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      Biden cabinet picks: confirmation hearings begin one day before inauguration

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      Confirmation hearings for Joe Biden’s cabinet nominees kicked off on Tuesday, one day ahead of the inauguration and as the next step in Donald Trump’s second impeachment loomed.Senators on the relevant committees began hearings to confirm Janet Yellen (treasury secretary), Avril Haines (director of national intelligence), Alejandro Mayorkas (homeland security secretary) and Antony Blinken (secretary of state). The hearings were merely a first wave of confirmations Congress must process as the new president takes office.Biden will take the oath of office on Wednesday, cementing a massive shift in the American political universe. Once Kamala Harris is sworn in as vice-president – the first Black woman in the role using a Bible once owned by Thurgood Marshall, the first Black supreme court justice, as well as one from a close family friend – Democrats will narrowly control both chambers of Congress.As well as holding confirmation hearings, the Senate must hold a second trial for Trump, even after he has left office. Democrats hope Republican sentiment has shifted away from the outgoing president in response to the riot he encouraged at the Capitol. There are signs that might be the case.On Tuesday, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said: “The mob was fed lies. 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.”John Thune of South Dakota, a member of Republican leadership, told ABC News: “It sounds like we are going to have a trial to examine that and like all senators I’ll fulfill my constitutional duty and listen intently to the evidence, and we will come to the conclusion.”Looking to make good on his promise to lower the political temperature of the country, Biden invited Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress to a prayer session before he takes office, the mere fact of the invitation a tonal shift from how Trump interacted with congressional leaders through his four years in office. Earlier in the day, Biden participated in a sendoff from his home state, Delaware, ahead of his move to Washington. A Covid memorial service was due to take place in the capital in the evening.Biden will need to retain good relations with both parties if he wants any of his policy agenda to become law and cabinet confirmations to go smoothly. WThe Senate will be split 50-50. In any tie, Harris, as vice-president, will hold the deciding vote. In the House, the Democratic majority shrank in the last election but Nancy Pelosi still wields control as speaker.When Biden is sworn in, he will be lagging behind his most recent predecessors on confirmation hearings held, according to data compiled by Axios. Only five Biden nominees will have had hearings by the end of Tuesday, seven fewer than Trump had by inauguration day, six fewer than Barack Obama (whom Biden served as vice-president), seven fewer than George W Bush and nine fewer than Bill Clinton.On the Senate floor on Tuesday, Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, noted that Democrats must deal with an unusually heavy load.“All of us want to put this awful chapter in our nation’s history behind us, but healing and unity will only come if there is truth and accountability, not sweeping such a severe charge, such awful actions under the rug,” Schumer said.“So let me be clear. There will be an impeachment trial in the United States Senate. There will be a vote on convicting the president for high crimes and misdemeanors. If the president is convicted, there will be a vote barring him [from running for office] again.”Privately, there is a worry among Democrats that impeachment hearings held simultaneously with confirmations will delay cabinet confirmations and progress on legislation. Away from Congress, Biden has said he will reverse key Trump policies by executive order, achieving among other objectives re-entry to the Paris climate accord and Iran nuclear deal.Democrats also worry that impeachment could further fuel the sense of heated national division the new president wants to end.“In 2017, the Senate confirmed President Trump’s secretary of defense and his secretary of homeland security on inauguration day,” Schumer said, adding: “Biden should have the same officials in place on his inauguration day at the very least.“That is the expectation and tradition for any administration, especially in the midst of a homeland security crisis … the way the Senate works, it will take cooperation from our Republican colleagues to swiftly confirm these highly qualified national security officials. But make no mistake, the Senate will move quickly to confirm Biden’s cabinet.” More

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      Billionaire backer feels 'deceived' by Josh Hawley over election objections

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      A secretive billionaire supporter of Josh Hawley and other rightwing lawmakers suggested he had been “deceived” by the Republican senator from Missouri, who led the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Jeffrey Yass is a co-founder of Susquehanna International Group – headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a critical swing state – who has donated tens of millions of dollars to hardline Republican groups who supported Donald Trump’s effort to invalidate his defeat at the polls by Joe Biden.Yass privately told a longtime associate he had not foreseen how his contributions would lead to attempts to overturn US democracy.“Do you think anyone knew Hawley was going to do that?” Yass wrote to Laura Goldman, a former stockbroker who has known him for more than three decades.“Sometimes politicians deceive their donors.”Yass, who does not give interviews and generally avoids publicity, also told Goldman he did not believe the 2020 election had been “stolen”, even though he has directly and indirectly supported rightwing Republicans who have repeatedly – and falsely – sought to discredit the results.The latest fallout of the 6 January attempt to invalidate the election, in which 147 Republicans in Congress objected to electoral college results in the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol, comes as both Hawley and his donors face pressure and criticism for his role.Hawley has said he objected to the counting of electoral votes in order to instigate a “debate” on the issue of election integrity. He has denied that his actions helped to incite the violent outburst and breach of the Capitol in which five people died, including a police officer.Goldman told the Guardian she emailed Yass because she was upset to learn about his support for Hawley and other Republicans, especially since the lawmakers were seeking to invalidate the election results in their home state, Pennsylvania, which helped Biden clinch the White House.“I approached Jeff Yass upset after reading the Guardian’s article [about his involvement in donations] because I was shocked he would allow my vote and the vote of his neighbors to possibly be invalidated by politicians to whom he gives millions of dollars,” she said.She added: “Yass lives here. He knows local politicians … he could simply call them and ask questions if he thought the election results were funky, which they absolutely were not. He doesn’t need Josh Hawley, a senator from Missouri, or Ted Cruz, a senator from Texas, to question the election results in the state that he has lived almost 40 years.”Goldman published snippets of Yass’s private remarks to her on Twitter. The Guardian was able to verify the authenticity of the statements.Yass, a trader and poker aficionado who is an active Republican donor and has been a force in Pennsylvania elections, donated about $30m to conservative Super Pacs in the 2020 election cycle, making him the eighth-largest donor in the election, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.Most of those donations were made to the Club for Growth, an anti-tax group that in 2018 and 2020 supported 42 Republican hardliners who ultimately voted to overturn election results even after insurrectionists stormed the US Capitol.The Club for Growth has been a major back of both Hawley and Cruz, his partner in seeking to invalidate the election.Yass has not responded to requests for comment from the Guardian. Nor has he responded to questions about whether he will continue to donate to the Club for Growth or whether he discussed issues with Hawley and others. Goldman said she sought out a discussion with him in part because she knows he is a “hands on” political donor.The Club for Growth did not respond to a request for comment. The group’s president, David McIntosh, has been an avid supporter of some of most anti-democratic lawmakers elected in 2020, including Lauren Boebert, a QAnon follower and gun rights advocate from Colorado who has been criticized for tweeting the location of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, during the riot in the Capitol, against the advice of police.In an endorsement of Boebert in July 2020, McIntosh lauded the the restaurant owner and political novice for her understanding of the “irreparable harm” caused by “government overreach” and said he had no doubt Boebert would be a “conservative firebrand” in Washington.Yass told Goldman he donated to the Club for Growth a year ago and suggested he could not have anticipated what Hawley and others might do.But public records show Yass also donated $2.5m to the Protect Freedom Pac on 10 November 2020, a week after the US election. The Protect Freedom Pac, affiliated with the Kentucky Republican senator Rand Paul, ran advertisements against Democrats ahead of two January runoff elections in Georgia, including ads that claimed Democrats were seeking to defund the police, institute “socialist healthcare” and raise “trillions in new taxes”.The Protect Freedom Pac’s website currently – and falsely – states that Democrats “stole” the 2020 election and used the Covid-19 crisis to illegally change election laws. It has also endorsed an in-person voter ID law, a policy that would disproportionately block minority voters.Yass has received far less attention than other billionaire donors, such as Mike Bloomberg or the late Sheldon Adelson, but has been known to get involved in local politics, donating money to candidates who support charter schools.Goldman told the Guardian Yass has been a longtime supporter of the Republican majority in the Pennsylvania legislature that led the fight to stop mail-in ballots from being counted until election day. Pennsylvania’s final results were not known until days after the election and Biden’s victory was clinched in large part because of hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots that were counted after in-person ballots.Hawley’s office did not respond to a request for comment. More

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      Biden will appeal for unity as US braces for violence by Trump supporters

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      Joe Biden will deliver a message of national unity when he assumes the presidency on Wednesday, seeking to begin healing a country fractured by the acrimony of Donald Trump’s administration and ongoing threats of violence by his supporters.The preview of the theme of Biden’s inauguration address came as cities across the US braced for violent protests and Washington DC resembled a fortress with up to 25,000 national guard troops deployed.“It’s a message of moving this country forward, it’s a message of unity, it’s a message of getting things done,” Ron Klain, the incoming White House chief of staff, told CNN’s State of the Union.“There’s no question we’ve seen the most divisive four years in over a century from President Trump, it’s one reason Joe Biden ran, to restore the soul of America. The events of the past few weeks have proven out just how damaged the soul of America has been, and how important it is to restore it. That work starts on Wednesday.”Biden will act quickly to reverse many of Trump’s most controversial policies, Klain said, beginning with a 10-day flurry of executive orders that will return the US to the Paris climate agreement and Iran nuclear deal, aim to speed the delivery of Covid-19 vaccines and erase the immigration ban on Muslim-majority countries.The promise of new beginnings, however, is set against the backdrop of threats of domestic terrorism this weekend and around the inauguration. Throughout the day on Sunday, small groups of rightwing protesters gathered outside statehouses across the country, outnumbered by national guard troops and police. By late afternoon Sunday, no incidents were reported. There was an attack on our people. This was the most terrible crime ever by a president against our countryThe Washington DC mayor, Muriel Bowser, told NBC’s Meet the Press she was concerned about several areas of her city following FBI warnings of armed individuals heading there, and to state capitals, bent on repeating the insurrection that left five dead when a mob incited by Trump overran the US Capitol on 6 January.With the massive national guard presence in Washington, and federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies including the Secret Service working with local police, Bowser said she was confident Wednesday’s inauguration would be “a safe event”.But, she said, “this will be an inauguration unlike any other. It was already destined to be given Covid concerns and limited seating and public access. But having our fellow Americans storm the Capitol, in an attempt to overthrow the government, certainly warrants heightened security.”Adam Schiff, the Democratic chair of the House intelligence committee, likened the scene in Washington to Baghdad’s Green Zone, “with so much military presence and barricades”.“I never thought I would see that in our own capital or that it would be necessary, but there was a profound threat from domestic violent extremists of the nature we saw on 6 January,” he said told CBS’s Face the Nation.“There are people coming to the Washington DC area that are bringing weapons, and we see threats to all 50 state capitals. There will be gatherings of individuals and those gatherings could turn violent, so there’s a very high level of risk.”An FBI bulletin warned of the likelihood of violence from armed protesters in Washington and every state capital between 16 and 20 January, Trump’s last day in office. The president, impeached for the second time for inciting the Capitol attack with lies about a stolen election, remained isolated and silent in the White House on Sunday, reportedly assembling a legal team for his Senate trial.Christopher Wray, the FBI director, outlined on Thursday threats by rightwing agitators including QAnon and white supremacist groups such as the Proud Boys.“We are seeing an extensive amount of concerning online chatter,” he said. “One of the real challenges is trying to distinguish what’s aspirational versus what’s intentional.”As a precaution, Capitol buildings were boarded up and extra law enforcement resources deployed in numerous states. On Saturday, Washington police arrested a Virginia man found with a fake inaugural ID, a loaded handgun and ammunition. The man later told the Washington Post the he had been working security in the capital all week and pulled up to the checkpoint after getting lost. He told the paper he forgot the gun was in his truck and denied having so much ammunition. He was released after an initial court appearance and is due back in court in June, records show.“We have intelligence that there’s going to be activity around our capital and capitals across the country,” Asa Hutchinson, the Republican governor of Arkansas, told Fox News Sunday. “We’re taking necessary precautions to protect our capital and our citizens. I know some governors have beefed up even more, but I think the deterrent value hopefully has diminished that threat level.”In Washington, a large area including the White House, the Capitol, the National Mall and several blocks on either side was sealed off by thousands of national guard troops. High steel fences on concrete stands protected government buildings.In the run-up to the inauguration, troops from DC and neighbouring states will garrison the city. By several measures, it is a bigger response than the aftermath of 9/11. Large numbers of soldiers resting in the corridors of the Capitol, have not been seen since the civil war.The protected area was divided into a highly restricted “red zone” and around that a “green zone” accessible to residents, an echo of the Iraq war, and the fortified government and diplomatic area in central Baghdad.By lunchtime on Sunday, the city was quiet, with white supremacist militia leaders telling followers to stay away.In an email to supporters on Thursday, Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, joined other extremists in begging Trump to declare martial law. But he also told supporters they should not gather at state capitols, warning them of “false-flag traps”.Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the neo-fascist Proud Boys, told USA Today his group was not mobilising, saying: “I feel like this part of the battle is over.”A majority of respondents in a USA Today/Suffolk poll published on Sunday said they were still expecting violence.Trump was consumed on Sunday with his Senate trial for “incitement of insurrection”, which could begin as early as Wednesday afternoon.Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman from Maryland and the lead impeachment manager, gave a moving interview to CNN in which he recalled the Capitol riot and remembered his son Tommy, who died on New Year’s Eve at the age of 25.“When we went to count the electoral college votes and [the Capitol] came under that ludicrous attack, I felt my son with me and I was most concerned with our youngest daughter and my son in law, who is married to our other daughter, who were with me that day and who got caught in a room off of the House floor,” he said.“In between them and me was a rampaging armed mob, that could have killed them easily. These events are personal to me. There was an attack on our country, there was an attack on our people.“This was the most terrible crime ever by a president of the United States against our country.”Reuters contributed to this report. More

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      Joe Manchin: the conservative Democrat with leverage in a split Senate

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      There’s a meme going around concerning Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. It shows a futuristic city of gleaming skyscrapers and flying cars and an accompanying caption that reads something like: “West Virginia after Manchin has used all the leverage he has in the next Congress.”In other words, people expect Manchin, one of the most conservative Democrats in the federal government, to wield power like never before thanks to the 50-50 split in the Senate left by Democrats’ double win in the Georgia runoff races.Manchin, a three-term senator and former governor of West Virginia, is the most well-known of a set of moderate Republicans and Democrats who can decide whether to slow down legislation to a crawl or open a pathway to it becoming law.“There is going to be an important role for him to play as a moderate-to-conservative Democrat regardless of who won control of the Senate,” said Nick Rahall, a former Democratic congressman from West Virginia.Democrats have the slimmest of majorities in the Senate. The divide is Democrats control 50 seats and Republicans control 50 seats, which means when Kamala Harris becomes vice-president and her replacement, Alex Padilla of California, is sworn in as senator, Harris will be the tie-breaking vote.That slim majority can only go so far, though. Lawmakers need 60 votes for all legislation except reconciliation bills, which are annual and meant for tax and spending bills only. But all nominations before the Senate go strictly on a majority vote.There is going to be an important role for him to play as a moderate-to-conservative Democrat regardless of who won control of the SenateStill, Manchin’s reputation as being as right-leaning a Democrat as possible right now means that his support or opposition can provide cover to other lawmakers who also might want to influence Biden’s agenda. Manchin also maintains public friendships across the political spectrum. In an age where bipartisanship is rare, Manchin endorsed Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican, ahead of her re-election campaign. Collins then beat her Democratic challenger, Sara Gideon, in an upset.Manchin is part of a dying breed of Democrats out of West Virginia. He is the only statewide elected Democrat in the increasingly conservative-leaning red state. A Democratic presidential candidate has not won the state in over two decades and Donald Trump beat Joe Biden there by almost 40% of the vote.Manchin’s roots in West Virginia are deep. He grew up in coal country, one of five children and rose through the state’s politics first through the West Virginia house of delegates, then the state senate, then the secretary of state’s office, then the governor’s mansion, then the Senate.Nick Casey, a former chief of staff to the West Virginia governor, Jim Justice, said Manchin’s political career has been characterized by making decisions based on “what he thought were in the absolute interest of the people of West Virginia or the people of West Virginia and the people of the United States”.“He’s always been responsible, moderate and I don’t think ideologically driven at all,” Casey said.Manchin is the perfect example of a red state politician who styles himself as a different kind of Democrat in a party where the progressive wing can often generate eye-catching headlines.In 2010 Manchin aired a campaign ad in which he literally shot the text of a cap-and-trade bill while vowing to oppose certain parts of then-president Barack Obama’s signature Obamacare bill. In a sign of how important the landmark healthcare bill became to all corners of the Democratic party in 2018, during his second regular Senate re-election campaign, the West Virginia senator this time shot an anti-Obamacare lawsuit.More recently, Manchin has reinforced his trademark conservative Democrat identity by keeping some wiggle room on $2,000 stimulus checks to Americans making $75,000 or less. Manchin’s murkiness has spurred Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the liberal congresswoman from New York, to set up a political action committee to embrace $2,000 checks.“The Pac – No Excuses Pac – is intended to defend the Democratic agenda of Joe Biden, the Build Back Better plan, from the fringes of the Democratic party like Joe Manchin,” said Corbin Trent, the co-founder of the Pac. “Make no mistake, he is the fringes of the Democratic party.”Another potential flashpoint for Manchin in the months ahead concerns the Senate committee on energy and natural resources, where Manchin is the ranking member and poised to become chairman when Democrats regain the Senate majority.Even with a Democratic president prioritizing climate change Manchin is poised to split with other members of his party on the climate crisis and the gas industry. In a headline Inside Climate News wrote of Manchin “The Senate’s New Point Man on Climate Has Been the Democrats’ Most Fossil Fuel-Friendly Senator”.Make no mistake, he is the fringes of the Democratic partyManchin is one of a handful of centrist senators from both parties expected to take center sage during major policy debates over the next few years: Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly of Arizona, the Rev Rafael Warnock of Georgia, Angus King and Susan Collins of Maine, Jon Tester of Montana and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.“I think Joe Manchin will be a part of the influence on critical decisions but I think it will be a group of moderates that talk to each other on a regular basis,” said the former senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana. “The fact that Susan Collins is a Republican and Joe Manchin is a Democrat, those are party titles. It doesn’t in any way reflect the relationships that have developed in the Senate over the years. People like Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins and Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema – other people who are fairly moderate in her views – have developed real friendships.” More

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      Joe Biden cannot govern from the center – quashing Trumpism demands radical action | Robert Reich

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      I keep hearing that Joe Biden will govern from the “center”. He has no choice, they say, because he will have razor-thin majorities in Congress and the Republican party has moved to the right.Rubbish. I’ve served several Democratic presidents who have needed Republican votes. But the Republicans now in Congress are nothing like those I’ve dealt with. Most of today’s GOP live in a parallel universe. There’s no “center” between the reality-based world and theirs.Last Wednesday, fully 93% of House Republicans voted against impeaching Trump for inciting insurrection, even after his attempted coup threatened their very lives.The week before, immediately following the raid on the Capitol, two-thirds of House Republicans and eight Republican senators refused to certify election results on the basis of Trump’s lies about widespread fraud – lies rejected by 60 federal judges as well as Trump’s own departments of justice and homeland security.Prior to the raid, several Republican members of Congress repeated those lies on television and Twitter and at “Stop the Steal” events – encouraging Trump followers to “fight for America” and start “kicking ass”.This is the culmination of the growing insanity of the GOP over the last four years. Trump has remade the Republican party into a white supremacist cult living within a counter-factual wonderland of lies and conspiracies.More than half of Republican voters – almost 40 million people – believe Trump won the 2020 race; 45% support the storming of the Capitol; 57% say he should be the Republican candidate in 2024.Trump has remade the Republican party into a white supremacist cult living within a counter-factual wonderland of lies and conspiraciesIn this hermetically sealed cosmos, most Republicans believe Black Lives Matter protesters are violent, immigrants are dangerous and the climate crisis doesn’t pose a threat. A growing fringe openly talks of redressing grievances through violence, including QAnon conspiracy theorists, of whom two are newly elected to Congress, who think Democrats are running a global child sex-trafficking operation.How can Biden possibly be a “centrist” in this new political world?There is no middle ground between lies and facts. There is no halfway point between civil discourse and violence. There is no midrange between democracy and fascism.Biden must boldly and unreservedly speak truth, refuse to compromise with violent Trumpism and ceaselessly fight for democracy and inclusion.Speaking truth means responding to the world as it is and denouncing the poisonous deceptions engulfing the right. It means repudiating false equivalences and “both sidesism” that gives equal weight to trumpery and truth. It means protecting and advancing science, standing on the side of logic, calling out deceit and impugning baseless conspiracy theories and those who abet them.Refusing to compromise with violent Trumpism means renouncing the lawlessness of Trump and his enablers and punishing all who looted the public trust. It means convicting Trump of impeachable offenses and ensuring he can never again hold public office – not as a “distraction” from Biden’s agenda but as a central means of re-establishing civility, which must be a cornerstone of that agenda.Strengthening democracy means getting big money out of politics, strengthening voting rights and fighting voter suppression in all its forms.It means boldly advancing the needs of average people over the plutocrats and oligarchs, of the white working class as well as Black and Latino people. It means embracing the ongoing struggle for racial justice and the struggle of blue-collar workers whose fortunes have been declining for decades.The moment calls for public investment on a scale far greater than necessary for Covid relief or “stimulus” – large enough to begin the restructuring of the economy. America needs to create a vast number of new jobs leading to higher wages, reversing racial exclusion as well as the downward trajectory of Americans whose anger and resentment Trump cynically exploited.This would include universal early childhood education, universal access to the internet, world-class schools and public universities accessible to all. Converting to solar and wind energy and making America’s entire stock of housing and commercial buildings carbon neutral. Investing in basic research – the gateway to the technologies of the future as well as national security – along with public health and universal healthcare.It is not a question of affordability. Such an agenda won’t burden future generations. It will reduce the burden on future generations.It is a question of political will. It requires a recognition that there is no longer a “center” but a future based either on lies, violence and authoritarianism or on unyielding truth, unshakeable civility and radical inclusion. And it requires a passionate, uncompromising commitment to the latter. More

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      Trump impeachment risks bogging down early days of Biden presidency

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      The prospect of Donald Trump facing a bitter impeachment trial in the US Senate threatens to cast a shadow over the earliest days of Joe Biden’s presidency, as Washington on Thursday headed into a militarized virtual lockdown ahead of next week’s inauguration.With warnings of more violent protests being planned following the pro-Trump mob’s deadly attack on the US Capitol last week, some Republican members of Congress who voted for the unprecedented second impeachment of the president fear they are in personal danger.Peter Meijer, a Michigan Republican who voted along with the Democratic majority in the House on Wednesday to impeach Trump, on the charge of incitement of insurrection – after he encouraged the riot in a futile attempt to overturn his election defeat by force – said some of his colleagues were hiring armed escorts and acquiring body armor out of fear for their safety.“When it comes to my family’s safety, that’s something that we’ve been planning for, preparing for, taking appropriate measures,” Meijer told MSNBC.“Our expectation is that somebody may try to kill us,” he said.“Our expectation is that somebody may try to kill us.” — Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI), who voted to impeach Trump, says he and other lawmakers believe their lives are in danger following yesterday’s impeachment.He also says they are altering their routines and buying body armor. pic.twitter.com/stOO00OKYD— The Recount (@therecount) January 14, 2021
      There is no schedule yet for when the House may present the article of impeachment – essentially the charge against Trump – to the Senate for trial.Trump was acquitted at his first impeachment trial in the Senate early last year after being charged with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, stemming from his request that Ukraine investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter ahead of the 2020 election.The Senate resumes full session on the eve of the inauguration events on 20 January to install Biden as the 46th US president and Kamala Harris as his vice-president.A swift impeachment trial would entangle Biden’s urgent efforts to have his cabinet choices confirmed by the Senate and fire up his agenda to tackle the raging coronavirus pandemic as well as the related economic crisis and vaccination chaos.There is no real prospect of Trump being ousted before Biden takes office next Wednesday, after the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, rejected Democratic calls for a quick trial in the Republican-led chamber, saying there was no way to finish it before Trump leaves office.Biden, meanwhile, has urged Senate leaders to avoid an all-consuming trial during his first days in the White House so that they can focus on the crises facing his incoming administration.“I hope that the Senate leadership will find a way to deal with their constitutional responsibilities on impeachment while also working on the other urgent business of this nation,” Biden said in a statement on Wednesday night.Biden’s inauguration events have already been scaled back due to security concerns and the risks of spreading infection during the Covid-19 pandemic.The west front of the Capitol building, where the swearing-in occurs and which was overrun by marauding rioters invading the US Congress last week, is now fortified by fencing, barriers and thousands of national guard troops. Soldiers have been sleeping sprawled in the marble corridors of the complex.Trump himself is increasingly isolated at the White House and “in self-pity mode”, according to several reports.Under the US constitution, a two-thirds majority is needed in the Senate to convict Trump, before or after he leaves office, meaning at least 17 Republicans in the 100-member chamber would have to join the Democrats.McConnell’s vote would be crucial. At Trump’s first impeachment, no House Republicans voted in favor of charging him and all Republicans in the Senate voted to acquit him except for Utah’s Mitt Romney.If McConnell signaled to his caucus that he would vote to convict Trump this time, that could give other senators the cover they needed to follow suit if they believed privately that Trump deserved it but feared a backlash from voters.On Wednesday, McConnell released a note to Republican senators in which he did not deny that he backed the impeachment push, the New York Times reported. The leader said that he had “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”.McConnell and some other senior Republicans may see conviction as a way to prevent Trump being a liability to the party in the future, and therefore an opportunity.If Trump is already out of office by the time of the trial, historical precedent suggests the Senate could disqualify him from holding office in the future with only a simple majority vote.But the legal details and what would happen, including if Trump attempted to pardon himself in his last days in the White House, are far from resolved.The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, set to become majority leader when Biden takes office, said that no matter the timing, “there will be an impeachment trial in the United States Senate, there will be a vote on convicting the president for high crimes and misdemeanors, and if the president is convicted, there will be a vote on barring him from running again.”The Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio has warned, meanwhile, that the impeachment process risks making Trump a martyr to his diehard supporters.Rubio told NBC he thought Trump bore some responsibility for the attack on the Capitol, which happened on the day both chambers of Congress were meeting in order to certify Joe Biden’s victory, but that putting Trump on trial could make things worse.“It’s like pouring gasoline on fire,” he said, noting that some who were displeased with Trump “after seeing what happened last week, sort of reckoning with the last four years – now all of a sudden they’re circling the wagons and it threatens to make him a martyr.”No US president has ever been removed from office via impeachment. Three – Trump in 2019, Bill Clinton in 1998 and Andrew Johnson in 1868 – were impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 rather than face impeachment. More

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      in Elections

      Fight to vote: the Georgia organizers who helped mobilize voters

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

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

      January 4, 2021

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