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Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley declined to say that the US civil war was caused by slavery when asked by a voter in Berlin, New Hampshire. Responding to the questioner, Haley said: ‘I mean, I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are’ More
Before House Republicans left for their holiday recess this month, they addressed one last matter of business. They did not take up an aid package for Ukraine or pass an appropriations bill to fully fund the government through the fiscal year.The House chose instead to vote along party lines to formally authorize an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, even though Republicans have failed to uncover any proof that the president financially benefited from his family’s business dealings.“Instead of doing anything to help make Americans’ lives better, they are focused on attacking me with lies,” Biden said of the vote. “The American people deserve better.”The vote was a fitting end to a year defined by new lows on Capitol Hill. From removing a House speaker to expelling an indicted member and issuing threats of violence, 2023 saw Congress explore new depths of dysfunction. And it all started with a days-long speakership race.The battle for the gavel (part one)After a disappointing performance in the 2022 midterms, Republicans took control of the House in January with a much narrower majority than they had anticipated. That created a math problem for Kevin McCarthy, a Republican of California and the conference’s presumed speaker nominee.Instead of the uneventful process seen in past speakership elections, McCarthy failed to win the gavel on the first ballot, as roughly 20 hard-right members of the Republican conference opposed his ascension. The gridlock forced the House to hold a second round of voting, marking the first time in a century that the chamber failed to elect a speaker on the first ballot.The standoff lasted for four long days and necessitated 15 ballots in total. Just after midnight on 7 January, McCarthy won the speakership with a wafer-thin majority, in a vote of 216 to 212. He would hold the job for just nine months.On the brink of economic collapseAs soon as Republicans (finally) elected a speaker, attention turned to the most pressing matter on Congress’s agenda for 2023: the debt ceiling.The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, warned that the debt ceiling, which represents the amount of money the US government is allowed to borrow to pay its bills, had to be raised or suspended by early June to avoid a federal default and prevent economic catastrophe.Despite those urgent warnings, hard-right members of the House Republican conference appeared prepared to let the US default on its debt in an attempt to force steep government spending cuts. With just days left before the expected default deadline, both the House and the Senate passed a bill to suspend the debt ceiling until January 2025.The bill passed the House with a vote of 314 to 117, as 149 Republicans and 165 Democrats supported the measure. But 71 House Republicans opposed the bill, accusing McCarthy of cutting a horrendous deal with Biden. One Freedom Caucus member, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, mocked the deal as “insanity”.In retrospect, the Freedom Caucus’s attacks on McCarthy marked the beginning of the end of his speakership.The indicted senator from New JerseyAs House Republicans clashed with each other, the Senate grappled with its response to a member accused of corruption so rampant that it bordered on comical. In late September, Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat of New Jersey, was charged in connection to what prosecutors described as a “years-long bribery scheme”.The indictment accused Menendez of exploiting his role as chair of the Senate foreign relations committee to promote the interests of the Egyptian government in exchange for kickbacks. A raid of Menendez’s home, conducted in 2022, revealed that those kickbacks allegedly included a Mercedes-Benz convertible, $500,000 in cash and 13 gold bars.Even as more of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate called on him to step down, Menendez insisted he would not resign, claiming he had been “falsely accused” because of his Latino heritage.Pete Aguilar, a Democrat of California and the highest-ranking Latino member of the House, said of those claims, “Latinos face barriers and discrimination across the board in so many categories, including in our justice system. This is not that.”The chair is declared vacantThe next near-disaster for Congress came in September, when the government appeared to be on the brink of a shutdown that would have forced hundreds of thousands of federal employees to go without a paycheck.But that fate was avoided because, with just hours left before the government’s funding was set to run out, McCarthy introduced a mostly clean bill to fund the government for 45 days. In the House, the bill won the support of 209 Democrats and 126 Republicans, but 90 Republicans opposed the legislation.Democrats and hard-right Republicans alike said McCarthy had “folded” in the funding negotiations, failing to secure the steep spending cuts demanded by hard-right Republicans. Outraged by the bill’s passage, Matt Gaetz, a Republican of Florida, introduced a motion to vacate the chair, forcing a chamber-wide vote on removing McCarthy as speaker.The motion passed, with eight Republicans joining House Democrats in voting for McCarthy’s ouster. Seated in the House chamber, McCarthy let out a bitter laugh as he became the first speaker in US history to ever be ejected from the job.The battle for the gavel (part two)McCarthy’s removal prompted another speakership election, and this one somehow proved even more chaotic than the days-long spectacle that unfolded in January.Republicans initially nominated the House majority leader, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, for the speakership. But Scalise was forced to withdraw from the race days later because of entrenched opposition to his nomination among hard-right lawmakers. The caucus then nominated Jim Jordan of Ohio, who attempted to pressure his critics into electing him as speaker by holding multiple unsuccessful chamber-wide votes. Jordan dropped out of the race when it became clear that opposition to his speakership bid was only growing.The election reached its peak level of absurdity on 24 October, when Tom Emmer of Minnesota withdrew from the race just hours after becoming the conference’s third speaker nominee in as many weeks. By then, it appeared even Republicans had grown tired of their manufactured crisis. Republicans’ fourth and final speaker nominee, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, won the gavel in a party-line vote, bringing an end to weeks of turmoil that had become the subject of nationwide mockery.‘You are a United States senator!’The fourteenth of November was a special day on Capitol Hill because it offered an opportunity for members of both the House and the Senate to embarrass themselves.In the House, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, one of the eight Republicans who voted to remove McCarthy as speaker, accused McCarthy of elbowing him in the kidneys. Burchett then chased after McCarthy to confront him, but the former speaker denied the allegation.“If I’d kidney-punched him, he’d be on the ground,” McCarthy told reporters.Meanwhile, on the other side of the Capitol, Senator Markwayne Mullin, a Republican of Oklahoma, challenged one of the witnesses at a committee hearing to a fistfight. Mullin had previously clashed with the witness, the Teamsters union president, Sean O’Brien, over social media and suggested they settle their score with a physical fight.“You want to do it now?” Mullin asked.“I’d love to do it right now,” O’Brien replied.“Then stand your butt up then,” Mullin said.“You stand your butt up,” O’Brien shot back.The chair of the committee, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, then intervened to prevent any violence and offered this pointed reminder to Mullin: “You know, you’re a United States senator.”From Congress to CameoThe House kicked off the final month of the year with a vote to expel George Santos, a freshman Republican from New York who had been indicted on 23 federal counts related to fraud and campaign finance violations.Santos had been plagued by controversy since before taking office, as reporters discovered he had fabricated most of the life story he shared with voters. A congressional investigation uncovered that Santos had spent thousands of dollars from his campaign account on Botox treatments, luxury items at Hermès and payments to OnlyFans, an online platform known for its sexual content.Faced with that mountain of evidence, more than 100 House Republicans joined Democrats in voting to expel Santos. The 311-114 vote made Santos only the sixth member of the House ever to be expelled from Congress.Without his day job, Santos has turned his attention to Cameo, which allows D-list celebrities to make money by filming short personalized videos for fans. Reports indicate Santos is already raking in six figures on the platform.Goodbye, KevinSantos is not the only House members leaving Congress this year. McCarthy announced in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he would resign from the House at the end of December. McCarthy’s decision brought an end to a 17-year career in the House that encapsulated the Republican party’s shift away from small-government conservatism and toward Donald Trump’s “Make America great again” philosophy.Despite his humiliating fall from power, McCarthy expressed unbroken faith in Americans’ goodness and in “the enduring values of our great nation”.“I’m an optimist,” McCarthy declared.That makes one of us, Kevin. More
In 2015, the man who coined Godwin’s law, a famous maxim about argument on the internet, wrote a column for the Washington Post. Its headline: “Sure, call Trump a Nazi. Just make sure you know what you’re talking about.”By the lawyer and author Mike Godwin’s own definition, his law reads thus: “As an online discussion continues, the probability of a reference or comparison to Hitler or Nazis approaches one.” Since Republicans fell under Trump’s thrall, the law has often been invoked. Why? See our list of the 10 worst things Trump said in 2023:VerminIn November, in Claremont, New Hampshire, Trump continued his dominant primary campaign. His rant was familiar but it held something new:
We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.
Hillary Clinton, who Trump beat in 2016, had already likened him to Hitler. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian from New York University, told the Washington Post: “Calling people ‘vermin’ was used effectively by Hitler and Mussolini to dehumanise people and encourage their followers to engage in violence.”PoisonOf course, the signs were already there. In September, discussing immigration with the National Pulse, Trump said:
Nobody has ever seen anything like we’re witnessing right now … It’s poisoning the blood of our country.
He had already promised “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history”. Plans to hold migrants in camps would be reported. But Mehdi Hasan of MSNBC summed up the “poisoning” comment as “a straight-up white supremacist/neo-Nazi talking point”. Trump went there again in December, too.DictatorTrump wasn’t done. In December, at an Iowa town hall, the Fox News host Sean Hannity asked if he would promise not to “abuse power as retribution against anybody”. Trump said: “Except for day one”, then explained:
I love this guy. He says, ‘You’re not gonna be a dictator, are you?’ I say, ‘No, no, no – other than day one.’ We’re closing the border. And we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that I’m not a dictator, OK?
Noting Trump’s laughter and the crowd’s cheers, Philip Bump of the Washington Post wrote: “What fun! I guess we can put that to bed.”RetributionNo one could say such comments were surprising. In March, closing CPAC in Maryland, Trump told conservatives:
In 2016, I declared: I am your voice. Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.
Jonathan Karl of ABC would report that the Trump strategist Steve Bannon said Trump was speaking in code, referring to a Confederate plot to take hostage – and eventually kill – President Abraham Lincoln.DeathIn September, the Atlantic profiled Mark Milley, then chair of the joint chiefs of staff. Milley’s work to contain Trump at the end of his presidency was already widely known but the profile set Trump off nonetheless. On Truth Social, referring to a call in which Milley assured Chinese officials he would guard against any attempted attack, Trump lamented …
… an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!
Milley was moved to take “appropriate measures to ensure my safety and the safety of my family”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCourtsThis has been the year of the Trump indictment. He faces four, spawning 91 criminal charges regarding election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments. On 4 August, lawyers for the federal special counsel Jack Smith notified a judge of a post in which Trump appeared to threaten them, writing:
If you go after me, I’m coming after you!
Trump claimed protected political speech but the exchange teed up one of many tussles over gag orders and the general impossibility of getting Trump to shut up.IndictA recurring question: if re-elected, will Trump seek to use the federal government against his enemies? The slightly garbled answer, as expressed to Univision in November, was of course … yes:
If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say go down and indict them, mostly they would be out of business. They’d be out. They’d be out of the election.
AnimalIn April, Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, filed 34 charges over Trump’s 2016 payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star who claims an affair. Trump had already made arguably racist comments about Letitia James, the New York attorney general. Aiming at Bragg, Trump used Truth Social to say:
He is a Soros-backed animal who just doesn’t care about right or wrong.
Calling Bragg an animal played to racism about Black people. “Soros-backed”, commonly used by Republicans, refers to the progressive financier George Soros and is widely regarded as antisemitic.Whack jobIn May, Trump was found liable for sexual abuse of the writer E Jean Caroll. Ordered to pay about $5m, he was not about to be quiet. The next night, in New Hampshire, he ranted:
And I swear and I’ve never done that … I have no idea who the hell – she’s a whack job.
Carroll called the comments “just stupid … just disgusting, vile, foul”. Then she sued Trump again.All-out warTrump is 77. Questions about his mental fitness for power are not going away. Recently, he has appeared to think he beat Barack Obama in 2016 and become confused about which Iowa city he was in. On 2 December, however, another Iowa gaffe seemed to point to a worrying truth:
That’s why it was one of the great presidencies, they say. Even the opponents sometimes say he did very well … but we’ve been waging an all-out war on American democracy. More
The Politics Weekly America team are taking a break. So for the next two weeks, we’re looking back at a couple of our favourite episodes of the year.
From August: Jonathan Freedland and Amanda Marcotte try to figure it out why rightwing politicians and pundits took such a disliking to Barbie, Greta Gerwig’s summer blockbuster. They look at what the outrage can tell us about how the Republicans will campaign in 2024
How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More
The Colorado ruling disqualifying Donald Trump from the ballot because he incited an insurrection on January 6 sets up another high-stakes, highly controversial political intervention by the US supreme court – a conservative-dominated panel to which Trump appointed three stringent rightwingers.Compromised in progressive eyes by those appointments and rulings including the removal of the federal right to abortion, the court was already due to decide whether Trump has immunity from prosecution regarding acts committed as president.Arising from one of four criminal indictments that have generated 91 charges, that case – concerning elected subversion if not incitement of insurrection – has produced intense scrutiny of Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving justice and a hardline conservative also at the centre of an ethics scandal.Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, is a hard-right activist who was deeply involved in attempts to overturn Trump’s 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, a defeat which according to Trump’s lie was the result of electoral fraud.With the Colorado ruling, calls for Clarence Thomas to recuse from cases involving Trump will no doubt increase – and no doubt continue to be ignored.On Tuesday, the progressive strategist Rachel Bitecofer said: “Justice Thomas will get to weigh in on whether Trump engaged in insurrection for the same plot his own wife helped organise. Extraordinary.”Earlier, in a scene of extraordinary Washington pageantry, Biden addressed Thomas and the other justices at a memorial service for Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to sit on the court.Speaking at the National Cathedral, the president delivered a passage that would within hours assume greater significance.To O’Connor, Biden said, the court was “the bedrock of America. It was a vital line of defence for the values and the vision of our republic, devoted not to the pursuit of power for power’s sake but to make real the promise of America – the American promise that holds that we’re all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives.”Citing that need for equality before the law, some prominent observers said the supreme court should uphold the Colorado ruling.J Michael Luttig, a conservative former judge who testified before the House January 6 committee and has written with the Harvard professor Laurence Tribe on the 14th amendment, called the Colorado ruling “historic”, “masterful” and “brilliant”.“It will be a test of America’s commitment to its democracy, to its constitution and to the rule of law,” Luttig told MSNBC, adding: “Arguably, when it is decided by the supreme court, it will be the single most important constitutional decision in all of our history.“… It is an unassailable … decision that the former president is disqualified from the presidency because he conducted, engaged in or aided or supported an insurrection or rebellion against the United States constitution.”But others were not so supportive.Jonathan Turley, a conservative law professor from George Washington University who has appeared as a witness for House Republicans seeking to impeach Biden on grounds of supposed corruption, told Fox News: “This court has handed partisans on both sides the ultimate tool to try to shortcut elections. And it’s very, very dangerous.“This country is a powder keg, and this court is throwing matches at it. And I think it’s a real mistake. I think they’re wrong on the law. You know, January 6 was many things, most of it not good. In my view it was not an insurrection, it was a riot.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That doesn’t mean the people responsible for that day shouldn’t be held accountable. But to call this an insurrection for the purposes of disqualification would create a slippery slope for every state in the union.“This is a time where we actually need democracy. We need to allow the voters to vote to hear their decision. And the court just said, ‘You’re not going to get that in Colorado, we’re not going to let you vote for Donald Trump.’ You can dislike Trump, you can believe he’s responsible for January 6, but this isn’t the way to do it.”Adopted in 1868, section three of the 14th amendment barred former Confederates from office after the civil war. But it has rarely been used. In Trump’s case, much legal argument has centered on whether the presidency counts as an office, as defined in the text. In Colorado, a lower court found that it did not. The state supreme court found that it did. That argument now goes to the highest court in the land.After the Colorado ruling, many observers also pointed out that Trump has not been convicted of inciting an insurrection, or charged with doing so. He was impeached for inciting an insurrection on January 6 but acquitted at trial in the Senate, where enough Republicans stayed loyal.What is clear is that thanks to Colorado, a US supreme court already racked by politics and with historically low approval ratings will once again pitch into the partisan fight. On Tuesday, Trump seized on the Colorado ruling as he has his criminal indictments: as battle cry and fundraising tool. His Republican opponents also slammed the ruling.Last month, the Pulitzer prize-winning historian Eric Foner, an expert on the civil war and Reconstruction, spoke to the Guardian about 14th amendment challenges to Trump, including in Colorado. A successful case, Foner said, would be likely to act on Trump like “a red flag in front of a bull”.So, it seems clear, will anything the US supreme court now does regarding the Colorado ruling.On Wednesday a Trump attorney, Jay Sekulow, said on his own internet show he expected the court to act quickly, with “the next 10 days … critical in this case” and oral arguments likely by mid-January. His son and co-host, Jordan Sekulow, countered that a slow-moving case could not be counted out. More
Ten days out from the end of the year, and who could have foreseen the latest Trump plot twist? On Wednesday morning, Americans woke to absorb the fallout from the previous day’s news that Colorado – of all places – had ruled via its supreme court to ban Donald Trump from the ballot in the run-up to next year’s presidential election. There are many sober things to say about this, but in the first instance let’s give way to an unseemly squeal. How completely thrilling!Colorado leans Democrat – both its senators are blue – but it’s a western state with large conservative enclaves that is not exactly Massachusetts or Vermont. The decision by the state’s top justices is unprecedented in US electoral history. According to their ruling, Trump is in breach of section 3 of the 14th amendment, the so-called “insurrectionist ban”, in light of his behaviour during the 6 January storming of the Capitol.“President Trump did not merely incite the insurrection,” the judges said in a statement. “Even when the siege on the Capitol was fully under way, he continued to support it by repeatedly demanding that Vice-President [Mike] Pence refuse to perform his constitutional duty and by calling senators to persuade them to stop the counting of electoral votes. These actions constituted overt, voluntary, and direct participation in the insurrection.”Well, it could hardly be less ambiguous. The 14th amendment, adopted in the wake of the civil war to obstruct Confederate lawmakers from returning to Congress, has never been implemented in a presidential race and, of course, Trump’s lawyers immediately challenged it. The ban will swiftly go up to the US supreme court for judgment, until which time Trump’s candidacy in Colorado will remain legitimate.Given the conservative super-majority of the US’s highest court, we have to assume that Colorado’s challenge will be unsuccessful. It might also be assumed that, catching on, other states will follow Colorado’s lead and vote similarly to exclude Trump from the primaries. Apart from childish delight, what, then, might this week’s events achieve?The wider backdrop isn’t encouraging, and glancing at the polls this week is a quick way to shunt the smirk from your face. In a survey commissioned by the New York Times on Tuesday, US voters were found to be largely unhappy with President Biden’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which he scored a 57% disapproval rating. Given how divided Democrats are over fighting in the Middle East, that figure isn’t surprising. What, to use the technical term, blows your mind is that in the same poll, 46% of voters expressed the opinion that Trump would be making a better job of it than Biden, with only 38% more inclined to trust the president. Overall, Trump leads Biden by two points in the election race, a slender margin but, given the 91 felony counts currently pending against Trump, a hugely depressing one.Trump doesn’t need Colorado to win. In the 2020 election, he lost the state by 13 percentage points. And there is a good chance that, following the Alice in Wonderland logic that seems to determine Trump’s fortunes, the ruling in Colorado might actually help him. The narrative Trump has crafted for himself of being a Zorro-type outsider pursued by deep state special interests is as absurd as it is apparently compelling to large numbers of his supporters. At a rally in Waterloo, Iowa, on Tuesday night, Trump avoided the subject of Colorado’s decision, which came in just before he stepped out on stage. That won’t hold. By the end of the evening, an email sent out by his campaign team had already referred to the ban as a “tyrannical ruling”.And so we find ourselves in the perfect catch-22. The greater Trump’s transgressions and the more severe the censure from his detractors, the more entrenched his popularity with Republican voters appears to grow. It may not win him the presidency next November – there are too many variables around undecided voters in the middle – but it seems increasingly likely that it will ensure he beats his Republican rivals to get on the ballot.A four-count indictment for election interference, brought by special counsel Jack Smith and covering Trump’s actions in the run-up to 6 January, is set to be heard in the District of Columbia in March. Countless other civil and criminal suits work their way through the system. And now his viability as a candidate will probably go before the supreme court. It’s like a grim parlour game, with the same question going round and round: what will it take to make any of this stick?
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More
The US is a house divided. The presidential election is set to be a rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. But as 2023 draws to a close it leaves a legacy in print, in books about the US political scene that help explain the crises that engulf us.February brought The Lincoln Miracle, Edward Achorn’s in-depth examination of the 16th president’s quest for the Republican nomination in 1860. Beautifully written, Achorn’s book reminds us that outcomes are not preordained and that elections bring consequences. Achorn also shows that the battle between red and blue America is now more than 160 years old.The party of Lincoln, however, is no more. Jonathan Karl, chief Washington correspondent for ABC News, had two books on Trump behind him before Tired of Winning. Well-paced, meticulously sourced and amply footnoted, Karl’s latest shines another light on how the Republican party has been recast by a man now under multiple felony indictments.Steve Bannon, Trump’s brain and muse, a leading voice of the far right, talked on the record. He stressed that as long as Trump lives, the party belongs to him. Confronted by a grandee who suggested Trump play less of a role in the run-up to the 2022 midterms, Bannon unloaded: “Have you lost your fucking mind?” If Trump defeats Biden, Bannon may well return to the West Wing.Loyalty to Trump has emerged as a cardinal tenet of Republican life. In Enough, Cassidy Hutchinson, the White House aide who became the lead January 6 witness, offers a persuasive, dispiriting tale of political degradation. Hutchinson “isn’t crazy”, a Trump White House veteran confided before her first public appearance in front of the January 6 committee. But she is a “time bomb”. True on both counts.McKay Coppins’s Romney: A Reckoning is a must-read for anyone interested in how the Republican party became a Trumpian mess. Picking up where he left off in The Wilderness, his earlier look at the GOP, Coppins, a veteran Romney-watcher now at the Atlantic, offers an engaging read, the product of 30 interviews with the 2012 presidential nominee, access to aides and friends and also the senator’s emails and diaries. Coppins offers a scorching critique, capturing Romney strafing Trump and Newt Gingrich, Ted Cruz and Mike Pence.Adam Kinzinger represented a Republican Illinois district in the US House for six terms. He voted to impeach Trump for the January 6 insurrection, and with Liz Cheney was one of two Republicans on the investigating committee. Like Cheney, from Wyoming, Kinzinger earned the ire of Trump and the GOP base. Both are no longer in Congress. Renegade, Kinzinger’s memoir, written with Michael D’Antonio, biographer of Pence, is a steady, well-crafted read.In the year of the Republican shadow primary, before voting begins next month, presidential aspirants past and present gave their spin too. Mike Pompeo, ex-congressman, CIA director and secretary of state, wrote Never Give an Inch. Tart and tight, filled with barbs, bile and little regret, it was an unexpectedly interesting read. Pompeo did give an inch to reality, though, accepting there was no point mounting a run.On the other side of the aisle, with The Last Politician, Franklin Foer provides a well-sourced look at Biden. A staff writer at the Atlantic and former New Republic editor, Foer captures successes and cock-ups. The 46th president is caught wondering why John F Kennedy was not so tightly handled by his aides – or “babied”. Less than a year from election day, Biden trails Trump at the polls.Chris Whipple’s The Fight of His Life is a flattering portrait of Biden. Ron Klain, his first chief of staff, hails “the most successful first year of any president ever”, adding: “We passed more legislation than any president in his first year.” Many remain unimpressed. Inflation scars remain visible. The retribution impeachment looms. Hunter Biden is under felony indictment.With Filthy Rich Politicians, Matt Lewis skewers both sides of the aisle. A senior columnist at the Daily Beast, Lewis performs a valued public service, shining a searing light on the gap between the elites of both parties and the citizenry in whose name they claim to govern. The book is breezy and readable. The Bidens and Clintons, the Trumps and Kushners, right and left – all are savaged.Michael Waldman ran the speechwriting shop in Bill Clinton’s White House and now heads the Brennan Center at NYU. The Supermajority, his book about the conservative bloc that dominates the supreme court, is written with great verve. He takes the Citizens United decision to task for allowing unlimited political spending. He also argues that the court has become a serious threat to American democracy.Religion in politics garnered its share of attention this year, particularly evangelical Protestants. Sunday attendance is down but the movement retains political clout. In Losing Our Religion, the Rev Russell Moore, conservative but a Trump critic, laments the growing interchangeability between cross and flag, and the paganization of Christianity. “The step before replacing Jesus with Thor is to turn Jesus into Thor,” he writes. Like the caesars of old, Trump is deified by his minions.In The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, Tim Alberta poignantly and painfully captures the metamorphosis of US evangelism. A writer at the Atlantic and the son of a Presbyterian minister, Alberta lays bare his hurt over how Christianity has grown ever more synonymous with those who fervently wave the stars and stripes. He takes us back to summer 2019. The Rev Richard Alberta died suddenly. At his funeral, a church elder delivered to Alberta a one-page screed expressing his disapproval of the author for not embracing Trump. Alberta also delivers a deep-dive on the disgraced Jerry Falwell Jr and Liberty University.The media and the Murdochs remained in the spotlight too. In Network of Lies, Brian Stelter, the former CNN host, captured the Murdochs’ struggle to make money, keep their audience happy and avoid liability. It wasn’t easy: Fox News coverage of the 2020 election led to a $787.5m settlement of a defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems. Other litigations remain.Stelter had competition. In The Fall, Michael Wolff gave the Murdochs and Fox the treatment he gave Trump, memorably with Fire and Fury and two sequels. Wolff says he may be “the journalist not in his employ who knows [Murdoch] best”. Quotation marks abound – whether the author was an actual witness is another matter. But The Fall is full of digestible dish.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionElsewhere in the media, Marty Baron led the Washington Post as executive editor for eight years, retiring in 2021. Newsrooms he led won 17 Pulitzer prizes, 10 at the Post. Baron has stories to tell. The actor Liev Schreiber even played him in Spotlight, winner of the best picture Oscar in 2016. Collision of Power, Baron’s first book, carried a tantalizing subtitle: “Trump, Bezos, and the Washington Post”.“Trump and his team would go after the Post and everyone else in the media who didn’t bend to his wishes,” Baron writes. From the beginning, as Baron saw close up, Trump “had the makings of an autocrat”.In finance, with Going Infinite, Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball, The Big Short and other bestsellers, wrote about Sam Bankman-Fried, crypto and the scandal that saw the one-time billionaire convicted on seven counts of fraud. To politicians, as well as to profilers, Bankman-Fried had allure. Exactly why he continues to puzzle. Money doesn’t explain everything, but it does shed light on plenty.Foreign policy impinged on domestic politics too, of course. Last spring, Israel marked its 75th anniversary, roiled by internal divisions. On 7 October, Hamas mounted a barbaric binge of rape, murder, plunder and hostage-taking. Israel’s response continues.In May, Isabel Kershner of the New York Times painted a masterly and poignant portrait with The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel’s Battle for Its Inner Soul. Attempting to make sense of a “national unraveling”, she spoke with members of competing and clashing tribes. Wisely, she offered no sense of immediate resolution. None is on the horizon.Back home, Trump stands ready to plunge a knife into US democracy. A year ago, he called for terminating the constitution. More recently, he said he would be a dictator “on day one” of a second term. He is the “most dangerous man ever to inhabit the Oval Office”, Liz Cheney writes in Oath and Honor, her own memoir.The former congresswoman, a member of the Republican establishment, adds: “This is the story of when American democracy began to unravel. It is the story of the men and women who fought to save it, and of the enablers and collaborators whose actions ensured the threat would grow and metastasize.”The book is well-timed. Iowa and New Hampshire vote next month.“We cannot survive a president willing to terminate our constitution,” Cheney adds. Promoting her book, she warned that the US was “sleepwalking into dictatorship”. In 11 months, we will find out how fast. More
A jury has ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay former election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, $148.1m after he spread lies about them following the 2020 election. It is one of the most significant verdicts to date seeking accountability for those who attempted to overturn the 2020 election.
There were gasps in the courtroom when the amount was read out and the judge stumbled over the number as she read out the verdict, according to media reports.
Giuliani did not appear to show any emotion as the damages were announced. Former Atlanta election workers Freeman and Moss hugged their attorney after the amount was announced.
The damages were $100m above what the women had asked for and included nearly $16.2m and $17m in compensatory damages for Freeman and Moss respectively. It also included $20m to each woman for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and an additional $75m in punitive damages. Giuliani owes approximately $275,000 in additional legal fees.
Giuliani himself dismissed the verdict and told reporters outside the Washington federal courthouse that he will appeal, saying the “absurdity of the number merely underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding”. “It will be reversed so quickly it will make your head spin, and the absurd number that just came in will help that actually,” he said.
Speaking outside court on Friday, Freeman said: “Today’s a good day. A jury stood witness to what Rudy Giuliani did to me and my daughter and held him accountable, and for that I’m thankful. Today is not the end of the road, we still have work to do. Rudy Giuliani was not the only one who spread lies about us, and others must be held accountable too. But that is tomorrow’s work.”
Freeman’s daughter, Shaye Moss, also gave a statement, saying: “The flame that Giuliani lit with those lies and passed to so many others to keep that flame blazing changed every aspect of our lives – our homes, our family, our work, our sense of safety, our mental health. And we’re still working to rebuild.”
This is the end of our live coverage of the damages trial. You can read the full report by Sam Levine here:And Rachel Leingang has looked at how the multimillion-dollar ruling against Giuliani shows the cost of spreading election lies:Thanks for following along.A legal analyst for CNN explains that the punitive damages awarded to two former election workers were intended to “send a message to Rudy Giuliani and to the general public”.Elie Honig told Jake Tapper: “When we think about the inequities in this case, when we think about an extraordinarily powerful, remorseless liar like Rudy Giuliani, compared to these women or civil servants, they never signed up for this. Their lives were turned over and I think that’s why you see such a high number here from the jury.”Here are a few of the pictures that have dropped on the newswires from outside the court after the verdict:The damages included nearly $16.2m and $17m in compensatory damages for Freeman and Moss respectively.It also included $20m to each woman for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and an additional $75m in punitive damages.Giuliani owes approximately $275,000 in additional legal fees.Here’s some more reaction to the verdict:After the verdict, Giuliani appeared to be trying to rewrite history by claiming he hadn’t been able to present his side of the argument in court.Giuliani had in fact been due to testify on Thursday but declined to do so at the last moment.On Friday, he tried to paint a different picture, telling reporters: “I’ve not been allowed to present a single piece of evidence in defence, of which I have a lot.“I am quite confident when this case gets before a fair tribunal it’ll be reversed so quickly it’ll make your head spin.”Here is video of that statement:My colleague Rachel Leingang has written this analysis about the staggering damages award:
The judge had already decided Rudy Giuliani defamed the two former Georgia election workers, the question was just how much that cycle of lies and ensuing harassment should cost him.
A jury declared on Friday that it was worth an eye-popping $148m, far beyond expectations and a major blow to the former New York mayor and key Donald Trump ally.
The case was one of a handful of ways pro-democracy groups are seeking consequences for election subversion ahead of the next presidential election. The plaintiffs hope the high-dollar decision will show to Giuliani and others that there’s a financial and human cost to spreading lies. The stakes are high with the 2024 presidential election quickly approaching and Trump probably on the ballot once again.
You can read her full piece here:In her statement after the trial, Ruby Freeman gave an insight into the continued impact of Giuliani’s false claims on her life.She said:
Today is not the end of the road. We still have work to do. Rudy Giuliani wasn’t the only one who spread lies about us and others must be held accountable too.
But that is tomorrow’s work. For now I want people to understand this. Money would never solve all of my problems. I can never move back to the house that I call home. I will always have to be careful about where I go and who I choose to share my name with.
I miss my home, I miss my neighbors and I miss my name.
Moss went on to thank the court and jury for listening to her and her mother’s experience in the aftermath of Giuliani’s defamatory statements.Her voice broke slightly when she added: “I know I won’t be able to retire from my job with the county like my grandma did, but I hope having taken these very big steps towards justice, I can make her proud.”Here is more from what Shaye Moss said outside the court:
The lies Rudy Giuliani told about me and my mommy after the 2020 presidential election have changed our lives and the past few years has been devastating.
The flame that Giuliani lit with those lies and passed to so many others to keep that flame blazing changed every aspect of our lives – our homes, our family, our work, our sense of safety, our mental health. And we’re still working to rebuild.
As we move forward and continue to seek justice, our greatest wish is that no one … ever experiences anything like what we went through.
Today’s verdict comes at the end of an emotional week for former election workers Moss and Freeman. They had to relive their ordeal in testimony at the federal court in Washington DC and told how it had ruined their lives.Here are some of the key moments from this week’s trial:
Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss both testified about the disastrous effects of lies spread by Rudy Giuliani and others who put them at the center of an election conspiracy theory. They shared examples of the racist, harassing, threatening messages they received after being publicly named by election deniers.
Freeman said she had to leave her home for safety reasons. She hired a lawyer to help keep her name off any home-related documents for her new place. She feels like she’s lost who she is, her good name, in this web.
Moss detailed how these actions made her anxious to even leave the house and caused her son to get harassed, eventually failing his classes. She said she still doesn’t really go out.
Giuliani was initially expected to testify. But after two separate incidents of him doubling down, his team did not put him on the stand. His lawyer said the women had been through enough, but also pointed to Gateway Pundit, the rightwing media outlet, as more culpable for the harassment.
Ashlee Humphreys, a professor from Northwestern University and an expert witness of Freeman and Moss, walked through the significant reputational damage done to Freeman and Moss, showing how their names are now associated with election fraud.
Freeman and Moss’ lawyer, Michael Gottlieb, said they hope the case sends a clear message to people launching smear campaigns not to do it.
The jury began deliberations on Thursday and returned their verdict on Friday afternoon.
The sum awarded to Freeman and Moss was $100m above what they had asked for – and media reports said gasps were heard in the courtroom when the final sum was read out. CNN reported the judge stumbled over her words when reading out the final sum.The verdict is likely to be far beyond Giuliani’s means. In closing arguments, his lawyer, Joseph Sibley, said the original $48m amount would be “catastrophic” for his client.Meanwhile, the plaintiffs’ attorney Michael Gottlieb argued: “Mr Giuliani thought he could get away with making Ruby and Shaye the face of election fraud because he thought they were ordinary and expendable.“He has no right to offer defenseless civil servants up to a virtual mob in order to overturn an election.”My colleague Sam Levine has more from Freeman’s statement outside the court:“Today is not the end of the road, we still have work to do. Rudy Giuliani was not the only one who spread lies about us, and others must be held accountable too. But that is tomorrow’s work.“I want people to understand this,” she added. “Money will never solve all my problems. I can never move back into the house that I call home. I will always have to be careful about where I go and who I choose to share my name with. I miss my home, I miss my neighbors, and I miss my name.”Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss gave a statement outside court after they were awarded $148m in damages.Freeman said: “A jury stood witness to what Rudy Giuliani did to me and my daughter and how I answered that. I’m thankful.”The judgment adds to growing financial and legal peril for Giuliani, who was among the loudest proponents of Trump’s false claims of election fraud that are now a key part of the criminal cases against the former president, AP writes.Giuliani had already been showing signs of financial strain as he defends himself against costly lawsuits and investigations stemming from his representation of Trump. His lawyer suggested that the defamation case could financially ruin the former mayor, saying “it would be the end of Mr Giuliani.”Giuliani told reporters outside Washington’s federal courthouse that he will appeal, saying the “absurdity of the number merely underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding”.“It will be reversed so quickly it will make your head spin, and the absurd number that just came in will help that actually,” he said.Giuliani had already been found liable in the case and previously conceded in court documents that he falsely accused the women of ballot fraud.Even so, the former New York City mayor continued to repeat his baseless allegations about the women in comments to reporters outside the Washington DC courthouse this week.Giuliani’s lawyer acknowledged that his client was wrong but insisted that Giuliani was not fully responsible for the vitriol the women faced. The defense sought to largely pin the blame on a rightwing website that published the surveillance video of the two women counting ballots.AP has a bit more from the hearing today:
The damages verdict follows emotional testimony from Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who tearfully described becoming the target of a false conspiracy theory pushed by Giuliani and other Republicans as they tried to keep then-President Donald Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election.
There was an audible gasp in the courtroom when the jury foreperson read aloud the $75 million award in punitive damages for the women. Moss and Freeman were each awarded another roughly $36 million in other damages.
Giuliani didn’t appear to show any emotion as the verdict was read after about 10 hours of deliberations. Moss and Freeman hugged their attorneys after the jury left the courtroom and didn’t look at Giuliani as he left with his lawyer.
Giuliani told reporters outside Washington’s federal courthouse that he will appeal, saying the “absurdity of the number merely underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding.”
A Washington DC jury has ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay $148.1m to two Atlanta election workers after he spread lies about them, one of the most significant verdicts to date seeking accountability for those who attempted to overturn the 2020 election.The verdict follows a four-day trial in which Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, her daughter, gave haunting details about the harassment and threats they faced after Giuliani falsely accused them of trying to steal the election in Georgia. The women, who are Black, described how they fled, are afraid to give their names in public, and still suffer severe emotional distress today. Their lawyers asked the jury to award them each at least $24m in damages.The case is the latest in a series of cases in which plaintiffs have used defamation law to push back on lies spread about them since the 2020 election. The voting equipment vendor Dominion settled with Fox for $787m earlier this year in a defamation case. Freeman and Moss also have a pending lawsuit against the Gateway Pundit, a far-right news outlet. Last year, they also settled with One America News, another far-right outlet. Civil rights groups are turning to defamation law as a new tool to ward off misinformation. More
