US Senate

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Senate Republican threatens impeachments of past Democratic presidents

      by

      The Texas Republican senator John Cornyn warned on Saturday that Donald Trump’s second impeachment could lead to the prosecution of former Democratic presidents if Republicans retake Congress in two years’ time.Trump this month became the first US president to be impeached twice, after the Democratic-controlled House, with the support of 10 Republicans, voted to charge him with incitement of insurrection over the assault on the Capitol by his supporters on 6 January which left five people dead.Trump failed to overturn his election defeat and Joe Biden was sworn in as president this week.After a brief moment of bipartisan sentiment in which members from both parties condemned the unprecedented attack on Congress as it met to formalize Biden’s victory, a number of Senate Republicans are opposing Trump’s trial, which could lead to a vote blocking him from future office.“If it is a good idea to impeach and try former presidents, what about former Democratic presidents when Republicans get the majority in 2022?” Cornyn, a 19-year veteran of the Senate who last year tried to distance himself from Trump when it seemed his seat was at risk, tweeted at majority leader Chuck Schumer. “Think about it and let’s do what is best for the country.”Democrats hold narrow majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate but it is common for a president’s party to lose seats in elections two years after a presidential contest. Impeachment begins in the House. The Senate stages any trial.Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has said the mob in the Capitol putsch was “provoked” by Trump – who told supporters to march on Congress and “fight like hell”. Other Senate Republicans claim trying Trump after he has left office would be unconstitutional and further divide the country.There are also concerns on both sides of the aisle that the trial could distract from Biden’s legislative agenda. Schumer, who became majority leader this week, tweeted on Friday that the Senate would confirm Biden’s cabinet, enact a new Covid-19 relief package and conduct Trump’s impeachment trial.The trial is due to be held in the second week of February. More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Former general Lloyd Austin confirmed as Biden's defense secretary

      by

      The US Senate on Friday confirmed Joe Biden’s nominee, Lloyd Austin, to serve as the secretary of defense, making the retired four-star army officer the first African American to lead the Pentagon.The final vote was 93 to 2, with only two Senate Republicans – Mike Lee of Utah and Josh Hawley of Missouri – opposing Austin’s nomination.Austin said in a tweet that it was “an honor and a privilege” to serve as the defense secretary, adding that he was “especially proud” to be the first African American to hold the position.“Let’s get to work,” he wrote.Austin, 67, will oversee the 1.3 million active duty men and women who make up the nation’s military. The Senate vote gave Biden his second cabinet official, and another crucial member of his national security team, after Avril Haines was confirmed on Wednesday as the first woman to serve as the director of national intelligence. She was sworn in on Thursday by the vice-president, Kamala Harris.[embedded content]Austin’s confirmation required a special dispensation from both chambers of Congress, waiving a legal prohibition on military officials serving as secretary of defense within seven years of their retirement from active-duty service. The House and Senate easily approved the waiver on Thursday, despite concerns among some lawmakers about granting an exception from a law intended to maintain civil control of the military.It was only the third time Congress had granted the exception, including in 2017 for the retired marine general Jim Mattis to become Donald Trump’s first defense secretary in 2017.Austin sought to allay concerns over his recent service during his confirmation hearing, saying he was a “general and a soldier” who was prepared “to serve now – as a civilian – fully acknowledging the importance of this distinction.”Austin, raised in a rural town in Georgia, graduated from West Point and steadily rose through the nearly all-white ranks of the military, breaking racial barriers nearly every step of the way during his decorated 41-year career. In a video posted on Twitter, he reflected on the historic nature of his nomination and vowed that he “won’t be the last” African American to lead the military.I am enormously grateful for the service and the sacrifices of those who broke barriers before me—and although I may be the first African American Secretary of Defense, it’s my hope that I won’t be the last. pic.twitter.com/cT3fU6whmE— Lloyd Austin (@LloydAustin) January 12, 2021
      Appearing before the Senate armed services committee this week, Austin was asked how he planned to address rightwing extremism and white nationalism within the military, particularly as officials investigate the involvement of current and former service members in the violent attack on the US Capitol.Austin said he was committed to rooting out domestic extremism, telling lawmakers: “The job of the Department of Defense is to keep America safe from our enemies. But we can’t do that if some of those enemies lie within our own ranks.”Biden nominated Austin to restore stability atop the Pentagon and to rebuild America’s relationship with allies, frayed by the Trump administration, and orient the defense department to confront threats ranging from potential future pandemics to the climate emergency to refugee crises.“In my judgment, there is no question that he is the right person for this job at the right moment, leading the Department of Defense at this moment in our nation’s history,” Biden said as he announced his nomination of Austin for the role last month. He called Austin the “definition of duty, honor and country” and a leader “feared by our adversaries, known and respected by our allies”.Shortly after he was sworn in on Friday, Austin made his first official phone call to the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, to reiterate the country’s “steadfast commitment” to the defense alliance that had been a target of Trump’s wrath for nearly four years. The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said he would be sworn in “more ceremoniously” by Harris on Monday.The Senate finance committee also unanimously supported the nomination of Janet Yellen for treasury secretary on Friday morning, setting up a final confirmation vote. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said the full chamber would vote on her confirmation on Monday.• This article was amended on 22 January 2020. An earlier version referred to Lloyd Austin as a retired marine officer; he is a retired army general. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump impeachment article to be sent to Senate on Monday, setting up trial

      by

      Democratic leaders announced on Friday that the article of impeachment against Donald Trump for incitement of insurrection would be transferred from the House to the Senate on Monday, setting up a trial of the former president.“The Senate will conduct a trial on the impeachment of Donald Trump,” the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said. “It will be a fair trial. But make no mistake, there will be a trial.”The move was a stunning rebuke of a proposal a day earlier by the Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to delay transfer of the article and push the trial into February, to make “additional time for both sides to assemble their arguments”.Trump is the only president in history to be impeached twice. Conviction in the Senate, which would require a two-thirds majority vote, could prevent him from ever again holding public office.But in rejecting McConnell’s offer, Democrats did more than press the case against Trump. They also staked out a tough stance in an internal Senate power struggle, as the newly installed Joe Biden administration prepares to ask Republicans for support on initiatives including pandemic policy, economic relief and immigration reform.McConnell and Republicans lost control of the Senate with a double loss in runoff elections in Georgia earlier this month. But McConnell has been fighting for advantage, refusing to approve a basic power-sharing agreement in a body now split 50-50, unless Schumer promised to retain a Senate filibuster rule that enables the minority party to block legislation with only 41 votes.Schumer rejected that pitch by McConnell on Friday, too, demanding that Republicans approve the organizing agreement, which would for example grant the parties an equal number of members on each committee, with no strings attached.“Leader McConnell’s proposal is unacceptable – and it won’t be accepted,” Schumer said.The pair of forceful moves by the Democratic leadership signaled an intention to deliver on a mandate they feel they won last November and displayed an unaccustomed assertiveness after four years of Trump and McConnell.But the power plays also called more deeply into question whether Biden would benefit from any measure of Republican support as he attempts to answer multiple national crises.The most fierce Trump supporters in the Senate have threatened to hold hostage every ounce of Biden’s agenda, including cabinet appointments, unless Democrats called off the impeachment trial.“Democrats can’t have it both ways: an unconstitutional impeachment trial & Senate confirmation of the Biden administration’s national security team,” tweeted the Republican senator Ron Johnson, who until this week was chair of the homeland security committee. “They need to choose between being vindictive or staffing the administration to keep the nation safe. What will it be: revenge or security?”Johnson’s explicit threat to hold national security hostage to a political agenda was not echoed by most colleagues, and the Senate proceeded with key Biden confirmations on Friday. The body overwhelmingly confirmed Lloyd Austin as the first African American defense secretary in history by a bipartisan vote of 93-2, and the Senate finance committee unanimously advanced the nomination of Janet Yellen to be treasury secretary.While McConnell and others have expressed an openness to the charges facing Trump in his second impeachment trial, expectations are low that Democrats will find the 17 Republican votes they probably need to convict him.While the transmission of the article triggers the launching of trial proceedings, the schedule ahead remains uncertain, and is subject to negotiations. After the article of impeachment is transmitted, lawyers for Trump would be called on to submit a response from the president, and prosecutors from the House, known as impeachment managers, would submit pre-trial briefs.“I’ve been speaking to the Republican leader about the time and the duration of the trial,” Schumer said.Lawyers defending Trump will include Butch Bowers, a former justice department official recommended by Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator announced on Thursday. No lawyers from Trump’s impeachment trial last year were expected to return to his defense team.When Trump was first impeached in December 2019, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, delayed the transfer of the case to the Senate in an effort to prolong Trump’s political pain and to win concessions on how Trump’s trial would be conducted.But this time Pelosi moved quickly, her decision linked to an unusual number of moving parts with deep significance for the Biden administration and the future of the country.Democrats might have concluded that it would be a mistake to bargain for Republican support for Biden’s agenda, the top item of which is a $1.9tn Covid relief and economic recovery package.The Republican senator Susan Collins of Maine, a potential swing vote for Democrats, told reporters on Thursday that Biden’s plan was “premature”.The government watchdog group Fix Our Senate on Friday blasted McConnell for linking support for an organizing agreement in the Senate to the filibuster.“By threatening to filibuster a routine resolution that simply affirms that Democrats won the majority and can now lead committees,” said group spokesman Eli Zupnick, “Senator McConnell has made it crystal clear, to anyone with any remaining doubts, that his only goal is to undermine, delay and block the Biden agenda that the American people just voted for.” More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial rests in the hands of Republican senators

      by

      Democratic control of the US Senate could create problems for Donald Trump in the weeks ahead when the former president likely faces his second impeachment trial – but not because Democrats by themselves would be able to convict Trump on the charge at hand: incitement of insurrection.A two-thirds majority of voting senators – 67 if all 100 members vote – is still required to convict the president, and the Democratic caucus will number only 50 senators. Thus they would need 17 Republicans to join them to convict Trump.If convicted, Trump could be banned from ever again holding public office. If not, Trump, who won the votes of 74 million Americans just two months ago, might simply run for president again in 2024.Late Thursday it emerged that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is proposing to push back the start of the Senate trial to give Trump time to prepare. He said he is suggesting the impeachment charge be presented to the Senate on 28 January and the trial to start two weeks after that.Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said he was negotiating on timing but added “make no mistake about it. There will be a trial, there will be a vote, up or down or whether to convict the president”.The judgment facing Republicans is more political than constitutional, said Frank O Bowman III, author of High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump and a professor at the University of Missouri school of law.“If Republicans decide, as most of them will, maybe nearly all, to vote against this, it’s going to have nothing to do with their opinion about the behavior of Donald Trump,” he said.“It will have everything to do with their narrow political calculation about balancing whatever allegiance they may feel to the constitution with concerns about being attacked from the Trumpist right, to, on the other side, a sense that I suspect many of them have that if they could rid themselves of this turbulent priest, and not have to suffer any major electoral consequences, they’d do it in a minute.”On its face, 17 Republicans voting to convict Trump currently seems like an extremely tall order despite the widespread outrage at the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob that he had seemed to goad into action. Last time Trump faced an impeachment trial, in February 2020, only one Republican senator, Mitt Romney of Utah, cast a vote to convict him.But the political landscape has changed dramatically meanwhile. Disgust at the fatal sacking of the Capitol has only grown since 6 January, creating pressure on Republicans to condemn Trump, who appeared in person to speak to the mob before the attack and encouraged them to march on the building.Some Republicans might be eager to condemn Trump for other reasons, blaming him for their loss of the Senate majority, which happened because Republican candidates lost two runoff elections in Georgia in January, in a huge double upset.The most important Republican senator of all, minority leader McConnell – who would still be majority leader, if Republicans had won just one of those Georgia contests – has indicated that he might vote to convict Trump, whom he blasted on the floor of the Senate a day before Trump left office.“The mob was fed lies,” McConnell said. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people. And they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like. But we pressed on.”McConnell’s break with Trump is breathtaking for many political observers. The last time Trump faced an impeachment trial, McConnell promised “total coordination with the White House” on Trump’s defense, said there was “no chance” Trump would be convicted, and told Fox News, “the case is so darn weak coming from the House”.This time, McConnell has announced: “I have not made a final decision on how I will vote, and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate.”As the Senate majority, Democrats will enjoy certain procedural perks during the impeachment trial. They will control scheduling, and be able to tailor the trial around the legislative priorities of president Joe Biden.Senate majority leader Schumer is coordinating with House speaker Nancy Pelosi about when the article of impeachment would be handed over, triggering the trial process. “It will be soon; it will not be long,” Pelosi said on Thursday.Unlike at Trump’s first impeachment trial, Republicans this time will have great difficulty blocking witnesses at the new trial, assuming all 50 Democratic senators stick together – although exactly how a tie would be broken on a procedural objection to the introduction of a certain witness is not yet clear, said Bowman.“I suspect this is the kind of thing that the Senate parliamentarian is hunkered down with somebody figuring out,” Bowman said.It is likewise unclear how many Republicans might follow McConnell if he indeed tips toward convicting Trump. Ten Republicans joined Democrats last week in the House to impeach Trump by a 232-197 vote – hardly a flood of defectors, and yet the most bipartisan impeachment vote in history.Up for election only once every six years versus every other year for House members, senators are more insulated from political tides. Anger at how Trump has divided their party could tempt some Republicans toward banishing him, as could fear of what Trump will do if he is permitted to run for office again.Other powerful currents of ambition and desire are at work. At least a half-dozen Republican senators hope to run for president themselves in 2024, potentially conferring a certain convenience on having Trump offstage.The narrow impeachment charge against Trump is strong on the merits, said Bowman, but the most powerful case against him would take in the entirety of his conduct after the election, when he attacked the democracy with wild false claims about voter fraud, pressured local elections officials directly to overturn state results and then summoned a mob to the Capitol to block the certification of the vote.“Donald Trump tried to overturn American democracy, there’s no way to get around that, that’s what he tried to do,” Bowman said. “And we came within a gnat’s whisker of having him succeed.“So, is that impeachable? Dammit yes, and it is plainly the most impeachable sequence of events that has ever come to our attention, because it is the biggest betrayal by an American president of American constitutionalism in the history of our country.“The sad fact is that despite the fact that that’s obviously true, to anybody who’s not a QAnon delusionist, he probably is going to skate anyway, because too many Republicans are more worried about their own electoral future than they are about preserving the constitutional order.” More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Mitch McConnell proposes delaying Trump's impeachment trial

      by

      The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, is proposing to push back the start of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial by a week or more to give the former president time to review the case.House Democrats who voted to impeach Trump last week for inciting the 6 January Capitol attack have signaled they want a quick trial as President Joe Biden begins his term, saying a full reckoning is necessary before the country – and the Congress – can move on.But McConnell told his fellow GOP senators on a call Thursday that a short delay would give Trump time to prepare and stand up his legal team, ensuring due process.The Indiana senator Mike Braun said after the call that the trial might not begin “until sometime mid-February”. He said that was “due to the fact that the process as it occurred in the House evolved so quickly, and that it is not in line with the time you need to prepare for a defense in a Senate trial”.The timing will be set by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, who can trigger the start of the trial when she sends the House charges for “incitement of insurrection” to the Senate, and also by McConnell and the new Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, who are in negotiations over how to set up a 50-50 partisan divide in the Senate and the short-term agenda.Schumer is in charge of the Senate, assuming the majority leader post after Democrats won two new Senate seats in Georgia and Vice-President Kamala Harris was sworn in on Wednesday. But with such a narrow divide, Republicans will have some say over the trial’s procedure.Democrats are hoping to conduct the proceedings while also passing legislation that is a priority for Biden, including coronavirus relief, but they would need some cooperation from Senate Republicans to do that, as well.Schumer told reporters on Thursday that he was still negotiating with McConnell on how to conduct the trial, “but make no mistake about it. There will be a trial, there will be a vote, up or down or whether to convict the president.”Pelosi could send the article to the Senate as soon as Friday. Democrats say the proceedings should move quickly because they were all witnesses to the siege, many of them fleeing for safety as the rioters descended on the Capitol.“It will be soon, I don’t think it will be long, but we must do it,” Pelosi said on Thursday. She said Trump did not deserve a “get out of jail card” for his historic second impeachment just because he has left office and Biden and others are calling for national unity.[embedded content]Without the White House counsel’s office to defend him – as it did in his first trial last year – Trump’s allies have been searching for lawyers to argue the former president’s case. Members of his past legal teams have indicated they do not plan to join the effort, but the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham told GOP colleagues on Thursday that Trump was hiring the South Carolina attorney Butch Bowers, according to a person familiar with the call who was granted anonymity to discuss it. Bowers did not immediately respond to a message Thursday.Prosecuting the House case will be Pelosi’s nine impeachment managers, who have been regularly meeting to discuss strategy. Pelosi said she would talk to them “in the next few days” about when the Senate might be ready for a trial, indicating the decision could stretch into next week.Trump told thousands of supporters to “fight like hell” against the election results that Congress was certifying on 6 January just before an angry mob invaded the Capitol and interrupted the count. Five people, including a Capitol police officer, died in the mayhem, and the House impeached the outgoing president a week later, with 10 Republicans joining all Democrats in support.Pelosi said it would be “harmful to unity” to forget that “people died here on January 6, the attempt to undermine our election, to undermine our democracy, to dishonor our Constitution”. Following his first impeachment, Trump was acquitted by the Senate in February after his White House legal team, aided by his personal lawyers, aggressively fought the House charges that he had encouraged the president of Ukraine to investigate Biden in exchange for military aid. This time around, Pelosi noted, the House was not seeking to convict the president over private conversations but for a very public insurrection that they experienced themselves and that played out on live television.“This year the whole world bore witness to the president’s incitement,” Pelosi said.Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No 2 Senate Democrat, said it was still too early to know how long a trial would take, or if Democrats would want to call witnesses. But he said: “You don’t need to tell us what was going on with the mob scene – we were rushing down the staircase to escape.”McConnell, who said this week that Trump had “provoked” his supporters before the riot, has not said how he will vote. He told his GOP colleagues that it would be a vote of conscience. More

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on Joe Biden's inauguration: democracy prevails – for now | Editorial

      by

      It was a moment of immense relief across the world, rather than unbridled celebration. Washington saw an orderly transition of power at the Capitol, just two weeks after the attack on it; the departure of a man who has thrived on division and the anointment of Joe Biden, who pledges unity; the arrival of Kamala Harris – the first female vice-president and a woman of colour – after the racism and misogyny of Donald Trump. Yet there were no cheering crowds to greet the new president, and 25,000 members of the National Guard stood watch, thanks to his predecessor’s legacy: the deadly toll of the pandemic and the political violence epitomised by this month’s insurrection. That threat did not recede when the 46th president took his oath of office. It is part of America’s body politic, as are the bitter political forces that birthed it. Though Mr Trump was resoundingly defeated, more than 70 million Americans voted for him and a huge number of those now believe that President Biden stole his job. One in five voters supported the storming of the Capitol.Mr Trump, petty to the last, slunk away to Florida rather than face his defeat. But whether or not the twice-impeached ex-president can maintain political momentum, Trumpism in the broader sense is thriving. Its next standard bearer – there are plenty of hopefuls – could well be smarter and more dangerous. So the sombre mood was not only inevitable but apt. The perils facing the republic have rarely been greater. Mr Biden’s speech rose to the moment. He acknowledged the constant struggles of his nation, and the current dangers. But he also promised: “Democracy has prevailed … Our better angels have always prevailed.”The new president has promised a flurry of action, expecting little honeymoon. He must tackle the pandemic that has taken 400,000 American lives – a quarter of those in the past month – and the economic crisis, with 10 million fewer employed than a year ago; he plans a $1.9tn stimulus package. A slew of executive orders on his first afternoon – axing the Muslim travel ban; rejoining the Paris climate agreement – are set to reverse some of Mr Trump’s most egregious acts. But erasing the last four years is impossible. Only some policies can be enacted at the stroke of a pen. An ambitious legislative agenda must force its way through a 50/50 Senate. The Trump administration scrapped regulation and stacked courts. Above all, it tore apart the social and political fabric of the United States, making brazen lies, naked cruelty and hatred commonplace. Mr Trump was the product of his country’s failures, but further exposed and exacerbated them. Europe and other allies are breathing easier, but America’s standing cannot truly be restored until its domestic crises are resolved. At best, Mr Biden will begin to address them. He reminded his listeners that politics “does not have to be a raging fire destroying everything in its path”, in a call for honesty and decency that should be heard not only in the US, but across the Atlantic. Yet others are still pouring on the fuel. While some Republicans belatedly scramble for the vestiges of respectability, others continue to foment lies. Facts have become optional in the age of disinformation.Changing the president, as hard as it has been, was an easy task set against the challenge of binding up the nation’s wounds. But this is, at least, the removal of a dangerous man and the arrival of a president who believes in his oath of office. This inauguration brings hope, however tentative, at a time when the US desperately needs it. More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden prepares ambitious agenda even as he cleans up Trump's mess | Analysis

      by

      The last time a Democratic president took control of the White House, the wreckage he inherited was so great, there was little else his incoming team could prioritize.Twelve years ago, Barack Obama’s blunt-spoken chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, liked to describe the Republican legacy – a financial crisis, deep recession and two wars – as a giant shit sandwich wrapped in a red ribbon.Recovering from the economic crisis of George W Bush’s final year would require most of the Obama team’s focus in their first two years, when they controlled both sides of Congress with large majorities. Obama handed over his signature campaign issue – winding down the war in Iraq – to his vice-president to manage.Now that former vice-president takes over the presidency with even more wreckage to sift through.Joe Biden must overcome a pandemic, rebuild an economy, tackle racist insurrectionists and the ex-president who incited them, and reassert American leadership across a distrustful world. Somehow he must do all that while also confirming his senior officials in a Senate with no working majority.So far the Biden team shows no sign of limiting its ambition in terms of what it hopes Congress will take up – and what it will push through executive action – in its first days and weeks in power. In addition to signing a flurry of executive orders, rejoining the Paris climate accords and restarting the Iran nuclear deal, Biden will also propose sweeping immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for the undocumented.Comprehensive reform of the nation’s broken immigration system proved beyond the capabilities of both Bush and Obama. It was Bush’s failure to enact immigration reform in 2007 that effectively marked the end of his second-term agenda, as Republicans turned towards a nativist agenda that Donald Trump placed at the heart of his campaign and presidency.The Biden team may be marking a sharp break with the Trump years in prioritizing immigration reform. But what are their realistic prospects for legislative progress in the first year of the Biden presidency?Obama veterans think there may be one good reason why Biden can feel more optimistic about political progress than their own experience in 2009, when Republicans obstructed their action from the outset, would dictate. That reason is the legacy of one Donald Trump.“I think the difference between this and 2009 is that I believe there’s going to be a significant number of Republicans in Congress who think that their party needs a course correction here,” said Joel Benenson, who served as strategist and pollster to both Obama and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns. “It doesn’t mean they are suddenly going to be liberal Rockefeller Republicans, but the damage that Trump has done to the party and its image – and it has exacerbated through the events of the last two weeks – is giving them pause.“I don’t think it’s a major shift ideologically, but they have to recognize they are losing large and important sections of the electorate, and that’s going to be problematic for them. They know for their long-term prospects they can’t just be a base party. The biggest political failure of Donald Trump is that he didn’t fundamentally understand that to win the presidency, you have to win the center.”At the heart of that calculation is the singular figure of Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, who now finds himself in the minority after six years of control. McConnell was effective as an obstructionist force through the end of the Obama presidency, but he also can be a pragmatic figure when it comes to gaining and holding power.Recent polling underscores McConnell’s challenge: the majority of Republicans are fundamentally misaligned with the majority of the country. Almost two-thirds of the party falsely believes that Donald Trump won last year’s election, according to polling by the Pew Research Center. The same polling showed that more than two-thirds of Americans do not want Trump to play a major political role moving forward, giving him the lowest approval rating of his presidency at just 29%.Congressional Democrats aim to test McConnell’s approach – and his main lever of power, the filibuster – with their first legislation, which would expand voting rights and reform campaign finance.The so-called For The People Act, which passed the house in 2019, aims to tackle gerrymandering, “dark money” donations, and expand voting rights through initiatives such as a national voter registration system. If McConnell filibusters the bill, there will be immediate pressure for Democrats to abolish the filibuster through a change in the Senate rules requiring 51 votes.Senator Jeff Merkley, the Oregon Democrat who has introduced the new bill, said: “Each and every one of us takes an oath to protect and defend the constitution. There’s nothing more fundamental than the ability to vote. That should not be subject to a veto by McConnell. If he exercises a veto, it will cause everyone to figure out how to honor their oath to the constitution that requires us to pass this legislation.”Merkley believes that Democrats can achieve a lot in Congress by using budget reconciliation rules that allow taxing and spending legislation – including climate-related policies – by simple majority votes. But policy changes such as immigration reform will need 60 votes to overcome a likely Republican filibuster, and Merkley expects McConnell to continue with his approach from the Obama years.“I think McConnell is deeply wedded to the strategy of delay and obstruction,” he said. “It has been his fundamental theory of power that if you show the majority in place isn’t getting the job done, it strengthens your case to replace them.”In two years, one-third of the Senate will be up for re-election, representing the class of 2016, when Trump won the presidency, and the senators at risk are overwhelmingly Republican – including Republicans from Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where Biden won last year.The historical trend is clear: the president’s party tends to lose seats in the first mid-term congressional elections. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald Trump all lost control of the House in their first mid-terms. The one president who bucked the trend was George W Bush, in the first elections after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.It’s unclear how the domestic terrorism threat of white supremacist groups – and this month’s insurrection at Capitol Hill – will play out in the next several months, as Trump’s second impeachment trial begins and federal investigations continue to unfold with criminal prosecutions across the country.“The congressional Republican party in the House and the Senate are going to have to be very careful about how they choose to obstruct and govern in the aftermath of the insurrection at the hands of the president they refused to stand up to,” said Benenson. “They could get labeled as complicit with the leaders of the worse episode we have seen since the civil war. They have to be mindful of that.” More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      'The mob was fed lies': McConnell blames Trump for Capitol attack – video

      by

      Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, acknowledged the violent mob that attacked the Capitol earlier this month was ‘provoked’ by Donald Trump, going on to say that the inauguration of Joe Biden would be ‘safe and successful’.  
      Speaking on the Senate floor, McConnell said: ‘The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people’ More