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      in US Politics

      Donald Trump will fly to Florida hours before Biden inauguration, reports say

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      Donald Trump is expected to leave the White House as president on Wednesday morning, just hours before Joe Biden’s inauguration, flying off on Air Force One to his beachside home in Florida.Trump’s post-presidential plans have been clouded in uncertainty. But several US news organisations reported on Friday that Trump intends to live at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach resort. His daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner are expected to join him there, at least for some of the time.Trump has said he will not attend Biden’s inauguration, following last week’s deadly invasion of the US Capitol and Trump’s second impeachment on Wednesday. He is expected to leave Washington on the morning of 20 January, Bloomberg reported, citing two people familiar with the matter.The Associated Press, citing a person familiar with the planning, said there would be a departure ceremony at Andrews air force base, with a military band, red carpet and 21-gun salute under discussion.Several White House staff are likely to work for Trump and his family from their new Florida base. According to the Palm Beach Post, Melania Trump recently visited a private school in Boca Raton that the couple’s teenage son Barron is due to attend.Adjusting to life outside the White House may be tough. When the president arrives at Palm Beach on Wednesday roads will be shut as his motorcade threads its way to Mar-a-Lago. Once Biden is sworn in, however, they will reopen. Commercial flights from the nearby international airport that pass directly over his estate will resume.It is unclear what exactly Trump intends to do next. It seems inevitable he will spend some of the weeks and months ahead closeted with his lawyers – and, as per his presidency, on the golf course. He faces a second impeachment trial in the Senate and a slew of other legal cases, federal and civil. As an ex-president he loses his immunity from prosecution.In Washington Trump’s staff are busy packing up. On Wednesday, a photographer for Reuters snapped the president’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, carrying a large, framed photograph of one of Trump’s meetings with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. Other items on their way out of the building included a stuffed pheasant and an Abraham Lincoln bust.The removals and piles of boxes have prompted a rash of puns on Twitter, with several calling on the president to “stop the steal”.In September 2019 the Trumps filed court papers declaring Mar-a-Lago their permanent residence. Renovations are reportedly going on inside the family’s private quarters. Melania Trump has been shipping items for almost two months, ahead of her return next week, with one source telling CNN: “She just wants to go home.”Not everyone is thrilled by the prospect of having the former first family move in. Late last year neighbours sent a letter to the town of Palm Beach saying Trump would violate an agreement made in 1993 that allowed him to convert Mar-a-Lago into a private club. It stipulated that no one could reside at the property, the DeMoss family who live next door complained. More

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      Billionaires backed Republicans who sought to reverse US election results

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      An anti-tax group funded primarily by billionaires has emerged as one of the biggest backers of the Republican lawmakers who sought to overturn the US election results, according to an analysis by the Guardian.The Club for Growth has supported the campaigns of 42 of the rightwing Republicans senators and members of Congress who voted last week to challenge US election results, doling out an estimated $20m to directly and indirectly support their campaigns in 2018 and 2020, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.About 30 of the Republican hardliners received more than $100,000 in indirect and direct support from the group.The Club for Growth’s biggest beneficiaries include Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, the two Republican senators who led the effort to invalidate Joe Biden’s electoral victory, and the newly elected far-right gun-rights activist Lauren Boebert, a QAnon conspiracy theorist. Boebert was criticised last week for tweeting about the House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s location during the attack on the Capitol, even after lawmakers were told not to do so by police.Public records show the Club for Growth’s largest funders are the billionaire Richard Uihlein, the Republican co-founder of the Uline shipping supply company in Wisconsin, and Jeffrey Yass, the co-founder of Susquehanna International Group, an options trading group based in Philadelphia that also owns a sports betting company in Dublin.While Uihlein and Yass have kept a lower profile than other billionaire donors such as Michael Bloomberg and the late Sheldon Adelson, their backing of the Club for Growth has helped to transform the organization from one traditionally known as an anti-regulatory and anti-tax pro-business pressure group to one that backs some of the most radical and anti-democratic Republican lawmakers in Congress.Here’s the thing about the hyper wealthy. They believe that their hyper-wealth grants them the ability to not be accountable“Here’s the thing about the hyper wealthy. They believe that their hyper-wealth grants them the ability to not be accountable. And that is not the case. If you’ve made billions of dollars, good on you. But that doesn’t make you any less accountable for funding anti-democratic or authoritarian candidates and movements,” said Reed Galen, a former Republican strategist who co-founded the Lincoln Project, the anti-Trump campaigners.Galen said he believed groups such as the Club for Growth now served to cater to Republican donors’ own personal agenda, and not what used to be considered “conservative principles”.The Lincoln Project has said it would devote resources to putting pressure not just on Hawley, which the group accused of committing sedition, but also on his donors.The Club for Growth has so far escaped scrutiny for its role supporting the anti-democratic Republicans because it does not primarily make direct contributions to candidates. Instead, it uses its funds to make “outside” spending decisions, like attacking a candidate’s opponents.In 2018, Club for Growth spent nearly $3m attacking the Democratic senator Claire McCaskill in Missouri, a race that was ultimately won by Hawley, the 41-year-old Yale law graduate with presidential ambitions who has amplified Donald Trump’s baseless lies about election fraud.That year, it also spent $1.2m to attack the Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who challenged – and then narrowly lost – against Cruz.Other legislators supported by Club for Growth include Matt Rosendale, who this week called for the resignation of fellow Republican Liz Cheney after she said she would support impeachment of the president, and Lance Gooden, who accused Pelosi of being just as responsible for last week’s riot as Trump.Dozens of the Republicans supported by Club for Growth voted to challenge the election results even after insurrectionist stormed the Capitol, which led to five deaths, including the murder of a police officer.The Club for Growth has changed markedly as the group’s leadership has changed hands. The Republican senator Pat Toomey, who used to lead the group, has recently suggested he was open to considering voting for Trump’s impeachment, and criticised colleagues for disputing election results. Its current head, David McIntosh, is a former Republican member of Congress who accompanied Trump on a final trip to Georgia last week, the night before Republican candidates David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, both heavily supported by the Club for Growth, lost runoff elections to their Democratic opponents.Neither the Club for Growth nor McIntosh responded to requests for comment.Public records show that Richard Uihlein, whose family founded Schlitz beer, donated $27m to the Club for Growth in 2020, and $6.7m in 2018. Uihlein and his wife, Liz, have been called “the most powerful conservative couple you’ve never heard of” by the New York Times. Richard Uihlein, the New York Times said, was known for underwriting “firebrand anti-establishment” candidates like Roy Moore, who Uihlein supported in a Senate race even after it was alleged he had sexually abused underage girls. Moore denied the allegations.A spokesman for the Uihleins declined to comment.Yass of Susquehanna International, who is listed on public documents as having donated $20.7m to the Club for Growth in 2020 and $3.8m in 2018, also declined to comment. Yass is one of six founders of Susquehanna, called a “crucial engine of the $5tn global exchange-traded fund market” in a 2018 Bloomberg News profile. The company was grounded on the basis of the six founders mutual love of poker and the notion that training for “probability-based” decisions could be useful in trading markets. Susquehanna’s Dublin-based company, Nellie Analytics, wages on sports.In a 2020 conference on the business of sports betting, Yass said sports betting was a $250bn industry globally, but that with “help” from legislators, it could become a trillion-dollar industry.A 2009 profile of Yass in Philadelphia magazine described how secrecy pervades Susquehanna, and that people who know the company say “stealth” is a word often used to describe its modus operandi. The article suggested Yass was largely silent about his company because he does not like to share what he does and how, and that those who know him believe he is “very nervous” about his own security.Yass, who is described in some media accounts as a libertarian, also donated to the Protect America Pac, an organisation affiliated with Republican senator Rand Paul. The Pac’s website falsely claims that Democrats stole the 2020 election. More

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      Fight to vote: the Georgia organizers who helped mobilize voters

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      Dear Fight to Vote readers,
      Welcome back! I’m Sam Levine, the voting rights reporter here at Guardian US. I’ll be taking over this newsletter from the stalwart Ankita Rao.
      After the attack on the US capitol last week it’s easy to forget that Georgia’s nationally-watched Senate runoff races were just a little over a week ago. While it’s difficult right now to think about anything other than what’s going on in Washington, I wanted to begin 2021 by looking at how democracy can work, rather than how it can fall apart. I saw this firsthand in Georgia, where grassroots groups organized to mobilize unlikely voters and worked to overcome severe voting barriers in Georgia, a state that has become an epicenter of voter suppression.
      Methodical organizing
      I spent the Monday before election day with canvassers from Georgia Stand-Up, one of several civic action groups that spent the weeks before the election getting out the vote. Our day began in a chilly church parking lot in Atlanta, where canvassers, equipped with Dunkin’ coffee and Bojangles chicken biscuits, quickly piled into vans, which were then dispatched into different neighborhoods.

      Sam Levine
      (@srl)
      An army of canvassers with Georgia Stand Up gets ready to go out one day before the senate runoffs here. Their goal is to hit 6,078 doors today, which would put them at 100,000 doors statewide pic.twitter.com/6tWG3oU9Rn

      January 4, 2021

      I followed along with one group as they went into a neighborhood in Fairburn, just outside of Atlanta. In the silence of the morning, the organizers flew out of the van in groups of twos and threes and quickly, methodically covered different houses. Their goal that day was to knock on just over 6,000 doors, bringing their total across the state to just over 100,000.
      ‘So many people are not aware of simple voting information’ More

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      in US Politics

      Nancy Pelosi: Trump is a clear and present danger to the nation – video

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      The Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives has opened the debate on the article of impeachment against Donald Trump, arguing the president must be removed from office. Describing the storming of the Capitol as a ‘day of fire’, Nancy Pelosi said Trump had incited insurrection
      Trump impeachment – live
      House poised to impeach Trump for a second time following deadly Capitol riot
      Trump impeachment: what you need to know as House moves to a vote More

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      Trump impeachment: what you need to know as House moves to a vote

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      Donald Trump’s fiery speech at a rally just before the attack on the Capitol is at the center of the impeachment charge against him, even as the falsehoods he spread for months about election fraud are still being championed by some Republicans.A Capitol police officer died from injuries suffered in the riot, and police shot and killed a woman during the siege. Three other people died in what authorities said were medical emergencies.What to watch as the Democratic-controlled House moves to impeach Trump for the second time in 13 months – now with just days left in the defeated president’s term:The Democratic case for impeachment Trump faces a single charge – “incitement of insurrection” – after the deadly Capitol riot in an impeachment resolution that the House will begin debating Wednesday. It’s a stunning end for Trump’s presidency as Democrats and a growing number of Republicans declare he is unfit for office and could do more damage after inciting a mob that ransacked the Capitol.“President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government,” reads part of the four-page impeachment bill. “He will remain a threat to national security, democracy and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office.”House speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said impeachment is needed despite the limited number of days left in Trump’s term. “The president’s threat to America is urgent, and so too will be our action,” she said.Trump’s actions were personal for Pelosi and many other lawmakers. She was among those forced to huddle in a bunker during the Capitol riots, and armed rioters menaced staffers with taunts of “Where’s Nancy?”The House of Representatives will convene at 9am ET (2pm GMT) and there will follow an initial debate and some procedural votes. Then around lunchtime there should be about two hours of debate on the articles of impeachment, concluding with a vote in mid-to-late afternoon, around 3pm ET (8pm GMT). Voting in the House will take between 40 minutes and an hour. The vote is almost certain to pass, as Democrats have the majority, and several Republicans have already said they will support the move. The next step of the process would then be for the articles of impeachment to be sent to the Senate.How many Republicans will support impeachment?Unlike the last time Trump was impeached, when no House Republicans supported charges against Trump over a call he made to Ukraine’s new president, the current impeachment effort has drawn support from some Republicans.House minority leader Kevin McCarthy of California and his deputy, Louisiana representative Steve Scalise, are again expected to oppose impeachment, but Wyoming representative Liz Cheney, the No 3 House Republican, said Tuesday she will support it.Representatives John Katko, Republican of New York, and Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, also said they would back impeachment, and some other Republicans seem likely to follow.McCarthy, one of Trump’s closest allies in Congress, echoed Trump in declaring that “impeachment at this time would have the opposite effect of bringing our country together”.Will House censure Trump?In a move short of impeachment, McCarthy and other Republicans have floated the idea of a House censure of Trump. Although it was not clear how much support the proposal has, McCarthy said censure or some other mechanism – such as a bipartisan commission to investigate the attack – would “ensure that the events of January 6 are rightfully denounced and prevented from occurring in the future”.Democrats, with the votes to impeach in hand, aren’t buying it.When would articles of impeachment go to the Senate?Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell – who remains in charge of the Senate until Democrats take over, perhaps as early as 20 January – has said that the earliest the Senate could consider impeachment would be 19 January, the day before Trump leaves office and president-elect Joe Biden in inaugurated. Democratic leaders have been exploring how to recall the Senate earlier, though that would still require McConnell’s co-operation. It is therefore likely that any vote to convict Trump would take place after he has already left office, with a trial potentially taking place on 20 January or 21 January. There is a suggestion, however, that the Democratic-controlled House might delay sending the articles to the Senate until after the Biden administration is established and his cabinet picks confirmed by the Senate, so as not to provide a distraction to the start of his term in office. Biden has suggested the Senate split its time between impeachment and his agenda.How many votes are needed in the Senate to impeach Trump?Impeachment needs to be passed by a two-thirds majority in the Senate, which requires 67 votes. Following the Democrats’ two successes in the Georgia runoff elections, the new Senate will be delicately poised 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, with vice president Kamala Harris holding the casting vote. That means that 17 Republican Senators would need to vote to convict Trump. The outgoing president was acquitted easily on both counts in his previous impeachment trial with not a single Republican in the Senate finding him guilty.Will any Republicans in the Senate vote to convict Trump this time?Things might be different in 2021. For a start, the charge is much more simple and straightforward – that Trump is guilty of the incitement of an insurrection, rather than the complicated and murky dealings in Ukraine that were the subject of the first impeachment. So far five Republicans representatives in the House have come forward to say they will vote for impeachment, but, as yet, no Senators. It is difficult to imagine the hardliners like Sens. Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley who voted against Joe Biden’s election victory now swinging behind an attempt to impeach Trump.However, reports from both the New York Times and Axios suggest that those close to Senate leader McConnell appear to believe that he thinks Trump has committed impeachable offences and may be minded to vote to convict in a Senate trial. If that was the case, it would make it easier for other Republicans to do so.If Trump is found guilty, does that stop him from running for president again?Not automatically. However, if convicted, the Senate could follow up with another vote to block him from running for office, requiring only a simple majority to pass. This vote would invoke the 14th amendment, which bars from federal or state office anyone who takes part in insurrection or rebellion. Adopted after the US civil war, the amendment states that nobody should hold office in the US if they have previously “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the US while an elected official.Can the 14th amendment be used even if Trump is acquitted?While it is certain to be disputed and subject to legal challenge, some experts believe that the 14th amendment could be used to bar Donald Trump from running for office again even if he is acquitted. Again, this would only require a simple majority vote in the Senate, which, under Democrat control, would be likely to pass.How will Trump respond?So far, Trump has taken no responsibility for his part in fomenting the violent insurrection, despite his comments encouraging supporters to march on the Capitol and praising them while they were still carrying out the assault. “People thought that what I said was totally appropriate,” he said Tuesday.One significant difference from Trump’s first impeachment: he no longer has a Twitter feed to respond in real time.Stepped-up securityIn a sign of the increase tensions in the wake of the attack, House lawmakers will for the first time be required to go through a metal detector before being allowed to enter the chamber.This new security measure will stay in effect every day the House is in session for the foreseeable future, according to a directive by Timothy Blodgett, the acting House sergeant-at-arms. Blodgett replaced the longtime sergeant-at-arms who resigned after widespread criticism about poor security planning for the 6 January certification vote.Blodgett also told lawmakers they must wear masks during the Covid-19 crisis and that they face removal from the chamber if they fail to do so.Will lawmakers rein in emotions on the floor?While debate on the House is often impassioned, emotions are expected to run unusually high as lawmakers debate impeachment. Not only is it the second time they have voted on such a measure, the debate comes exactly one week after a majority of House Republicans objected to the certification of Biden’s victory, setting the stage for the hours-long siege that rocked the Capitol and the nation.A recent breakout of Covid-19 among lawmakers who were held in lockdown with others who refused to wear masks has only heightened tensions. More

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      ‘They always put other barriers in place’: how Georgia activists fought off voter suppression

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      Deborah Scott has been registering voters for well over a decade in Georgia, but about five years ago she began to notice a problem. Georgia Stand-Up, the civic action group she leads, started getting a spike in calls from people who said they filled out a voter registration form but never received an official voter registration card. “We’re like ‘hey, what’s going on here?,’” she said.Scott’s group adjusted their voter registration strategy. After they got someone to register, they started tracking their voter registration and following up with them to ensure it went through. When there was a problem, they would help the voter follow up with local election officials. Sometimes, after that follow-up inquiry, the election officials would “miraculously” discover the registration was there all along, Scott said.Georgia Stand-Up took their strategy into the general election last year and Senate runoff this year, both of which saw extremely high turnout among Black voters. It’s a surge that many have attributed to years of investment by activists like Scott and Democrat Stacey Abrams, to mobilize voters of color, who traditionally have had lower turnout than their white counterparts, and flip the state for Democrats in stunning upsets in both the presidential race (Joe Biden was the first Democrat to carry the state in a presidential race in nearly 30 years) and two US Senate runoffs.As voter suppression has become more brazen in Georgia, overcoming it has become a core part of the work that Abrams and other organizers have done to mobilize the new electorate in the state. This work is not glamorous, focused on helping new voters navigate a bureaucracy designed to make it more difficult to vote. It’s making calls to voters to ensure they know their polling place, explaining how to fill out a mail-in ballot, and making sure they aren’t wrongly purged from the voter rolls. But the multi-year investment in overcoming voting barriers significantly contributed to organizers’ success in Georgia this year.“What we kept seeing was no matter what turnout we had, if we turned out in larger numbers, they always put other barriers in place,” said Helen Butler, the executive director of the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, another civil rights group focused on mobilizing voters of color. “We had to go through strategies that would help us to be more proactive.” Georgia Republicans have already signaled they plan to move ahead with new restrictions on vote-by-mail after an election in which a record number of people used the process.Butler said her group had to shift considerable resources to combat voter suppression starting in 2013, when the US supreme court struck down a provision of the Voting Rights Act that required places with a history of voting discrimination to submit voting changes to the federal government for approval before they went into effect. After the decision, her group began sending representatives to local boards of election so they could learn about polling place changes and consolidations and other changes they needed to know about before election day.Those strategies crystallized during the 2018 gubernatorial race, when Abrams lost to Brian Kemp, then the state’s top election official, and Georgia’s voting barriers were thrust to the center of the race. There was harsh scrutiny of state policy that placed 53,000 voter registrations in suspense over small discrepancies, 70% of which were Black voters. Georgia’s practice of aggressively purging hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls became a matter of national attention. For many, the election illuminated how severely restrictive voting rules could affect an election outcome.“There were so many people who had problems with their registration and didn’t discover the problem until they were already at the polls,” said Sara Tindall Ghazal, who worked as the Georgia Democratic party’s voter protection director from 2018 to 2019. “And when more than half of voters would vote on election day, it’s too late to fix anything then.”Beyond highlighting severe barriers in Georgia, the 2018 election also highlighted Democrats’ political strength in Georgia, Ghazal added, opening up money and other resources for grassroots groups that previously hadn’t existed. Abrams’ decision to focus on voting barriers in the state after the election only further galvanized support.In recent years, Butler said, her group has stepped up efforts to prevent voters from being wrongfully purged. Regularly monitoring Georgia’s voter rolls, her group will contact voters who are at risk of being purged to inform them of how they can confirm their eligibility. If someone has been purged, they tell them how they can re-register.“We didn’t always do that. We didn’t have to do that until recently,” Butler said.This year, Fair Fight, the organization Abrams started after the 2018 election, had a network of more than 15,000 volunteers to help people overcome barriers to voting. When it looked like Pooler, a city just outside Savannah, wouldn’t offer any ballot drop boxes, Fair Fight texted voters there to get them to push local officials to install one, said Marisa Pyle, the group’s volunteer and rapid response organizer. Once officials announced there would be a drop box after all, Fair Fight followed up with voters and let them know the location. The group took a similar approach to pressure officials to allow early voting on campus at the University of Georgia.“Our goal was to make sure they got [voting information] in a way that was accessible. And when there were access gaps, trying to fill them with advocacy and our volunteer work,” Pyle said.The effort to contact voters doesn’t stop after election day. Once the polls closed in theSenate runoff, Butler and other groups launched an aggressive effort to contact voters who submitted a provisional ballot at the polls – a special kind of ballot election workers are required to offer if there is uncertainty about their eligibility.Butler said her group will often work with voters to help them understand what kind of documentation they need to provide to election officials in the days after the election in order to ensure their ballot isn’t rejected. If they are on the phone with a voter, organizers will sometimes even set up a three-way call with the board of elections to ensure they understand what they need to do to have their vote counted.The approach was deployed deftly in the general election and runoff. This year, when there were polling place changes in Georgia, organizers sent volunteers to the old locations to make sure voters were redirected to the new one. And as organizers knocked on doors trying to turn out new voters, teaching them about the voting process was at the heart of their conversations.As she knocked on doors ahead of the Senate runoff, Lacreasa Acey, a 38-year-old canvasser, said the emphasis on overcoming voting barriers was a big part of the conversations she had with voters. Sometimes, the information she offered could be as simple as telling people where they could vote or showing them how to fill out an absentee ballot.“It’s amazing how so many people are not aware of simple voting information. They don’t know where to go, they don’t know how to mail in ballots or anything like that, so they get frustrated and they say ‘you know what, I’m just not gonna vote at all,’” said Acey, who knocked on doors on behalf of the New South Super Pac, which backed the Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. “I have everything already. I have the answers.” More

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      Riots, effigies and a guillotine: Capitol attack could be a glimpse of violence to come

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      A guillotine outside the state capitol in Arizona. A Democratic governor burned in effigy in Oregon. Lawmakers evacuated as pro-Trump crowds gathered at state capitols in Georgia and New Mexico. Cheers in Idaho as a crowd was told fellow citizens were “taking the capitol” and “taking out” Vice-president Mike Pence.As a mob of thousands invaded the US capitol on 6 January, Trump supporters threatened lawmakers and fellow citizens in cities across the country. Compared with the violent mob in Washington, the pro-Trump crowds elsewhere in the country were much smaller, attracting dozens to hundreds of people. But they used the same extreme rhetoric, labeling both Democratic politicians and Republicans perceived as disloyal to Trump as “traitors”.As the FBI warns of plans for new armed protests in Washington and all 50 state capitols in the days leading up to Biden’s inauguration, and fresh calls for extreme violence circulate on social media forums, the intensity of the nationwide pro-Trump demonstrations and attacks last week offer evidence of what might be coming next. Some of the pro-Trump demonstrations on Wednesday did not turn violent. The dozens of Trump supporters who entered the Kansas state capitol remained peaceful, according to multiple news reports. In Carson City, Nevada, hundreds of Trump supporters drank beer and listened to rock music while denouncing the election results, the Reno Gazette Journal reported.But in Los Angeles, white Trump supporters assaulted and ripped the wig off the head of a young black woman who happened to pass their 6 January protest, the Los Angeles Times reported. A white woman was captured on video holding the wig and shouting, “Fuck BLM!” and, “I did the first scalping of the new civil war.”In Ohio and Oregon, fights broke out between counter-protesters and members of the Proud Boys, the neo-fascist group Trump directed in September to “stand back and stand by”. Proud Boys also reportedly demonstrated in Utah, California, Florida, and South Carolina.And in Washington state, Trump supporters, some armed, pushed through the gate of the governor’s mansion and stormed onto the lawn of Democrat Jay Inslee’s house. In Georgia, where lawmakers were evacuated from the state capitol, members of the III% Security Force militia, a group known for its anti-Muslim activism, had gathered outside.An effigy of Gov. Kate Brown is tarred and feathered by pro-Trump Supporters and anti-lockdown protesters at the Oregon State Capitol. pic.twitter.com/XSmHI82cXD— Brian Hayes (@_Brian_ICT) January 6, 2021
      Militia members, neo-Nazis, and other rightwing extremists have discussed multiple potential dates for armed protests in the coming days, researchers who monitor extremist groups say, with proposals ranging from rallies or attacks on state capitols to a “million militia march” in Washington.The FBI’s intelligence bulletin has warned of potential armed protests from 16 January “at least” through inauguration day on 20 January, but researchers say that energy had not yet coalesced around a single event. Public social media forums where Trump supporters have gathered to discuss plans are full of dramatic, contradictory rumors, but experts say that more concrete plans are likely being made in private and in smaller forums that are more difficult to infiltrate.The United States has no shortage of heavily armed extremists who have been openly calling for a new civil war, from members of the Boogaloo Bois – a nascent domestic terrorism group that has been linked to the murders of two law enforcement officers – to militia leaders such as Stewart Rhodes, the Yale-educated founder of an anti-government group that recruits policy and military officers, who was photographed outside the capitol during the mob invasion last week.Accusations at public protests that Democratic politicians are dictators, tyrants and “traitors” and suggestions that white Americans need to seize power back from their elected officials, have been intensifying for more than a year, fueled in part by furious demonstrations against public health measures that forced businesses to close to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, which has disproportionately killed Black and Latino residents.Before they stormed the US Capitol last week, angry crowds of white Americans, some armed with rifles, had staged chaotic demonstrations at state capitols in Michigan, Idaho, California and elsewhere, often calling law enforcement officers “traitors” when they would not let them pass.On 6 January, the news that Trump supporters were forcing their way into the capitol was greeted with cheers at pro-Trump protests in other states. “Patriots have stormed the Capitol,” a protest organizer in Arizona announced, prompting chants of “USA!” according to the Arizona Republic.“Supposedly, they’re taking the Capitol and taking out Pence,” the organizer of an Idaho protest told a crowd of about 300 people, according to the Spokesman-Review. The crowd cheered.In Washington DC, part of the mob at the capitol had been captured on video shouting “Hang Mike Pence!” after the vice-president refused to give in to Trump’s repeated demands to deny the results of the election and name him the winner.Signs and rhetoric linked to the QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds that Trump is fighting a secret war against a powerful network of elite pedophiles, were present at multiple state events last week.In Salem, Oregon, where an effigy of Democratic governor Kate Brown was tarred and feathered before being burned, the protest outside the statehouse turned violent, as Proud Boys clashed with counter-protesters. In Colorado, an estimated 700 people gathered at the state capitol to protest, many of them not wearing masks, and Denver’s mayor announced he was closing municipal buildings early as a precaution.In Arizona, where 1,000 Trump supporters gathered to protest the certification of Biden’s victory, the guillotine outside the state capitol had a Trump flag on it, and the Trump supporters who had brought it gave an Arizona Republic reporter a written statement, which included a list of baseless allegations of election fraud, and demands for new fraud audits and investigations.“Why do we have a guillotine with us? The answer is simple,” the statement read. “For six weeks Americans have written emails, gathered peacefully, made phone calls and begged their elected officials to listen to their concerns. We have been ignored, ridiculed, scorned, dismissed, lied to, laughed at and essentially told, no one cares.“We pray for peace,” the statement concluded, “but we do not fear war.” More

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      in US Politics

      Lawyers face fallout from fueling Trump’s false claims of election fraud

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      Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, could be included in a federal investigation and is facing a disbarment complaintProminent lawyers who helped fuel Donald Trump’s baseless charges of election fraud to try and thwart Joe Biden’s win, are now facing potentially serious legal and financial problems of their own tied to their aggressive echoing of Trump’s false election claims, say former Department of Justice lawyers and legal experts.They include a federal investigation into the Capitol attack by a pro-Trump mob, possible disbarment and a defamation lawsuit. Continue reading… More