreme court ruled on Tuesday to let a law banning almost all abortions in the state go into effect, a decision that could curtail abortion access in the US south-west and could make Arizona one of the biggest battlefields in the 2024 electoral fight over abortion rights.The justices said Arizona could enforce a 1864 near-total abortion ban, first passed before Arizona became a state, that went unenforced for decades after the US supreme court legalized abortion nationwide in the 1973 decision Roe v Wade. However, the justices also ruled to hold off on requiring the state to enforce the ban for 14 days, in order to allow advocates to ask a lower court to pause it again.The ban can only be enforced “prospectively”, according to the 4-2 ruling. Minutes after the ruling Kris Mayes, Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, vowed not to prosecute any doctors or women under the 1864 ban.You can read the full story here.The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, urged Congress to approve new military aid for Ukraine after talks in Washington.
      Blinken and Cameron held a joint press conference where the US secretary of state said the stalled Ukraine funding is critical for US, European and world security. The supplemental budget request that Joe Biden has made of Congress is “urgent” and should be taken to a vote “as quickly as possible”, Blinken said. Victory for Ukraine is “vital for American and European security”, Cameron said.
      Cameron also met with Donald Trump over dinner on Monday at his Mar-a-Lago estate. During the briefing with Blinken, Cameron defended the meeting as a standard encounter with an opposition figure and said it covered a number of pressing global issues but did not elaborate. “These things are entirely proper,” he said.
      Trump’s campaign said the former president and Cameron discussed the Ukraine war and “the need for Nato countries to meet their defense spending requirements”.
      The US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, told a Senate armed services committee hearing that the US has seen no evidence that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
      A New York appeals court judge rejected the latest bid by Trump to delay his 15 April trial on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to an adult film star.
      Republican far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene escalated her threat to oust Mike Johnson, issuing a searing indictment of the House speaker in a letter explaining her decision to file a motion to oust him.
      There’s a key US Senate race in Ohio this year, where the incumbent leftwing Democrat, Sherrod Brown, is expected to face a tough challenge from Bernie Moreno, a car dealer turned Trump-backed populist firebrand.Like many Trump-backed candidates, Moreno is making it his business to blame China for woes affecting blue-collar workers. Earlier this year, he went so far as to tell a conservative radio host: “The Buick Envision was made in China, I told General Motors I wouldn’t sell one of them, don’t even ship it to me.”The problem about the claim, which Moreno has made elsewhere, is that as Spectrum News reports … “Moreno’s dealership did sell the Chinese-made SUVs for several years, and even promoted the vehicles on social media, according to numerous social media posts.”After detailing such posts, Spectrum adds:
      “GM, the parent company of Buick, confirmed to Spectrum News the Envision was only manufactured in China. The SUV became the first Chinese-made vehicle to be imported by a major US automaker when it debuted in Michigan in 2016.
      The imports were called a “slap in the face” by the United Auto Workers union, which felt the vehicles should be made on US soil by American workers.
      A spokesperson for Moreno, Reagan McCarthy, told Spectrum: “In response to the closure of the Lordstown Plant here in Ohio [in March 2019], Bernie made a decision to stop any new inventory of Envision’s [sic] from being sold at his dealership. After he sold off the inventory he already had on the lot, he refused to take orders for more Envisions. There is zero contradiction here.”There are contradictions elsewhere in Moreno’s campaign statements, though, as the Guardian discussed here:A New York appeals court judge has rejected the latest bid by Donald Trump to delay his 15 April trial on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to an adult film star.Trump’s lawyers had requested the trial to be postponed indefinitely while he appeals a gag order that bars him from commenting about jurors, witnesses and others connected to the case.Trump’s attorneys argue that Justice Juan Merchan’s order restricting his public comments is an unconstitutional prior restraint on his free speech rights while he campaigns for president. Merchan imposed the order last month after finding Trump made statements in various legal cases that the judge called “threatening, inflammatory” and “denigrating”.During the hearing on Tuesday, Trump’s lawyer Emil Bove said:
      The First amendment harms arising from this gag order right now are irreparable.
      Justice Cynthia Kern issued the order following a Tuesday morning hearing, but a full panel of appeals judges will later consider the former president’s underlying challenge to the gag order.Austin, asked what the consequences of a deadly mass famine in Gaza would be, said:
      It will accelerate violence, and it will have the effect of ensuring that there’s a long-term conflict.
      Addressing the Senate armed services committee, the defense secretary added:
      It doesn’t have to happen … We should continue to do everything we can, and we are doing this, to encourage the Israelis to provide humanitarian assistance. More

    • 225 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans want to use an 1873 law to ban abortion. Congress must overturn that law | Moira Donegan

      by

      They don’t need Congress. The anti-abortion movement is preparing to ban abortion nationwide as soon as a Republican takes the White House, and under a bizarre legal theory, they don’t think they even need congressional approval to do it. That’s because anti-choice radicals have begun to argue that an 1873 anti-obscenity law, the Comstock Act, effectively bans the mailing, sale, advertisement or distribution of any drug or implement that can be used to cause an abortion.For a long time, this was a fringe theory, only heard in the corners of the anti-choice movement with the most misogynist zealotry and the flimsiest concerns for reason. After all, the Comstock Act has not been enforced for more than half a century: many of its original provisions, banning contraception, were overturned; other elements, banning pornography and other “obscene” material, have been essentially nullified on free speech grounds.And, for decades, its ban on abortifacients was voided by Roe v Wade. Now that the US supreme court has thrown out the national abortion right, the anti-choice movement is reviving the long-forgotten law, claiming that the Comstock Act – named after a man who hunted down pornographers, threw early feminists in jail and bragged about driving abortion providers to suicide – should still be considered good law.It’s not a solid legal theory, but like a lot of flimsily reasoned, violently sexist and once-fringe arguments, it is now getting a respectful hearing at the supreme court. At last month’s oral arguments in a case regarding the legality of the abortion drug mifepristone, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas both mentioned Comstock, implying that someone – perhaps the FDA, perhaps drug companies – was obliged to suppress abortion medication under the law. Comstock was not at issue in the mifepristone case, but the comments from the justices were not really about the case before them. Rather, they were a signal, a message meant for the conservative legal movement: if you bring us a case that seeks to ban abortion under Comstock, the judges were saying, we will vote for it.So it is a bit puzzling why, in an election year that promises to be dominated by outrage over abortion bans and the erosion of women’s rights, Democrats have not done more to convey the dangers of Comstock to the public. Admittedly, the problem is somewhat complicated and obscure, not quite the kind of thing that can fit on a bumper sticker. But voters have shown that they are willing to pay prolonged attention to the abortion issue: the continued political salience of Dobbs almost two years after the decision has proved this.Democrats have an opportunity, this election year, to corner Republicans on an unpopular issue, to make a case to the voters about the uses of giving them continued electoral power, and to articulate a vision for a modern, pluralist and tolerant society in which women can aspire to a meaningfully equal citizenship and in which ordinary citizens are endowed with the privacy and dignity to control their own sexual lives – without interference from the pantingly prurient Republican party.This election cycle, Democrats must take the obvious stand, and do what is right both in terms of politics and in terms of policy: they must call, en masse, for the repeal of the Comstock Act. Anything less would be political malpractice.It’s not as if Comstock is not being thoroughly embraced by the other side. In addition to its revival by the conservative legal movement and anti-choice activists, Comstock has found enthusiastic backers both in conservative thinktanks and among members of Congress. The rightwing Heritage Foundation cited a maximalist approach to Comstock interpretation and enforcement – and the nationwide total abortion ban that would result – as one of their priorities in their “Project 2025”, a policy plan for a coming Trump administration. Meanwhile, in an amicus brief issued to the supreme court in the mifepristone case, 119 Republican representatives and 26 Republican senators asked the court to ban abortion nationwide using Comstock.These conservatives know that their abortion bans are unpopular; they know that voters do not support the overturning of Roe v Wade, and will never vote for the total abortion bans that they aim for. This is precisely why they are seeking to achieve their ends through the judiciary, the one branch of the federal government that is uniquely immune to democratic accountability. And it is why, rather than attempting to ban abortion through the regular legislative process, they are seeking to do so via the revival of a long-forgotten statute, ignoring that Comstock has been void for decades to exploit the fact that it is technically still on the books.To their credit, a few Democratic lawmakers have begun to vocally campaign to overturn Comstock. The first was Cori Bush, of Missouri, who called for the repeal of what she termed the “zombie statute” in the hours after Comstock was mentioned at the court’s mifepristone oral arguments.She was joined days later by Senator Tina Smith, of Minnesota, who wrote in a New York Times op-ed that she wanted to repeal the law and “take away Comstock as a tool to limit reproductive freedom”. Smith says that she is working to form a coalition of Democratic House and Senate members to “build support and see what legislation to repeal the Comstock Act might look like”. Smith says that she wants to wait to see what, if anything, the supreme court says on the matter in its mifepristone decision, expected by the end of June.There is no need to wait. It is unlikely that any bill to repeal Comstock will get the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate; it is impossible that any such bill would make its way through the Republican-controlled House. But this means that Democrats have nothing to lose in waging a political campaign to draw attention to Comstock, and to force their Republican colleagues to take a stand on it. Voters deserve to know what they’re in for if a Republican captures the White House – and they deserve to know what the Republicans on their ballot think about their own rights to dignity, equality, privacy and sexual self-determination.There might be no item on the current political agenda that more aptly symbolizes the Republican worldview than Comstock. Never really workably enforced and long ignored as out of date, Comstock has come to stand in, in the rightwing imagination, for a virtuous, hierarchically ordered past that can be restored in a sexually repressive and tyrannically misogynistic future.This past never existed, not really, but the fantasy of it now has power in many corners of our law: among the reasons given by Samuel Alito in his majority opinion overturning Roe v Wade was his estimation that the right to an abortion was not “deeply rooted in America’s history and traditions”. This grimly nostalgic Republican aim to allow only those freedoms delineated in “history and tradition” would foreclose an America that adapts with time, that allows new forms of freedom to emerge from history.Comstock is a relic, and a relic is what the Republican right wants to turn America into. Democrats have a chance to make a case for it to be something else – something more like a democracy.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More