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      ‘They had absolute power’: the US congressman driven out by Republican gerrymandering

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      A little over nine months after he was sworn in to his first term in Congress, Jeff Jackson, a freshman US representative for North Carolina, announced he would leave the body at the end of his term.To an outsider, that might seem like a surprising decision. In just his first few months in Congress, Jackson had become well-known for smart, short videos explaining what was going on at the Capitol. By April, he had more followers on TikTok than any other member of Congress, the Washington Post reported (as of mid-December he had 2.5 million). By all accounts, he was a rising star.But the reason for his planned departure was simple – it was impossible for him to win re-election. In October, Republicans enacted a new congressional map that reconfigured the boundaries of his district. They cracked the district near Charlotte, which Jackson won by more than 15 points in 2022, and divided voters into two districts that heavily favor GOP voters. It was an effort made possible by the new Republican majority on the North Carolina supreme court, which reversed a key ruling limiting extreme partisan gerrymandering it issued just months ago. Jackson announced he would run for attorney general in the state instead.The Guardian spoke to Jackson about gerrymandering, what he’s learned in Congress, and his decision to leave. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.You get that phone call – and you have no chance of winning re-election. What’s that like?To be honest, we knew it was very likely to end up that way. I was not shocked. They had absolute power to draw almost any map they wanted. And we all know what absolute power does to politicians. Frankly, it would have been a shock if we hadn’t seen this level of corruption from them.So you sort of knew that this was coming.I didn’t know it to a certainty. And I didn’t have any advance information. I just knew the legal freedom that our court was going to grant them and I knew what their incentives were. So if you have that information you can predict the outcome.Can I ask you what happened with the supreme court in North Carolina. Obviously, they switched their rulings on the districts within a matter of months after control of the court flipped. And some people might look at that and say that’s not surprising, the partisan makeup changes, the rulings change. Is there something there that you think people should pay more attention to?On its face it’s deeply concerning. I don’t think you have to know much about the court or politics to see exactly what happened here. This is one of those instances where one of the most obvious explanations is simply the right one. The court was elected with a different partisan composition and they acted in a partisan way to accommodate their party. I think the simple read here is the right one.And do you think people pay close enough attention to what’s happening in supreme court races? I mean, there was one in North Carolina that was decided by 400 votes.I am absolutely positive that they do not. Just with my conversations with voters over the years, the judicial races are the ones furthest from people’s radar.Why do you think that is and how do you get people to pay more attention to them?We haven’t had partisan judicial races for a really long time in North Carolina. That’s a recent development. We’re the first state in a long time, many decades, to go from non-partisan judicial races to partisan judicial races.So I think most people in North Carolina just grew up with an understanding that these judicial races were not partisan and were probably between judges and lawyers who wanted to be a judge. But now that’s not the case. Now these offices come with prepackaged partisan agendas as we saw with redistricting in North Carolina.Is there any hope of fixing this problem in North Carolina?skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe gerrymandering fix in North Carolina is a long-term fix. There are no immediate prospects for this because of the hurdles that you cited. The only way to mitigate it is by doubling down on our effort to get people to the polls. The only way you overcome the seawall of gerrymandering is through an energetic approach to turning out the vote, and that’s what we’re gonna do.Going back to your district, what do you think the consequences are going to be for voters?That’s a good question, particularly when it’s a brutal gerrymander. The state legislature basically used redistricting to take as much power away from voters as they possibly could. They found the true ceiling of how much electoral power they should shift from the voters to themselves. I don’t care which party you’re in, you really shouldn’t appreciate elections being decided for you for the rest of the decade by the state legislature drawing the map, which is exactly what happened.Walk me through your decision to not run for this new district and to run for attorney general?I’ve appreciated the opportunity to serve in Congress. I’ve found it highly educational and [there have been] moments where I felt really productive but I also appreciate the opportunity to serve as attorney general. The job is to protect people. It’s our state’s top prosecutor. I started my career at the district attorney’s office and it’s about guarding against consumer fraud and keeping kids safe online and combatting the fentanyl epidemic and protecting clean air and water.One thing about the job that’s really great is that it’s really not about the type of jobs you see in Congress. It’s not so much about left versus right. It’s just about doing what’s right. Having been in a highly charged partisan environment like Congress, serving as attorney general would be completely different in a really refreshing way.You were in Congress for a relatively short time – what are your takeaways from what you learned there? Your videos about what it’s like to be a congressman I think really struck a chord with a lot of people.There are a lot of serious people here who want to do good work and they tend to be the people whose names you might not know. And getting to know a lot of those people and find ways to work with them has been a rewarding part of the experience.Another rewarding part, to your point, has been learning that there’s enormous appetite by the American public for being spoken to in a calm, reasonable, sensible way about politics. That wasn’t necessarily what I expected. They’re so used to being screamed at that I sort of thought what I was offering wasn’t going to gain much traction beyond my district, beyond people who personally knew me. But as it turns out there’s huge demand for being spoken to in a normal tone of voice about what’s happening in Congress. I think that’s really encouraging.Can I also ask you one more question about this new law that messes with the composition of local boards of elections? There’s concerns that could be used to interfere with certifying election results in other matters. Is that something that you’re concerned about and that you would be focused on as attorney general?Any time the same group of people who just gerrymandered the heck out of the whole state say that they have some ideas about tinkering with the state board of elections, it should make the hair on the back of everyone’s neck stand up. These people are flatly not to be trusted when it comes to taking power away from the voters. More

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      More than a third of US adults say Biden’s 2020 victory was not legitimate

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      More than a third of US adults believe Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president in 2020, according to a new poll.According to the Washington Post and the University of Maryland, 62% of American adults say they believe Biden’s win was legitimate – down from 69% in the same poll in December 2021.Thirty-six per cent say they do not accept Biden’s win.This week brings the third anniversary of the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, which Donald Trump incited in his attempt to overturn his conclusive defeat by Biden the year before.Nine deaths have been linked to the attack, including law enforcement suicides. More than a thousand people have been charged and hundreds convicted in relation to the riot, some with seditious conspiracy.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection but acquitted when enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal.Colorado and Maine have moved to bar Trump from the ballot under section three of the 14th amendment to the US constitution, a post-civil war measure meant to prevent insurrectionists running for state or national office. Trump is expected to appeal.Maintaining his lie that Biden’s win was the result of electoral fraud, and using four federal and 13 state criminal election subversion charges (alongside 74 other criminal counts and assorted civil threats) to motivate supporters, Trump dominates polling for the Republican nomination this year.Reporting its poll, the Post said that among Republicans, only 31% now say Biden’s win was legitimate – down from 39% in 2021.The poll also showed Republicans becoming more sympathetic to the January 6 rioters and more likely to absolve Trump of responsibility for the attack, the Post said.Analysing the poll, Aaron Blake, a senior political reporter for the Post, said it mostly showed that Trump’s message over the 2020 election and January 6 had resonated with voters already disposed to believe it.Nonetheless, Michael J Hanmer, director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland, told the paper: “From a historical perspective, these results would be chilling to many analysts.” More

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      in Elections

      Trump to argue he is immune from January 6 charges as polls show him leading Republican field – US politics live

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      A new year has dawned, but the contours of the race for the Republican presidential nomination are much the same as they were throughout all of 2023. Donald Trump continues to lead in polls of the field, with the support of 62% of voters in a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released yesterday. Soon, we’ll have more than polls to go on when gauging the race for the nomination. The Iowa GOP caucuses are less than two weeks away on 15 January, and will give us an idea of whether Trump’s strong polling edge will translate to votes.Trump is as busy in court as he is on the campaign trail, dealing with the four criminal indictments that were issued against him last year. The matter closest to going to trial is his federal charges over trying to overturn the 2020 election, which is set for a 4 March start date in Washington DC. Trump is trying to convince judges at various levels that he is immune from the charges, and is expected to today file the final brief on the matter to a federal appeals court. We will see what he, or more accurately, his lawyers, have to say for themselves when it comes in.Here’s what is going on today:
      The House and Senate are both out, though lawmakers are still bargaining over government funding levels, military assistance to Ukraine and Israel and potential changes to US immigration policy.
      Joe Biden is returning to Washington DC from vacation in the US Virgin Islands.
      Two planes collided at Tokyo’s airport, leaving five people dead as Japan recovers from Monday’s earthquake. Follow our live blog for the latest on this developing story.
      Police have arrested a man who broke into the Colorado supreme court building and opened fire early this morning, CNN reports.The assailant took an unarmed security guard hostage after shooting out a window and entering the building in downtown Denver, but the Colorado state patrol said no injuries resulted from the incident. In late December, the court had in a 4-3 ruling disqualified Donald Trump from the state’s ballot for his involvement in the January 6 insurrection.Here’s more on the shooting, from CNN:
      Tuesday’s incident began unfolding around 1:15 a.m. and ended nearly two hours later, when the suspect surrendered to police, according to the news release.
      “There are no injuries to building occupants, the suspect, or police personnel,” the release said, adding there was “significant and extensive damage to the building.”
      The incident began with a two-vehicle crash at 13th Avenue and Lincoln Street in Denver, near the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center, which houses the state supreme court.
      A person involved in that crash “reportedly pointed a handgun at the other driver,” the release said. That individual then shot out a window on the east side of the judicial center and entered the building.
      The individual encountered an unarmed security guard, held the guard at gunpoint and took the guard’s keys before going to other parts of the building, including the seventh floor, where he fired more shots, the release said.
      The suspect called 911 at 3 a.m. and surrendered to police, the release said.
      In addition to arguing in court, Donald Trump has taken to issuing personal attacks against the prosecutors who have brought charges against him in three states and the District of Columbia. As the Guardian’s Peter Stone reports, experts fear his campaign of insults could do real damage to America’s institutions:As Donald Trump faces 91 felony counts with four trials slated for 2024, including two tied to his drives to overturn his 2020 election loss, his attacks on prosecutors are increasingly conspiratorial and authoritarian in style and threaten the rule of law, say former justice department officials.The former US president’s vitriolic attacks on a special counsel and two state prosecutors as well as some judges claim in part that the charges against Trump amount to “election interference” since he’s seeking the presidency again, and that “presidential immunity” protects Trump for his multiple actions to subvert Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.But ex-officials and other experts say Trump’s campaign and social media bashing of the four sets of criminal charges – echoed in ways by his lawyers’ court briefs – are actually a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories and very tenuous legal claims, laced with Trump’s narcissism and authoritarian impulses aimed at delaying his trials or quashing the charges.Much of Trump’s animus is aimed at the special counsel Jack Smith, who has charged him with four felony counts for election subversion, and 40 felony counts for mishandling classified documents when his presidency ended.Just days ago, prosecutors on special counsel Jack Smith’s team argued that granting Donald Trump immunity from the charges he faces for trying to overturn the 2020 election would threaten US democracy, the Associated Press reports:Special counsel Jack Smith urged a federal appeals court Saturday to reject former president Donald Trump’s claims that he is immune from prosecution, saying the suggestion that he cannot be held to account for crimes committed in office “threatens the democratic and constitutional foundation” of the country.The filing from Smith’s team was submitted before arguments next month on the legally untested question of whether a former president can be prosecuted for acts made while in the White House.Though the matter is being considered by the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit, it’s likely to come again before the supreme court, which earlier this month rejected prosecutors’ request for a speedy ruling in their favor, holding that Trump can be forced to stand trial on charges that he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The outcome of the dispute is critical for both sides especially since the case has been effectively paused while Trump advances his immunity claims in the appeals court.Prosecutors are hoping a swift judgment rejecting those arguments will restart the case and keep it on track for trial, currently scheduled for 4 March in federal court in Washington. But Trump’s lawyers stand to benefit from a protracted appeals process that could significantly delay the case and potentially push it beyond the November election.After Donald Trump’s lawyers file their last written arguments in the case over his immunity claim today, they will meet alongside prosecutors from special counsel Jack Smith’s office next Tuesday to make oral arguments before the Washington DC-based federal appeals court.It’s unclear when the three-judge panel deciding the matter will rule, but the issue could then make its way to the supreme court. Last month, Smith asked the nation’s highest judges to immediately take up Trump’s claim that his position as president makes him immune from charges related to attempting to overturn the 2020 election, but the court declined to do so, saying the issue needed to follow the normal appeals process before getting to them.A new year has dawned, but the contours of the race for the Republican presidential nomination are much the same as they were throughout all of 2023. Donald Trump continues to lead in polls of the field, with the support of 62% of voters in a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released yesterday. Soon, we’ll have more than polls to go on when gauging the race for the nomination. The Iowa GOP caucuses are less than two weeks away on 15 January, and will give us an idea of whether Trump’s strong polling edge will translate to votes.Trump is as busy in court as he is on the campaign trail, dealing with the four criminal indictments that were issued against him last year. The matter closest to going to trial is his federal charges over trying to overturn the 2020 election, which is set for a 4 March start date in Washington DC. Trump is trying to convince judges at various levels that he is immune from the charges, and is expected to today file the final brief on the matter to a federal appeals court. We will see what he, or more accurately, his lawyers, have to say for themselves when it comes in.Here’s what is going on today:
      The House and Senate are both out, though lawmakers are still bargaining over government funding levels, military assistance to Ukraine and Israel and potential changes to US immigration policy.
      Joe Biden is returning to Washington DC from vacation in the US Virgin Islands.
      Two planes collided at Tokyo’s airport, leaving five people dead as Japan recovers from Monday’s earthquake. Follow our live blog for the latest on this developing story. More

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      in US Politics

      Lauren Boebert blames ‘Hollywood elites’ for decision to switch districts

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      The far-right Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert has blamed “Hollywood elites” including singer Barbra Streisand and actor Ryan Reynolds for her decision to switch districts ahead of her 2024 re-election campaign.In an interview on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast over the weekend, Boebert alluded to how her Democratic opponent Adam Frisch’s campaign had received a $1,000 donation from Streisand in April and a $500 contribution from Reynolds in March.Those sums combine for approximately 0.03% of the $7.7m Frisch’s campaign has raised – compared with his Republican opponent’s $2.4m – since he narrowly lost against Boebert during the 2022 midterm election.Nonetheless, as she has done before, Boebert singled out the donations from Welcome to Wrexham’s Reynolds and Streisand – an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony winner – as evidence that “Hollywood is trying to buy their way into Congress” at her expense.Boebert said her 27 December announcement that she intended to relocate from Colorado’s third congressional district to the fourth and seek election there was meant to “defend and advance conservative principles”.“We need a strong voice there, and we have to shut down the Hollywood elites who are trying to buy my current seat,” Boebert said to Bannon, the former Donald Trump White House adviser who is appealing a prison sentence given to him for his refusal to cooperate with the US House committee that investigated the January 6 US Capitol attack.“It’s coming from Hollywood when you have Barbra Streisand coming in and donating to the Democrat, when you have Ryan Reynolds coming in and donating to the Democrat.”The Cook Political Report categorized the fourth district where Boebert is headed as “solidly Republican”. Its current representative is Ken Buck, who has been a member of the US House since 2015. But Buck said in November that he would not be seeking re-election, blaming his fellow Republicans’ insistence on lying about how the 2020 election was stolen from Trump in favor of Joe Biden.Meanwhile, the third district that Boebert – a vocal 2020 election denier – has represented since 2021 was categorized as a toss-up in a Cook Political Report rating from December. The Cook Political Report changed its Colorado third district rating to “lean Republican” after Boebert announced her switch.Boebert, 37, won a second term in Congress after defeating Frisch by just 546 votes. The 56-year-old former banker announced in February that he would challenge her efforts to win a third term in Congress during the 2024 election cycle.When she first revealed her plans to pursue election in Colorado’s fourth congressional district rather than grant Frisch a rematch, Boebert said a “pretty difficult year” for her and her family personally had also factored into her reasoning. She filed for divorce in May from her husband, with whom she has four sons.About four months later, Boebert landed in scandal after she and a man with whom she was on a date were kicked out of a performance of the stage production Beetlejuice in Denver for inappropriate behavior, including vaping, recording and groping each other. She later issued a statement of apology, saying: “I simply fell short of my values.”Among those to criticize Boebert for switching congressional districts was the Republican Colorado state representative Richard Holtorf, who is also running to succeed Buck in the US House.“Seat shopping isn’t something the voters look kindly upon,” Holtorf said. “If you can’t win in your home, you can’t win here.” More

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      At least three members of Congress targeted in ‘swatting’ incidents

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      At least three members of Congress reported “swatting” incidents over the past week, with the New York Republican Brandon Williams being the latest to reveal that he was subject to an act of criminal harassment that generally involves prank-calling 911 to get a heavily armed Swat team to show up at the target’s home.Williams, who has represented central New York since 2023, said police from Auburn, New York, had come to his home on Christmas Day after receiving a call claiming there was a crisis at his home.Williams said the police, recognizing his address, called in advance to alert him but only after the swatting incident had disrupted his family holiday. Williams said he suspected his pro-Israel positions were behind the prank since pro-Hamas signs had been left at his home.The congressman later told CBS News that he told his family to assemble in the kitchen and to keep their hands visible when police arrived. He said he suspects public officials are being increasingly targeted, including by agitators seek to disrupt the lives of elected officials.“There are so many things going on in our society that are disrupting our systems,” Williams told the outlet. “Swatters are disrupting police, getting them out on these fake calls. This could be targeted at judges, state officials and law enforcement too.”“Swatting” became a holiday feature for several politicians from both parties at the end of 2023.The Florida Republican senator Rick Scott said on Thursday that he had also been the target of a hoax call.“Last night, while at dinner with my wife, cowards ‘swatted’ my home in Naples. These criminals wasted the time & resources of our law enforcement in a sick attempt to terrorize my family,” Scott said in a social media post.A spokesman for the Naples police department told CBS News that the person who made the call told dispatchers that a man had “shot his wife with an AR-15 three times while she was sleeping.”Police said that within 15 minutes they had confirmed the report was false.“This is very much an active and ongoing investigation,” the department added.In a third incident, the Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene said that she, too, had been swatted. In a social media post on Christmas Day, Greene said: “I was just swatted. This is like the 8th time. On Christmas with my family here.”She later claimed that both of her daughters’ homes were targeted.“Both my [daughters’] houses just got swatted today. Big thanks to the police who responded! We appreciate you and support you! Whoever is doing this, you are going to get caught and it won’t be funny to you anymore,” she wrote on X, tagging the FBI.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Maine secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, who last week ruled that Donald Trump was ineligible to appear on the state’s 2024 primary ballot after his allegedly insurrectionist actions of 6 January 2021, was the target of a “swatting call” on Friday night, according to state police.Police said they had received a call at 8.15pm from an unknown male, saying that he had broken into her home in Manchester, Maine. Police responded but found no one inside the home, according to WMTV.Bellows later posted on Facebook that she and her husband were not home “when threats escalated, and our home address was posted online”.“This behavior is unacceptable,” she added. “The non-stop threatening communications the people who work for me endured all day yesterday is unacceptable. It’s designed to scare not only me but also others into silence, to send a message.”In an FBI alert about swatting in 2022, the agency warned that “individuals who engage in this activity use technology, such as caller ID spoofing, social engineering, TTY and prank calls to make it appear that the emergency call is coming from the victim’s phone.”The law enforcement agency added that patterns of swatting had evolved.“Traditionally, law enforcement has seen swatters directing their actions toward individuals and residences. Increasingly, the FBI sees swatters targeting public places such as airports, schools and businesses. Another recent trend is so-called celebrity swatting, where the targeted victims are well-known personalities.” More

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      How 2023 became the year Congress forgot to ban TikTok

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      Banning TikTok in the US seemed almost inevitable at the start of 2023. The previous year saw a trickle of legislative actions against the short-form video app, after dozens of individual states barred TikTok from government devices in late 2022 over security concerns. At the top of the new year, the US House followed suit, and four universities blocked TikTok from campus wifi.The movement to prohibit TikTok grew into a flash flood by spring. CEO Shou Zi Chew was called before Congress for brutal questioning in March. By April – with support from the White House (and Joe Biden’s predecessor) – it seemed a federal ban of the app was not just possible, but imminent.But now, as quickly as the deluge arrived, it has petered out – with the US Senate commerce committee confirming in December it would not be taking up TikTok-related legislation before the end of the year. With the final word from the Senate, 2023 became the year Congress forgot to ban TikTok.“A lot of the momentum that was gained after the initial flurry of attention has faded,” said David Greene, a civil liberties attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). “It seems now like the idea of a ban was being pushed more so to make political points and less as a serious effort to legislate.”Lots of legislation, little actionThe political war over TikTok centered on allegations that its China-based parent company, ByteDance, could collect sensitive user data and censor content that goes against the demands of the Chinese Communist party.TikTok, which has more than 150 million users in the United States, denies it improperly uses US data and has emphasized its billion-dollar efforts to store that information on servers outside its home country. Reports have cast doubt on the veracity of some of TikTok’s assertions about user data. The company declined to comment on a potential federal ban.With distress over the influence of social media giants mounting for years, and tensions with China high after the discovery of a Chinese spy balloon hovering over the US in February 2023, attacks on TikTok became more politically viable for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Legislative efforts ensued, and intensified.The House foreign affairs committee voted in March along party lines on a bill aimed at TikTok that Democrats said would require the administration to effectively ban the app and other subsidiaries of ByteDance. The US treasury-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) in March demanded that TikTok’s Chinese owners sell off the app or face the possibility of a ban. Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, and more than two dozen other senators in April sponsored legislation – backed by the White House – that would give the administration new powers to ban TikTok and other foreign-based technologies if they pose national security threats.But none of these laws ever made it to a vote, and many have stalled entirely as lawmakers turned their attention to the boom in artificial intelligence. Warner told Reuters in December that the bill he authored has faced intensive lobbying from TikTok and had little chance of survival. “There is going to be pushback on both ends of the political spectrum,” he said.The Montana effectMontana passed a total statewide ban on TikTok in May, to start on 1 January 2024, setting the stage for a federal one. That momentum for a nationwide prohibition ebbed, however, when a US judge last week blocked the legislation from going into effect – a move that TikTok applauded.“We are pleased the judge rejected this unconstitutional law and hundreds of thousands of Montanans can continue to express themselves, earn a living, and find community on TikTok,” the company’s statement reads.In a preliminary injunction blocking the ban, US district judge Donald Molloy said the law “oversteps state power and infringes on the constitutional rights of users”. The closely watched decision indicated that broader bans are unlikely to be successful.“The Montana court blocking the effort to ban TikTok not only threw a wet blanket on any federal efforts to do the same, but sent a clear message to every lawmaker that banning an app is a violation of the first amendment,” said Carl Szabo, general counsel at the freedom of speech advocacy group NetChoice, of which TikTok is a member.The EFF’s Greene, who also watched the Montana case closely, echoed that the results proved what many free speech advocates have long argued: a broad ban of an app is not viable under US law.“This confirmed what most people assumed, which is that what is being suggested is blatantly not possible,” he said. “Free speech regulation requires really, really precise tailoring to avoid banning more speech than necessary. And a total ban on an app simply does not do that.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPolitical discussions around the ban also exposed a need for comprehensive privacy legislation, Greene said. The same politicians raising concerns about the Chinese government collecting data had done little to address companies like Meta collecting similar reams of data in the US.“The ideas that were floated were legally problematic and belied a real, sincere interest in addressing privacy harms,” he said. “I think that can cause anyone to question whether they really cared about users.”Election year fearsMeanwhile, some analysts think Congress and the White House are unlikely to even attempt to ban TikTok in 2024, an election year, given the app’s popularity with young voters.Joe Biden’s re-election campaign team has been reportedly debating whether to join TikTok, on which the president does not currently have an official page, to attempt to reach more young voters. Nearly half of people between 18 and 30 in the US use TikTok, and 32% of users in that age group say they regularly consume news there. To date, Vivek Ramaswamy is the only Republican candidate to join the app, a move which has elicited lashings from his opponents in multiple debates.“The same lawmakers calling for a ban are going to need to pivot to online platforms like TikTok for their upcoming get-out-the-vote efforts,” said Szabo. “To cut off a major avenue of reaching voters during an election year doesn’t make political sense.”Even as interest in banning TikTok wanes – politically and among voters – the efforts are not entirely dead. Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington, told Reuters she is still working on legislation and in talks with federal agencies, noting that the Senate held a secure briefing on concerns about foreign influence by way of social media last month.Even as the interest and political power to fuel a TikTok ban wanes, social networks are going to be under the magnifying glass in the coming year, said Szabo.“As we go into 2024, I will say that control of speech on the internet is going to be even more heated, as lawmakers try to control what people can say about their campaigns,” he said. “I would also expect to see those very same politicians using the platform to raise money and to get out the vote.”Reuters contributed reporting More

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      in US Politics

      Liars, expulsions and near-fistfights: Congress plumbs the depths in 2023

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      Before House Republicans left for their holiday recess this month, they addressed one last matter of business. They did not take up an aid package for Ukraine or pass an appropriations bill to fully fund the government through the fiscal year.The House chose instead to vote along party lines to formally authorize an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, even though Republicans have failed to uncover any proof that the president financially benefited from his family’s business dealings.“Instead of doing anything to help make Americans’ lives better, they are focused on attacking me with lies,” Biden said of the vote. “The American people deserve better.”The vote was a fitting end to a year defined by new lows on Capitol Hill. From removing a House speaker to expelling an indicted member and issuing threats of violence, 2023 saw Congress explore new depths of dysfunction. And it all started with a days-long speakership race.The battle for the gavel (part one)After a disappointing performance in the 2022 midterms, Republicans took control of the House in January with a much narrower majority than they had anticipated. That created a math problem for Kevin McCarthy, a Republican of California and the conference’s presumed speaker nominee.Instead of the uneventful process seen in past speakership elections, McCarthy failed to win the gavel on the first ballot, as roughly 20 hard-right members of the Republican conference opposed his ascension. The gridlock forced the House to hold a second round of voting, marking the first time in a century that the chamber failed to elect a speaker on the first ballot.The standoff lasted for four long days and necessitated 15 ballots in total. Just after midnight on 7 January, McCarthy won the speakership with a wafer-thin majority, in a vote of 216 to 212. He would hold the job for just nine months.On the brink of economic collapseAs soon as Republicans (finally) elected a speaker, attention turned to the most pressing matter on Congress’s agenda for 2023: the debt ceiling.The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, warned that the debt ceiling, which represents the amount of money the US government is allowed to borrow to pay its bills, had to be raised or suspended by early June to avoid a federal default and prevent economic catastrophe.Despite those urgent warnings, hard-right members of the House Republican conference appeared prepared to let the US default on its debt in an attempt to force steep government spending cuts. With just days left before the expected default deadline, both the House and the Senate passed a bill to suspend the debt ceiling until January 2025.The bill passed the House with a vote of 314 to 117, as 149 Republicans and 165 Democrats supported the measure. But 71 House Republicans opposed the bill, accusing McCarthy of cutting a horrendous deal with Biden. One Freedom Caucus member, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, mocked the deal as “insanity”.In retrospect, the Freedom Caucus’s attacks on McCarthy marked the beginning of the end of his speakership.The indicted senator from New JerseyAs House Republicans clashed with each other, the Senate grappled with its response to a member accused of corruption so rampant that it bordered on comical. In late September, Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat of New Jersey, was charged in connection to what prosecutors described as a “years-long bribery scheme”.The indictment accused Menendez of exploiting his role as chair of the Senate foreign relations committee to promote the interests of the Egyptian government in exchange for kickbacks. A raid of Menendez’s home, conducted in 2022, revealed that those kickbacks allegedly included a Mercedes-Benz convertible, $500,000 in cash and 13 gold bars.Even as more of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate called on him to step down, Menendez insisted he would not resign, claiming he had been “falsely accused” because of his Latino heritage.Pete Aguilar, a Democrat of California and the highest-ranking Latino member of the House, said of those claims, “Latinos face barriers and discrimination across the board in so many categories, including in our justice system. This is not that.”The chair is declared vacantThe next near-disaster for Congress came in September, when the government appeared to be on the brink of a shutdown that would have forced hundreds of thousands of federal employees to go without a paycheck.But that fate was avoided because, with just hours left before the government’s funding was set to run out, McCarthy introduced a mostly clean bill to fund the government for 45 days. In the House, the bill won the support of 209 Democrats and 126 Republicans, but 90 Republicans opposed the legislation.Democrats and hard-right Republicans alike said McCarthy had “folded” in the funding negotiations, failing to secure the steep spending cuts demanded by hard-right Republicans. Outraged by the bill’s passage, Matt Gaetz, a Republican of Florida, introduced a motion to vacate the chair, forcing a chamber-wide vote on removing McCarthy as speaker.The motion passed, with eight Republicans joining House Democrats in voting for McCarthy’s ouster. Seated in the House chamber, McCarthy let out a bitter laugh as he became the first speaker in US history to ever be ejected from the job.The battle for the gavel (part two)McCarthy’s removal prompted another speakership election, and this one somehow proved even more chaotic than the days-long spectacle that unfolded in January.Republicans initially nominated the House majority leader, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, for the speakership. But Scalise was forced to withdraw from the race days later because of entrenched opposition to his nomination among hard-right lawmakers. The caucus then nominated Jim Jordan of Ohio, who attempted to pressure his critics into electing him as speaker by holding multiple unsuccessful chamber-wide votes. Jordan dropped out of the race when it became clear that opposition to his speakership bid was only growing.The election reached its peak level of absurdity on 24 October, when Tom Emmer of Minnesota withdrew from the race just hours after becoming the conference’s third speaker nominee in as many weeks. By then, it appeared even Republicans had grown tired of their manufactured crisis. Republicans’ fourth and final speaker nominee, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, won the gavel in a party-line vote, bringing an end to weeks of turmoil that had become the subject of nationwide mockery.‘You are a United States senator!’The fourteenth of November was a special day on Capitol Hill because it offered an opportunity for members of both the House and the Senate to embarrass themselves.In the House, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, one of the eight Republicans who voted to remove McCarthy as speaker, accused McCarthy of elbowing him in the kidneys. Burchett then chased after McCarthy to confront him, but the former speaker denied the allegation.“If I’d kidney-punched him, he’d be on the ground,” McCarthy told reporters.Meanwhile, on the other side of the Capitol, Senator Markwayne Mullin, a Republican of Oklahoma, challenged one of the witnesses at a committee hearing to a fistfight. Mullin had previously clashed with the witness, the Teamsters union president, Sean O’Brien, over social media and suggested they settle their score with a physical fight.“You want to do it now?” Mullin asked.“I’d love to do it right now,” O’Brien replied.“Then stand your butt up then,” Mullin said.“You stand your butt up,” O’Brien shot back.The chair of the committee, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, then intervened to prevent any violence and offered this pointed reminder to Mullin: “You know, you’re a United States senator.”From Congress to CameoThe House kicked off the final month of the year with a vote to expel George Santos, a freshman Republican from New York who had been indicted on 23 federal counts related to fraud and campaign finance violations.Santos had been plagued by controversy since before taking office, as reporters discovered he had fabricated most of the life story he shared with voters. A congressional investigation uncovered that Santos had spent thousands of dollars from his campaign account on Botox treatments, luxury items at Hermès and payments to OnlyFans, an online platform known for its sexual content.Faced with that mountain of evidence, more than 100 House Republicans joined Democrats in voting to expel Santos. The 311-114 vote made Santos only the sixth member of the House ever to be expelled from Congress.Without his day job, Santos has turned his attention to Cameo, which allows D-list celebrities to make money by filming short personalized videos for fans. Reports indicate Santos is already raking in six figures on the platform.Goodbye, KevinSantos is not the only House members leaving Congress this year. McCarthy announced in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he would resign from the House at the end of December. McCarthy’s decision brought an end to a 17-year career in the House that encapsulated the Republican party’s shift away from small-government conservatism and toward Donald Trump’s “Make America great again” philosophy.Despite his humiliating fall from power, McCarthy expressed unbroken faith in Americans’ goodness and in “the enduring values of our great nation”.“I’m an optimist,” McCarthy declared.That makes one of us, Kevin. More

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      Are we laughing at George Santos, or is he laughing at us? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      George Anthony Devolder Santos was born in 1988 with a serious congenital condition which means he is incapable of feeling shame or embarrassment. I’m not sure what the name of the affliction is or whether it’s recognized by the medical establishment – but many of his former colleagues in government seem to suffer from the same thing.Still, the disgraced New York Republican, who was expelled from Congress three weeks ago and pleaded not guilty in October to a total of 23 federal felony charges ranging from wire fraud to money laundering, clearly has an extreme case. Santos, who was elected to represent parts of Long Island and Queens last year, has been dogged by controversy throughout his short political career. It turns out he lied about pretty much everything in his life – including his mother surviving 9/11.Every time he’s been called out on his lies and alleged frauds, however, he’s shrugged his shoulders and acted as if people were making a fuss out of nothing. “It’s the vulnerability of being human,” he said loftily when challenged on his claims to have an extensive property portfolio, for example. “I am not embarrassed by it.”Santos, who is just the sixth person ever to be expelled from Congress, doesn’t seem particularly fazed by his ousting either. I don’t know about you, but if I’d been kicked out of Congress – and was facing a 23-count federal indictment that alleged, inter alia, that I’d stolen campaign donors’ identities and charged thousands of dollars to their credit cards for things like Botox without their knowledge – I’d probably feel a tad sheepish. I’d probably lie low for a bit and try to avoid doing anything that brought undue attention to myself or got me into even more legal trouble.Santos, however? He’s busy trying to reinvent himself. He hasn’t let disgrace bring him down. Instead, Santos, the first non-incumbent gay Republican ever elected to Congress, seems to be busy trying to turn himself into some kind of ironic gay icon and is leaning into his camp and outlandish persona as far as he possibly can.He recently announced an X subscription where he promises to “spill tea” on Congress for just $7 a month, for example. He also signed up as a “former congressional ‘Icon’!” to Cameo, a website that offers access to personalized messages from celebrities. For a mere $200-$500 you can get a video message from him.Are people actually paying for this? I’m afraid they are! A friend of the Nebraska state senator Megan Hunt, who is bisexual and a big supporter of LGBTQ+ rights, hired Santos – who has endorsed several anti-trans policies – to send her a message of support which was widely shared.“Be yourself unapologetically,” Santos said in the video, seemingly oblivious that he had supported laws that would stop people doing just that. “Just love yourself. Just make sure that you don’t buy into the hate and stand your ground and don’t let them force you out. Don’t let them bully you. You do you, girl. I’m cheering for ya.”Then there was this week’s much-anticipated interview with Ziwe Fumudoh, a comedian famous for her deadpan interviews. Santos used drag slang like “boots the house down” (an expression of enthusiasm) multiple times throughout the interview in a seeming attempt to remind us all that he may be a disgrace and a Republican but he’s also gay, so he can’t be all bad, ya know?While he may be familiar with gay slang, Santos doesn’t seem to know much about LGBTQ+ history. Ziwe quizzed Santos on civil rights icons (the former politician once compared himself to Rosa Parks) and he admitted he had no idea who James Baldwin or Harvey Milk were. He also didn’t seem familiar with the transgender activist Marsha P Johnson.What about Santos’s own gay history? Namely allegations that Santos, a supporter of anti-LGBTQ+ policies like Florida’s “don’t say gay” law, had been a drag queen in the past. That was true, Santos said, but only for a day. “If I was a career drag queen then, like everybody likes to claim, then I must be a myth of a drag queen now … I wear far more makeup today.”The most important question Ziwe asked was probably her most earnest. “What could we do to get you to go away?” she demanded towards the end, speaking for a nation. “Stop inviting me to your gigs,” Santos replied quickly. “But you can’t. Because people want the content.”Santos may be fond of fiction but, for once, he was speaking the complete truth. You can be forgiven for pretty much anything in America if you generate entertaining enough content. You can lie, you can cheat, you can commit all manner of sins – but if you draw eyeballs and generate headlines you will probably be forgiven. You might even become president! And you certainly won’t go broke. The talkshow appearances, the book deals, the invitations to Dancing on the Stars will come.That said, there are a few things that do tend to kill your career in America. Espousing pro-Palestinian views being a major one. Ziwe, in fact, joked about that herself. “Do you support a ceasefire or are you afraid of losing your Hollywood representation?” she asked Santos at one point during the 18-minute interview.The former congressman, in case you’re interested, made it very clear that he did not support a ceasefire in Gaza, where more than 20,000 people have died. What a strange world we live in, where calling for a ceasefire can get you cancelled faster than using campaign money on shopping sprees and lying your way into Congress.Ziwe is hilarious but, despite the laughs, the interview with Santos ultimately left a bad taste in one’s mouth. You can’t “gotcha” a guy like Santos. You can’t embarrass him. You can’t expose him. You can’t unsettle him. At one point, for example, Ziwe asked: “What advice do you have for young diverse people with personality disorders considering a career in politics?” Most people would get flustered. Santos just paused for a while then said, “You’re cute.”Ultimately, none of this is cute. Platforming a guy like Santos, a bigot who thrives on the oxygen of attention, only helps to rehabilitate him. We may think we’re laughing at the ex-congressman but with every view his interviews rack up, it’s clear that the joke is on us.
      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist More