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      Republicans are shamelessly working to subvert democracy. Are Democrats paying attention?

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      Republicans are shamelessly working to subvert democracy. Are Democrats paying attention? Voting rights activists say the country has not fully awakened to the threat A dry run. A dress rehearsal. A practice coup. As the first anniversary of the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol approaches, there is no shortage of warnings about the danger of a repeat by Republicans.But even as Donald Trump loyalists lay siege to democracy with voting restrictions and attempts to take over the running of elections, there are fears that Democrats in Washington have not fully woken up to the threat.“At the state level we’re raising hell about it but the Democrats on the national level are talking about Build Back Better, the infrastructure bill, lots of other things,” said Tony Evers, the Democratic governor of Wisconsin. “When we think about voting rights and democracy, I would hope we would hear a little bit more about that from the national level.”Hopes that the attack on the Capitol would break the fever of Trumpism in the Republican party were soon dashed. All but a handful of its members in Congress voted against a 9/11-style commission to investigate the riot and many at national level have downplayed it, rallying to the former president’s defense.But it is an attritional battle playing out state by state, county by county and precinct by precinct that could pose the bigger menace to the next election in 2024, a potential rematch between Trump and Joe Biden.An avalanche of voter suppression laws is being pushed through in Republican-led states, from Arizona to Florida to Georgia to New Hampshire. Gerrymandered maps are being drawn up to form districts where demographics favour Republican candidates.Backers of Trump’s big lie of a stolen election are running to be the secretary of state in many places, a position from which they would serve as the chief election official in their state. Trump has endorsed such candidates in Michigan, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada – all crucial swing states.The all-out assault suggests that Trump and his allies learned lessons from their failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election, identifying weak points in the system and laying the groundwork for a different outcome next time.Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota, said: “It looks like Plan B is populating state elected offices with believers of the big lie and morally corrupt candidates. We should all be concerned about that and, by the way, not just Democrats: everybody.”Yet despite waves of media coverage – recently including the Atlantic magazine and the Guardian and New York Times newspapers – Democrats face the challenge of getting their voters to care. Many are confronting inflation, crime and other priorities and may assume that, having defeated Trump last year, they can stop paying attention.Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington state, said: “It’s still very difficult to imagine the severity and depth of what Donald Trump tried to pull off. It’s hard sometimes to recognise something when it’s new. For the president of the United States to try and stage a coup is unprecedented. It’s hard for people to wrap their heads around it.”Inslee described Trump as “a clear and present danger” who is “trying to remove the impediments that rescued democracy last time”. State governors are not the only ones sounding the alarm about the dangers of complacency or assuming that normal service has resumed.Jena Griswold, a Colorado Democrat seeking re-election, is chair of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, which focuses on electing Democrats to those positions. She said while there’s been a surge of attention from activists and donors to those races, “it is not enough.”“I think one of the issues happening is that because this is the United States, the idea that our most fundamental freedom of living in a democracy is under attack, is hard to really grasp,” she said. “It’s important that we keep leaning in because the folks on the other side are definitely leaning in.”In Michigan, one of the leading candidates in the Republican field is Kristina Kamaro, who has spread lies about 6 January and the election. She is seeking to oust Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who became one of the most high profile secretaries of state in 2020 when she took steps to make it easier to vote by mail in her state.Like Griswold, Benson, who describes herself as “avowedly not a partisan”, said she noticed increased interest from voters and independent donors, but not from the national Democratic party.“We’re not seeing the same sense of urgency that perhaps ‘the other side’ has shown in investing in these offices,” she said. “With the exception of the vice-president, who’s been enormously supportive and gets the importance of these offices from a voting rights standpoint, I have seen no significant increase in support from national party leaders than what we experienced in 2018, which wasn’t insignificant.”Acolytes of the so-called “Stop the Steal” movement are drilling down even deeper, targeting local election oversight positions that have traditionally been nonpartisan and little noticed, with only a few hundred votes at stake and candidates often running unopposed. Yet these too could pull at the threads of the democratic fabric.In Pennsylvania, for example, there is concern that election deniers are running for a position called judge of elections, a little-known office that plays a huge role in determining how things are run on election day.Scott Seeborg, Pennsylvania state director of All Voting is Local, a voting advocacy group, said the role is essentially the top position at the precinct polling place on election day. They could cause huge disruptions at the polls based on how the office holder interprets rules around ID and spoiling mail-in ballots, he added.Seeborg agreed that not enough attention has been paid to these local races. “There’s no precedent for this, as far as we know in sort of the modern history of elections,” he said. “I don’t think folks anticipated this, I’m not sure how seriously entities like the Democratic party are taking this, but they ought to.”Similar anxieties emerged earlier this week when the grassroots movement Indivisible ran a focus group with members from Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina and elsewhere.Ezra Levin, the group’s co-founder and co-executive director, said: “They’re worried about their governors, they’re worried about their secretaries of state and they’re worried even at a more local level about previously nonpartisan or uncontroversial election administration officials being taken over by a well-funded and very focused operation led by people who have embraced the big lie.“These are not positions, especially at the local level, that are getting as much attention but it’s real. We see Steve Bannon [former White House chief of staff, now a rightwing podcaster] trying to lead the charge, getting folks to take up the lowest level spots in the election administration ecosystem. It’s happening right in front of our eyes.”Levin, a former congressional staffer, noted that the Democratic party is not a monolith but warned that Biden has devoted his political capital – traveling the country to make speeches, holding meetings on Capitol Hill – to causes such as infrastructure rather than the future of democracy.“The big missing puzzle piece in this entire fight for the last 11 months has been the president.”Pressure on the Senate to act intensified this week when 17 governors wrote a joint letter expressing concern over threats to the nation’s democracy. Evers of Wisconsin was among them.In a phone interview, he said Democrats in his crucial battleground state are highlighting the “full throated attack on voting rights” but acknowledged that voters have numerous other concerns.“Everybody’s talking about it but when they go home from the capital and they’re visiting with people, I’m guessing that the conversation talks about more bread and butter things like ‘I want my roads fixed,’ and ‘Thank you for reducing taxes,” Evers added.TopicsUS voting rightsRepublicansDonald TrumpUS politicsUS elections 2024featuresReuse this content More

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      Pence appears to set up a presidential run – can he win over Trump’s base?

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      Pence appears to set up a presidential run – can he win over Trump’s base?The former vice-president seems to be playing a long game for the 2024 election, possibly betting Trump’s influence over the Republican party will wane “Hang Mike Pence!” was the chilling chant of the mob at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Can the same constituency be persuaded to vote Mike Pence on 5 November 2024? He, for one, appears to think so.The former vice-president this week travelled across New Hampshire, host of the first-in-the-nation presidential primary elections, to meet local activists, raise money and deliver a speech attacking potential opponent Joe Biden.‘It’s who they are’: gun-fetish photo a symbol of Republican abasement under TrumpRead morePence, who has nursed White House ambitions since his teens, has also paid recent visits to the early-voting states Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada, implying that a run is more likely than not. But there is one problem.Donald Trump.The ex-president, whom Pence served faithfully – or obsequiously, in the eyes of critics – has not forgiven him for ignoring his plea to overturn the result of the 2020 election. That Pence, presiding over the Senate at it certified Biden’s victory, had no such power has become irrelevant at this stage.Pence’s continued insistence that he did his constitutional duty on 6 January has done little to assuage the sense of betrayal among livid Trump supporters. In June he was heckled as a “traitor” during a speech to a gathering of religious conservatives in Orlando, Florida – hardly a positive omen.“His biggest challenge is the people that he’s going to need to vote for him – the Republican primary base – are also the people who wanted to hang him on January 6,” said Kurt Bardella, an adviser to the Democratic National Committee. “I don’t see how you overcome that.”Yet the former Indiana governor appears to be playing a long game, perhaps betting that Trump’s influence over the party will wane over the next three years. He may also be calculating that the stand he made for democracy on 6 January – a day on which he refused to flee the Capitol, taking cover in an underground car park – will resonate with moderate Republicans and independents.Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist in Indiana, said: “He’s doing everything he needs to set himself up to run and, if Trump is not the nominee or is not running, I think he’s clearly the frontrunner.”“I think people are realising that he was an unlikely hero on January 6. In the end, even for people who disagree with him for many other policy positions he’s taken, whether it was as a governor or as a vice-president, he did the right thing when the pressure was on on January 6.”Pence’s visit to New Hampshire was his second to the state, which has a huge say in choosing the party nominee, since leaving office. He attended holiday parties, raised money for state Republicans and posed for photos at at the Simply Delicious bakery in Bedford.In a speech hosted by Heritage Action, a conservative policy advocacy organisation, the 62-year-old accused Biden of fuelling inflation and lambasted the president’s social and environmental spending plan, warning: “Keep your hands off the American people’s pay cheques.”As is customary at this stage of an election cycle, Pence did not confirm or deny whether he was running for president, insisting that his priority was next year’s midterm elections for Congress.He told the Associated Press: “To be honest with you, all of my focus is on 2022 because I think we’ve got a historic opportunity for not just a winning election, but a realignment election. So I’m dedicating all of my energy to the process of really winning back the Congress and winning statehouses in 2022. And then in 2023, we’ll look around and we’ll go where we’re called.”The campaign-style tour did not go unnoticed by Trump, who released a statement that said: “Good man, but big mistake on not recognizing the massive voter fraud and irregularities” in the 2020 election. There is no evidence of any such fraud or irregularities.Pence, however, may choose to borrow from the playbook of Glenn Youngkin, who recently won election as governor of Virginia by keeping Trump at arm’s length without overtly denouncing him, thereby reaping the best of both worlds: the party establishment and “Make America Great Again” (Maga) base.There are already signs of Pence having his cake and eating it too. In a radio interview on Wednesday he repeated a now familiar line that he and Trump may “never see eye to eye” on the events of 6 January, but he also told several news outlets “there were irregularities that happened at the state level” in the election. He also insisted that he parted with his boss on good terms.This Trump-lite approach might do just enough to satisfy the former president’s followers while promising other Republicans a lower political temperature.Michael D’Antonio, a Pence biographer, said: “What’s weird is he earned his bona fides with Trump by being so craven in his loyalty and then he expressed his independence in that one moment when it really mattered. So he could make a play in both directions and say, ‘Look, I’m Donald Trump but without the violence.’” There are signs of the Maga core “cooling off” or losing interest in politics, D’Antonio added. “I also knew a number of Trump voters who chose him in 2016 because of Pence. So Pence may have built up a lot of credibility with people. And I guess the last point is, you don’t need to win 50% to get the nomination.”Some Republicans, including former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, have said they will not contest the primaries if Trump throws his hat in the ring. Others, such as ex-New Jersey governor Chris Christie, have rejected the idea that a Trump candidacy should prevent others running.Florida governor Ron DeSantis, South Carolina senator Tim Scott and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo are seen as potential contenders to be party standard bearer. Pence, however, might hope that his status as a former vice-president would count in his favor, just as it did for Biden last year.Clues to his intentions include the fact he is writing a book and recording a regular podcast: in the latest episode of American Freedom, the devout Christian says “we hope and pray” the supreme court will overturn Roe v Wade, its 1973 decision upholding a woman’s constitutional right to abortion.Should he secure the nomination, however, Pence would be hard pushed to win over millions of Trump critics who have not forgotten how he failed to speak out or take a principled stand during four years of chaos. There are countless hours of footage of him giving speeches in which he mentions “President Trump” over and over again, praising his “leadership” and calling him “my friend”.Bardella, a former Republican congressional aide, said: “Mike Pence will be regarded for what he is, which is a coward void of any real moral conviction or principles.“The fact that he is turning around now, still trying to court the hearts and minds and votes of the very people who perpetrated the domestic terrorist attack on our country illustrates that he is the worst kind of political figure because, even though he may not believe these things, he’s still pandering and catering to those elements. I don’t believe that history will look back on him kindly at all.”TopicsMike PenceRepublicansUS elections 2024US politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Michael Cohen says Trump will not run in 2024: ‘His ego can’t stand to be a two-time loser’

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      Michael Cohen says Trump will not run in 2024: ‘His ego can’t stand to be a two-time loser’Trump’s former attorney says the former president will not run again after losing five states by narrow margins in 2020 Donald Trump’s pollster thinks he will run for the White House again in 2024, with a path to victory through five states he lost to Joe Biden in 2020: Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.Joe Biden intends to run again in 2024, White House confirmsRead moreBut Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney and fixer who is fresh out of house arrest, thinks he will not.“His fragile ego cannot stand to be considered a two-time loser,” Cohen said on Monday.Trump lost the five states in question by narrow margins – defeats he refuses to accept, continuing to promote the lie that Biden won thanks to electoral fraud, which led to deadly violence at the US Capitol on 6 January.Politico obtained a memo from Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, which said a poll carried out for the former president’s fundraising committee put him up over Biden in all five states, by margins ranging from three points in Georgia to 12 in Michigan.In recent books about the Trump administration, Fabrizio is depicted as willing to give Trump polling news he did not want.But he told Politico: “Poll after poll clearly demonstrates that … Trump is still the 800lb gorilla in the [Republican party] and would be its 2024 nominee should he run.”“This new data clearly shows that today the voters in these five key states would be happy to return Trump to the White House and send Biden packing.”With Biden struggling in the polls, Trump dominates both his party and Republican fundraising, with a huge post-election haul. He also remains in extensive legal jeopardy. The Washington Post revealed details on Monday of his legal troubles, including how the Republican party is paying some of his legal bills.Cohen, one of more than 10 Trump associates who have been convicted of crimes, has completed his sentence for his role in illegal hush-money payments to women to help Trump’s 2016 campaign and lying to Congress about a project in Russia.“Donald will not run,” Cohen told CNN. “Why? Because first of all, he has an incredibly fragile ego. He lost by 9m votes the first time [actually a little more than 7m]. He will lose by more than 9m the second and his fragile ego cannot stand to be considered a two-time loser.”Asked if Trump would again react to defeat by simply saying he won, Cohen pointed to Trump’s political fundraising, which has brought in more than $100m.“This is nothing more than the world’s greatest grift,” Cohen said. “He’s bringing in money greater than when he had the Trump Organization with all of its assets. So why would you give this up?“He will drag this thing on all the way to the end. I have an original document … whereby he decided not to run in 2011. And of course, the reasons he talked about was his real estate, it was, you know, The Apprentice and so on.“He’s going to do the same thing. The only difference this time versus last is that he’s making money each and every day by sending out more texts. ‘Oh, Donald won. Send $25.’”Alluding to pictures of Republicans including the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, at Trump’s Florida resort, Cohen said Trump “doesn’t need to be the president in his mind to be the man behind the power, which of course goes to his adage, right? ‘Come and kiss the ring.’“He says that all the time. They’re all coming to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring.”TopicsUS elections 2024Donald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Joe Biden intends to run again in 2024, White House confirms

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      Joe Biden intends to run again in 2024, White House confirmsThe US president’s approval rating has dipped to 40% but Vice-President Kamala Harris’s was just 28% The White House has said that Joe Biden intends to run for re-election in 2024, a statement that comes amid speculation over his future as the president sees a dip in his approval rating.Joe Biden reportedly telling allies he will run for president again in 2024Read moreBiden, 79, has suffered a drop in his polling numbers in recent months, leading some Democrats to speculate he might not seek another four-year term.“He is. That’s his intention,” said the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, as Biden flew onboard Air Force One for a Thanksgiving event with US troops in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.Democrats were rattled by Republican victories in Virginia’s gubernatorial election earlier this month and a narrow Democratic victory in New Jersey.The statement from the White House follows reports that Biden has been reassuring allies of his intentions to run again, and that he is keen to quash rumors of a one-term presidency.A recent Washington Post/ABC survey survey found just over 40% of voters approved of Biden, continuing a steady downward trend in the president’s ratings amid inflation and supply chain issues and intra-party fighting over key aspects of the president’s agenda.Questions have arisen about the viability of Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate in 2024 should Biden decide not to run again. A recent USA Today/Suffolk University poll found her with a 28% job approval rating.Biden underwent his first physical examination on Friday since taking office in January and doctors found he has a stiffened gait and attributed frequent bouts of coughing to acid reflux. Doctors said he was fit to serve.Biden’s political prospects appeared to have been buoyed last week by congressional passage of a $1.2tn infrastructure plan. Still being debated is another $1.75tn in spending on a social safety net package.Biden was already the oldest presidential candidate to be elected as commander-in-chief when he beat Donald Trump in the November 2020 election, and will be 15 days short of his 82nd birthday on 5 November 2024, the next time voters in the US will be asked to choose their president.TopicsJoe BidenUS elections 2024US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Joe Biden reportedly telling allies he will run for president again in 2024

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      Joe Biden reportedly telling allies he will run for president again in 2024President shared his decision ‘with a small group of donors’ during a virtual fundraiser, reports the Washington Post Joe Biden has reportedly been letting allies know he’ll be running for president again in 2024.Amid sliding approval ratings, Biden is reported to be keen to dash any assumption in Democratic circles that he’ll be standing down after a single term and opening the field to hopefuls including Vice-President Kamala Harris.Democrats worry inflation could imperil agenda and congressional majoritiesRead more“The only thing I’ve heard him say is he’s planning on running again. And I’m glad he is,” the Democratic former Connecticut senator Chris Dodd told the Washington Post in an article published Saturday – Biden’s 79th birthday.According to the newspaper, Biden shared his decision “with a small group of donors” during a virtual fundraiser earlier this month.Ed Rendell, the former Pennsylvania governor who attended the event, said there was “no difference” in what Biden told the donors to what he stated at a White House press conference in March. Then, Biden attempted to dampen speculation by stating that he had “never been able to plan three and a half, four years ahead.”Rendell told the Post: “What he is saying publicly is what he firmly believes. He will not run if he feels he can’t do the job physically or emotionally.”Biden was already the oldest presidential candidate to be elected as commander in chief when he beat Donald Trump in the November 2020 election, and will be 15 days short of his 82nd birthday on 5 November 2024, the next time voters in the US will be asked to choose their president.In 2019, at a campaign event in New Hampshire, Biden said it was “totally appropriate” for voters to consider his age.“Just like when I was 29 [when he was elected a US senator], was I old enough? And now, am I fit enough? I’ll completely disclose everything about my health. I’m in good shape,” Biden told the rally, according to the Laconia Daily Sun.On Friday, doctors declared Biden “fit to successfully execute the duties of the president” after his first physical in office.Trump, who has yet to declare if he will be running again, has frequently taunted Biden over his age and perceived health challenges. The former president, whose own weight places him in the obese category, would be 78 on election day 2024.TopicsJoe BidenUS elections 2024DemocratsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘The testing ground’: how Republican state parties grow Trumpism 2.0

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      ‘The testing ground’: how Republican state parties grow Trumpism 2.0 In Oklahoma, Idaho, Wyoming and California, the next generation of GOP extremists are passing laws, picking their own voters … and preparing for powerThe website of the Oklahoma Republican party has a running countdown to the 2024 presidential election measured in “Maga days”, “Maga hours”, “Maga minutes” and “Maga seconds” – Maga being shorthand for Donald Trump’s timeworn slogan, “Make America great again”.Betrayal review: Trump’s final days and a threat not yet extinguishedRead moreThe state party chairman, John Bennett, a veteran of three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, has described Islam as a “cancer in our nation that needs to be cut out” and posted a yellow Star of David on Facebook to liken coronavirus vaccine mandates to the persecution of Jewish people in Nazi Germany.This is just one illustration of how Republican parties at the state level are going to new extremes in their embrace of Trump, an ominous sign ahead of midterm elections next year and a potential glimpse of the national party’s future. Yet the radicalisation often takes place under the radar of the national media.“We are not a swing state and we’re nowhere near a swing state so no one’s looking,” said Alicia Andrews, chair of the Oklahoma Democratic party. “And because no one is looking at Oklahoma, we are allowed to be way more extreme than a lot of states.”Andrews pointed to the example of a state law passed by the Republican majority in April that grants immunity to drivers who unintentionally injure or kill protesters and stiffens penalties for demonstrators who block public roadways.“Only three states passed it, with Oklahoma being the first,” she said. “And you know why? Because there wasn’t national attention. We were talking about Florida passing it and Texas passing it. No one was even considering what was going on in Oklahoma and it quietly passed in Oklahoma.”Similarly, Andrew argues, while other states were debating “critical race theory” in schools, in Oklahoma a ban was rammed through with little coverage. Another concern is gerrymandering, the process whereby a party redraws district boundaries for electoral advantage.Andrews, the first African American to lead the Oklahoma Democratic party, said: “Our legislators are in a special session right now to review our maps and they are really eroding an urban core, taking at least 6,000 Hispanic Americans out of an urban district and moving them to a rural district, thus denuding their votes. I didn’t think that they could make it worse but they are.”Oklahoma is a deep red state. As of August, its house and senate had 121 Republicans and 28 Democrats. It continues to hold “Stop the Steal” rallies pushing Trump’s “big lie” that Joe Biden robbed him of victory in the presidential election.Andrews warns that Republicans in her state are indicative of a national trend.“Their stated strategy is start at the municipal level, take over the state, take over the nation. So while everybody’s talking about the infrastructure plan and the Build Back Better plan, they’re rubbing their hands together and making differences in states.”She added: “We’re like the testing ground for their most radical right exercises, and once they perfect it here, they can take it to other states.”‘Owning the libs’Republican state parties’ rightward spiral has included promotion of Trump’s “big lie” about electoral fraud, white nationalism and QAnon, an antisemitic conspiracy theory involving Satan-worshipping cannibals and a child sex-trafficking ring. It can find bizarre and disturbing expression.Arizona staged a sham “audit” of the 2020 presidential election that only confirmed Biden’s victory in the state. Last month in Idaho, when Governor Brad Little was out of the state, his lieutenant, Janice McGeachin, issued an executive order to prevent employers requiring employees be vaccinated against Covid-19. Little rescinded it on his return.The Wyoming state party central committee this week voted to no longer recognise the congresswoman Liz Cheney – daughter of the former vice-president Dick Cheney and a hardline conservative – as a Republican, its second formal rebuke for her criticism of Trump and vote to impeach him for his role in the US Capitol attack.Nina Hebert, communications director of the state Democratic party, said: “Wyoming is not exempt from the extremism that Trump has intentionally cultivated and fuelled and continues to court today.“He was a popular figure in Wyoming in the 2016 election and he retains that popularity amongst voters in the state, which I think is the most red in the nation.”Gerrymandering is a longstanding problem, Hebert said, but Trump’s gleeful celebration of the 6 January riot has opened floodgates.“They have created situations where Republican-controlled state legislatures have no reason to pretend even that they’re not just trying to hold on to power. This has become something that is acceptable within the Republican party.”The shift has also been evident in policy in Florida, Texas and other states where Republicans have taken aim at abortion access, gun safety, trans and voting rights. Often, zealous officials seem to be trying to outdo one another in outraging liberals, known as “owning the libs”.The drift is not confined to red states. When Republicans in California, a Democratic bastion, sought to recall Governor Gavin Newsom, they rallied around a Trumpian populist in the conservative talk radio host Larry Elder rather than a more mainstream figure such as Kevin Faulconer, a former mayor of San Diego.Kurt Bardella, an adviser to the Democratic National Committee who was once an aide to a leading California Republican, said: “To me that was a bellwether. If even a state like California can’t get a more moderate, pragmatic Republican party at the state level, there’s really no hope for any of the parties in any state at this point.“They’re leaning so hard into this anti-democratic, authoritarian, non-policy-based iteration and identity. The old adage, ‘As goes California, so goes the country,’ well, look at what the California Republican party did and we’re seeing that play out across the board.”‘Wackadoodle Republicans’Like junior sports teams, state parties are incubators and pipelines for generations of politicians heading to Washington. The primary election system tends to favour the loudest and most extreme voices, who can whip up enthusiasm in the base.Trump has been promiscuous in his endorsements of Maga-loyal candidates for the November 2022 midterms, among them Herschel Walker, a former football star running for the Senate in Georgia despite a troubled past including allegations that he threatened his ex-wife’s life.Other examples include Sarah Sanders, a former White House press secretary running for governor in Arkansas, and Karoline Leavitt, a 23-year-old former assistant press secretary targeting a congressional seat in New Hampshire.‘Professor or comrade?’ Republicans go full red scare on Soviet-born Biden pickRead moreThis week, Amanda Chase, a state senator in Virginia and self-described “Trump in heels”, announced a bid for Congress against the Democrat Abigail Spanberger. Chase gave a speech in Washington on 6 January, hours before the insurrection, and was censured by her state senate for praising the rioters as “patriots”.The former congressman Joe Walsh, who was part of the Tea Party, a previous conservative movement against the Republican establishment, and now hosts a podcast, said: “I talked to these folks every day, and for people who think [members of Congress] Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are nuts, they ain’t seen nothing yet.“The Republicans at the state and local level are way, way more gone than the Republicans in Washington. We’re talking about grassroots voters and activists on the ground and eventually, to win a Republican primary at whatever level, every candidate has to listen to them.“So you’re going to get a far larger number of wackadoodle Republicans elected to Congress in 2022 because they will reflect the craziness that’s going on state and locally right now.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsOklahomaWyomingCaliforniaIdahoUS midterm elections 2022featuresReuse this content More

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      Is Donald Trump plotting to steal the 2024 election?

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      Trump’s attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 US election was ultimately thwarted, but through efforts at state level to elect loyalists to key positions, the stage is set for a repeat showing in 2024

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      Cast your mind back to last November and the US presidential election. Donald Trump initially claimed victory and then, over the subsequent days as postal votes came in, it became clear he wasn’t in fact close to winning. Within five days, the election was called for Joe Biden. Trump had joined that unenvied club: the one-term presidents. But as the Guardian US chief reporter, Ed Pilkington, tells Michael Safi, Trump didn’t let the matter lie. Instead, he’s been touring the country and rallying his supporters with speeches pushing the conspiracy theory that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 election. And while he’s been doing this, his supporters have been busy at state and local level challenging incumbents in elected roles who oversee state election counts. The very people Trump tried and failed to convince last time around to endorse his claim to victory. More

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      Florida lawmakers’ special session aims to thwart Covid vaccine mandates

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      Florida lawmakers’ special session aims to thwart Covid vaccine mandates
      Governor Ron DeSantis promises to ‘strike a blow for freedom’
      Republican seen as contender for 2024 presidential nomination
      LA has one of the strictest vaccine mandates: will it work?
      Florida lawmakers will meet on Monday for a week-long special legislative session called by the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, with the goal of thwarting coronavirus vaccine mandates imposed by businesses or government agencies.Conservative judges block Biden’s vaccine requirement for businessesRead moreDeSantis recently announced he is running for re-election in 2022 but is seen by many as a potential presidential candidate in 2024 – particularly if Donald Trump decides not to run again.The special legislative session will be about “a combination of policy and politics”, said Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, adding that DeSantis is following Trump’s lead in being staunchly against mask and vaccine mandates.According to an agenda released by the governor’s office, a body of legislators dominated by Republicans will consider four bills to impose penalties on businesses and local governments that require workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19.“No cop, no firefighter, no nurse, nobody should be losing their job because of these jabs,” DeSantis said in a media release, echoing a previous plea for first responders from other states to relocate to Florida if they do not wish to be vaccinated by mandate.“We’re going to be striking a blow for freedom,” DeSantis said.Resistance to vaccine mandates and other public health measures to combat Covid-19 has spread in Republican states and among Republican politicians using it to buttress their pro-Trump bona fides and attack the Biden administration.By Sunday, the US had recorded nearly 763,000 deaths from Covid-19, out of more than 47m cases. Florida has recorded the third-highest state death toll, with more than 62,600, behind only California and Texas. Around 58% of the population is fully vaccinated. On Friday, a conservative federal court in New Orleans refused to lift a stay it imposed on a Biden administration rule which says businesses with 100 or more employees must insist on vaccinations or masks and regular testing from 4 January.The administration has said it is confident the rule is legal and will ultimately prevail.DeSantis has railed against vaccine mandates but is vaccinated himself, according to media reports. The governor “knows that Trump supporters don’t like masks or this vaccine”, Jewett told Reuters. “There’s no denying it’s politics with an eye not only on the governor’s race, but an eye toward the White House.“If passed into law, the new Florida bills considered in the special legislative session will impose fines on private businesses that do not allow employee exemptions to Covid-19 vaccine requirements.“This is something that his base will love,” Jewett said. “[DeSantis] is establishing himself as a freedom fighter.”TopicsCoronavirusFloridaUS politicsRepublicansUS elections 2024Donald TrumpUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More