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      Josh Hawley rails at big tech firms but records show he has invested in them

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      Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri accuses the US’s biggest tech companies of committing the “gravest threat to American liberty since the monopolies of the Gilded age” in his upcoming book. He rails that tech giants like Amazon, Google and Facebook “have become a techno-oligarchy with overwhelming economic and political power”.Hawley has also invested potentially tens of thousands of dollars in the very companies he denounces, according to public financial disclosure records examined by the Guardian.Hawley’s new book, The Tyranny of Big Tech, is published next week by Regnery Publishing. Simon & Schuster, its original publisher, dropped the book following the Missouri senator’s involvement in the 6 January electoral college vote certifying Joe Biden’s election.In the book Hawley compares today’s tech titans to the “robber baron” industrialists who dominated the US economy in the 19th century, whose monopoly powers were attacked by president Theodore Roosevelt, the subject of a previous Hawley book.“Theodore Roosevelt had balked at the monopolies of his day that had consolidated power and crowded out the common man, but the the robber barons’ power over everyday Americans was nothing compared to was nothing compared to that wielded by Big Tech,” Hawley writes.But according to Senate financial disclosures the senator’s disdain for big tech does not extend to his investment portfolio.Hawley and his wife each have somewhere between $1,000 and $15,000 invested in Vanguard Growth Index Fund ETF which has holdings in Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Facebook. The disclosures don’t offer exact amounts of holdings, only a range.The Hawleys held considerably more cash in Vanguard funds in 2018, according to his disclosures. The couple held between $50,001 and $100,000 in Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF, between $50,001 and $100,000 in Vanguard Growth ETF and another $50,001 to $100,000 in Vanguard Value ETF.Hawley is a long-time critic of tech power. Before taking his seat in the Senate in 2019 he was Missouri’s attorney general and opened investigations into Facebook, Google and Uber.It’s not unusual for senators to have mutual funds while serving in Congress or for lawmakers to have investments in individual stocks. But it’s a counterintuitive decision for Hawley. The Missouri senator, educated at Stanford University and Yale Law School, has made fighting “big tech” one of his signature issues. He’s also been mentioned as a potential 2024 presidential candidate. Hawley is one of a number of young Republican senators who have prioritized rebranding the Republican party as a nemesis of big tech, China and aspiring populist champion of the American working class.Hawley drew criticism for leading the charge of congressional lawmakers in early January seeking to challenge Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential elections. That push incited a violent riot at the Capitol where Trump supporters broke into Congress.In a statement to the Guardian, a spokesperson for Hawley said: “The Hawleys don’t own any stock. They have their savings in mutual funds. Some politicians enrich their families by landing them board seats on Ukrainian oil and gas companies and multi-million dollar salaries but the liberal media insists that isn’t newsworthy. But if you’re a Republican, just investing in mutual funds – just like millions of hardworking Americans do – is considered controversial.”The disclosures also show that Hawley is invested in another of his persistent targets: China.Hawley has between $1,000 and $15,000 invested in iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF, holds stakes in some of China’s biggest companies including Alibaba, Ping An Insurance group and Tencent.According to the New York Times Alibaba’s cloud computing business showed its clients how they could use its software to detect the faces of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities currently being persecuted in the country.Last year Hawley launched an attack on China, claiming “imperialist China seeks to remake the world in its own image, and to bend the global economy to its own will”.“For decades now, China has bent, and abused, and broken the rules of the international economic system to its own benefit,” he said in a Senate speech.“They have stolen our intellectual property and forced our companies to transfer sensitive trade secrets and technology. They have manipulated their currency and cheated time and again on their trade commitments. They have been complicit in the trafficking of persons and relied upon the forced labor of religious minorities,” he said. More

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      Republicans fret over AOC backing for Biden as 100-day mark draws near

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      As Joe Biden welcomed a series of polls showing majority approval for his first 100 days in the White House, and prepared to address Congress for the first time on Wednesday, Republicans attacked his progressive record in office.One senior senator said: “AOC said his first 100 days exceeded her expectations. That’s all you need to know.”Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was talking to Fox News Sunday about remarks by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a congresswoman and leading progressive from New York.Speaking to an online meeting on Friday, she said: “The Biden administration and President Biden have definitely exceeded expectations that progressives had.”Citing the $1.9tn Covid relief and stimulus bill, Ocasio-Cortez said Biden had been “very impressive” in negotiating with Congress to pass “progressive legislation”. She also voiced dissatisfaction with Biden’s $2.25tn infrastructure package.On Sunday, speaking to CNN’s State of the Union, Vice-President Kamala Harris trumpeted the administration’s achievements.“We are going to lift half of America’s children out of poverty,” she said. “How about that? How about that? Think about that … That’s good stuff. That’s really good stuff.”Republicans oppose the price tag on the American Jobs Plan and priorities within it, including plans to raise taxes on wealthier Americans and proposed spending on environmental initiatives.So do some Democrats – on Sunday the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin, a key vote in the 50-50 chamber, told CNN he favoured a slimmed down, “more targeted” bill.Graham was not the only senior GOP figure to complain about something many on the left have praised: that Biden campaigned as a moderate but is governing more as a progressive.Also speaking to Fox News Sunday, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, accused Biden of “a bait and switch. The bait was he was going to govern as bipartisan but the switch is, he’s governed as a socialist”.Graham said: “During the campaign, he made us all believe that Joe Biden would be the moderate choice, that he really thought court-packing was a bonehead idea. All of a sudden we got a commission to change the structure of the supreme court. Making DC a state, I think that’s a very radical idea that will change the make-up of the United States Senate.”Progressives defend Biden’s commission on the supreme court as a necessary answer to Republican hardball tactics that skewed the panel 6-3 in favour of rightwing judges. However, Biden’s commission to examine the issue both contains conservative voices and is unlikely to produce an increase beyond nine justices any time soon.A bill to make DC a state, thereby giving the city representation it currently lacks and almost certainly electing two Democratic senators, has passed the House but is unlikely to pass the Senate.“AOC said his first 100 days exceeded her expectations,” Graham added. “That’s all you need. I like Joe Biden, but I’m in the 43%.”Sunday brought a slew of polls. Fox News put the president’s approval rating at 54% positive to 43% negative, nine points up on Donald Trump at the same time four years ago. NBC put Biden up 51%-43%, ABC made it 52%-42% and CBS reported a 58%-42% split.Graham also insisted Biden had “been a disaster on foreign policy”.The South Carolina senator was once an eager ally of John McCain, the late Arizona senator, presidential nominee and a leading GOP voice on foreign affairs. Biden was a senator from Delaware for 36 years and chaired the foreign relations committee.“The border is in chaos,” Graham said, “the Iranians are off the mat … Afghanistan is gonna fall apart, Russia and China are already pushing him around. So I’m very worried.“I think he’s been a very destabilising president, and economically thrown a wet blanket over the recovery, wanting to raise taxes a large amount and regulate America basically out of business.“So I’m not very impressed with the first 100 days. This is not what I thought I would get from Joe Biden.” More

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      Anti-Asian hate crimes bill passes Senate with bipartisan support

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      The US Senate has overwhelmingly passed a bill that would help combat the rise of hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, marking a bipartisan denunciation of the violence that has come into sharp focus during the coronavirus pandemic.The Senate passed the anti-Asian hate crimes bill on Thursday in a vote of 94 to 1, after the Democrat Mazie Hirono worked with some of her Republican colleagues to ensure bipartisan support for the legislation.Josh Hawley, a Republican of Missouri, was the only senator to vote against the bill.The bill now heads to the Democratic-controlled House, where it is expected to pass. Joe Biden has signaled he will sign the bill once it reaches his desk.The legislation would create a new justice department position to more quickly review hate crime reports linked to the coronavirus pandemic and provide support to state and local officials responding to hate crimes.The Senate passage of the bill comes amid an alarming increase in reports of hate crimes among Asian Americans. The shooting at three spas in Atlanta last month killed eight people, including six Asian women, intensifying calls to address the problem.A major survey by Stop AAPI Hate released in March found that Asian Americans had reported nearly 3,800 hate-related incidents during the pandemic, a number that is believed to be only a fraction of the true total.“This long-overdue bill sends two messages. To our Asian American friends, we will not tolerate bigotry against you,” the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said. “And to those perpetrating anti-Asian bigotry, we will pursue you to the fullest extent of the law.”Hirono, of Hawaii, the legislation’s lead sponsor, said the measure was incredibly important to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, “who have often felt very invisible in our country, always seen as foreign, always seen as the other”. She said the message of the legislation was as important as its content and substance.Hirono, the first Asian American woman in the Senate, said the attacks were “a predictable and foreseeable consequence” of racist and inflammatory language that has been used against Asians during the pandemic, including slurs used by Donald Trump.Republicans said last week that they agreed with the premise of the legislation and signaled they were willing to back it with minor changes. Hirono worked closely with Senator Susan Collins, of Maine, to incorporate some additional Republican and bipartisan provisions, including better reporting of hate crimes nationally and grant money for states to set up hate crime hotlines.The revised bill would also replace language in the original legislation that called for “guidance describing best practices to mitigate racially discriminatory language in describing the Covid-19 pandemic”. The legislation would require the government to issue guidance aimed at “raising awareness of hate crimes during the pandemic” to address some GOP concerns about policing speech.Republicans agreed to back the bill after the Senate also voted on and rejected a series of GOP amendments, including efforts to prevent discrimination against Asian Americans in college admissions and to require reporting about restrictions on religious exercise during the pandemic.Representative Grace Meng, a Democrat of New York, introduced a similar bill in the House, which she says is expected to be considered in May.“For more than a year, Asian Americans all across our nation have been screaming out for help,” Meng said, and the Senate showed that “they heard our pleas”. More

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      ‘It would be glorious’: hopes high for Biden to nominate first Black woman to supreme court

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      Joe Biden’s promise to nominate an African American woman to the supreme court for the first time holds broad symbolic significance for Darlene McDonald, an activist and police reform commissioner in Salt Lake City, Utah.But McDonald has specific reasons for wanting a Black woman on the court, too.When Chief Justice John Roberts asserted in 2013 that federal oversight of voting in certain southern states was no longer needed because “things have changed dramatically” since the civil rights era, McDonald said, he revealed a blindness to something African American women have no choice but to see.“I believe that if Chief Justice Roberts had really understood racism, he would never have voted to gut the Voting Rights Act,” McDonald said, adding that hundreds of voter suppression bills introduced by Republicans in recent months suggest things have not “changed dramatically” since 1965.“Myself, as an African American woman, having that representation on the supreme court will be huge,” McDonald said, “especially in the sense of having someone that really understands racism.”The gradual diversification of US leadership, away from the overwhelming preponderance of white men, towards a mix that increasingly reflects the populace, was accelerated by the election last November of Kamala Harris, a woman of color, as vice-president.Black women have been overlooked in terms of their values and what they have to bring to society as well as to the benchNow enthusiasm is building around a similarly historic leap that activists, academics and professionals expect is just around the corner: the arrival on the court of a justice who would personify one of the most historically marginalized groups.“Black women have been overlooked for decades and decades in terms of their values and what they have to bring to society as well as to the bench,” said Leslie Davis, chief executive of the National Association of Minority and Women Owned Law Firms. “We should be able to look at our highest court in the land and see the reflection of some of the folks who have made America great. And that absolutely includes Black women.”Out of 115 justices in its history, the supreme court has counted two African American justices, one Latina and just five women. The court has no vacant seats but calls are growing for Stephen Breyer, a liberal who turns 83 this year, to retire. Last month, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden’s campaign commitment to nominating a Black woman “absolutely” holds.“This is a big moment in the making,” said Ben Jealous, president of People For the American Way, which recently launched the Her Fight Our Fight campaign to support and promote women of color in government and public service roles.“The presumption is that whomever Biden nominates, the first Black woman to the supreme court would be filling both the shoes of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall,” said Jealous.The late Ginsburg, a pioneering lawyer for women’s rights, was succeeded last fall by the conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett. Marshall was succeeded in 1991 by the George HW Bush appointee Clarence Thomas, who “is anathema to everything that the civil rights community stands for”, Jealous said.“It would be both glorious and a relief to have a Black woman on the supreme court who actually represents the values of the civil rights community, and the most transformative lawyers in our nation’s history.”Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a civil rights historian, dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute and professor of constitutional law, said having qualified federal judges who “reflect the broad makeup of the American public” would strengthen democracy and faith in the courts.“It’s an important historical moment that signifies equal opportunity,” Brown-Nagin said. “That anyone who is qualified has the chance to be considered for nomination, notwithstanding race, notwithstanding gender. That is where we are. In some ways, we shouldn’t be congratulating ourselves, right?”Brown-Nagin pointed out that a campaign was advanced in the 1960s to nominate Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to sit as a federal judge, but some Democratic allies of President Lyndon Johnson opposed such a nomination because they saw it as too politically risky.“This moment could have happened 50 years ago,” Brown-Nagin said.Daniel L Goldberg, legal director of the progressive Alliance For Justice, said to call the moment “overdue” did not capture it.“It is stunning that in the entire history of the republic, that no African American woman has sat on the highest court in the country,” Goldberg said. “For way too long in our nation’s history, the only people who were considered suitable and qualified for the court happened to be white males.”The first Black woman supreme court justice is likely to be nominated at a time when a renewed push for racial justice brings renewed focus on the court, which has played a key role in enforcing desegregation and reinforcing anti-discrimination laws.I would like to see someone like Sherrilyn Ifill or Lia Epperson – a woman who comes out of Thurgood Marshall’s old law firmThe killing of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, by a white police officer outside Minneapolis last weekend during the murder trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin has sharpened cries for a national answer to serial injustice at the local level – precisely the kind of conflict that typically lands before the supreme court.“As we sit here today, and watch the trial of Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd, that precipitated a summer of protests for the lives of Black people to matter – it feels that it is time for there to be a Black woman on the supreme court, because of the moment that we are in right now,” said McDonald, the Utah activist.Davis said it was “imperative” the country make strides toward racial justice after the invasion of the Capitol in January by white supremacists intent on overturning the 2020 presidential election, goaded on by a former president.“That shows that there are folks who are intentional about not seeing diversity, equity and inclusion thrive,” Davis said. “Now is the time for us as a country to recognize that until we value the voices of everyone, including Black women, we are silencing a very important part of the fabric of America.”‘A significant pool’The percentage of Black women who are federal judges – a common stepping-stone to a high court nomination – is extraordinarily small.According to the federal judicial center, the US circuit courts count only five African American women among sitting judges out of 179. There are 42 African American women judges at the district court level, out of 677.Those numbers are partly owing to Republican obstruction of Black women nominated by Barack Obama, including former seventh circuit nominee Myra Selby. She was denied a hearing in the Senate for the entirety of 2016 – a year later Republicans filled the seat with Donald Trump’s nominee: Amy Coney Barrett.“There is a significant pool of lawyers, law professors, public officials who would be viable nominees for the federal courts,” said Brown-Nagin. “The problem is not the pool.”Last month, Brown-Nagin co-signed a letter to the Senate judiciary committee supporting the nomination of district court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the court of appeals for the DC district, sometimes informally referred to as the second-highest court in the land.“Her resumé virtually screams that she is an ideal nominee for an appellate court or even the supreme court, and that is because she has the combination of educational and professional experience on the federal courts that feasibly fits the mold of typical supreme court nominees,” Brown-Nagin said.“I would say it goes beyond what we’ve seen, frankly, in recent nominees to the court.”Jealous, a former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said he would like to see a nominee “who cut their teeth defending the people, not corporations”.“I would like to see someone like Sherrilyn Ifill or Lia Epperson – a woman who comes out of Thurgood Marshall’s old law firm, the NAACP legal defense fund, with a courageous commitment to defending the rights of all Americans,” he said.McDonald said having a Black woman on the supreme court would mean American history had “come full circle”.“I feel in my heart that it’s time,” she said. “Everything takes its time. And everything happens at its time. I was raised in a church, so I’m just going to say it like that.” More

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      Why so many lobbyists are courting Senate Democrat Joe Manchin

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      An increasing large number of lobbyists and outside groups in America all have a similar target: Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.And it’s understandable why. In a Senate where Democrats hold the slimmest of majorities a vote by Manchin, the most conservative Senate Democrat, can decide whether legislation is signed into law or left to meander in political purgatory in Congress.Manchin has also demonstrated a willingness to buck the majority of the party on priority proposals and key votes. He was one of the first senators to oppose Neera Tanden’s nomination to direct the Office of Management and Budget. He has vehemently resisted the idea of changes to the filibuster. He was also early out of the gate in opposing a minimum wage increase as part of Joe Biden’s $1.9tn stimulus bill.Many progressive Democrats see Manchin as a stubborn obstacle to their agenda. Others in the party afford him some slack. He’s managed to retain a Senate seat in West Virginia as the state has drifted away from electing Democrats and become more reliably Republican.But one thing is clear: Manchin is the Senate Democrat to lobby.The Service Employees International Union and Poor People’s Campaign met with him in February to try to move him on a $15 minimum wage. The liberal outside group Indivisible has been running radio ads in West Virginia, urging Manchin to support Washington DC becoming a state. According to lobbying disclosures Humanity Forward, a group aligned with Democratic mayoral candidate Andrew Yang, hired lobbyists to push the West Virginia senator on supporting “targeted installments of stimulus payments”.Earlier this month, The American Working Families Action Fund launched digital and TV advertising targeting Manchin and Senator Susan Collins of Maine on infrastructure.Manchin is one of the senators being targeted by a string of advocacy groups on voting rights. Part of a joint advocacy campaign by the End Citizens United political action committee, the Let America Vote Action Fund and the National Democratic Redistricting Fund to push key senators to support Democrats’ For the People Act.Conservative groups are also trying to push Manchin. The conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity is airing radio ads calling on Manchin not to shift his position on the filibuster or adding seats to the supreme court. Those ads on talk radio direct listeners to an AFP-backed site.Ken Cuccinelli, a former deputy secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, is leading a group called the American Principles Project alongside the Susan B Anthony List to reinforce a set of conservative Senate Democrats’ opposition to overhauling the filibuster. The partnership is called the Election Integrity Initiative. Manchin is one of those senators being targeted.“When Manchin says good things about it we engage with positive reinforcement in West Virginia,” Cuccinelli said in an interview. “We haven’t been doing attacking on it.”Cuccinelli said his initiative have had events at all Manchin’s offices. “As between trying to drag him down now or support a path he’s on that’s a positive path, we’ve chosen to support a positive path,” Cuccinelli added.All the activism and lobbying might suggest Manchin is particularly malleable to pressure. If anything Manchin has fueled frustration – especially among progressives – for how firm he’s been on some issues.Nick Rahall, a former member of Congress for West Virginia said Manchin is not immovable. Rahall said Manchin just “needs his space”.“He needs his room to maneuver and Biden’s willing to give it to him, [Senate majority leader] Chuck Schumer’s willing to give it to him,” Rahall said.Rahall added that Manchin can be convinced to change his mind. Rahall pointed to Manchin, in the end, voting for the Biden administration’s huge coronavirus relief bill. “He had concerns about it, he got an amendment accepted and he voted for it. He came down on Biden’s side after appearing initially – not totally against the bill but having concerns,” Rahall said. More

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      Ted Cruz threatens to burn John Boehner’s book over criticisms

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      Republican senator Ted Cruz has responded to fiery criticism from John Boehner with a tactic beloved of authoritarian regimes: threatening to burn his book.In an email to supporters, the Texas politician said he also might machine-gun or chainsaw the memoir, depending on how much his supporters paid for the privilege to watch.Boehner, a Republican congressman from Ohio for 24 years and House speaker from 2011 to 2015, published his book On the House this week. It contains strong criticism of political figures from Donald Trump to Barack Obama but hits Cruz especially hard.The senator who drove a government shutdown in 2013 is “Lucifer in the flesh”, Boehner has said.On the page, he writes: “There is nothing more dangerous than a reckless asshole who thinks he is smarter than everyone else.”The book also contains a memorable sign-off: “PS, Ted Cruz: Go fuck yourself.”But Cruz, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 and may well do so again in 2024, is nothing if not a bomb-thrower himself, as well as a nimble opportunist.“John Boehner doesn’t like me much,” his fundraising email said. “That’s fine, I’m not a big fan of his either.”Calling the speaker-turned-lobbyist a “Swamp Monster” and accusing him of “an unhinged smear campaign”, the email told supporters Cruz had “put this trash right where it belonged, in my fireplace”.“But I didn’t finish it off just yet,” it added. Instead, the Texas senator announced a “72-hour drive to raise $250,000”, in which donors would “get to VOTE on whether we machine gun the book, take a chainsaw to it or burn the book to light cigars!”The email also said Cruz would livestream the evisceration or incineration.There is nothing new about American politicians shooting or eviscerating texts they don’t like in order to raise campaign dollars. Ask the Democratic senator Joe Manchin, who has both taken aim at Obamacare and fired his gun to defend it.But it could also be pointed out that Cruz’s attempt to stoke outrage – and dollars – might only succeed in bringing Boehner’s book to wider attention.As Ray Bradbury, author of the classic novel Fahrenheit 451, about a society which bans books, once said: “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”On Thursday morning, On the House was the No 1 seller on Amazon. More

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      Clyburn offers Manchin history lesson to clear Senate path for Biden reforms

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      Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip, said on Sunday he intends to give Joe Manchin a lesson in US history as he attempts to clear a path for Joe Biden on voting rights and infrastructure.Manchin, a moderate Democratic senator from West Virginia, has emerged as a significant obstacle to the president’s ambitious proposals by insisting he will not vote to reform or end the Senate filibuster, which demands a super-majority for legislation to pass, to allow key measures passage through the 50-50 chamber on a simple majority basis.His stance has drawn praise from Republicans: Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, hailed Manchin as the politician “almost singlehandedly preserving the Senate”.But Democrats appear to be losing patience – and none more vociferously than Clyburn.“I’m going to remind the senator exactly why the Senate came into being,” Clyburn, from South Carolina, told CNN’s State of the Union, refreshing criticism of Manchin that has included saying he feels “insulted” by his refusal to fully embrace voting rights reform.“The Senate was not always an elective office. The moment we changed and made it an elective office [was because] the people thought a change needed to be made.“The same thing goes for the filibuster. The filibuster was put in place to extend debate and give time to bring people around to a point of view. The filibuster was never put in place to suppress voters … It was there to make sure that minorities in this country have constitutional rights and not be denied.”Clyburn has assailed Manchin for promoting a bipartisan approach to voting rights and refusing to endorse the For the People Act, a measure passed by the US House and intended to counter restrictive voting laws targeting minorities proposed by Republicans in 47 states and passed in Georgia last month.“You’re going to say it’s more important for you to protect 50 Republicans in the Senate than for you to protect your fellow Democrat’s seat in Georgia? That’s a bunch of crap,” Clyburn told Huffpost this month, referring to Senator Raphael Warnock’s 2022 re-election battle that supporters feel has become much harder due to the new voting laws.On Sunday Clyburn also reached into history to repeat his contention that the Georgia law is “the new Jim Crow”, a claim repeated by Biden but which Republicans say is unfair.“When we first started determining who was eligible to vote and who was not,” Clyburn said, “they were property owners. They knew that people of colour, people coming out of slavery did not own property.“…And then they went from that to having disqualifiers. And they picked those offences that were more apt to be committed by people of colour to disqualify voters.“The whole history in the south of putting together those who are eligible to vote is based upon the practices and the experiences of people based upon their race. So, I would say to anybody, ‘Come on, just look at the history … and you will know that what is taking place today is a new Jim Crow. It’s just that simple.”Despite the urging of Clyburn and others, Manchin remains steadfast in his belief bipartisanship is Biden’s best path to implementing his agenda. In a CNN interview last week, the senator said the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol “changed me”, and said he wanted to use his power as a swing vote in the 50-50 Senate “to make a difference” by working with Republicans and Democrats.“Something told me, ‘Wait a minute. Pause. Hit the pause button.’ Something’s wrong. You can’t have this many people split to where they want to go to war with each other,” he said, of watching a riot mounted by supporters of Donald Trump seeking to overturn his election defeat on the grounds it was caused by voter fraud – a lie without legal standing.Manchin said he had a good relationship with the White House and wanted to meet Warnock and Georgia’s other Democratic senator, Jon Ossoff, to discuss voting rights.On Sunday, Clyburn said the riot also had “a tremendous effect” on him.“When I saw that Capitol policeman complain about how many times he was called the N-word by those people, who were insurrectionists out there, when I see [the civil rights leader] John Lewis’s photo torn to pieces and scattered on the floor, that told me everything I need to know about those insurrectionists, and I will remind anybody who reflects on 6 January to think about these issues as well,” he said.Clyburn was among the first major figures to endorse Biden last year, helping nurse him through bleak times after rejections in early primaries.The congressman has Biden’s ear and in an interview with the Guardian in December promised to keep pressure on his friend to fulfill a promise in his victory speech directed to African Americans: “They always have my back, and I’ll have yours.”“I think he will,” Clyburn said. “I’m certainly going to work hard to make sure that he remembers that he said it.” More