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      Far-right US Senate candidate tells crowd to ‘strap on a Glock’ before elections

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      Republican US Senate candidate Kari Lake has told supporters to “strap on a Glock” ahead of the 2024 elections as she struggles to gain ground against her Democratic rival in Arizona.In a campaign speech made to a crowd in Arizona’s Mohave county on Sunday, Lake echoed Trump-like terms in calling Washington DC a “swamp” – and used a reference to carrying guns when she told people to prepare for an “intense” election year.Lake hopes to represent Arizona in the seat to be vacated by Democrat turned independent Kyrsten Sinema.Lake told the crowd: “We need to send people to Washington DC that the swamp does not want there. And I can think of a couple people they don’t want there. First on that list is Donald J Trump; second is Kari Lake.“He’s willing to sacrifice everything I am. That’s why they’re coming after us with ‘lawfare’,” Lake said, referencing the ex-president’s many legal troubles as he stands trial in New York.“They’re going to come after us with everything. That’s why the next six months is going to be intense. And we need to strap on our … ”Lake briefly paused before deciding on the item her supporters should strap on. After suggesting a “seatbelt”, a “helmet” and “the armor of God”, she said: “And maybe strap on a Glock on the side of us just in case.”Before running for the Senate seat, Lake ran for governorship of Arizona in 2022 on a hard-right platform where she echoed Donald Trump’s false claims that he was not beaten in the 2020 presidential election by Joe Biden. She lost to her Democratic rival, Katie Hobbs.She told supporters on Sunday, referring to constitutional gun rights and free speech rights: “We’re not going to be the victims of crime. We’re not going to have our second amendment taken away. We’re certainly not going to have our first amendment taken away by these tyrants.”But despite Lake’s assertive remarks, more voters are now moving towards her Democratic opponent, Ruben Gallego, Politico reported.Politico cited election analyst Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, which moved the likelihood of the open Senate race from “toss-up” to “leans Democratic”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt’s not yet clear how much the issue of abortion will sway elections in the state, where last week the Arizona supreme court ruled a divisive 19th-century near-total abortion ban would soon go into effect, almost two years after the overturning of Roe v Wade’s federal abortion rights protection by the US supreme court. The revived historical law in Arizona makes no exceptions for rape or incest and only allows abortions if the mother’s life is at risk.Lake has flip-flopped on the issue, previously supporting the law and now saying she opposes it.Democrats in the Arizona house of representatives are seeking to repeal the pending 1864 ban on abortion, but they will need the help of some Republicans in the closely divided legislature.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      House Republicans present Mayorkas impeachment articles to Senate

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      House Republicans on Tuesday formally presented articles of impeachment against Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, to the Senate, part of the party’s attempt to force an election-year showdown with the Biden administration over immigration and border security.In a ceremonial procession, 11 House Republican impeachment managers carried the two articles of impeachment across the rotunda of the US Capitol, where they informed the Senate they were prepared, for the first time in American history, to prosecute a sitting cabinet secretary for “willful and systemic refusal” to enforce border policies and a “breach of public trust”.Constitutional scholars, including conservative legal experts, have said the Republicans’ impeachment case is deeply flawed and fails to meet the high bar of “high crimes and misdemeanors” outlined in the constitution.Democrats, who control the Senate, have made clear their intention to quickly dispense with the articles, arguing that the politically charged proceedings amount to little more than a policy dispute with the administration. A two-thirds majority is needed to win an conviction in the Senate, an impossible threshold if all of the Democrats are united in favor of dismissing the charges against Mayorkas, who retains the support of Joe Biden.In February, House Republicans bypassed skepticism within their own ranks and unified Democratic opposition to approve by a one-vote margin two articles of impeachment against the secretary, who they have made the face of the Biden administration’s struggle to control record migration at the US-Mexico border.“Impeachment should never be used to settle a policy disagreement,” the Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said on Tuesday, adding: “Talk about awful precedents. This would set an awful precedent for Congress.”Schumer has said the Senate would convene on Wednesday as a “court of impeachment” and senators will be sworn in as jurors. Patty Murray, the Senate president pro tempore, a Democrat of Washington, presided over the chamber as the House homeland security chair, Mark Green of Tennessee, read the charges aloud.Schumer said he hoped to deal with the matter as “expeditiously as possible”. But Republicans are pressuring Democrats to hold a full trial.“We must hold those who engineered this crisis to full account,” the House speaker, Mike Johnson, said in a statement on Monday after signing the articles of impeachment. “Pursuant to the constitution, the House demands a trial.”Johnson initially delayed the delivery of the articles to focus on funding legislation to avert a government shutdown. Then the transmission was delayed again after Senate Republicans asked for more time to strategize ways to ensure a Senate trial.In remarks on Tuesday, Senator Mitch McConnell charged that it would be “beneath the Senate’s dignity to shrug off our clear responsibility” and not give thorough consideration to the charges against Mayorkas.“I will strenuously oppose any effort to table the articles of impeachment and avoid looking the Biden administration’s border crisis squarely in the face,” the Senate minority leader said.Mayorkas, the first Latino and first immigrant to lead the agency, has forcefully defended himself throughout the process, writing in a January letter to House Republicans: “Your false accusations do not rattle me.”Hours before the articles were delivered to the Senate, Mayorkas was on Capitol Hill, pressing Congress to provide his agency with more resources to enforce border policies and to pass legislation updating the nation’s outdated immigration laws.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Our immigration system, however, is fundamentally broken,” he told members of the House homeland security committee on Tuesday morning. “Only Congress can fix it. Congress has not updated our immigration enforcement laws since 1996 – 28 years ago. And, only Congress can deliver on our need for more border patrol agents, asylum officers and immigration judges, facilities and technology.”Republicans seized on the opportunity to assail Mayorkas, blaming him for the humanitarian crisis at the country’s southern border.“The open border is the number one issue across America in poll after poll and that is exactly why this committee impeached you,” said Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia congresswoman, one of 11 House Republicans tapped to serve as an impeachment manager.Several Republican senators have expressed deep skepticism about the House’s impeachment effort, former secretaries of homeland security as well as conservative legal scholars have denounced the Republicans’ case against Mayorkas as deeply flawed and warned that it threatens to undermine one of Congress’s most powerful tools for removing officials guilty of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”.A group of Republican senators are contemplating ways to slow-walk the process, suggesting they will deliver lengthy speeches and raise time-consuming procedural inquiries to keep the attention on immigration, one of Biden’s greatest political vulnerabilities.Americans broadly disapprove of the president’s handling of the border, now a top concern for many voters. Ahead of the 2024 election, Republicans have assailed Biden over the border while Donald Trump, the party’s likely presidential nominee, has again put immigration at the center of his campaign.An attempt to pass a bipartisan border bill – negotiated by Mayorkas and touted as the most conservative piece of immigration legislation in decades – was derailed by Republicans at the behest of Trump, who did not want Biden to notch a victory on an issue that plays to the former president’s political advantage.Biden has also asked Congress to approve requests for more border patrol agents and immigration court judges, but Republicans have refused, saying Biden should use his executive authority to stem the flow of migrants. Biden has said he is mulling a far-reaching executive action that would dramatically reduce the number of asylum seekers who can cross the southern border. More

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      Mike Johnson unveils complex plan for Israel and Ukraine aid as pressure rises

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      Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, has unveiled a complicated proposal for passing wartime aid for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, rejecting pressure to approve a package sent over by the Senate and leaving its path to passage deeply uncertain.The Republican speaker huddled with fellow GOP lawmakers on Monday evening to lay out his strategy to gain House approval for the funding package. Facing an outright rebellion from conservatives who fiercely oppose aiding Ukraine, Johnson said he would push to get the package to the House floor under a single debate rule, then hold separate votes on aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and several foreign policy proposals, according to Republican lawmakers.However, the package would deviate from the $95bn aid package passed by the Senate in February, clouding its prospects for final passage in Congress.Johnson has faced mounting pressure to act on Joe Biden’s long-delayed request for billions of dollars in security assistance. It’s been more than two months since the Senate passed the $95bn aid package, which includes $14bn for Israel and $60bn for Ukraine.The issue gained new urgency after Iran’s weekend missile and drone attack on Israel. Congress, however, remains deeply divided.Johnson has declined to allow the Republican-controlled House to vote on the measure. The senate passed it with 70% bipartisan support and backers insist it would receive similar support in the House, but Johnson has given a variety of reasons not to allow a vote, among them the need to focus taxpayer dollars on domestic issues and reluctance to take up a Senate measure without more information.As the House has struggled to act, conflicts around the globe have escalated. Israel’s military chief said on Monday that his country will respond to Iran’s missile strike. And Ukraine’s military head over the weekend warned that the battlefield situation in the country’s east has “significantly worsened in recent days”, as warming weather has allowed Russian forces to launch a fresh offensive.Meanwhile, Joe Biden, who is hosting Petr Fiala, the Czech prime minister, at the White House, called on the House to take up the Senate funding package immediately. “They have to do it now,” he said.Hakeem Jeffries, the top House Democrat, also put pressure on Johnson and pledged in a letter to lawmakers to do “everything in our legislative power to confront aggression” around the globe, and he cast the situation as similar to the lead-up to the second world war.“The gravely serious events of this past weekend in the Middle East and eastern Europe underscore the need for Congress to act immediately,” Jeffries said. “We must take up the bipartisan and comprehensive national security bill passed by the Senate forthwith. This is a Churchill or Chamberlain moment.”In the Capitol, Johnson’s approach could further incite the populist conservatives who are already angry at his direction as speaker.Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican Congresswoman from Georgia, is threatening to oust him as speaker. As she entered the closed-door Republican meeting on Monday, she said her message to the speaker was: “Don’t fund Ukraine.”The GOP meeting was filled with lawmakers at odds in their approach to Ukraine: Republican defense hawks, including the top lawmakers on national security committees, who want Johnson to finally take up the national security supplemental package as a bundle, are pitted against populist conservatives who are fiercely opposed to continued support for Kyiv’s fight.On the right, the House Freedom Caucus said Monday that it opposed “using the emergency situation in Israel as a bogus justification to ram through Ukraine aid with no offset and no security for our own wide-open borders”.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      ‘Donald Trump is a symptom, not the cause’: Tim Kaine’s journey to healing

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      Jack Kemp. Joe Lieberman. John Edwards. Sarah Palin. Paul Ryan. All ran for vice-president of the United States and fell short. All had to confront the question: what next? The same fate befell Tim Kaine, whose turn as running mate to Hillary Clinton in 2016 ended in a catastrophic defeat by Donald Trump and Mike Pence. The US has not recovered, as polarisation, rancour and looming criminal trials testify. But Kaine has.At 7.30am on the Monday after the 2016 election, the Virginia senator was back at work in his office. With Trump in the White House, the work of the Senate proved critical, including preserving Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law. But as time wore on, Kaine found ways to nourish his soul – not on the campaign trail but the nature trail.To mark his 60th birthday and 25th year in public office, he invented his own triathlon in Virginia. On weekends and in Senate recess weeks, Kaine hiked (mostly solo) the 559 miles (900km) of the Appalachian Trail, biked 321 miles (517km) along the crest of the Blue Ridge mountains and canoed all 348 miles (560km) of the James River. He kept a 100-word-a-day diary on his phone, raw material for his first book, Walk, Ride, Paddle.The hike was the toughest, he recalls, averaging about 14 miles (22km) a day with a 30lb (14kg) backpack, mostly in the heat of August.“I’d have two litre bottles and I’d be getting down to no water and I’ve got to get to this next stream and I’d get there and it’d be bone dry and then oh, man, talk about depressing!” the 66-year-old tells the Guardian.“The physical challenge of the hike was very difficult. It wasn’t probably till I got to mile 300 that I quit thinking about ‘I don’t need to do this whole thing. Why be so type-A about it?’ But when I passed mile 300 and I only had 260 left, it’s like, I’m going to finish this but I don’t have to rush.”A former teacher and civil rights lawyer, Kaine is one of only 30 people in US history to have been a mayor, governor and senator. In person, in a conference room on Capitol Hill, he lives up to adjectives that often tail him: affable, genial, nice. Only in politics does that count as an insult.In 2016, the New Republic ran a headline: “Tim Kaine Is Too Boring to Be Clinton’s Running Mate.” The Washington Post wondered: “What’s a nice guy like Senator Tim Kaine doing in a campaign like this?” Kaine himself quipped on NBC: “I am boring. Boring is the fastest-growing demographic in this country.”True to form, no one should look to Walk, Ride, Paddle for tales of Teddy Roosevelt-esque derring-do. Like other vice-presidential near misses, Kaine never quite became a celebrity. To those who encountered him in the great outdoors, he was just another guy in baseball cap and hiking shorts.He recalls: “I would say maybe a quarter recognised me and of that quarter, half didn’t say they recognised me. You’re out on the trail to relax and they get that. I learned there’s a beautiful Emily Dickinson poem about once being famous:
      Fame is a bee.
      It has a song—
      It has a sting—
      Ah, too, it has a wing.
      “People would see me and if you see somebody and they’re not dressed the way you normally see them, you’re like, ‘I think I kind of know you, but I’m not sure.’ Sometimes people would know me. Most often they wouldn’t. And then sometimes they were, ‘I think I know you. What do you do?’ ‘I work in Washington.’ ‘What do you do in Washington?’ ‘I do some stuff in politics’. ‘What?’ ‘I’m a United States senator.’”The journey took about 30 months, from May 2019 to October 2021, a jaw-dropping period of American history that spanned two impeachment trials, a global pandemic, racial justice protests, a presidential election and the January 6 attack on the Capitol. When the Senate was in session, Kaine had a key part to play. When in nature, he could tune out the noise and contemplate his faith in friendship, God (he grew up in an Irish Catholic household) and America.View image in fullscreenHe likens the experience to a camper who wakes up, stuffs everything into their backpack and gets going.“I realised in the course of the hike that’s how I dealt with 2016. I showed up right back to work. I started working. I said, ‘I’ll sort it all out later.’“The hike was primarily by myself. That extended time, both the solitude but also the appreciation of nature and your humility in the grand scheme of things, was helpful in taking the stuff out of the pack that needed to be washed and folded and put away the right way.”His epiphany came not around how Trump won, or relitigating what mistakes the Clinton-Kaine campaign might have made, but reckoning with a deeper question: why is America going through this dark chapter? Early one morning, Kaine was hiking alone in fog and rain and nearing Mount Rogers, the highest peak in Virginia, when he thought about the biblical Book of Job.A faithful man who has it all, Job starts to lose his family, his business, his money and his health, compelling him to ask if the universe is pointless and neighbours to assume he is suffering divine retribution.Kaine says: “There’s two explanations of why people or maybe nations suffer: because you did something wrong or maybe it’s just all pointless and random. The reader of the story knows that neither is the case: Job’s being tested. The end of the story is, as mad as he is at God, he still is true to his principles and then what was lost to him is restored.”Kaine was just days away from Trump’s first Senate impeachment trial.“I’d never been on a jury ever in my life, even on a traffic case. I’m just like, I’m 61 years old and I thought I understood this country. What’s going on here?“It’s not necessarily punishment and it’s not necessarily random, but it could be a test. So we stay true to our principles. Belief in religious equality – are we going to kick Muslims around? Our belief in free press – are we going to expose journalists to intimidation, rule of law? No person should be above the law.“I started to think about the virtues that we claim about ourselves, some of which are truer than others, none of which we can perfectly attain. But maybe this is one of these moments to see whether we’re going to stay true to principle or abandon principle, and if we stay true to principle, maybe we’ll end up sadder but wiser but we’ll turn a corner and feel like we’ve passed. I think we’re surviving the test but I don’t think we passed it yet.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNo test was more severe than January 6, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s win. Having become less addicted to his phone during his communions with nature, Kaine forgot to take it into the Senate chamber.“It was hours after the beginning of the attack, when we were finally over in a committee room and they turned on TV monitors, that I realised, ‘Oh, man, this is what my parents are seeing, this what my kids are seeing, this is what my wife was seeing.’ So, ‘[Senator] Martin Heinrich [of New Mexico], give me your phone, I got to call people quick!’“It was a day that I never would have imagined, never will forget and hope is never repeated. It was very powerful and my overwhelming emotion was anger. There was a moment when we were in the committee room that CNN called the Georgia Senate race for Jon Ossoff, which meant that the Dems now had the Senate, and it was very much like, in the middle of this attack, the American public are saying, ‘OK, we’ve seen enough here, you guys take the wheel for a while.’ They handed the keys to us.”View image in fullscreenKaine went up to the Republican senator Lindsey Graham and told him Democrats would not have taken the majority but for Trump’s lies. Graham did not disagree. Kaine said the same thing to the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, and saw a level of anger in his eyes he had never witnessed before.“The other thing that happened about three hours after we were in the room, the Virginia state police cruisers arrive to help the Capitol police. I went over to [fellow Virginia senator] Mark Warner and said the last time there was an insurrection against the United States, Virginia was leading it. Now here there’s an insurrection that’s being inspired by the president of the United States and Virginia is coming to the rescue of the union. We were both very emotional as we thought about that.”In his book, Kaine, a senator since 2013, acknowledges painful lessons about a country he thought he understood. While he has always been an optimist, he writes, Trump is “a symptom of a national sickness”. Trump is energising and galvanising for Democrats but also brings “a level of dread and tension” to everyday life.Kaine explains: “I was a missionary in Honduras when I was a young man and it was a military dictatorship and it made me be less naive: this authoritarian thing is still real, a lot of people live that way. But even then, when I came back, I still was naive because I thought that would never be something we would see in the United States, the authoritarian impulse.“But it’s Donald Trump and it’s [Nayib] Bukele [of El Salvador] and [Viktor] Orbán [of Hungary] and [Vladimir] Putin [of Russia]. You just go place to place, continent to continent, you’re going to see examples of this. The struggle between the authoritarianism and the democratic impulses is very live right now here and everywhere. That’s the global sickness that I’m talking about. Donald Trump is a symptom. He’s not the cause.”Kaine is one of a small group to have run on a US presidential ticket. His advice to Biden and Kamala Harris: continue to emphasise democracy and freedom, which connect January 6, Russia’s war on Ukraine and rightwing threats to reproductive rights. He also believes they have accomplishments to sell, including the best post-Covid recovery of any major economy.“People aren’t feeling the vibe yet,” Kaine admits, attributing this to a Covid “hangover”.“As I travel around Virginia, this is such a common phrase: ‘I’m doing pretty well but I’m not so sure about three months from now.’ They acknowledge first that economically things are OK but, just around the corner, ‘I’m sure what I’m going to see.’ The Biden-Harris ticket – and I’m on the ticket too because I’m running in 2024 – we just have to sell, sell, sell. The good news is we have a lot to sell.”The alternative, a replay of 2016, putting Trump back in the White House, is too much to bear.“I don’t want to contemplate it. We’re coming up on celebrating our 250th birthday in 2026. I want there to be a vigorous democracy for our kids and grandkids to inherit. And by vigorous, that doesn’t mean just do it the way we did it. Each generation has to decide how to renew these traditions and make them better.“But I don’t view Donald Trump as a guy who’s committed to institutions: one man one vote, free press, independent judiciary, professionalised civil service, civilian control of the military. Donald Trump is committed to himself but he’s not committed to democratic institutions and virtues. He’s done enormous harm to them.“We can wake up from that and, like Job, stick to our principles, become sadder and wiser but still pass the test that is before us. But he will do enormous damage to this nation and to others in the world with a second term.”
      Walk, Ride, Paddle: A Life Outside is published in the US by Harper Horizon More

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      Japanese leader asks US to overcome ‘self-doubt’ about global leadership

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      Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, on Thursday called on Americans to overcome their “self-doubt” as he offered a paean to US global leadership before a bitterly divided Congress.Warning of risks from the rise of China, Kishida said that Japan – stripped of its right to a military after the second world war – was determined to do more to share responsibility with its ally the United States.“As we meet here today, I detect an undercurrent of self-doubt among some Americans about what your role in the world should be,” Kishida told a joint session of the House of Representatives and Senate during a state visit to Washington.“The international order that the US worked for generations to build is facing new challenges, challenges from those with values and principles very different from ours,” Kishida said.Kishida said he understood “the exhaustion of being the country that has upheld the international order almost single-handedly” but added: “The leadership of the United States is indispensable.“Without US support, how long before the hopes of Ukraine would collapse under the onslaught from Moscow?” he asked.“Without the presence of the United States, how long before the Indo-Pacific would face even harsher realities?”He sought to remind lawmakers of the leading role the US has played globally since the second world war. After dropping two nuclear weapons on Japan to end the war, the US helped rebuild Japan, and the nations transformed from bitter enemies to close allies. “When necessary, it made noble sacrifices to fulfill its commitment to a better world,” Kishida said of the US.While he was careful not to touch on US domestic politics, Kishida’s address comes amid a deadlock in Congress on approving billions of dollars in additional military aid to Ukraine, due to pressure from hard-right Republicans aligned with their presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump.Kishida met on Wednesday with Joe Biden where they pledged to step up cooperation, including with new three-way air defenses involving the United States, Japan and Australia.Sending a clear signal toward China, Kishida meets again with the president on Thursday for a three-way summit with President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, which has been on the receiving end of increasingly assertive Chinese moves in dispute-rife waters.Kishida said that China’s military actions “present an unprecedented, and the greatest, security challenge”.China’s actions pose challenges “not only to the peace and security of Japan but to the peace and stability of the international community at large”, he said.Kishida’s speech, from the dais where Biden delivered a raucous State of the Union address a month ago, marked a rare moment of bipartisan unity in Congress.Lawmakers across party lines offered repeated standing ovations as Kishida reaffirmed support for Ukraine, warned of Chinese influence and highlighted Japanese investment in the United States.The prime minister, who spent part of his childhood in New York City, read his address in fluent English, after speaking in Japanese at his news conference with Biden.He mentioned how he watched the classic cartoon The Flintstones as a child in New York.“I still miss that show, although I could never translate, ‘Yabba Dabba Doo’,” he said. More

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      Mitt Romney says Alejandro Mayorkas’s actions do not merit impeachment

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      Alejandro Mayorkas is not guilty of a high crime or misdemeanour, the Republican senator Mitt Romney said, making clear he will not vote to remove the US homeland security secretary from office if his impeachment goes to a trial.“Secretary Mayorkas is following the position of his party and of the president who was elected,” Romney, from Utah and his party’s nominee for president in 2012, told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday.“We have pointed out that President Biden is for open borders, as are the Democrats, and Mayorkas is simply following that policy. It’s the wrong policy, it has a huge damaging effect on the country – but it’s not a high crime or misdemeanour.”Republicans have zeroed in on undocumented migration and the southern border as campaign issues in an election year.House Republicans impeached Mayorkas in February but have not yet formally sent the articles of impeachment across the Capitol to the Senate. On Tuesday, John Kennedy, a Republican senator from Louisiana, told reporters that process would now be delayed until Monday.Under article two, section four of the US constitution, “the president, vice-president and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanours”.Debate over what exactly constitutes “high crimes and misdemeanours” is a constant of US political life.Impeachment is meant to be rare: from the founding until Donald Trump only two presidents were impeached and both, Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, were acquitted at trial.Donald Trump, however, was impeached twice: first for seeking to blackmail Ukraine for dirt on political rivals, second for inciting an insurrection, the attack on Congress of 6 January 2021.Romney was the only Republican to vote to convict both times. Now a lonely anti-Trump Republican voice, he will quit Congress this year.Democrats control the Senate, making conviction and removal of Mayorkas a near impossibility. But Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, must still decide what to do. Republicans are pressing for a trial. Schumer has indicated Democrats will do so, though they do not have to.Romney said: “Precedent is a matter of interpretation in this case. There have been impeachments that have been brought forward that did not go to trial in part because the people left office.”The last impeachment of a cabinet official concerned William Belknap, secretary of war to President Ulysses S Grant, in 1876. Belknap resigned, was tried anyway on charges of corruption, and acquitted.Romney did not say if he would vote to table the articles of impeachment, thereby avoiding a trial.“What does one do will depend on what the legal options are,” he said. “When to vote and how is uncertain at this stage. I believe a high crime or misdemeanour has not been alleged.” More

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      Senator Raphael Warnock: ‘The Bible doesn’t need Trump’s endorsement’

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      Donald Trump’s decision to sell Bibles branded under his name is “risky business”, the Democratic US senator Raphael Warnock said on Sunday, as the former president stands accused of having few moral scruples in four separate criminal indictments pending against him.“The Bible does not need Donald Trump’s endorsement,” Warnock, the pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist church, said to CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. Speaking on Easter, one of Christianity’s holiest celebrations, Warnock added: “It’s a risky bet because the folks who buy those Bibles might actually open them up, where it says things like thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not bear false witness, where it warns about wolves dressed up in sheep’s clothing.“I think you ought to be careful. This is risky business for somebody like Donald Trump.”Warnock’s comments to CNN came days after the Republican who is running against Joe Biden for a second presidency in November presented an offer for the public to buy Trump-endorsed Bibles for $59.99. “Let’s Make America Pray Again”, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, a clear reference to the “Make America Great Again” slogan that he rode to the White House in 2016.But indeed more than 80 criminal charges filed against Trump over the previous 12 months – including in Warnock’s home state of Georgia – charge the former president with behaving in ways that many true Bible devotees would frown upon.Trump has pleaded not guilty to allegations that he tried to unduly overturn the outcome of the 2020 election that he lost to his Democratic rival Biden, improperly retained classified government materials after his presidency, and illicitly covered up hush-money payments to an adult film actor who has claimed to have engaged in extramarital sex with him.He is also facing multimillion-dollar civil penalties for business practices deemed fraudulent and an allegation that he raped a woman – a claim that a judge has determined to be substantially true.Warnock on Sunday said he wasn’t surprised Trump had turned to selling Bibles to help raise funds for his soaring legal bills as well as his presidential campaign. The senator alluded to Trump’s history of hawking – among other things – Trump-branded steaks, non-accredited business school degrees and, more recently, $399 gold sneakers.“Now he’s trying to sell the scriptures,” said Warnock, who was first elected to the US Senate in 2020. “At the end of the day, I think he’s trying to sell the American people a bill of goods.”Warnock went out of his way to mention that Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016, but recognized that his tact allowed him to triumph in the electoral college. But Warnock remarked: “It did not work in 2020,” when Trump lost both the popular and electoral college votes.“And,” the senator said,” I don’t think it’s going to work in 2024.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDuring his interview on CNN, Warnock also addressed criticism from Trump and his Republican allies that Biden recognized Transgender Day of Visibility – which falls annually on 31 March – as scheduled on Sunday, even though this year it coincided with Easter.The Republican US House speaker, Mike Johnson, notably asserted that Biden had “betrayed the central tenet of Easter”, something that he called “outrageous and abhorrent”.Warnock, who is part of a succession of Ebenezer Baptist church pastors that includes the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, said the fabricated controversy was another instance of people “who do not know how to lead us trying to divide us”.“Apparently, the speaker finds trans people abhorrent, and I think he ought to think about that,” Warnock said. “The fact of the matter is … March 31 has been a day to lift up transgender people who endure violence and bigotry.“But this is just one more instance of folks … who do not know how to lead us trying to divide us. And this is the opposite of the Christian faith. Jesus centered the marginalized. He centered the poor. And in a moment like this, we need voices, particularly voices of faith, who would use our faith not as a weapon to beat other people down, but as a bridge to bring all of us together.” More

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      Ted Cruz, US senator mocked for flight to Cancún, seeks airport police escorts

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      The Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz, who achieved viral infamy in 2021 when he was seen at Houston airport for a flight to Cancún even as his state faced a historic and deadly spell of cold weather, this week moved a step closer to securing police escorts for lawmakers at airports.Under an amendment to the Federal Aviation Authority Reauthorization bill introduced by Cruz, members of Congress and other prominent officials, and some family and staff members, will be offered security escorts if they are deemed “currently … or previously … the subject of a threat, as determined by such applicable federal protective agency”.If passed by the House and Senate, the bill will fund the FAA for four years.But given Cruz’s scrape with viral fame over his flight to Mexico in February 2021 – a trip to join a family vacation he abandoned after one day, admitting his “obvious mistake” as tweets and memes proliferated – the senator faces criticism and mockery over his attempt to secure security guards for future airport trips.“Cancún Cruz wants to flee Texas in secret,” said Lose Cruz, a Democratic political action committee supporting Colin Allred, an NFL player turned US congressman now challenging Cruz for his Senate seat.Matt Angle, founder of the Lone Star Project, an anti-Republican Texas group, said: “Ted Cruz is still chapped over being caught sneaking to Cancún. He can’t get a damn thing done to improve the border or keep kids safe, but Ted figures out how to get private security covered by taxpayers. Self-serving. Soulless. Worthless.”Insisting the amendment was needed, Cruz told Politico of “serious security threats facing public officials”, adding: “It’s important that we take reasonable measures to keep everyone safe.”There have been prominent cases of lawmakers being accosted at airports. But Kevin Murphy, of the Airport Law Enforcement Agencies Network, told Politico Cruz’s amendment would prove “a burden to airport police agencies” he said were not adequately funded.Melissa Braid, a spokesperson for Senate commerce committee Republicans, among whom Cruz is the ranking member, told the Dallas Morning News: “The airport security amendment was drafted in a bipartisan manner to address the growing number of serious threats against justices, judges, public officials and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.“It passed out of committee unanimously by voice vote and was included in the Senate’s bipartisan FAA Reauthorization bill.“With rising security incidents at airports, this amendment ensures that when law enforcement determines a threat exists, reasonable security measures will be taken to keep everybody safe.”Still, Cruz’s trip to Cancún seems sure to play a prominent campaign role.Earlier this week, Allred said: “We don’t need to ask where Ted Cruz stands when he’s challenged. We know. He stood in the airport lounge waiting to fly to Cancún while Texans froze in the dark. It’s time for him to go on a permanent vacation from the Senate.” More