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      ‘An egregious act’: debt ceiling deal imperils the environment, critics say

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      The deal to raise the US debt ceiling will have significant ramifications for the climate and nature, by fast-tracking a controversial gas pipeline in West Virginia and limiting the scope of environmental reviews for future developments, environmentalists have warned.The agreement struck between Joe Biden and Republicans who control the House of Representatives states the Mountain Valley pipeline is “required in the national interest” and should be issued its necessary permits within 21 days and be shielded from legal challenge by those who object to it.Environmentalists reacted in outrage at the deal, arguing the 300-mile (480km) pipeline, which will bring fracked gas from West Virginia to southern Virginia, will endanger hundreds of waterways, threaten landscapes including the nearby Appalachian trail and worsen the climate crisis.“Singling out the Mountain Valley pipeline for approval in a vote about our nation’s credit limit is an egregious act,” said Peter Anderson, Virginia policy director at Appalachian Voices, a campaign group that has charted hundreds of environmental violations by the project across the two states.“By attempting to suspend the rules for a pipeline company that has repeatedly polluted communities’ water and flouted the conditions in its permits, the president and Congress would deny basic legal protections, procedural fairness and environmental justice to communities along the pipeline’s path.”The pipeline was recently provided a key approval by the federal government to go through a stretch of forest but is currently stymied by court action that has dogged it for years. Mountain Valley has just 20 miles (30km) left to complete but is several years behind schedule due to opposition from green groups and nearby residents who risk having their land taken for the project.However, Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator, coal baron and the Senate’s leading beneficiary of campaign donations from gas pipeline interests, has vigorously lobbied for the pipeline’s construction and appears to have prevailed in his quest. Manchin, a centrist Democrat, is considered a valued swing vote in an evenly divided Senate.“I am pleased speaker [Kevin] McCarthy and his leadership team see the tremendous value in completing the [Mountain Valley pipeline] to increase domestic energy production and drive down costs across America and especially in West Virginia,” Manchin said in a statement that did not mention Biden. “I am proud to have fought for this critical project and to have secured the bipartisan support necessary to get it across the finish line.”The White House has framed the debt ceiling deal as one that has protected Biden’s key climate achievements, such as the numerous provisions for clean energy support in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, which Republicans were keen to strip away in negotiations.But the agreement does not include any measures to accelerate the expansion of electricity transmission, a crucial factor in whether the shift to renewables will actually materialize, while acceding to Republican demands to curtail the environmental reviews of developments such as oil and gas pipelines.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnder the deal, reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, the US’s first national environmental law, will be limited to just two years for federal projects.Environmental groups, already angered by Biden’s ongoing embrace of large fossil fuel projects, such as the recently approved Willow oil drilling operation in Alaska, said these provisions mean that Democrats should block the debt deal when it is voted upon in Congress this week.“President Biden made a colossal error in negotiating a deal that sacrifices the climate and working families,” said Jean Su, energy justice program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Congress should reject these poison pills and pass a clean debt ceiling bill.” More

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      Gov. Jim Justice Is Expected to Announce Senate Run for Joe Manchin’s Seat

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      Mr. Manchin is viewed as one of the most vulnerable Democrats in next year’s elections, in a state, West Virginia, that has overwhelmingly trended red.Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia is set to announce a Senate campaign on Thursday, giving Republicans a strong recruit against Senator Joe Manchin III, one of the most vulnerable Democrats up for re-election in 2024.The West Virginia race is one of the most essential pickup opportunities for Republicans if they are to retake control of the Senate, which Democrats hold by a narrow 51-49 seat margin.Mr. Manchin, who represents by far the most Republican state held by any Democratic senator, has yet to announce whether he will seek re-election, but Republicans are hoping that Mr. Justice’s entry might spur him toward retirement.Mr. Manchin in recent years has been one of the few Democrats who can compete in the overwhelmingly Republican state.Mr. Justice’s team teased a “special announcement” at 5 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday at the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. It made a point to note that his English bulldog — Babydog, known for a memorable appearance last year at Mr. Justice’s State of the State speech — would be present for the announcement.The advisory did not specify the nature of the announcement, though it offered a livestream link to a YouTube page with the description “The official YouTube channel for Jim Justice for U.S. Senate, Inc.” Two people with knowledge of Mr. Justice’s plans confirmed he would be entering the Senate race.Before facing Mr. Manchin, Mr. Justice would need to make it through a Republican primary. He will have at least one major opponent, Representative Alex Mooney, who has been closely allied with former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Mooney has already attacked Mr. Justice as a “RINO,” or “Republican in name only,” one of Mr. Trump’s and his allies’ favorite insults.Mr. Mooney has the backing of the Club for Growth, the influential conservative group that has spent heavily in recent Republican primaries, and Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, endorsed him last week.Mr. Justice, a billionaire businessman, was first elected governor in 2016 and re-elected in 2020, making him term-limited next year. He initially ran and won as a Democrat, but switched his party affiliation to Republican in 2017, less than a year into his first term.He made that announcement at a rally alongside Mr. Trump, saying, “Today I will tell you as West Virginians that I can’t help you anymore being a Democrat governor.” As is traditional for politicians who switch allegiances, he said his former party had moved away from him, not the other way around.Top Senate Republicans have been eager to lure Mr. Justice into the race. One Nation, a nonprofit group aligned with Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, recently began a $1 million ad campaign against Mr. Manchin for his support of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.Mr. Manchin appeared on Fox News this week, in an interview with Sean Hannity, and attacked the Biden administration for the way it had implemented the legislation. He even threatened to vote to repeal it over its climate provisions.Mr. Hannity asked why Mr. Manchin had remained with the Democratic Party.“Well, they don’t always get my vote, you know that — if I can’t go home and explain, I don’t vote for it,” Mr. Manchin said. “I think about that every day: Why am I a Democrat?”Shane Goldmacher More

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      Biden proposal forbids US schools from outright bans on transgender athletes

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      The Biden administration has released a proposal that would forbid schools and colleges across the US from enacting outright bans on transgender athletes. But teams could create some limits in certain cases – for example, to ensure fairness.If finalized, the proposal would become enshrined as a provision of Title IX. It must undergo a lengthy approval process, however, and it’s almost certain to face challenges from opponents.“Every student should be able to have the full experience of attending school in America, including participating in athletics, free from discrimination,” said Miguel Cardona, Biden’s education secretary, in a statement.The Biden administration used “fairness of competition” as criteria, which has been part of the debate in the US and globally.The move is an effort to counteract a wave of Republican-backed measures targeting LGBTQ+ rights, particularly the participation of trans athletes in school sports. The proposal must undergo a lengthy approval process, however, and it’s almost certain to face challenges. While opponents sharply criticized the proposal, some advocates for transgender athletes were concerned that it did not go far enough.The proposal came on the same day that the US supreme court refused to let West Virginia enforce a state law banning trans athletes from female sports teams at public schools, one of many similar measures across the country.The justices denied West Virginia’s request to lift an injunction against the law that a lower court had imposed while litigation continues over its legality in a challenge brought by a 12-year-old transgender girl, Becky Pepper-Jackson.Two conservative justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, publicly dissented from the decision.The law, passed in 2021, designates sports teams at public schools including universities according to “biological sex” and bars male students from female athletic teams “based solely on the individual’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth”.In the lawsuit, Pepper-Jackson and her mother Heather argued that the law discriminates based on sex and transgender status in violation of the US constitution’s 14th amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law, as well as the Title IX civil rights law that bars sex-based discrimination in education.West Virginia said in a court filing that it can lawfully assign athletic teams by sex rather than gender identity “where biological differences between males and females are the very reason those separate teams exist”.Pepper-Jackson, who attends a middle school in the West Virginia city of Bridgeport, sued after being prohibited from trying out for the girls’ cross-country and track teams.Critics argue trans athletes have an advantage over cisgender women in competition. Last year, Lia Thomas became the first transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming title. College sports’ governing body, however, adopted a sport-by-sport approach to transgender athletes in January 2022, which was to bring the organization in line with the US and International Olympic committees, though recently the NCAA’s board decided it won’t be fully implemented until 2023-24.At the same time, international sports-governing bodies are instituting policies that ban all trans athletes from competing in track and field and effectively ban trans women from swimming events. More

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      Republican states pull out of voter rolls program amid false claims of bias

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      Republican states pull out of voter rolls program amid false claims of biasThree states announce end of Eric membership citing unfounded concerns over security and political leaning of organizationThree Republican states announced this week that they would be terminating their membership with a prominent, multi-state consortium that shares voter rolls data to keep their lists up to date. The moves come amid unfounded rightwing conspiracies about the security and partisan leaning of the organization.Florida, West Virginia and Missouri said this week that they are leaving the Electronic Registration Information Center (Eric), a group of roughly 30 states on both sides of the aisle that assist one another in voter roll maintenance. The group matches member states’ voter rolls to each other to flag registrations of duplicate voters or people who have moved or died. The more states that are involved, the more accurate Eric’s services can be.Georgia Republicans race to pass laws to restrict and challenge votesRead moreIn a statement announcing its decision on Monday, Florida’s Republican secretary of state, Cord Byrd, said he is withdrawing to protect the data privacy of state residents.“As secretary of state, I have an obligation to protect the personal information of Florida’s citizens, which the Eric agreement requires us to share,” he said. “Florida has tried to back reforms to increase protections, but these protections were refused. Therefore, we have lost confidence in Eric.”Earlier this year, Alabama and Louisiana also pulled out of Eric, citing similar concerns. Alabama’s new secretary of state has denied the results of the 2020 election and supported a lawsuit brought by Texas against four other states for election “irregularities” that allegedly caused Trump’s loss.Eric has been supported by its member states, including many GOP-controlled states, since it launched in 2012 as a way to supplement the insufficient national voter registration database. It was not until last year, when rightwing conspiracy theories began to spread, that the organization began to be viewed as partisan and states began to question their membership.Far-right groups and websites, which were already actively spreading election misinformation and sowing doubt in election administration, began describing Eric as left-leaning and falsely tied the organization to liberal billionaire George Soros. The rightwing website Gateway Pundit published a series of baseless blog posts claiming that Eric was a liberal plot to inflate voter rolls and that it could allow private voter data to become public.Republican states have also begun to take issue with the governance of the organization. In his statement announcing West Virginia’s departure, the secretary of state, Mac Warner, said the Eric board of directors rejected recommended changes during a recent meeting which he claimed would have prevented partisan, non-state actors from having influence over the organization.“It truly is a shame that an organization founded on the principle of nonpartisanship would allow the opportunity for partisanship to stray the organization from the equally important principle of upholding the public’s confidence,” he said.Politico reported that the withdrawing secretaries of state also took issue with Eric’s requirement that state election officials contact eligible but unregistered voters at least every two years to see if they would like to register.Top state officials push to make spread of US election misinformation illegalRead moreIn his letter announcing Missouri’s withdrawal, the secretary of state, Jay Ashcroft, wrote that “Eric focuses on adding names to voters rolls by requiring a solicitation to individuals who already had an opportunity to register to vote and made the conscious decision not to be registered.”Trump has called for more Republican states to withdraw, falsely claiming that Eric is inflating the rolls for Democrats.Tammy Patrick, chief executive officer for programs with the Election Center, said that Eric had benefited for more than a decade from state and local officials from both sides of the aisle working together to serve the electorate.“The weaponizing of any election administration function is problematic – particularly when it is not based on factual evidence to appease a particular faction or is done under partisan pressures,” she said. “Voter list maintenance and registering voters in as efficient a manner as possible should not be viewed as partisan when done properly.”TopicsUS politicsThe fight for democracyRepublicansFloridaWest VirginiaMissourinewsReuse this content More

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      G.O.P. States Abandon Group That Helps Fight Voter Fraud

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      Five red states have severed ties since last year with the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit that helps maintain accurate voter rolls.First to leave was Louisiana, followed by Alabama.Then, in one fell swoop, Florida, Missouri and West Virginia announced on Monday that they would drop out of a bipartisan network of about 30 states that helps maintain accurate voter rolls, one that has faced intensifying attacks from election deniers and right-wing media.Ohio may not be far behind, according to a letter sent to the group Monday from the state’s chief election official, Frank LaRose. Mr. LaRose and his counterparts in the five states that left the group are all Republicans.For more than a year, the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit organization known as ERIC, has been hit with false claims from allies of former President Donald J. Trump who say it is a voter registration vehicle for Democrats that received money from George Soros, the liberal billionaire and philanthropist, when it was created in 2012.Mr. Trump even chimed in on Monday, urging all Republican governors to sever ties with the group, baselessly claiming in a Truth Social media post that it “pumps the rolls” for Democrats.The Republicans who announced their states were leaving the group cited complaints about governance issues, chiefly that it mails newly eligible voters who have not registered ahead of federal elections. They also accused the group of opening itself up to a partisan influence.In an interview on Tuesday, Jay Ashcroft, a Republican who is Missouri’s secretary of state, said that the group had balked at his state’s calls for reforms, some of which were expected to be weighed by the group’s board of directors at a meeting on March 17. He denied that the decision to pull out was fueled by what the organization and its defenders have described as a right-wing smear campaign.“It’s not like I was antagonistic toward cleaning our voter rolls,” Mr. Ashcroft said.Shane Hamlin, the group’s executive director, did not comment about particular complaints of the states in an email on Tuesday, but referred to an open letter that he wrote on March 2 saying that the organization had been the subject of substantial misinformation regarding the nature of its work and who has access to voter lists.Wes Allen, Alabama’s secretary of state, withdrew the state from the Electronic Registration Information Center in January, a day after he was sworn in.Butch Dill/Associated PressDefenders of the group lamented the departures, saying they would weaken the group’s information-sharing efforts and undermine it financially because of lost dues. And, they said, the defections conflict with the election integrity mantra that has motivated Republicans since Mr. Trump’s defeat in 2020.Republicans haven’t always been so sour about the work of the coalition, which Louisiana left in 2022.It was just last year that Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida mentioned the group’s benefit to his state, which he described as useful for checking voter rolls during a news conference announcing the highly contentious arrests of about 20 people on voter fraud charges. He was joined then by Cord Byrd, Florida’s secretary of state, a fellow Republican who, on Monday, was expressing a much different opinion. In an announcement that Florida was leaving the group, Mr. Byrd said that the state’s concerns about data security and “partisan tendencies” had not been addressed.“Therefore, we have lost confidence in ERIC,” Mr. Byrd said.Representatives for Mr. DeSantis, who is considering a Republican run for president, did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. LaRose, in Ohio, also had a stark shift in tone: After recently describing the group to reporters as imperfect but still “one of the best fraud-fighting tools that we have,” by Monday he was also calling for reforms and put the group on notice.“Anything short of the reforms mentioned above will result in action up to and including our withdrawal from membership,” Mr. LaRose wrote. “I implore you to do the right thing.”The complaints about partisanship seem centered on David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer who helped develop the group and is a nonvoting board member. Mr. Ashcroft said he didn’t think that Mr. Becker, a former director of the elections program at the Pew Charitable Trusts who has vocally debunked election fraud claims, including disputing Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, should be on the board.Mr. Becker is the founder and director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, another nonpartisan group that has been attacked by election deniers.“There’s truth and there’s lies,” Mr. Becker said on a video call with reporters on Tuesday. “I will continue to stand for the truth.”Mr. Hamlin vowed that the organization would “continue our work on behalf of our remaining member states in improving the accuracy of America’s voter rolls and increasing access to voter registration for all eligible citizens.”While some Republican states are ending their relationship with the group, California, the nation’s most populous state, could potentially join its ranks under a bill proposed by a Democratic state lawmaker. But in Texas, a Republican lawmaker has introduced a bill with the opposite intention.Still, Sam Taylor, a spokesman for Texas’s Republican secretary of state, said in an email on Tuesday that “We are not currently aware of any system comparable to ERIC, but are open to learning about other potentially viable, cost-effective alternatives.”New York, another heavily populated state, is also not a member of the group.Seven states started the organization more than a decade ago. It charges new members a one-time fee of $25,000 and annual dues that are partly based on the citizen voting age population in each state. The Pew Charitable Trusts provided seed funding to the group, but that money was separate from donations that it had received from Mr. Soros, according to the website PolitiFact.Shenna Bellows, a Democrat who is Maine’s secretary of state, said in an interview on Tuesday that the group had been particularly helpful in identifying voters who have died or may no longer live in the state, which became a member in 2021.“We have a lot of Mainers who retire to Florida for example,” Ms. Bellows said.Ms. Bellows called the recent defections “tragic” and said that her office had received several inquiries from residents who had read criticism of the group online.“Unfortunately, this move by our colleagues in Florida and elsewhere to leave ERIC in part because of misinformation being spread by election deniers deprives all of us of the ability to effectively clean our voter rolls and fight voter fraud,” she said. More

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      Joe Manchin hails expansive bill he finally agrees to as ‘great for America’

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      Joe Manchin hails expansive bill he finally agrees to as ‘great for America’Rewritten $739bn bill, now called the Inflation Reduction Act, that tackles US debt and the climate crisis could pass Senate this week West Virginia Democratic senator Joe Manchin on Sunday hailed the legislation he almost killed off, calling the rewritten $739bn bill he agreed to last week to pay down US debt and tackle the climate crisis “great for America”.Manchin, on a tour of all five Sunday morning TV politics talk shows, told CBS’s Face the Nation that the energy and climate deal he’s now supporting will tackle inflation because it will be “aggressively producing more energy, to get more supply, to get the prices down”.Republicans charge that the deal would in fact add to inflation, currently running at a 40-year-high.But the centrist Democrat said he hoped his Senate colleagues would “take a good look at the bill”, which also controversially boosts planet-heating fossil fuels, an industry that has made Manchin very wealthy.“They wanted more energy, I want more energy, we’re going to be producing more energy. There’s an agreement that we’re going to be drilling and doing more than we can to bring more energy to the market that reduces prices. They like that,” he said of Republicans.Manchin reiterated to Fox News that he believes the bill would not raise inflation, while saying that previous Biden spending packages he’d supported, including last year’s $1.9tn American Rescue Plan, had done just that.“I’ll make sure I don’t make that mistake again,” Manchin said.He once again declined to say if he’d back Joe Biden for re-election in 2024.“Everybody’s worried about the election. That’s the problem. It’s the 2022 election, 2024 election. I’m not getting involved in that,” Manchin told ABC’s This Week. “Whoever is the president, that’s my president. Joe Biden is my president right now,” he added.Manchin agreed on a deal with Senate majority leader and fellow Democrat Chuck Schumer last Wednesday, announcing an expansive $739bn package, that had eluded them for months, that addresses healthcare and the climate crisis, raising taxes on high earners and corporations and reducing federal debt.The bill replaces the $3.5tn Build Back Better flagship infrastructure and social support legislation that Manchin crushed last fall and the reduced $1.75tn version that he rejected in December, then was renegotiating, then caused to suffer a near-death experience just weeks ago when he turned away from that too.The new legislation, now called the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, could pass the Senate this week, although it is not a done deal and Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona has not yet committed. “Senator Sinema is my dear friend…She has an awful lot in this piece of legislation, the way it’s been designed as far as…letting Medicare go ahead and negotiate for lower drug prices,” Manchin said, referring to the government health insurance program for older Americans and people with disabilities.“Also, basically, when she said … ‘we’re not going to raise taxes,’ I agree with that,” he added.As a budget-related bill, Democrats aim to be able to use the so-called reconciliation process to pass it with a simple majority in the Senate, which would need all 50 Democratic senators in the 100-seat chamber and the swing vote of US vice-president Kamala Harris to pass.“I sure hope so,” Manchin told CNN’s State of the Union show on Sunday morning, when asked if the Senate would vote to approve the bill before they go on summer recess at the end of the week.It’s “a great opportunity. It’s not a Democrat bill, it’s not a Republican bill, it’s definitely not a ‘green’ bill, it’s a red, white and blue bill,” he told host Jake Tapper.Manchin appeared to walk away from the legislation earlier this month on inflation concerns, enraging supporters of climate action and his own colleagues on Capitol Hill. He has repeatedly thwarted his own party and was seen as jeopardizing world climate goals and, at home, Democratic political fortunes, while himself making millions in the coal industry.He refused to support more funding for climate action and came out against tax raises for wealthy Americans to pay for it.“There were things in there I considered could be considered inflammatory…inflation is the biggest challenge we have in our country,” he said on Sunday.Then, he added, “we re-engaged” in negotiations. There was relief among Democrats and climate experts last week, and a sense of turning a corner if the bill passes, both for climate action and the performance of the beleaguered Biden administration, despite the reduced bill.Manchin hailed Biden.“You do not do anything of this size without the president,” he saidthanking Biden for his support in the negotiations.What’s in the climate bill that Joe Manchin supports – and what isn’t Read moreThe bill includes $369bn, especially tax credits to encourage renewable energy production that gets the US close to its planet-heating emissions reductions target of a 50% cut by 2030, and support for purchasing electric cars.TopicsJoe ManchinWest VirginiaUS politicsJoe BidennewsReuse this content More

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      ‘What about my life?’ West Virginia girl, 12, speaks out against anti-abortion bill

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      ‘What about my life?’ West Virginia girl, 12, speaks out against anti-abortion bill Plea by Addison Gardner during public hearing against bill that would prohibit procedure in nearly all cases goes viral00:56An impassioned plea from a 12-year-old girl has gone viral after she spoke to West Virginia Republican lawmakers during a public hearing for an abortion bill that would prohibit the procedure in nearly all cases.On Wednesday, Addison Gardner of Buffalo middle school in Kenova, West Virginia, was among several people who spoke out against a bill that would not only ban abortions in most cases but also allow for physicians who perform abortions to be prosecuted.Addressing the West Virginia house of delegates, Gardner, among about 90 other speakers, was given 45 seconds to plead her case.“My education is very important to me and I plan on doing great things in life. If a man decides that I’m an object and does unspeakable and tragic things to me, am I, a child, supposed to carry and birth another child?” Gardner said.She went on to add, “Am I to put my body through the physical trauma of pregnancy? Am I to suffer the mental implications, a child, who had no say in what was being done with my body? Some here say they are pro-life. What about my life? Does my life not matter to you?”As Gardner – a volleyball and track athlete at her middle school, spoke, she was looked on by Rita Ray, an 80-year-old woman who had an abortion in 1959, 14 years before terminations were deemed a constitutional right.In a photo captured by Kyle Vass, a journalist from the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia, Ray can be seen smiling in the background as Gardner issued her impassioned plea.One user who tweeted the photo wrote, “Rita Ray, 80, who risked her life pre-Roe by getting an abortion from someone who wasn’t a healthcare provider, watches on as Addison Gardner, 12, contemplates her own future without access to legal abortion in WV.”Despite speeches from Gardner and other abortion rights activists, the house passed the bill by an overwhelming vote of 69 to 23. Shortly after Gardner delivered her address, house members adopted an amendment that would allow abortions in cases of rape or incest.However, the amendment, which passed narrowly with 46 to 43 votes, only allows for the procedure to be performed up to 14 weeks of pregnancy and only if the rape or incest is reported to the police.Unlike some other states which have “trigger bans” that would ban abortions within 30 days of Roe being overturned, West Virginia has a 150-year-old pre-Roe abortion ban that would come back into effect in the absence of Roe.Last week, Kanawha county circuit judge Tera Salango blocked the enforcement of the abortion ban and granted the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia, the state’s only abortion clinic, the ability to continue performing the procedure.Salango said its patients, “especially those who are impregnated as a result of a rape or incest, are suffering irreparable harm”, the Associated Press reports.West Virginia’s attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, described the ruling as “a dark day for West Virginia”.The abortion bill moved to the West Virginia senate on Thursday and may be passed by the end of the week.TopicsWest VirginiaAbortionUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Republican who livestreamed Capitol attack given three months in prison

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      Republican who livestreamed Capitol attack given three months in prisonWest Virginia lawmaker Derrick Evans, 37, who filmed self-incriminating footage, pleaded guilty to committing civil disorder00:43A West Virginia lawmaker who participated in the January 6 attack on the Capitol while livestreaming the deadly insurrection has been sentenced to three months in prison.Derrick Evans, 37, was arrested and charged shortly after the attack, in part thanks to self-incriminating video footage he shot of himself leading and egging on rioters who overwhelmed police at the Capitol.Feds seek delay in Proud Boys conspiracy case as it collides with parallel January 6 inquiryRead moreHe resigned, then pleaded guilty to the felony of committing civil disorder in March, but was given bail and appeared virtually from his home for sentencing on Wednesday.Evans, who had been sworn into the Republican-led legislature less than a month before the attack, is among 21 lawmakers known to have joined the rioters trying to overturn the 2020 election. He is the only one to be prosecuted so far.Evans had a penchant for broadcasting live on his Facebook page, Derrick Evans – The Activist, which had 32,000 followers, whom he encouraged to travel to Washington to “fight for Trump”, according to prosecutors.He documented his bus journey to the capital, and then headed straight for the east side of the Capitol. Donning a helmet, Evans shouted out updates to the growing crowd about the violence occurring on the west side of the Capitol, where rioters first breached the building, according to the sentencing memo.Evans narrated as the mob eventually overwhelmed the police and pushed through the Rotunda doors, according to video clips from his account played in court.“We’re taking this house, I told you today! Patriots stand up! … My people didn’t vote for me because I was a coward.” After breaching the building, he said, “We’re in! Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!”He deleted the video later that day, but it had already been widely circulated.Evans is among at least 825 people so far charged in connection with the insurrection, of whom 310 have pleaded guilty.Before January 6, Evans had streamed live footage of himself outside West Virginia’s only abortion clinic, which led to a 10ft fence being built around the building and a clinic volunteer having to obtain a restraining order against him. Evans also broadcast his protests against Black Lives Matter and drag shows.On Wednesday Evans told the judge that he took responsibility for his actions and regretted that his actions would leave his kids “fatherless for months”.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsWest VirginiaRepublicansnewsReuse this content More