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      George Santos to face expulsion vote on Thursday, House speaker says

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      The Republican speaker of the US House, Mike Johnson, said the chamber would vote on whether to expel George Santos on Thursday, leaving it up to lawmakers to decide whether the New Yorker should be removed from office for embellishing his résumé and allegedly breaking federal law.“What we’ve said as the leadership team is we’re going to allow people to vote their conscience,” Johnson told reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.“I think it’s the only appropriate thing we can do. We’ve not whipped the vote and we wouldn’t. I trust that people will make that decision thoughtfully and in good faith.“I personally have real reservations about doing this, I’m concerned about a precedent that may be set for that. So, everybody’s working through that and we’ll see how they vote tomorrow.”On Tuesday, Santos said he would not resign in order to avoid becoming only the sixth representative ever expelled from the House.“If I resign, I make it easy for this place,” Santos, 35, told reporters. “This place is run on hypocrisy. I’m done playing a part for the circus. If they want me to leave Congress, they’re going to have to take that tough vote.”But that tough vote was already drawing near.Earlier, two Democrats, Robert Garcia of California and Dan Goldman of New York, initiated proceedings to require an expulsion vote within two legislative days. Later, two Republicans, Anthony D’Esposito of New York and Michael Guest of Mississippi, did the same.“We want to make sure that happens this week,” Garcia said. “I think whatever it takes to get that vote this week is what we’re doing. He has no place in Congress.”The list of previous expellees includes three men who fought for the Confederacy in the civil war and two convicted of crimes. The last man forced out, James A Traficant of Ohio, a congressman with a famous “piled-high pompadour” toupée who was convicted of fraud, bribery, obstruction of justice and racketeering, was expelled in 2002.On Thursday, a two-thirds majority will be required to add Santos to the list of shame.Santos was elected last year but quickly saw his résumé torn to pieces by investigative reporting and past actions subjected to legal scrutiny. He admitted embellishing that résumé – which included bizarre claims about his academic and professional history – but denied wrongdoing. Among more picaresque episodes, he denied having been a drag performer in Brazil – a denial now undermined by reporters including the author of a new biography.Santos has pleaded not guilty to 23 federal fraud charges but has not yet stood trial. As indicated by Johnson on Wednesday, many in Congress, including senior Democrats, have cited the lack of a conviction when opposing previous attempts to expel Santos, saying to do so without the verdict of a court would set a dangerous precedent.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat in the closely divided Senate, is under indictment for alleged corruption. He denies wrongdoing.In Santos’s case, his own party generated a previous attempt to expel him. But it took a damning House ethics committee report, issued this month and detailing the use of campaign funds for expenses including Botox treatment and luxury purchases, to change the political equation.Johnson must govern with a narrow and unruly majority. A Santos exit would eat into that margin but Johnson this week attempted to persuade Santos to quit before he could be thrown out.Santos has said he will not run again but his refusal to quit prompted an unnamed Republican to tell Axios he thought Santos wanted the “notoriety” of becoming the sixth person ever forcibly expelled.If Santos is removed, his New York district, which covers parts of Long Island and Queens, will have a special election within 90 days. More

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      Rosalynn Carter memorial service: Jimmy Carter joins mourners at Atlanta church – as it happened

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      Former president Jimmy Carter was in attendance at the tribute service for his wife, Rosalynn Carter:Carter turned 99 in October, and has been in hospice in his home town of Plains, Georgia, since February.Here’s the moment he arrived at the church for the ceremony:Mourners including Joe and Jill Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Melania Trump and Georgia’s two Democratic senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock paid tribute to former first lady Rosalynn Carter at a ceremony in Atlanta. Back in Washington DC, House Democrats called up a resolution to expel fraudster George Santos from the chamber that must be voted on within two days, while the chamber’s Republican leaders are reportedly considering holding a vote on a separate resolution Thursday.Here’s what else has been happening today:
      Jimmy Carter was in attendance at the memorial service in Atlanta. The 99-year-old former president has been receiving hospice care since February.
      Amy Carter spoke about her parents’ love for each other, and read from a letter her father wrote to Rosalynn while he was serving in the navy.
      Nikki Haley received the endorsement of Koch-affiliated Super Pac Americans for Prosperity Action, in a potential boost for her quest to overtake Donald Trump in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
      Santos insists he will not resign, while the House resolution to expel him needs two-thirds majority support to pass.
      Trump and Santos aren’t so different, a biographer of the New York congressman says.
      Back in Congress, Punchbowl News reports that the House’s Republican leadership is considering taking up GOP lawmaker Michael Guest’s resolution to expel George Santos on Thursday:Passing Guest’s resolution would make the separate motion proposed by Democrat Robert Garcia moot. It remains to be seen if either proposal has the two-thirds majority support necessary to pass.Here are a few photos as the tribute to Rosalynn Carter wrapped up in Atlanta:Pallbearers have loaded Rosalynn Carter’s casket into a hearse, which is now departing the tribute ceremony.Her funeral is scheduled for tomorrow in Plains, Georgia, the Carters’s hometown. That ceremony and her burial at the family residence are restricted to family and friends, according to the Carter Center.The tribute to Rosalynn Carter is nearing its conclusion in Atlanta.The closing benediction was given by Tony Lowden, a pastor at the church the Carters attended in Plains, Georgia, who made a point to acknowledge the work of the Secret Service agents who guarded the former president and his family during his time in office, and in the decades since:
      Oftentimes, Mr. President, we don’t acknowledge those who keep us safe. Rosalynn Carter is in heaven, and she did the work of the Lord and the kingdom all around the world. And Don and all the directors for 46 years got her and her family home safe. And I say thank each and every one of you, those that are standing post and those that are listening on the radios right now. Thank you and she loves you and a nothing you can do about it.
      Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter’s grandson Jason, a former Georgia state senator, spoke about his grandmother’s work fighting Guinea worm disease, as well as advocating for better mental health care.“Her advocacy for mental health was a 50-year climb that is as remarkable as any other and has been mentioned already. But if you imagine just how far our society has come in the last five years on issues of mental health, and you think that she decided in 1970 to tackle the anxious and stigma associated with mental illness, it is remarkable how far she could see and how far she was willing to walk,” Carter said. “And that effort changed lives and it saved lives, including in my own family. She was made for these long journeys.”Jason Carter continued:
      John Lewis once said that in all of his marches, he only really learned one thing: Don’t let them turn you around. That was my grandmother to a tee. One of my last memories of her was in a hospital. We were there for my grandfather, but she had her own physical limitations that made it hard for her to walk. She had to practice. She was ready to go for one of these walks and she picked up this cane and I looked at the cane. She looked at me and she said, ‘you know it’s not a cane … it’s a trekking pole’ She said, ‘the exact same kind that those women use when they go to the South Pole.’
      I watched her walk down that hall with that trekking pole. I followed her and I just pray that we never lose sight of that path.
      Back in Georgia, Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter’s daughter Amy Carter spoke about the importance of love in their relationship:“My mom spent most of her life in love with my dad,” she said. “Their partnership and love story was a defining feature of her life. Because he is unable to speak to you today, I’m going to share some of his words about loving and missing. This is from a letter he wrote 75 years ago while he was serving in the navy”:
      My darling, every time I have ever been away from you, I had been thrilled when I returned to discover just how wonderful you are. While I’m away I tried to convince myself that you really are not could not be as sweet and beautiful as I remember. But when I see you I fall in love with you all over again. Does that seem strange to you? It doesn’t to me. Goodbye darling. Until tomorrow, Jimmy.
      Two House Democratic lawmakers have moved to force a vote within 48 hours on a resolution to expel Republican congressman and admitted fabulist George Santos from the chamber.California’s Robert Garcia introduced the resolution earlier this year, and together with New York’s Dan Goldman have called it up as a privileged resolution, meaning it must be voted on within the next two days. While it will need a two-thirds majority vote of the chamber to pass, momentum to oust Santos has increased in the past weeks following the release of an ethics committee report that found “grave and pervasive campaign finance violations and fraudulent activity” by the New York Republican.“The time has finally come to remove George Santos from Congress. If we’re going to restore faith in government, we must start with restoring integrity in the U.S. House of Representatives,” Garcia said in a statement.Added Goldman: “George Santos is an admitted liar, fraud, and cheat, and the recent Ethics Committee report confirms what we’ve long known: George Santos is wholly unfit for public office.”Former president Jimmy Carter was in attendance at the tribute service for his wife, Rosalynn Carter:Carter turned 99 in October, and has been in hospice in his home town of Plains, Georgia, since February.Here’s the moment he arrived at the church for the ceremony:Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s son, James “Chip” Carter is speaking now at his mother’s memorial service.He called Rosalynn the glue that held the family together “through the ups and downs and thicks and thins” of family life and politics.Chip Carter, 73, recalled that when he was 14 he used to get beaten up for wearing a sticker supporting Lyndon Johnson for president.But he said his mother would mend his shirt torn in the fight and replace the sticker for him, as he supported the Democratic Party cause.He also said that Rosalynn Carter “was influential in getting me into rehab for drug and alcohol addiction. She saved my life.”He called Jimmy Carter’s loss in the 1980 election to the Republican ticket of Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush “devastating to us all.”Chip Carter just mentioned that his mother was “racked with dementia” prior to her death last month.The memorial service for first lady Rosalynn Carter is now under way, with the call to worship and invocation.The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus just gave the patient congregation a stirring rendition of America the Beautiful, as Carter’s casket entered the church.The setting is the Glenn Memorial United Methodist church on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.The sunlight is streaming through the windows and illuminating many on the left-hand side of the congregation.The front row in the church is now occupied with the leadership names of the day.Jimmy Carter, 99, has just entered, semi-recumbent on a sort of wheeled chair-bed. He is at one end of the row. Joe Biden is close by with, to the president’s right, Jill Biden, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, Michelle Obama and Melania Trump.The choir is now singing America the Beautiful, as Rosalynn Carter’s casket has been brought in and placed at the front of the church.The hearse has pulled up to the steps of the church and the military guard is marching forward to lift the coffin and take it in to the service.Rosalynn Carter’s flower-decorated coffin is now being carried. The political leaders past and present are now in the church. More details shortly.Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, a Republican, has just entered the church and taken a pew.Georgia’s Democratic US Senators, Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff have also entered and found a seat.We await the biggest names of the day. It’s a brilliantly sunny day with a cloudless, bright blue sky above the church on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta.Things are clearly running a little behind schedule before the start of the memorial service for Rosalynn Carter.It’s due to start at 1pm ET but there are still at least five rows at the front of the church in Atlanta empty and clearly waiting for their VIP occupants.The congregation that’s there so far was just treated to some Elgar from the orchestra and now something of a hush has descended upon the church, apart from a bit of hold music. We await the arrival of the courtege.Guests are filing in to the Glenn Memorial church in Atlanta for the tribute service to former first lady Rosalynn Carter. Her husband Jimmy Carter will attend, as will Joe and Jill Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Melania Trump and Georgia’s two Democratic senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. None of the group is scheduled to speak at the event, which will instead feature eulogies from Carter family members and people who knew the former first lady. Back in Washington DC, House Democrats are expected to propose a resolution to expel fraudster George Santos from the chamber that must be brought up for consideration within two days. We’ll be watching for signs of if the resolution has the support to pass.Here’s what else has been happening today:
      Nikki Haley received the endorsement of Koch-affiliated Super Pac Americans for Prosperity Action, in a potential boost for her quest to overtake Donald Trump in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
      Santos insists he will not resign, while the House resolution to expel him needs two-thirds majority support to pass.
      Trump and Santos aren’t so different, a biographer of the New York congressman says.
      Reporters traveling with Joe Biden say the president and first lady have arrived at Glenn Memorial church in Atlanta ahead of the tribute service for Rosalynn Carter.Traveling with them are a number of current and former elected officials, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Georgia’s two Democratic senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. Jimmy Carter is also expected to attend, though is not reported to be traveling with the president, as is former first lady Melania Trump.As guests are filing in, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is running through some of Rosalynn Carter’s favorite songs, including compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach.In Atlanta, guests are arriving for this afternoon’s tribute service to former first lady Rosalynn Carter. Here are some photos ahead of the event, which begins at 1pm: More

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      ‘George Santos models himself pretty directly off Trump’ – biographer Mark Chiusano

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      “I always thought it would be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.” So says Matt Damon in the title role of The Talented Mr Ripley, the Oscar-winning film from 1999. The line would make a fitting political epitaph for George Santos, the New York Republican facing imminent expulsion from Congress after a scathing House ethics committee report cited “overwhelming evidence” of lawbreaking.Santos, 35, also faces federal charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, false statements, falsification of records, aggravated identity theft and credit card fraud, in a 23-count indictment in his home state. If convicted, he is likely to spend years in prison.“This story is a tragedy,” says Mark Chiusano, author of The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos, a book published this week. “He is someone who is clearly very ambitious and wants to live a kind of wealthy life, a life of fame and notoriety, and he is trying to attain essentially a version of the American dream, which so many people have sought over the years.“The sad thing is that he realises pretty early on that he’s not going to get there, he’s not going to be able to make a ton of money on Wall Street, he’s not going to be as famous as The Real Housewives, for example. Because of the difficulty and grittiness of the usual road to the American dream, he decides to go a different route.“He starts making everything up, rather than [be like] members of his family who just kept their heads down and worked hard and tried to build a life. He tries to take this shortcut and the shortcut eventually catches up with him and it’s a real tragedy. He has no one to blame but himself but he is in a very difficult place now.”Chiusano, 33, covered Santos at Newsday, a newspaper serving Long Island. He first spoke to Santos by phone in 2019, when he was announcing a run for Congress. When Chiusano asked where the launch would happen, he was surprised to hear Santos say right now – even though the candidate was in Florida.The author recalls: “That was the first strangeness of him and then I kept writing about other strange things he was doing. It was unclear where he lived, whether he even really lived in the district, his QAnon slogan promoting – all sorts of strange things for the next two cycles.”Like Ripley, Chiusano discovered that Santos can be charming. “One of the things that almost everyone I talked to who knew him said is he’s very charismatic and it’s true. He has a big personality. He’s a tall man. He makes friends easily. He’s a fun guy to hang out with.“I got a little bit of that sense in our phone calls but the flip side is that he can turn nasty and cutting very quickly, which he certainly did with his financial victims and to a lesser extent with me, just starting to get more critical and angry, and I’m sure there’s more of that to come once the book comes out.”Santos did not cooperate for the book.‘This hustling, grifting lifestyle’In 2020, up against an incumbent, Santos lost the election by more than 12 points. But two years later the incumbent was gone, redistricting worked in Republicans’ favour and there was local frustration over Covid and crime. Santos won New York’s third congressional district, which encompasses parts of Nassau county and Queens.His biography came under intense scrutiny – and began to fall apart. Among his most spectacular lies: his grandparents fled the Holocaust; his mother was caught up in the 9/11 attacks in New York; he was the “star” of the Baruch College volleyball team; he worked for the Wall Street firms Citigroup and Goldman Sachs; he was a producer on the failed Broadway show Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark; he “lost four employees” in the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida; the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.Furthermore, it emerged that in 2008 Santos, who has deployed an array of pseudonyms, was charged by Brazilian prosecutors for using a fake name and a stolen chequebook to buy goods including tennis shoes. Also, in 2016 he allegedly took $3,000 from an online fundraiser intended to help save the life of a dog owned by a disabled military veteran.It seems there was no “loss of innocence” or “turning point” for Santos. Raised in New York by Brazilian migrants, he was always a fabulist leaving a trail of victims.“One thing that struck me in reporting the book is how committed he was to this hustling, grifting lifestyle from a very early age,” Chiusano says.When Santos was in high school, he cheated his sister’s 16-year-old friend, who spoke little English, out of video game equipment and technology worth hundreds of dollars.“This kid saw Santos as a kind of older brother figure, a mentor looking out for him, which is a through line with Santos: he’ll befriend you and be very charming and charismatic before he turns. He did turn on this kid and the kid ended up going back to Brazil pretty empty-handed.”Not even Santos’s family was safe. Chiusano adds: “I write in the book about how he mooches off his very elderly and religiously devout grandmother, who’s living in Brazil. He gets money off her to fund his fun lifestyle in Brazil as a late adolescent teenager.“In New York he is stealing from his Aunt Elma, who again is this woman who worked very hard to build a life in New York and seems to have doted on Santos and he used that to his benefit. This commitment to doing whatever he can to make a couple of bucks is a through line in his life up to the present.”Interviewees agreed that this goes beyond everyday grifting. “A story that I heard many times was a version of: ‘Santos was talking to me and told me X and not only was it fake but he really believed it.’ The idea that he believed the lies he was telling was something that many people thought was the case.”Chiusano spent weeks in Brazil tracking down people who remember Santos as a drag queen and beauty pageant hopeful.“The Brazil piece of his story was important to the book because it shows Santos at this major moment of his development, which is that he’s in Brazil away from the New York life he knew. No one knows who he is that well so he can pretend to be this other person.“He pretends to be a very wealthy person, someone who’s on his way up in the world, using his American background to seem more impressive than he actually is. I talked to a lot of people down there who knew him and this, of course, is when he is experimenting with dressing in drag.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This has been a controversial part of Santos’s story. There’s a couple of famous pictures and videos of him dancing in drag but he claims that these pictures are all that there was. That was not what I found when I went down there and talked to people who remembered him as a drag queen.”Santos is married to a man named Matt. Yet he has endorsed Florida’s hardline “don’t say gay” bill and aligned himself with far-right Republicans who scaremonger about drag queens in schools and advocate book bans. Does he have any true political convictions or are these, too, just an act?Chiusano finds it hard to say. “He has flipped on so many things. He’s flip-flopped on abortion. He claims that he was no rightwinger and now he is very much associated with the far right of the Republican party. He’s definitely flipped and he’ll definitely say whatever he needs to satisfy an audience.“But there do seem to be some core conservative beliefs. Many members of his family are pretty conservative. They’re pretty pro-[Jair] Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil who’s very conservative. I don’t think that he is secretly a super-lefty guy who is making this up. He’s conservative but he takes any opportunity that is laid in his path.”Santos belongs to what Chiusano dubs “the shamelessness caucus” in Congress, along with provocateurs such as Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. “They are there mostly to get more attention for themselves,” Chiusano says. “They don’t seem to have so much interest in governing and he has joined them, sometimes voting in concert with them, co-sponsoring bills with them. Obviously a lot of people are very angry at him in Congress and are not giving him the time of day but he does have these friends on the far right.”Long obsessed with celebrity – his old tweets betray a fascination with Miley Cyrus, Paris Hilton and The Real Housewives – Santos got rich in a political era in which fame is the ultimate currency.“Some of these more shameless members feel a sense of impunity, that it doesn’t matter what they say,” Chiusano says. “In fact, the crazier that they sound, the more social media clout they have.“This is the result of breakdown of all these American institutions including the media and the party system, which used to be gatekeepers that helped give voters a better sense of here’s who this person is, but also weeding out candidates who should not have gotten to higher office. This is a very modern thing and he is a symptom of the disease. He’s not the disease itself.”‘A scary idea’There is not much doubt about Santos’s political mentor: Donald Trump.Chiusano continues: “Santos models himself pretty directly off Trump. Trump is this almost sui generis figure who is kind of shaping the Republican party and he himself is the result of all these other political forces outside himself. But Trump is a person who was already famous and already had at least a perception of being very rich and certainly had more resources that Santos did.“You can see how someone like that was able to harness these crazy political forces and become president. What’s interesting to me is the Santos story shows that even a regular person can be lying and shameless and get to office and that is, in some senses, almost scarier than someone like Trump being able to do it. If there can be many Trumps who aren’t as rich and powerful as Trump and still lie their way to office, that’s a scary idea.”But it does not appear that Santos could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes. The House ethics committee detailed extravagant – and possibly illegal – spending of campaign money, including thousands of dollars on Botox, luxury brands such as Hermès, and “smaller purchases” from OnlyFans, an online platform known for sexual content.Consequently, Santos looks set to be expelled from Congress, as even Republicans run out of patience, and has said he will not run again. He has no Trump-style option to pardon himself. But Chiusano does not believe this is the last the world will hear of George Santos.“These charges are very significant and he’s facing an uphill battle but he wouldn’t be in jail for a hundred years, like Sam Bankman-Fried seems likely to be. As far as we know now, if he’s convicted, he’ll get out as a relatively young man. I definitely see a second act for him, maybe not in elected politics but certainly in the Dancing with the Stars/rightwing podcast game. It would be back to his original love of celebrity.”
      The Fabulist is published in the US by One Signal/Atria More

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      Joe Biden and first lady ‘horrified’ by Vermont shooting of three Palestinian students – as it happened

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      Joe and Jill Biden as well as Vermont’s congressional delegation condemned the weekend shooting of three Palestinian students in the northeastern state’s most-populous city Burlington, while police announced an arrest was made in the case yesterday. It was an otherwise quiet day in Washington DC, but it won’t stay that way for long. The House will perhaps as soon as Wednesday vote on kicking admitted fabulist George Santos out of the chamber after a damning report from its ethics panel, while the Senate is gearing up to consider Biden’s request for more than $100b to fund border security and military assistance to Ukraine and Israel.Here’s what else happened today:
      Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, reportedly said he discussed “options” with Santos ahead of the expected expulsion vote.
      A rift is emerging among Democrats over Biden’s request for military assistance to Israel in the wake of Hamas’s 7 October terrorist attack.
      Merrick Garland said federal authorities are looking into whether the Vermont shooting was a hate crime.
      Donald Trump is making it very clear that a priority of his second presidential term will be retaliating against his enemies.
      The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said they believe the three students were targeted in Vermont because of their ethnicity.
      In a new statement, Joe Biden condemned the shooting of three Palestinian students, two of whom were US citizens, in Vermont this weekend, saying the White House would support the investigation into the attack:
      Jill and I were horrified to learn that three college students of Palestinian descent, two of whom are American citizens, were shot Saturday in Burlington, Vermont. They were simply spending Thanksgiving gathered with family and loved ones.
      We join Americans across the country in praying for their full recovery, and we send our deepest condolences to their families. While we are waiting for more facts, we know this: there is absolutely no place for violence or hate in America. Period. No person should worry about being shot at while going about their daily lives. And far too many Americans know a family member injured or killed as a result of gun violence. We cannot and we will not accept that.
      Earlier today, I spoke to Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger to offer my support. We are grateful to the Burlington Police Department – as well as the FBI, ATF, and other law enforcement partners – for their swift work identifying and arresting a suspect. Our Administration will provide any additional federal resources needed to assist in the investigation.
      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said that members of both political parties discussed government funding over the Thanksgiving break ahead of a January deadline to avoid a shutdown.From Politico’s Burgess Everett:Here’s more background on Biden’s use of the the Defense Production Act, from the Guardian’s Edward Helmore.
      …The Defense Production Act of 1950, which was passed to streamline production during the Korean war, was last used in early 2021 during the coronavirus pandemic to accelerate and expand the availability of ventilators and personal protective equipment.
      The supply chain council is set to address issues ranging from improved data sharing between government agencies, supplying renewable energy resources and freight logistics…
      Monday’s announcement arrived as the US economy appears to be doing well on paper. But the White House has acknowledged that improving economic picture is not shared by consumers, and the administration has explicitly tied the economy to the president by calling it Bidenomics.
      A recent Economist/YouGov poll found that only 39% of voters approve of Biden’s handling of jobs and the economy. And a separate Reuters/Ipsos poll puts the economy as the most important issue to Americans for the past two years.
      Even as the pace of inflation has slowed, consumers are shouldering an economic burden they had not experienced in years. Prices have risen as much in the past three years as they had in the previous decade, according to a report by Bloomberg, and it now costs almost $120 to buy the same goods and services a family could afford with $100 before the pandemic.
      Read the full article here.Biden is currently speaking in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building about strengthening US supply chains and his Bidenomics policy, as the burden of high inflation costs remain a priority for many US voters.During today’s event, Biden announced that he would be evoking the Defense Production Act to boost production of “essential medicine”.The 1950s law will allow Biden to strength the domestic manufacturing of medicines that is seen as crucial for national security, improving US supply chains that the Biden administration believes will address the higher price of goods and services.Biden also flagged falling inflation rates and that wages for families were increasing as wins for the US economy under his Bidenomics plan.Biden added that “costs went down” in time for the Thanksgiving holiday.“As a share of earnings, dinner was the fourth cheapest ever on record. I want you all to know that,” Biden said, referring to the cost to produce the Thanksgiving feast.From the Guardian’s David Smith:In an appearance in Florida, Republican House speaker Mike Johnson said he had talked to George Santos about “his options” as the chamber gears up to vote on an effort to expel the New York congressman for his lies and ethics breaches, Politico reports:The vote on the expulsion resolution proposed by ethics committee chair Michael Guest is expected to come as soon as Wednesday, but Johnson’s comment is an sign that he may be looking for another solution to Santos’s ethical lapses that does not involve voting him out of the chamber.Joe Biden is due to right about now hold an event at the White House on his administration’s actions to strengthen supply chains.That event is late in starting, perhaps due to the fact that he was on the phone with Miro Weinberger, the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, where three Palestinian students were shot over the weekend. Here’s what Weinberger had to say about the call:The police have not yet said if they consider the shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont as a hate crime, but advocacy group the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said they believe it was:Joe and Jill Biden as well as Vermont’s congressional delegation have condemned the weekend shooting of three Palestinian students in the northeastern state’s most-populous city Burlington, while police announced an arrest was made in the case yesterday. It’s an otherwise quiet day in Washington DC, but it won’t stay that way for long. The House will perhaps as soon as Wednesday vote on kicking admitted fabulist George Santos out of the chamber after a damning report from its ethics panel, while the Senate is gearing up to consider Biden’s request for more than $100b to fund border security and military assistance to Ukraine and Israel.Here’s what else has happened today:
      A rift is emerging among Democrats over Biden’s request for military assistance to Israel in the wake of Hamas’s 7 October terrorist attack.
      Merrick Garland said federal authorities are looking into whether the Vermont shooting was a hate crime.
      Donald Trump is making it very clear that a priority of his second presidential term will be retaliating against his enemies.
      Also attending today’s White House press briefing was John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council.He offered details of the agreement reached for Hamas to release more of the hostages taken in the 7 October terrorist attack:Follow our live blog for the latest on the conflict between Israel and Hamas:At her briefing today, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Joe and Jill Biden were “horrified” by the shootings of three Palestinian students in Vermont:Here’s footage of the arraignment of Jason Eaton, the suspect in the shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont: More

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      ‘It has to be done’: can Reconstruction-era laws hold Trump and allies accountable?

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      In attempts to hold former president Donald Trump and his allies accountable for election subversion, attorneys are reaching back to laws created in the wake of the civil war in the 1860s.Beyond Trump, too, lawsuits using these Reconstruction-era laws seek to enforce voting rights and prevent discrimination in modern-era elections.The laws from this time period were designed, in part, to reintegrate the Confederate states back into the country and ensure that they did not yet again attempt to overthrow the government or pass laws to restrict newly freed Black citizens.But the Reconstruction Congress created laws that were “flexible and responsive to modern-day threats”, making them applicable today and worth trying to enforce, said Jessica Marsden, an attorney with Protect Democracy, which has filed lawsuits using such laws.In recent years, the use of laws originally designed to crack down on the Ku Klux Klan and its allies in government after the civil war has grown. This set of laws bans political intimidation and violence, including insurrection, and has been used in legal claims from Charlottesville, to the January 6 insurrection, to the federal government’s charges against Trump.Section 3 of the 14th amendment, recently making headlines as various lawsuits attempt to use it to keep Trump off the 2024 ballot, makes it illegal for someone who was an officer of the US government to hold office again if they engaged in “insurrection or rebellion”.One novel approach also seeks to use a law that dealt with readmitting Virginia into the union to protect the voting rights of people with felonies.The resurgence of these laws in recent years has surprised some observers, but proponents say they are strong tools to fight back against anti-democratic movements happening today. And there aren’t more recent laws that deal directly with insurrection since the last major one happened during the civil war.“We have been compelled to use tools that we didn’t use in the past or didn’t need to use because we didn’t have the kind of threat and the kind of character prepared to break norms as we do now with Mr Trump and his confederates,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, a civil rights attorney who is opening a center focused on the 14th amendment at Howard University School of Law.Under Ifill’s leadership, in 2020 the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund filed a lawsuit against Trump and the Republican National Committee using Ku Klux Klan Act statutes, alleging Trump’s campaign and the RNC were systematically trying to disfranchise Black voters by disrupting vote counting and trying to delay results. It’s “never easy to sue a president under the KKK Act,” Ifill said, “but it has to be done”.“We are in a moment of democratic crisis,” Ifill said. “Trump and his agenda and Trumpism is a unique threat to the core of American democracy. And I think that has sent everyone into the space that we have to use all of the tools that are available to us.”The Reconstruction Congress understood the threat of insurrection and the kinds of disfranchisement and violence that came from giving rights to Black men after the civil war because these activities had just happened or were still happening then, so they created a strong set of laws to prevent further violence and to hold accountable those who perpetuated it.Since then, these threats haven’t been as direct as they are now, those filing lawsuits under these laws say, rendering the historic tools both useful and necessary.“Congress in the 1860s and 70s gave us a toolkit that is surprisingly well-suited to this moment,” Marsden, of Protect Democracy, said.The laws from that time period were written with an understanding that opponents of democracy would be “quite creative” in how they’d try to deter people from participating in the democratic process, leaving open what kinds of actions can be considered voter intimidation, Marsden said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat has made the KKK Act, for instance, a valuable tool when addressing modern technology, like a successful lawsuit against robocalls with threatening messages targeting Black voters about voting by mail. Another KKK Act case that recently settled involved a “Trump train” of vehicles that harassed a Biden bus in Texas in 2020, in which Protect Democracy argued that a town’s police force knew of this intimidation but didn’t work to stop it.Protect Democracy is also arguing that the Virginia Readmission Act, which protected the rights of new Black citizens to vote, applies today to disfranchising people with felonies. In a lawsuit believed to be the first making this claim, the group says Virginia’s law that strips people with felonies of their right to vote is illegal because the Reconstruction-era readmission act says only certain felonies can be used to prevent voting.Eric Foner, a historian who specializes in the civil war and the Reconstruction era, said it makes sense to use existing laws from that time period because they haven’t been repealed, despite the lack of use in the many decades since then, and reflect similar ideas to what’s happening today. The recent use of them shows just how strong the laws created by the Reconstruction Congress are, he said.“It’s a political commentary on what is possible politically today,” Foner said. “And it’s an odd thing because it’s considered more possible to resurrect these laws than to pass new ones.”With the resurgence of these laws come some challenges with making the case to judges, who may not have dealt directly with Reconstruction-era statutes beyond scholarly arguments. In the 14th amendment lawsuits, for instance, judges have questioned how to apply this section of law and interpret its provisions. And, given the high-profile and political nature of seeking to boot a former president from the ballot, judges have expressed wariness to wade into what some consider a political question, not a legal one.Already, 14th amendment lawsuits in Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan and Florida have been tossed, though many are still ongoing and those bringing the lawsuits are likely to appeal, with the question expected to go before the US supreme court at some point.In one smaller case, though, which didn’t involve someone as high-profile as Trump, a judge in New Mexico ruled that a county commissioner who had participated in the January 6 riots couldn’t hold office any more because of the 14th amendment.Despite their discomfort with the politics of the issue, Ifill argues that judges need to show courage to enforce the amendment’s provisions.“They may not want to do it any more than I wanted to sue a president under the KKK Act, but their job is to apply the law to the facts and issue a ruling that is consistent with what the law demands,” she said. More

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      Kamala Harris: abortion bans passed by ‘extremist’ people causing ‘chaos, confusion and fear’ – as it happened

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      Vice-president Kamala Harris has released a statement condemning abortion bans, saying that they are passed by “extremist so-called leaders” who continue to “cause chaos, confusion and fear”.She added:
      The women of America deserve better. Congress must pass a bill that restores the protections of Roe v Wade – and when they do, President Joe Biden will sign it into federal law.
      We’ve launched a standalone blog following the latest developments after a vehicle explosion at the US-Canada border.Join us here to follow the latest news and reaction:The politics blog will pause for now.Dramatic images and clips are coming through on the vehicle explosion at the international bridge near the Niagara Falls, but it’s a very fluid situation in terms of official information emerging at this point.The FBI is investigating and, according to CNN, also the US Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) federal agency.Reports so far suggest that a car that was entering the US from Canada, where there are toll booths and officials, exploded. There are no reports yet of any victims but this is all unfolding.A border crossing between the US and Canada has been closed after a vehicle exploded at a checkpoint on a bridge near Niagara Falls, the Associated Press reports.The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s field office in Buffalo, in upstate New York, said in a statement that it was investigating the explosion on the so-called Rainbow Bridge, which connects the two countries across the Niagara River.Photos and video taken by news organizations and posted on social media showed a security booth that had been singed by flames.Further information wasn’t immediately available.New York governor, Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said she had been briefed on the incident and was “closely monitoring the situation”.Images and clips are emerging on social media.The FBI and other law enforcement are investigating a vehicle explosion at the international bridge that connects the US and Canada at the Niagara Falls.The cause of the explosion is not yet clear but there are some dramatic images and reports by the Associated Press citing the FBI that the border has been closed.There is talk of a vehicle bomb or an electric vehicle battery combusting, we will bring you details as they unfold.Here is Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer explaining the Reproductive Health Act which sends a “poweful message – [that] Michigan is a place that fights for people’s right to make decisions about their own bodies”: Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer has signed a package of bills known as the Reproductive Health Act into law on Tuesday.In a series of tweets announcing the signing, Whitmer said that the RHA repeals the state’s TRAP laws which are “medically unnecessary restrictions on hallway width, ceiling heights, HVAC systems, and janitor’s closets” that have “nothing to do with providing healthcare.”The RHA also repeals another “extreme law on the books from 1931 that would have criminalized nurses and doctors for prescribing medication abortion including mifepristone”, said Whitmer.The RHA also ensures that students at the state’s public universities have access to information about their reproductive health options.The American Civil Liberties Union has issued several guides on how to talk about abortion access over the holidays.In a guide by ACLU Alabama, the organization wrote:
      “Alabama has one of the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality in the nation. Restricting abortion access only worsens this issue.”
      Meanwhile, a guide issued by ACLU Indiana said:
      “Having deeper, nonjudgmental conversations in which you share personal, values-based stories has been shown to move the needle – even for people who start with opposite views. It isn’t magic, and it doesn’t work every time or even immediately, but these conversations can change the way Hoosiers think and talk about abortion.”
      Washington’s Democratic senator Patty Murray has also voiced her support for abortion rights, urging the restoration of Roe v Wade, which the US supreme court overturned last year.Murray tweeted:
      “RT if you agree: we need to restore Roe v. Wade and the right to abortion for all women, no matter where they live.”
      Last September, Murray led 29 senators in urging the Joe Biden administration to strengthen privacy protections for women seeking reproductive healthcare under the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act.Catholics for Choice, a Catholic abortion rights advocacy group, has tweeted support for advocates of abortion access who may have different political views from to those around them ahead of Thanksgiving, saying:
      “We know the Thanksgiving table might feel isolating if you have different political views. Catholics who support abortion access are in the pews, teaching Sunday school, & even around your dinner table.
      You are not alone.”
      In an interview earlier this year with the Guardian about pro-choice Catholics fighting to seize the abortion narrative from the religious right, CFC’s president, Jamie Manson said:
      “Catholics overwhelmingly support abortion is because their faith taught them the values of social justice, of the power of individual conscience and of religious freedom.”
      Alabama’s Republican senator Tommy Tuberville has falsely claimed that Democrats support reproductive policies that would allow abortions “after” a baby is born.In an interview last week with Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of former president Donald Trump’s son Donald Jr, Tuberville, who is blocking a handful of military promotions due to his opposition of the defense department reimbursing service members for abortion-related travels, said:
      “We’re going to pay for that by taxpayers’ money. They can’t tell us about the policy in terms of the abortion itself. You know, it’s been rape, incest or health of the mom but we asked in one of our hearings what month are you going to go by for the abortion. They couldn’t tell us if it was abortion after birth.”
      In response to Tuberville’s misleading claims about Democrats’ support for abortion after birth, Minnesota’s Democratic senator Tina Smith said:
      Did Kimberly attempt to acquaint Senator Tuberville with the criminal code? Because this is utter nonsense. But harmful nonsense. Senator Tuberville blocking these promotions is hurting our military.
      Vice-president Kamala Harris has released a statement condemning abortion bans, saying that they are passed by “extremist so-called leaders” who continue to “cause chaos, confusion and fear”.She added:
      The women of America deserve better. Congress must pass a bill that restores the protections of Roe v Wade – and when they do, President Joe Biden will sign it into federal law.
      Democrats in Virginia this week proposed amending the state constitution to enshrine abortion rights.The proposal follows Democrats’ win in the state earlier this month in which they gained control of the state legislature, signifying a blow to Republicans’ plans that included curtailing abortion access.The amendment seeks to establish that “every individual has the fundamental right to reproductive freedom” in the state constitution.In a statement on Monday, the majority leader, Charniele Herring, said:
      Throughout the campaign cycle we told Virginians that a Democratic majority meant that abortion access would be protected in the commonwealth.
      Today, that reigns true. Our resolution will begin the process of amending our constitution to protect reproductive rights in Virginia, building on the work that I and congresswoman Jennifer McClellan started many years ago.
      It has become all too clear that without constitutional protection, access to reproductive healthcare is at risk for the commonwealth.”
      Lawyers from the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, as well as Cooper & Kirk have asked the US supreme court on behalf of Idaho’s attorney general to strip prosecution protections for ER doctors who perform abortions in the state. Bloomberg Law reports:Idaho requested the US supreme court let it enforce a near-total abortion ban, pending appeal of a decision that found the ban makes it impossible for hospitals in the state to comply with a federal emergency care law.Attorney general Raúl Labrador Monday filed an emergency application to stay an injunction that prevents the state from imposing penalties on physicians who perform abortions in emergency situations, except when necessary to save the pregnant person’s life.The US didn’t show that it’s likely to succeed on a claim that the abortion law conflicts with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, Labrador said. It’s not impossible to comply with both laws because the emergency care law doesn’t require anything that Idaho law prohibits, he said.In a 2022 audio clip aired by CNN on Tuesday, the House’s newest speaker, Mike Johnson, said that allowing people to get abortions is “truly an American holocaust”.During a radio interview in 2022, Johnson also said:
      “I mean, the reality is that Planned Parenthood and all these – big abortion – they set up their clinics in inner cities. They regard these people as easy prey … That is what’s happening across the country now.”
      Johnson also criticized what he called “activist courts”, saying:
      “There’s been some really bad law made. They’ve made a mess of our jurisprudence in this country for the last several decades. And maybe some of that needs to be cleaned up.”
      The Missouri supreme court has refused an appeal surrounding the wording of a ballot question on abortion rights in the state.On Monday, the state supreme court declined to hear an argument from Republican secretary of state Jay Ashcroft who proposed asking voters whether they are in favor of allowing “dangerous and unregulated abortions until live birth”.In October, a state appeals court ruled against Ashcroft, calling his ballot summaries “replete with politically partisan language”.Ashcroft, who is running for governor in 2024, appealed the court’s decision but was turned away on Monday by the state’s supreme court.In response to the state’s supreme court rejection, a spokesperson from ACLU Missouri told Springfield News-Leader:
      “The courts’ repeated rejection of the secretary of state’s arguments verify that his case has no legal bearing but, instead, shows he will sacrifice Missourians’ constitutional rights to gain the support and funding of special interest organizations to advance his political career.”
      Good morning,Activists across the country are racing to get abortion rights on the ballot in 2024.The multi-state efforts follow a series of Democratic wins earlier this month in several states including Ohio, Virginia and Kentucky where voters rejected Republican attempts to limit or ban the procedure.Abortion rights groups in Missouri – where abortion is completely banned with very limited exceptions – have proposed 11 different amendments that seek to expand abortion rights in the state, NBC reports.In Nebraska, abortion rights groups launched a ballot measure last week that seeks to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. The measure proposes a constitutional amendment that would protect legal abortion care until “fetal viability”.Meanwhile, Democrats in Minnesota and abortion rights groups are divided on how exactly to put forth the question of abortion rights to voters. According to Axios, the state’s house speaker Melissa Hortman said that the idea is “in the mix when we talk about 2024”, but said that they “haven’t heard clearly from voters or from the caucuses here at the state capitol that [an amendment] is the next thing that we should do”.Meanwhile, in an aired audio clip on Tuesday from 2022, Mike Johnson, the House’s newest speaker, said that allowing people to receive abortions is causing “an American Holocaust”.Here are other developments in US politics:
      Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo is considering a potential run for New York City mayor, Politico reports.
      Jill Stein has launched her 2024 White House bid as a Green party candidate. More

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      House speaker Mike Johnson likened abortion to ‘American holocaust’

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      Before he became speaker of the US House of Representatives, the Louisiana Republican congressman Mike Johnson likened abortion to “an American holocaust”.“The reality is that Planned Parenthood and all these … big abortion … they set up their clinics in inner cities,” Johnson told a radio show in May 2022, in comments aired by CNN on Tuesday. “They regard these people as easy prey.”But while these remarks may sound stunning, anti-abortion activists often refer to abortion in the United States as a “holocaust”. This isn’t even the only time that Johnson has made the comparison.“During business hours today, 4,500 innocent American children will be killed,” Johnson wrote in a 2005 op-ed for the Shreveport Times, which was recently resurfaced by CBS News. “It is a holocaust that has been repeated every day for 32 years, since 1973’s Roe v Wade.”In that op-ed, Johnson also said the judicial philosophy that undergirded Roe – and allowed for the removal of the feeding tube of Terri Schiavo, a womanwith severe brain damage who became a cause célèbre among anti-abortion activists – to be “no different than Hitler’s”.Johnson went on to add that abortion had led to a dearth of “able workers” and a crisis for social security, a claim he would repeat at a House hearing years later.Comparisons between US abortion and the Holocaust date back decades, with anti-abortion advocates writing books in the 1980s with titles such as The Abortion Holocaust: Today’s Final Solution. Although the mainstream United States may have grown less tolerant of the comparison, it has never disappeared from anti-abortion circles, which are predominantly Christian.In fact, it’s sometimes used as a recruitment tool. One prominent anti-abortion group even claims anyone born after the supreme court decided Roe in 1973 is a “survivor of the American abortion holocaust” and invites young people to become “boots on the ground” in recognition of their aborted peers. In 2019, Texas Right to Life – a powerful anti-abortion group in Texas – held a training for young anti-abortion activists where leaders screened documentaries about the Nazi Holocaust and urged the activists to “write down three similarities between the Holocaust and abortion”.These kinds of comparisons have even made their way into law. In a 2019 abortion case, the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas wrote an opinion claiming that abortion was on the verge of becoming “a tool of modern-day eugenics”. Alabama’s near-total abortion ban, which was first passed in 2019 and took effect after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year, suggested abortion was worse than famous 20th-century atrocities.“More than 50 million babies have been aborted in the United States since the Roe decision in 1973,” the ban reads, “more than three times the number who were killed in German death camps, Chinese purges, Stalin’s gulags, Cambodian killing fields, and the Rwandan genocide combined.” More

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      Trump return to White House would be perilous for democracy, conservative lawyers say – as it happened

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      We’re closing the US politics blog now, thanks for joining us today. Here’s what we covered:
      The Wisconsin supreme court appeared poised to strike down gerrymandered Republican-drawn state legislative maps that have maintained the party’s domination for decades. In a hearing Tuesday, the panel’s new liberal majority appeared sympathetic to arguments from lawyers for Democratic governor Tony Evers and others that the majority of districts breached strict rules.
      Two senior aides to Ron DeSantis’s cratering campaign for the Republican presidential nomination almost got into a fist fight during a heated argument, it was reported. The altercation came last week as the Florida governor’s Never Back Down political action committee discussed how to counter a rise in popularity of rival Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor.
      Donald Trump appealed a ruling in which a Colorado judge said he could not be disqualified from the presidential ballot under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, even though he engaged in insurrection by inciting the deadly January 6 attack.
      Joe Biden called on Congress to pass his $106bn supplementary budget request that he said includes funding to “step up” the fight against a flow of deadly fentanyl entering the US. The president, speaking at the White House before leaving for a Thanksgiving break in Massachusetts, said the fentanyl crisis was hurting families in every state and curbing it was “something every American needs to get behind”.
      A trio of prominent conservative lawyers said in a scathing New York Times oped that a second term in office for former president Donald Trump would imperil democracy. George Conway, J Michael Luttig and Barbara Comstock, who have formed a new group to “speak out against Trump’s falsehoods”, say Trump has surrounded himself with “grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution” and that “our country is in a constitutional emergency, if not a constitutional crisis”.
      A reminder that you can follow the latest developments in the Israel-Hamas war, including the reported imminent deal for the release of some of the hostages held in Gaza, in the Guardian’s liveblog here.Two senior team members of Ron DeSantis’s flailing presidential campaign almost came to blows during a meeting last week to discuss how to counter Nikki Haley’s rise in the polls, NBC News is reporting.According to the network, Jeff Roe, chief consultant for DeSantis’s Never Back Down political action committee, got into “a heated argument” with longtime DeSantis associate and PAC board member Scott Wagner, the two being stopped just short of a physical altercation.“You have a stick up your ass, Scott,” Roe allegedly fumed at Wagner during the meeting in Tallahassee last Tuesday.“Why don’t you come over here and get it?” Wagner responded, rising from his chair, according to NBC. Wagner was “quickly restrained by two fellow board members”, the network’s report said, adding its information came from sources in the room.Florida governor DeSantis, once seen as a viable rival to runaway leader Donald Trump in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has been tanking in numerous opinion polls, even in his own state.He appears to be an an opposite trajectory to former South Carolina governor Haley, whose “surging poll numbers and newfound affection from megadonors pose an existential threat to the Florida governor’s campaign,” NBC said.DeSantis campaign insiders have indicated that the candidate and his wife Casey DeSantis, a former television news presenter who has assumed an increasingly prominent role in his political career, are growing unhappy at the performance of the Never Back Down PAC leadership.Both DeSantis and Haley, however, still trail Trump by a substantial margin.The unseemly scenes in DeSantis’s campaign meeting mirror those of last week’s Senate labor committee meeting when Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin rose from his seat and challenged a Teamsters union official to a fight.We’ve been bringing you updates for much of the day from Wisconsin’s supreme court, where arguments have tilted back and forth over the state’s gerrymandered legislative maps.According to the Guardian’s Sam Levine, and Alice Herman in the courtroom in Madison, the panel’s liberal majority appears poised to strike down the existing Republican-drawn maps and end the party’s stranglehold on both legislative chambers of government.But it’s unclear what that would mean for a redraw of the maps, or if special elections would be needed to fill legislative seats next year.Here’s our latest report on today’s developments, and a look at what might come next:A newly-elected Florida Republican state congressman has filed legislation that would effectively ban any LGBTQ group in the state from receiving taxpayer funding.A House bill by Ryan Chamberlin would bar any non-profit from using “sexual orientation or gender identity” as a factor in any application for state contracts or grants, Florida Politics reports.The proposal was immediately criticized by Democrats, who see the bill as an extension of the Republican-dominated legislature’s well-documented assault on LGBTQ+ rights, including the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill and other restrictions championed by hard right governor Ron DeSantis.The bill is “bigoted, unnecessary and highly unconstitutional”, Democratic state representative Anna Eskamani said on X, adding that groups such as Equality Florida would essentially be banned from existing.Chamberlin captured his central Florida seat in May with 79% of a special election vote, promising at the time: “There’s work to be done. I’m excited to help with that.”Missouri’s supreme court won’t hear an appeal by Republican secretary of state Jay Ashcroft over the wording of ballot question on access to abortion, a win for advocates attempting to enshrine protections for the procedure.A state appeals court ruled last month that wording asking voters if they were in favor of “dangerous and unregulated abortions until live birth” was politically partisan.On Tuesday, the state supreme court declined to hear Ashcroft’s appeal of that ruling. Missouri’s Republican controlled legislature banned abortion except in cases of medical emergency after the US supreme court last year overturned the Roe v Wade ruling and ended 50 years of federal protections.In all seven states where abortion has been on the ballot since, voters have either supported protecting abortion rights or rejected attempts to erode them.Here’s our state-by-state guide to where abortion laws stand:A judge in Atlanta is hearing arguments on a request to revoke the bond of Harrison Floyd, one of former president Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia case related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis filed a motion last week telling superior court judge Scott McAfee that Floyd attempted to intimidate and contact likely witnesses and his co-defendants in violation of the terms of his release, the Associated Press reports.Floyd’s attorneys wrote in a court filing that Willis’ allegations are without merit and that the motion is a “retaliatory measure” against their client. Floyd “neither threatened or intimidated anyone and certainly did not communicate with a witness or co-defendant directly or indirectly,” they wrote.Willis was in court Tuesday to present the prosecution’s case. She planned to call three witnesses, including Gabriel Sterling, a top election official in Georgia who strenuously defended the legitimacy of the state’s 2020 vote count against Trump’s false claims that the election was fraudulent.The charges against Floyd relate to allegations of harassment toward Ruby Freeman, a Fulton county election worker who had been falsely accused of election fraud by Trump and his supporters. Floyd took part in a 4 January 2021 conversation in which Freeman was told she “needed protection” and was pressured to lie and say she had participated in election fraud, the indictment says.Four of the original 19 defendants agreed plea deals that include a promise to testify in any trials in the case. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty.No trial date has been set, but Willis last week asked McAfee to set it for August next year, and warned the case could stretch into 2025.Donald Trump appealed a ruling in which a Colorado judge said he could not be disqualified from the presidential ballot under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, even though he engaged in insurrection by inciting the deadly January 6 attack.The former president took issue with the finding that he participated in insurrection in connection with the attack on the Capitol staged by his supporters.“The district court ruled that section three [of the 14th amendment] did not apply to the presidency, because that position is not an ‘officer of the United States’,” lawyers for Trump said in a court filing, responding to the ruling last week.“The district court nonetheless applied section three to President Trump, finding that he ‘engaged’ in an ‘insurrection’. Should these findings be vacated because the district court self-admittedly lacked jurisdiction to apply section three to President Trump?”The group that filed the suit on behalf of six state petitioners, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew), also lodged an appeal.It argued: “Section three of the 14th amendment, passed after the civil war, excludes from federal or state office those who engaged in insurrection against the constitution after previously taking an oath to support it.“Because the district court found that Trump engaged in insurrection after taking the presidential oath of office, it should have concluded that he is disqualified from office and ordered the secretary of state to exclude him from the Colorado presidential primary ballot.”Read Martin Pengelly’s full story here:John Dean, former White House counsel to Richard Nixon, is scathing about Donald Trump’s efforts to persuade an appeals court that he should not have a gag order in his federal election interference case because he is running for president.Dean has weighed in on what appears to be a court leaning towards, narrowing the gag order that bans Trump from making inflammatory statements and social media posts attacking prosecutors, potential witnesses and court staff.Dean posted on X/Twitter, saying: “Donald Trump has turned the rule of law in the United States upside down, and it is stunning that federal circuit court judges are buying into his remarkable con!” He said the hearing yesterday in Washington, DC, “bordered on pure farce.”Dean, who ultimately helped bring down Nixon despite being involved in the-then president’s cover-up of corrupt and illegal presidential conduct known as Watergate, must be experiencing deja vu right now. He told the Guardian’s David Smith in June 2022, of now-GOP frontrunner Trump: “I was never worried about the country and the government during Watergate but from the day Trump was nominated, I had a knot in my stomach…he just discovered late in his presidency the enormous powers he does have as president…he knows he can hurt his enemies and help his friends.”On X last night his new post on Trump concluded: “For heaven sakes, hold this man responsible for his aberrant and bullying behavior before he further destroys our country. Enough is enough is enough!”Joe Biden says negotiators are “very close” to securing the release of potentially dozens of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.The US president was speaking at the White House and said: “We’re now very close, very close – we can bring some of these hostages home very soon, but don’t want to get into the details of things.”He added: “Nothing is done until it’s done and when we have more to say we will, but things are looking good at the moment.”We are closely covering all the news in the Israel-Gaza crisis via our global live blog and you can find the details here.It’s lunchtime on a quiet day so far in US politics, and time for a recap of what we’ve looked at so far:
      Joe Biden has called on Congress to pass his $106bn supplementary budget request that he said includes funding to “step up” the fight against a flow of deadly fentanyl entering the US. The president, speaking at the White House before leaving for a Thanksgiving break in Massachusetts, said the fentanyl crisis was hurting families in every state and curbing it was “something every American needs to get behind”.
      Wisconsin’s supreme court justices have been grilling attorneys for both the respondents and plaintiffs in a much-watched gerrymandering case that could end in a complete redraw of the state’s legislative districts. Lawyers for Democratic governor Tony Evers say the current maps favoring Republicans breach a law that says they must be “contiguous”; a conservative justice says the plaintiffs want to upend 50 years of precedent.
      A trio of prominent conservative lawyers said in a scathing New York Times oped that a second term in office for former president Donald Trump would imperil democracy. George Conway, J Michael Luttig and Barbara Comstock say Trump has surrounded himself with “grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution” and that “our country is in a constitutional emergency, if not a constitutional crisis”.
      Back in Wisconsin’s supreme court, lawyers for Republicans defending gerrymandered state legislative maps are getting a grilling from the judges, as the Guardian’s Alice Herman reports from the courtroom:An attorney representing the Republican-controlled state legislature, the respondent in the redistricting case, argued that petitioners asking for legislative districts to be redrawn before the 2024 elections have not allotted sufficient time to redraw the maps, and disputed their definition of “contiguous districts”.Taylor Meehan argued that the existence of districts with literal water-bound islands invalidate the plaintiffs’ argument that the legislative maps should avoid non-contiguous districts and said that the court should adopt a looser definition of “contiguous”.“You’re telling us to use one definition because it will help your argument and I’m pretty sure the rule is we’re supposed to look at the definition to figure out what the law is,” said justice Jill Karofsky, who, along with bench colleague Ann Bradley, repeatedly questioned Dallet’s definition of “contiguity.”Meehan questioned the right of plaintiffs in non-contiguous districts across the state to bring forward the case, comparing their complaint to an Illinois voter challenging Wisconsin maps.“I don’t see how a petitioner who lives in Beloit” can ask for a statewide redraw, Meehan said.Joe Biden has called on Congress to join him to “step up the fight” against the flow of fentanyl coming into the US.The president was speaking at the White House in his final official engagement before he and first lady Jill Biden head to Nantucket later for their Thanksgiving break.Before a cabinet meeting that’s now gone into private session, Biden said he was heartbroken for families who will have an empty seat at their Thanksgiving table because they had lost a loved one to the drug:
      Fentanyl is likely the number one killer of Americans at this point. It’s an issue that’s hurting families in every state across the nation. Curbing this crisis is something that every American needs to get behind, Democrat and Republican.
      How can we accelerate our efforts and make sure that we’re delivering real results? Congress also has to step up in this fight. It can start by passing my supplemental budget request for national security, including significant resources to help stop the flow of fentanyl in our country, as well as funds to strengthen and support services for people struggling with fentanyl impacts.
      I also urge Congress to permanently make fentanyl and related substances Schedule One drugs. Too many people are dying.
      Biden prefaced his remarks with an update on progress towards a deal to free hostages held in Gaza by Hamas since the 7 October attacks on Israel. He said an agreement was “very close”.You can follow that and other developments in the Israel-Hamas war in our dedicated blog here:Here’s more from Alice Herman covering the gerrymandering case in Wisconsin’s supreme court:Anthony Russomanno, an attorney representing Wisconsin’s Democratic governor Tony Evers, argued that the state’s legislative maps, and the process for drawing them, violates the separation of powers – privileging the legislature, which is responsible for drafting the maps, over the executive branch.Tamara Packard, representing five Democratic lawmakers, also argued the mapmaking process violated the separation of powers.Conservative justices hammered Russomanno and Packard with questions of propriety regarding the timing of the litigation, and justice Rebecca Bradley accused attorneys of attempting to illegally overhaul the makeup of the state legislature.“You are ultimately asking that this court unseat every assemblyman that was elected last year,” said Bradley, comparing the plaintiffs’ request to implement a new map before the 2024 elections, and hold early special elections for representatives not up for election in 2024, to Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.Packard said her clients, Democratic lawmakers who would face special elections if the court were to side with the plaintiffs, were “ready, willing, and able” to face re-election and that other legislators should be willing as wellA conservative judge on Wisconsin’s supreme court questioned the timing of a lawsuit challenging the state’s legislative districts as oral arguments got under way Tuesday in a much-watched case over gerrymandering.The Guardian’s Alice Herman, who is in the courtroom, reports that Mark Gaber, an attorney representing Campaign Legal Center, laid out one of the plaintiff’s central arguments: that non-contiguous districts in the state are unconstitutional.Almost immediately, conservative judge Rebecca Bradley interrupted Gaber to question the plaintiffs’ timing in bringing the case forward.“Where were your clients two years ago?” she asked, pointing to the fact that the ideological sway of the court flipped when Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal judge, was elected this year. “You’re seeking to overturn 50 years of precedent.”Gaber disputedthe case was brought in a partisan manner, arguing that the state constitution requires contiguous districts – a non-partisan requirement. The argument that 75 of the state’s 132 districts are non-contiguous is at the heart of the plaintiffs’ case against the gerrymandered maps.House speaker Mike Johnson took a trip to visit Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday night, CNN is reporting, a pilgrimage similar to the one that exposed predecessor Kevin McCarthy to criticism.“Maga Mike”, as some have branded the Louisiana Republican for his unswerving loyalty to the former president, has endorsed Trump’s campaign for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, so a “kiss the ring” visit to Mar-a-Lago was not entirely unexpected.It is not known what the pair discussed, CNN says. But the trip has echoes of former speaker and then minority leader McCarthy’s “groveling” visit to see Trump in January 2021, days after condemning him for sparking the deadly 6 January Capitol riot.With his endorsement of Trump, Johnson, who voted against certifying the 2020 election results, has gone even further than McCarthy did in backing the twice-impeached ex-president, who is currently facing dozens of charges in multiple cases against him around the country.“I’m all in for President Trump,” Johnson told CNBC, adding he was “one of the closest allies that President Trump had in Congress”.The Guardian’s Sam Levine and Alice Herman are following oral arguments this morning at the Wisconsin supreme court, where the seven justices will adjudicate one of the most closely-watched gerrymandering cases this year.The case is a challenge to the maps for Wisconsin’s state legislature, which are so heavily distorted in favor of Republicans that it is all but impossible for Democrats to win a majority.Republicans took over the legislature in 2010, and drew maps that have cemented their majority ever since. Democrats won statewide elections in the state in 2018, 2020, and 2022, but Republicans have never had fewer than 60 seats in the state assembly. State senate districts must be comprised of three assembly districts in Wisconsin, so any gerrymandering in the assembly carries over to the senate.The challengers want the court to strike down the maps and order new elections in all 132 of the state’s legislative districts in 2024.They note that 75 of Wisconsin’s 132 legislative districts are non-contiguous, a clear violation of a state constitutional requirement that says all districts need to be contiguous. The districts, Republicans argue, are contiguous because even with “islands” they still keep municipalities whole.The challengers also argue that the process by which the supreme court picked the current maps violated the separation of powers because the panel chose one the Democratic governor had vetoed.Oral arguments have just begun. We’ll bring you updates as we get them.Read more here:“Grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution and long-established constitutional principles for the whims of political expediency.”That’s how a group of prominent conservative lawyers sees the legal team Donald Trump has surrounded himself with as the former president plots a return to the White House next year.Warning of an unprecedented threat to democracy from a Trump second term, and the worsening of a “legal emergency” set in motion by his unprecedented efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, they have founded a group called the Society for the Rule of Law Institute, which they say is needed “to bring sanity back to conservative lawyering and jurisprudence”.A trio of lawyers form the new group’s board. They are George Conway, ex-husband to Trump’s former senior adviser Kellyanne Conway; J Michael Luttig, formerly a US appeals court judge; and Republican former Virginia congresswoman Barbara Comstock.They set out their case Tuesday in a hard-hitting editorial in the New York Times:
      American democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law are the righteous causes of our times, and the nation’s legal profession is obligated to support them. But with the acquiescence of the larger conservative legal movement, these pillars of our system of governance are increasingly in peril. The dangers will only grow should Donald Trump be returned to the White House next November.
      Recent reporting about plans for a second Trump presidency are frightening. He would stock his administration with partisan loyalists committed to fast-tracking his agenda and sidestepping – if not circumventing altogether – existing laws and long-established legal norms.
      They cite Trump’s already publicized plans to appoint public officials investigate and exact retribution against his political opponents; remove federal public servants at will; and invoke special powers to seize control of First Amendment-protected activities, criminal justice, elections, immigration and more.The “guest essay” continues with praise for the few lawyers in the first Trump administration who stood up to his excesses, and a warning that legal checks and balances would be largely absent from his second:
      Alarming is the growing crowd of grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution and long-established constitutional principles for the whims of political expediency.
      The actions of these conservative Republican lawyers are increasingly becoming the new normal. Any legal movement that could foment such a constitutional abdication and attract a sufficient number of lawyers willing to advocate its unlawful causes is ripe for a major reckoning.
      Our country is in a constitutional emergency, if not a constitutional crisis.
      Good morning US politics blog readers! A group of prominent conservative lawyers is warning that democracy would be placed in unprecedented peril if Donald Trump returns to the White House next year, and that legal checks and balances on his conduct would be largely absent if he wins a second term.The dire predictions come in a hard-hitting opinion piece Tuesday in the New York Times.Trump, the former president and runaway leader for the Republican 2024 nomination, has surrounded himself with “growing crowd of grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution and long-established constitutional principles for the whims of political expediency,” they say, creating an unprecedented “legal emergency” worsened by their support of his unsuccessful efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.The authors, who include George Conway, ex-husband to Trump’s former senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, have formed an attorneys’ group called the Society for the Rule of Law Institute, which they say is needed “to bring sanity back to conservative lawyering and jurisprudence”.We’ll have a closer look at that coming up.Here’s what else we’re watching today on a quiet pre-Thanksgiving Tuesday in Washington DC:
      Joe Biden will host a White House meeting over efforts to stop the flow of fentanyl into the US this morning, before he and first lady Jill Biden head for their Thanksgiving break in Nantucket.
      There’s no action in Congress, but an election in Utah’s 2nd congressional district Tuesday will restore the House to its full complement of 435 members since Democrat David Cicilline of Rhode Island resigned in May. Republican Celeste Maloy is expected to handily beat Democratic state senator Kathleen Riebe.
      Wisconsin’s supreme court will hear oral argument in a high-stakes lawsuit seeking to strike down the maps for the state’s legislature. The result could bring an end to what may be the most gerrymandered districts in the US. Read more about that here. More