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      The Observer view on the secret garage files that could deal a severe blow to Joe Biden’s hopes | Observer editorial

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      The Observer view on the secret garage files that could deal a severe blow to Joe Biden’s hopesObserver editorialMore harmful than the alleged misplacement of classified documents will be a further erosion of trust in US politics It is almost a Washington tradition that, sooner or later, a sitting president will face investigation by a federal special counsel or special prosecutor – the terms are interchangeable. In recent history, only Barack Obama has escaped this fate and that was not for lack of opponents accusing him of nefarious misdeeds.Now it’s Joe Biden’s turn and wolves are once again baying at the door of the Oval Office.At first glance, last week’s revelations that old, possibly outdated classified documents had been found at a thinktank where Biden worked after leaving the vice-presidency in 2017, and in a garage at his home in Delaware, may not seem such a big deal. But such a view fails to understand the way Washington works. Significant or not, the find has given the flailing Republican party a stick with which to beat the president and it has seized it with grateful alacrity.A clutch of GOP-controlled committees in Congress has already launched a series of investigations, in addition to the independent special counsel inquiry ordered by Biden’s attorney-general, Merrick Garland. They want to know whether national security was compromised; whether Biden’s son Hunter – a longtime Republican target – had access to the files; and why the White House failed to admit their existence until forced to do so by a CBS TV scoop.Crucially, Biden’s opponents are posing the classic Watergate questions: what did the president know, when did he know it and was there a cover-up? It’s a sad fact that whatever Biden says now or in the course of what are likely to be wearying, attritional months of testimony and hearings, many Americans will not believe him. The distrust that infects and distorts US politics can only be expected to deepen.The distraction of attention from Biden’s agenda and achievements is one of many prospective negatives for the president. Another is the unfair, potentially disastrous conflation of his alleged wrongdoing with the ostensibly much more serious case of his predecessor. Donald Trump is accused of secreting hundreds of contemporary classified papers at his Florida home and refusing to hand them over.Biden previously accused Trump of “irresponsible” behaviour, words that are now being thrown back in his face. Suggestions that the misplacing of the documents was a mere oversight or act of forgetfulness play into the hurtful Republican narrative of a senile, incompetent 80-year-old president.Biden did not help himself by joking that his garage was a secure space because he keeps his classic Corvette car there. If the word “Corvette-gate” has not already entered the lexicon, it soon will.The extent of the damage to Biden and the Democrats will depend in part on whether Trump, the Republicans and their Fox News boosters succeed in sustaining and widening the scandal. They will propagate lies, disinformation and conspiracy theories.The White House will try to play down the affair. Yet if, for example, the special counsel discovers the documents – reportedly relating to Ukraine, Iran and the UK – are not merely historical but contain current, sensitive or embarrassing secrets, Biden could be in deep water, politically and legally.It’s almost exactly two years since Biden took office. After a rough start, his fortunes have steadily improved. Inflation is sharply down, Covid is mostly over (unlike in China), Russia is losing in Ukraine, Democrats did better than expected in the midterm elections and Maga Trump-ism continues to divide House Republicans. An announcement of a Biden run for a second term had been expected soon. All these gains suddenly appear in jeopardy and all because of a few dusty boxes of files.TopicsUS politicsOpinionJoe BidenRepublicansDonald TrumpeditorialsReuse this content More

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      Treasury secretary: US to reach debt ceiling on Thursday

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      Treasury secretary: US to reach debt ceiling on ThursdayJanet Yellen told Congress that ‘extraordinary measures’ would be taken to avoid default until legislation is passed to raise ceiling Janet Yellen, the US treasury secretary, has notified Congress that the US is projected to reach its debt limit on Thursday, 19 January, and will then resort to “extraordinary measures” to avoid default.In a letter to House and Senate leaders on Friday, Yellen said her actions will buy time until Congress can pass legislation that will either raise the nation’s $31.4tn borrowing authority or suspend it again for a period of time.US prices drop for first time since May 2020 as inflation rate falls to 6.5%Read moreShe urged lawmakers to act quickly to raise the debt ceiling to “protect the full faith and credit of the United States”.“Failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the US economy, the livelihoods of all Americans and global financial stability,” she said.Republicans now in control of the House have threatened to use the debt ceiling as leverage to demand spending cuts from Democrats and the Biden administration. This has raised concerns in Washington and on Wall Street about a bruising fight over the debt ceiling this year that could be at least as disruptive as the protracted battle of 2011, which prompted the brief downgrade of the US credit rating and years of forced domestic and military spending cuts.The Washington Post reported late on Friday that House Republicans had prepared an emergency plan for breaching the debt limit. The proposal, which was in the preliminary stages of being drafted, would direct the treasury department to prioritize certain payments if the US hits the debt ceiling, according to the newspaper.The White House said on Friday after Yellen’s letter that it will not negotiate over raising the debt ceiling.“This should be done without conditions,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. “There’s going to be no negotiation over it.”The new House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, told reporters in his first press conference that he had a “very good conversation” with Biden about the coming debt ceiling debate. “We don’t want to put any fiscal problems to our economy and we won’t, but fiscal problems would be continuing to do business as usual,” he said.“We’ve got to change the way we are spending money.”The proposal from House Republicans reported by the Washington Post would call on the Biden administration to make only the most critical federal payments if the treasury department comes up against the statutory limit on what it can legally borrow. The plan will call on the department to keep making interest payments on the debt, the newspaper reported, citing sources.House Republicans’ payment prioritization plan may also stipulate that the treasury department should continue making payments on social security, Medicare and veterans benefits, as well as funding the military, the newspaper added.Yellen said that while the treasury can’t estimate how long the extraordinary measures will allow the US to continue to pay the government’s obligations, “it is unlikely that cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted before early June.”The treasury department first used extraordinary measures in 1985 and at least 16 times since, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscal watchdog. Those measures include divesting some payments, such as contributions to federal employees’ retirement plans, in order to provide some headroom to make other payments that are deemed essential.Past forecasts suggest a default could instantly bury the country in a deep recession, right at a moment of slowing global growth as the US and much of the world face high inflation because of the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The financial markets could crash and several million workers could be laid off, and the aftershocks would be felt for years.Shai Akabas, director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told reporters Friday: “This is not the time for panic, but it’s certainly a time for policymakers to begin negotiations in earnest.”“Most policymakers agree that we have a major fiscal challenge as a country, our debt is unsustainable,” he said. “There’s no reason why we couldn’t agree on measures to improve our fiscal outcome, and also ensure that we are paying all of our bills in full and on time.”TopicsJanet YellenUS economyUS CongressUS politicsEconomicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Democrats plan defense as Republicans ramp up investigations into president and Hunter Biden – as it happened

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      Republicans on the House judiciary committee have announced their own investigation of the classified documents found at Joe Biden’s home and former office, sending a letter to the attorney general, Merrick Garland, demanding details of the inquiry.“We are conducting oversight of the Justice Department’s actions with respect to former Vice President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, including the apparently unauthorized possession of classified material at a Washington, D.C. private office and in the garage of his Wilmington, Delaware residence. On January 12, 2023, you appointed Robert Hur as Special Counsel to investigate these matters. The circumstances of this appointment raise fundamental oversight questions that the Committee routinely examines. We expect your complete cooperation with our inquiry,” the committee’s chair Jim Jordan along with congressman Mike Johnson said in a letter.The letter notes that the documents were first discovered just before the midterm elections in November, and accuses the justice department of departing “from how it acted in similar circumstances,” notable the inquiry into government secrets found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. The committee members demand Garland turn over an array of documents related to the Biden investigation by 27 January.The investigation is the second to be announced by the House GOP since reports of the documents’ discovery first emerged this week. The other is being pursued by James Comer of the oversight committee, who is playing a major role in the Republicans’ campaign of investigations against the White House.Donald Trump’s organization was fined $1.6m by a judge after being convicted of tax fraud charges, but the Manhattan district attorney hinted that’s not the end of his investigation into the former president’s businesses. Meanwhile in Washington, House Republicans demanded more information about the classified documents found at Joe Biden’s home and former office, while the top Senate Democrat said special counsel Robert Hur should be allowed to look into the matter without interference.Here’s what happened today:
      Biden doesn’t trust his Secret Service detail, according to a new book about his presidency.
      Treasury secretary Janet Yellen warned the US government will soon hit its debt limit, and could run out of money by June.
      Special counsel Jack Smith wants to talk to two people hired by Trump’s attorneys to look for any secret materials in his possession.
      Congress will convene for the annual State of the Union address on 7 February.
      Who is George Santos really? Two Daily Beast reporters try to get to the bottom of the fabulist congressman’s saga in an interview with the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast.
      Last week, the much-talked-about George Santos of New York was sworn into the House. The Democrats and even some Republicans think he should have resigned after he admitted to lying about a lot of things during his campaign.So who is the real George Santos? How likely is it that he’ll see out his full term in office? And does his success tell us more about the state of US politics than it does an individual’s misgivings? Jonathan Freedland and Will Bredderman of the Daily Beast discuss the man behind the lies on the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast:Politics Weekly AmericaCan George Santos outrun his lies? Politics Weekly AmericaSorry your browser does not support audio – but you can download here and listen https://audio.guim.co.uk/2020/05/05-61553-gnl.fw.200505.jf.ch7DW.mp300:00:0000:29:31Attorney general Merrick Garland has asked Robert Hur to handle the investigation into Biden’s classified documents, putting a justice department veteran whose most recent government service was as a Donald Trump-appointed US attorney in a role that could upend his presidency.Semafor reports that Democrats remember his work as US attorney for Maryland fondly. “He handled himself with real professionalism when he was U.S. attorney in Maryland,” the state’s Democratic senator Ben Cardin said, while Jamie Raskin, a House Democrat from the state and noted Trump foe, said Hur had a “good reputation.”Rod Rosenstein, who was deputy attorney general under Trump, said Hur was his “point person” for dealing with one of the men the former president liked least: Robert Mueller, the special counsel who led the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.The House armed services committee is also requesting details about the classified documents found in Joe Biden’s possession.The committee’s Republican chair Mike Rogers earlier this week wrote to two defense officials requesting details on what the documents contained, and how they had been handled.You can read the letter below:Read the full letter here ⬇️https://t.co/Y98CJppa8M pic.twitter.com/7Yz5uCZqdV— Armed Services GOP (@HASCRepublicans) January 12, 2023
      Needless to say, this is turning into a headache for Democrats in Congress.The party has been on a roll lately, doing much better in the November midterms than expected and then being gifted with Republican disarray in the House and a surprisingly quiet presidential campaign from Donald Trump.Now, they’re back to playing defense after Joe Biden was found to be doing something similar to what has gotten Trump into so much trouble: possessing classified documents. There are substantial differences to the two cases, but party leaders nonetheless are being called upon to answer for their president.“It’s much too early to tell,” Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer today replied on CNN, when asked if he believes Biden broke the law. “I think president Biden has handled this correctly. He’s fully cooperated with the prosecutors … it’s total contrast to president Trump, who stonewalled for a whole year.”With special prosecutors looking into both men’s cases, Schumer called for patience. “We should let it play out, we don’t have to push them in any direction or try to influence them,” he said. “Let the special prosecutors do their job,” Schumer said, adding that he supports the appointment of Robert Hur to that role in the Biden case.You can watch the full interview here:Republicans on the House judiciary committee have announced their own investigation of the classified documents found at Joe Biden’s home and former office, sending a letter to the attorney general, Merrick Garland, demanding details of the inquiry.“We are conducting oversight of the Justice Department’s actions with respect to former Vice President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, including the apparently unauthorized possession of classified material at a Washington, D.C. private office and in the garage of his Wilmington, Delaware residence. On January 12, 2023, you appointed Robert Hur as Special Counsel to investigate these matters. The circumstances of this appointment raise fundamental oversight questions that the Committee routinely examines. We expect your complete cooperation with our inquiry,” the committee’s chair Jim Jordan along with congressman Mike Johnson said in a letter.The letter notes that the documents were first discovered just before the midterm elections in November, and accuses the justice department of departing “from how it acted in similar circumstances,” notable the inquiry into government secrets found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. The committee members demand Garland turn over an array of documents related to the Biden investigation by 27 January.The investigation is the second to be announced by the House GOP since reports of the documents’ discovery first emerged this week. The other is being pursued by James Comer of the oversight committee, who is playing a major role in the Republicans’ campaign of investigations against the White House.Joe Biden will make the annual State of the Union speech on 7 February, after the president accepted a formal invitation from House speaker Kevin McCarthy:It is my solemn obligation to invite the president to speak before a Joint Session of Congress on February 7th so that he may fulfill his duty under the Constitution to report on the state of the union. pic.twitter.com/YBmzLxs3Iz— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) January 13, 2023
      In a statement confirming his attendance, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre struck a bipartisan tone. “The President is grateful for and accepts Speaker McCarthy’s prompt invitation to address the peoples’ representatives in Congress,” she said. “He looks forward to speaking with Republicans, Democrats, and the country about how we can work together to continue building an economy that works from the bottom up and the middle out, keep boosting our competitiveness in the world, keep the American people safe, and bring the country together.”Looping back to Donald Trump’s legal troubles, here’s a little more about the situation in New York and beyond.The Trump Organization’s sentencing doesn’t end Trump’s battle with Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who said the sentencing “closes this important chapter of our ongoing investigation into the former president and his businesses. We now move on to the next chapter,” the Associated Press writes.Bragg, in office for little more than a year, inherited the Trump Organization case and the investigation into the former president from his predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr.At the same time, New York attorney general Letitia James is suing Trump and the Trump Organization, alleging they misled banks and others about the value of its many assets, including golf courses and skyscrapers – a practice she dubbed the “art of the steal” – a parody of Trump’s long-ago bestselling ghostwritten book about getting rich The Art of the Deal.James, a Democrat, is asking a court to ban Trump and his three eldest children from running any New York-based company and is seeking to fine them at least $250 million. A judge has set an October trial date and appointed a monitor for the company while the case is pending.Trump faces several other legal challenges as he ramps up his presidential campaign.A special grand jury in Atlanta has investigated whether Trump and his allies committed any crimes while trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.Last month, the House January 6 committee voted to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department for Trump’s role in sparking the violent insurrection at the US Capitol. The FBI is also investigating Trump’s storage of classified documents.During last year’s Trump Org trial, assistant district attorney Joshua Steinglass told jurors that Trump himself had a role in the fraud scheme, showing them a lease that the Republican signed himself for now-convicted finance chief Allen Weisselberg’s perk apartment that was kept off the tax books.“Mr Trump is explicitly sanctioning tax fraud,” Steinglass argued.Joe Biden this weekend will become the first sitting US president to speak at a Sunday service at Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta, Georgia, where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr was a pastor.Biden is expected to address the ongoing struggle to protect voting rights in the US, despite his failure a year ago to persuade Congress to pass key related legislation, to the exasperation of activists and organizers, especially in Georgia and the south.At the White House press briefing ongoing now, former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, now senior adviser for public engagement at the White House, talked of the importance of the president’s visit this Sunday, ahead of Martin Luther King Day, the federal holiday that marks the birthday of the assassinated icon.She said that there was “more work to do” to protect democracy and acknowledged that the Biden administration’s two pieces of voting rights legislation have not made it through Congress.She noted that Biden has been invited to the church by Georgia’s recently re-elected Democratic senator Raphael Warnock, who is a pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist church. The church was also regularly attended by the late congressman and lifelong civil rights activist John Lewis.Biden will meet members of King’s family and leaders of the civil rights movement in Atlanta during his visit on Sunday and Monday.Lance Bottoms joined White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who pointed out that she and the former mayor are examples of “Black women who have broken barriers” on the shoulders of the civil rights movement.Donald Trump’s organization was fined $1.6m by a judge after being convicted of tax fraud charges, but the Manhattan district attorney hinted that’s not the end of his investigation into the former president’s businesses. Meanwhile in Washington, the Treasury secretary warned the US government will hit its legal borrowing limit on Thursday and could default in the summer, unless Congress acts to increase it. Republicans controlling the House have said they won’t cooperate unless government spending is cut, ensuring this is going to turn into a big fight at some point.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Joe Biden doesn’t trust his Secret Service detail, according to a new book about his presidency.
      The top House Republican government watchdog is trying to link his investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings with the inquiry into classified documents found at the president’s properties.
      Special counsel Jack Smith wants to talk to two people hired by Trump’s attorneys to look for any secret materials in his possession.
      The US government will hit the legal limit on how much debt it can carry on 19 January, but it should have enough money to operate until at least early June, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said Friday.“I am writing to inform you that beginning on Thursday, January 19, 2023, the outstanding debt of the United States is projected to reach the statutory limit. Once the limit is reached, Treasury will need to start taking certain extraordinary measures to prevent the United States from defaulting on its obligations,” the secretary wrote in a letter to Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy.“While Treasury is not currently able to provide an estimate of how long extraordinary measures will enable us to continue to pay the government’s obligations, it is unlikely that cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted before early June.”Republicans in the House have signaled they won’t agree to increase the debt ceiling unless the Biden administration and its Democratic allies in Congress agree to reduce spending, though it remains unclear what areas of the budget the GOP wants to cut. Raising the borrowing limit is one of the few pieces of leverage House Republicans have over the Democrats, but the strategy is not without risks. A failure to increase the ceiling could lead to the United States defaulting on its debt for the first time in its history, likely with serious consequences for the economy.The Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee is attempting to make two alleged scandals into one: the investigation of classified materials found at Joe Biden’s properties, and their inquiry into his son Hunter Biden’s business activities.The committee’s chair James Comer has sent the White House a new demand for information about whether Hunter had access to the garage at Joe Biden’s Delaware residence where it was revealed yesterday some classified material was found:🚨 @RepJamesComer presses the White House about classified docs stashed at Biden’s Wilmington home.We have docs revealing this address appeared on Hunter’s driver’s license as recently as 2018, the same time he was cutting deals with foreign adversaries.Time for answers. pic.twitter.com/663qG3REm4— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) January 13, 2023
      Even before Biden took office, Republicans have been trying to find evidence of corruption in Hunter Biden’s business dealings, and of his father’s involvement. They have had mixed results in doing that, but this week’s revelations that classified materials were found at Biden’s residence and an office he once used in Washington DC have given them new material to attack his administration. Yesterday, the justice department appointed a special counsel to look into the matter.The trial of members of the Proud Boys militia group over their involvement in the January 6 insurrection is continuing in Washington DC, today with testimony from a Capitol police officer.Thomas Loyd’s testimony contains fresh reminders of the violence that day, as Politico reports:Radio transmissions show Capiotl Police leaders pleading with officers to get off the inaugural stage scaffolding, worried it was going to collapse. “If they’re going to lock the capitol down, we can’t be up here when they breach,” someone yells.— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 13, 2023
      “They’re coming and we can’t stop them from breaching,” someone else says on the radio, as police were overwhelmed near the lower west terrace. There were repeated concerns about lack of “hard gear” for officers to defend themselves.— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 13, 2023
      Joe Biden doesn’t trust his Secret Service detail, fearing that some of them remain loyal to Donald Trump, Vox reports, citing a new book about his presidency.“The Fight of His Life” by Chris Whipple chronicles the past two years of Biden’s presidency from a positive perspective, according to Vox, and in particular shows the degree to which he loathes his predecessor. Biden, for instance, believes the White House’s Resolute desk was “tainted” by Trump’s use and unsuccessfully asked to swap it out for one used by Democratic icon Franklin D Roosevelt.When it comes to the Secret Service, he minds what he says around them, believing that agents harbor sympathies for the former president. He also thinks they lied about an incident where his dog Major bit an agent. Reached by Vox, the White House wouldn’t comment directly on the book’s content. More

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      Rightwing group pours millions in ‘dark money’ into US voter suppression bid

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      Rightwing group pours millions in ‘dark money’ into US voter suppression bid Tax filings reveal advocacy arm of Heritage Foundation spent $5m on lobbying in 2021 to block voting rights in battleground statesThe advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, the powerful conservative thinktank based in Washington, spent more than $5m on lobbying in 2021 as it worked to block federal voting rights legislation and advance an ambitious plan to spread its far-right agenda calling for aggressive voter suppression measures in battleground states.This article was produced in partnership with Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism projectPreviously unreported 2021 tax filings from Heritage Action for America, which operates as the foundation’s activist wing, shows that it spent $5.1m on contracting outside lobbying services. The outlay comes on top of $560,000 the group invested in its own in-house federal lobbying efforts that year, as well as registered lobbying by Heritage Action staffers in at least 24 states.The 990 tax filing was obtained by the watchdog group Documented and shared with the Guardian. It points to the pivotal role that Heritage Action is increasingly playing in shaping the rules that govern US democracy.The efforts help explain the unprecedented tidal wave of restrictive voting laws that spread across Republican-controlled states in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. The Brennan Center reported that more voter suppression laws were passed in 2021 than in any year since it began monitoring voting legislation more than a decade ago.The expenditures also signal a dramatic increase in Heritage Action’s advocacy activities. In 2020, Heritage Action had reported no spending at all on outside lobbying.Republicans filed record number of anti-voting lawsuits in 2022 – reportRead moreHeritage Action, whose board includes the Republican mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, is set up as a 501(c)4 under the US tax code which exempts it from paying federal taxes. It operates as a “dark money” group, avoiding disclosing the sources of its total annual revenue of over $18m.In the past two years the organization through its public messaging has echoed Donald Trump’s lie that US elections are marked by rampant fraud. A private plan prepared by Heritage Action last year set out a two-year, $24m “election integrity” strategy.The plan, obtained by Documented, proposed a two-pronged approach that would work to block moves by Democrats in Congress to bolster voting rights while at the same time pressing Republican-controlled states to impose restrictions on access to the ballot box. It said: “Where Democrats hold power, we must defend against bad policy. Where conservatives and our allies are in power, we must advance changes that protect the lawful votes of Americans.”The Heritage Action plan, which was first reported by the New York Times, is being published by the Guardian for the first time.Download original documentPart of Heritage Action’s two-year strategy is to promote what it calls “model election laws”, focusing initially on eight battleground states: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, Texas and Wisconsin. In a private meeting with donors in Tucson, Arizona, in 2021, the group’s executive director, Jessica Anderson, boasted about the role Heritage Action had played in pressing Republican-controlled legislatures to impose strict restrictions on voting, including limits on mail-in voting and early voting days.In a video of that meeting obtained by Documented, Anderson told the donors that the group acted “quickly and quietly”, bragging that “honestly nobody noticed” their behind-the-scenes influence. Heritage Action staff have registered to lobby in at least two dozen states. Voting rights in 2023: what are the key issues for US democracy?Read moreThe laser-like focus on key swing states like Georgia appears to have had an impact. The New York Times found that one-third of the 68 voting bills filed in Georgia in 2021 contained policy measures and language that aligned closely with proposals from Heritage Action.The group has publicly claimed that it had a hand in advancing 11 voting bills in at least eight states in 2021, though in some cases legislation was passed in only one chamber or went on to be vetoed by the state’s governor.Heritage Foundation, under the auspices of its elections supremo Hans von Spakovsky, curates an “election fraud database”. It claims to expose the errors, omissions and mistakes made by election officials, but it presents incomplete and misleading information and underscores how exceptionally rare fraud is within the US system.Its records stretch back 40 years, a period in which billions of votes have been cast. Yet the database records only 1,402 “proven instances of voter fraud” – a “molecular fraction” of votes cast nationwide, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.The newly disclosed tax filings also show that Heritage Action ramped up its spending on advertising as it sought to influence lawmakers and the public around its controversial voting agenda. In 2021, the organization reported paying $6.1m to outside contractors for “marketing and advertising” – a sharp rise from $1.8m the previous year.Among the top contractors employed by Heritage Action was CRC Advisors, the consulting firm tied to Leonard Leo, a chairman of the Federalist Society who is best known for his decades-long campaign to pack federal courts with rightwing judges. CRC Advisors was paid over $797,000 for “marketing and advertising” in 2021.Some of that ad spending was targeted in Georgia. After that state’s 2021 restrictive voting law caused a backlash from businesses and led Major League Baseball to move the All-Star Game from Georgia to Colorado, Heritage Action spent nearly $1m on TV ads defending the law aired on CNBC and local TV stations.Conservative donors pour ‘dark money’ into case that could upend US voting lawRead moreThe group also spent nearly $500,000 on Georgia TV and digital ads during the MLB All-Star Game, and spent at least $700,000 more on ads supporting the Georgia bill’s passage.On the federal level, Heritage Action also ran ads in West Virginia, Arizona, Montana and New Hampshire urging the Democratic senators in those states to oppose reforming the filibuster to pass democracy reform legislation with a simple majority. “It’s an all-hands-on-deck moment,” Anderson said of potential filibuster changes at the April 2021 donor summit.Heritage Action was formed in 2010 out of the rightwing policy empire embodied in the Heritage Foundation, which dates back to 1973. The foundation was created by Paul Weyrich, a richly networked conservative who wanted to inculcate small government, anti-regulation ideology at both federal and state level.From the start, restricting access to voting was a core part of Weyrich’s mission. In 1980 he infamously articulated his thinking by saying: “I don’t want everybody to vote … Our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”This article was produced in partnership with Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism project. Brendan Fischer is a campaign finance specialist with DocumentedTopicsUS political lobbyingThe fight for democracyUS politicsUS voting rightsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘He’s a coward’: Lucas Kunce on his Senate run – and Hawley running away

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      Interview‘He’s a coward’: Lucas Kunce on his Senate run – and Hawley running away Martin Pengelly in New York Missouri Democrat mounting a second bid for US Senate hammers the Republican incumbent over his actions on January 6Announcing his second bid for US Senate in Missouri, Lucas Kunce needed to hit the ground running. He did so by running an ad targeting the Republican he hopes to defeat, Josh Hawley, for running away from the January 6 rioters he encouraged.Republican Josh Hawley fled January 6 rioters – and Twitter ran with itRead moreThe ad appeared on the second anniversary of the deadly attack on the US Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters. On 6 January 2021, before the mob broke in, Hawley was photographed raising his fist in its direction. The House January 6 committee showed what happened after rioters breached the walls: the senator ran for cover.Hawley has insisted he is “not gonna run” from his political opponents. But Kunce’s ad, showing a fleeing man in a ripped suit, entitled simply Running, attracted national attention.A self-described populist in the midwestern tradition of President Harry S Truman, Kunce told the Guardian the ad “goes back to the reasons why I’ve run the campaign.“What I want to do is change who has power in this country, and take some back for everyday people. Folks in Missouri, they’re tired of career politicians like Josh Hawley just doing things for power for themselves and not caring about Missouri and not caring about the country.“And so that’s why we launched on January 6. It was a seminal moment where Josh Hawley showed he only cares about power for himself. He doesn’t stand for anything. He gets out there when he thinks it’s gonna get him some sort of political power, he’s raising his fist, he’s ‘rah-rah-ing’ the crowd, trying to incite them to do things. And then the second things get real, he’s getting out the back door, running as fast as he can to get away. It shows what a fraud and a coward he is.”Kunce is a military veteran who also worked on international arms control. In his new ad, as in conversation, he takes aim at Hawley’s contention that America has forgotten what it means to be a man, an argument the senator will make at length in May with a book, Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs.Kunce said: “As a marine who ran missions in Iraq, deployed to Afghanistan twice, if any of us had shown that type of cowardice [that Hawley showed on January 6], we would have been court martialed.“Missourians deserve better than someone who’s just going to run. They deserve someone who’s gonna stand for them, fight for them, and that’s what I’m gonna do.”The Hawley campaign responded to the Kunce ad by wielding the most obvious attack line back: Kunce has lost once in Missouri already.An adviser said: “We welcome this desperate woke activist to yet another political race. He just barely finished losing his last one. Maybe he’s running in the wrong state.”Kunce said Hawley’s camp was “obviously worried” because the senator, though thought to be eyeing the Republican presidential nomination, “has never had to run after showing everybody what a fraud and a coward he is. Now he’s got to deal with that.”In Missouri in 2022, the Democratic primary decided who would run for an open Senate seat as the Republican Roy Blunt retired. Kunce lost to Trudy Busch Valentine, a member of the Anheuser-Busch brewing dynasty who was then beaten by Eric Schmitt, the Republican attorney general, in the general election.Asked what he learned, Kunce said he had “shown people that no matter how hard it is, I’m not going to take money from the wrong folks. I’m only going to owe the people that took care of my family, everyday Missourians.“We took no money from corporate Pacs, no federal lobbyists, no big pharma, no big fossil fuel executives. The list is pretty long. And we did that because we want to show that in America everyday people, an everyday person like me, who doesn’t come from connections, doesn’t come from money, can get elected and can do it without corrupting themselves. It’s an uphill battle, but I think it’s worth it.“Josh Hawley does understand that when he got elected, he took millions of dollars from banks who wanted to control him. His dad was the president of the bank, he had all sorts of connections. And we provide a very good contrast to that.”01:08Kunce raised more than $5m in 2022 but Valentine, who would ultimately spend more than $16m of her own money, won comfortably. Kunce said: “What we learned in the primary was that money is critical in this political environment. And so we had to figure out a way to raise money without selling out.”Josh Hawley’s schooldays: ‘He made popcorn to watch the Iraq invasion’Read moreHe says “we did that. By the end, we had a record-breaking grassroots fundraising operation. And the beautiful thing is that all that work we did last time, none of it’s gone. The people are still there behind us. We’re growing it out even more, so we’re going to be very formidable this time. We have an operation that can run us all the way through November [2024].” In most minds, Missouri is a solidly red state. Asked why he thinks a Democrat can win there, Kunce cited recent ballot measures including “expanding Medicaid, increasing the minimum wage $5 over the federal level, passing medical and then recreational legalisation of marijuana, overturning right to work” anti-union laws.These, he said, were all “things that Josh Hawley did not stand for, that I do stand for. And … Missourians are willing in those situations to flip their vote.“In 2016, probably the reddest year of all time in Missouri, Donald Trump won here by 17 points. But the Democratic US Senate candidate, Jason Kander, he came within three points of winning.“I think we’re trending in the right direction. We just need to be able to capture the energy of everyday people trying to take back power for themselves, which clearly is my mission, and which we’ll be able to do.”TopicsUS SenateUS CongressUS elections 2024US politicsDemocratsMissouriinterviewsReuse this content More

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      Bills to regulate toxic ‘forever chemicals’ died in Congress – with Republican help

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      Bills to regulate toxic ‘forever chemicals’ died in Congress – with Republican help Lobbying industry flexed muscle to ensure bills that aimed to set stricter standards on PFAS compounds went nowhere All legislation aimed at regulating toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” died in the Democratic-controlled US Congress last session as companies flexed their lobbying muscle and bills did not gain enough Republican support to overcome a Senate filibuster.The failure comes after public health advocates and Democratic lawmakers expressed optimism at the legislative session’s outset that bills that would protect the public from dangerous exposure to the chemicals could gain sufficient bipartisan support.Among proposals that failed were bans on PFAS in food packaging, textiles and cosmetics, and measures that would have set stricter cleanup standards.Republican-controlled House pushes for new abortion restrictionsRead more“[The chemicals] industry is basically battening down the hatches, digging their trenches for defense, and shooting their salvos to stop anything that would significantly control PFAS,” said Erik Olson, the senior strategic director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group.PFAS are a class of about 12,000 compounds used to make products resist water, stains and heat. They are known as “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down, and they have been linked to cancer, high cholesterol, liver disease, kidney disease, fetal complications and other serious health problems.The Environmental Protection Agency this year found that virtually no level of exposure to two types of PFAS compounds in drinking water is safe, and public health advocates say the entire chemical class is toxic and dangerous. Because of their health risks, no chemical in recent years has drawn as much regulatory and legislative attention at the state and federal level. But the chemical industry records billions of dollars in PFAS sales annually, and has deployed lobbyists to protect its revenues.Of more than 50 bills that focused on PFAS introduced by Congress last session, only two minor proposals that in effect provide subsidies to industry became law, and only three made it out of committee. Several provisions included in the National Defense Authorization Act that order the military to take steps to clean up widespread PFAS contamination on its bases also became law.The failure of the PFAS Action Act amid heavy lobbying is emblematic of the difficulty in passing meaningful legislation. The bill was perhaps the most feared by the industry because it would have imposed tighter air and water pollution limits on PFAS while making the chemicals’ producers and users financially responsible for cleanup. Industry “pulled out the stops to kill it”, Olson said.The bill passed the House with bipartisan support in 2021, but stalled in the Senate’s environment and public works committee. The Republican senator Shelley Moore Capito, the committee’s ranking GOP member, had in 2019 introduced a bill that included many of the same provisions.“I’m proud to lead this bipartisan legislation,” Capito said at the time, adding that it would allow the EPA to hold PFAS polluters accountable.However, she did not support the legislation this session.“We’ve heard from local stakeholders and studied the real-life impacts of this complex issue, which is why, as we continue to work to address PFAS contamination across the country, the uncertainty and unintended consequences of any policy proposal must be taken into account,” Capito said.At least 43 companies or industry organizations lobbied on the PFAS Action Act, federal records show. Lobbying records that include the bill submitted by the American Chemistry Council trade group, which represents chemical makers, total about $17m, though the portion of that which was spent on the act is not publicly available.Meanwhile, Capito has received about $180,000 from the chemical industry since 2017, and represents a state with a DuPont factory that is responsible for extensive PFAS contamination. DuPont lobbying records from the last session that include the PFAS Action Act total about $2.5m, though it is not clear what portion of that was spent on the bill.The EPA this year used its authority to administratively enact pieces of the PFAS Action Act, but the proposed bill went further than what the agency implemented, and the rules could be dismantled by a Republican administration.Other bills were less intensively lobbied by industry because they had little chance of gaining enough Republican Senate support, despite taking what public health advocates say are very basic steps to protect the public from dangerous exposures to the chemicals.Among those were the No PFAS in Cosmetics Act and Keep Food Packaging Safe From PFAS Act. Both were introduced in the House by Congresswoman Debbie Dingell. The food package bill did not make it through committee but Dingell attempted to include the provisions in the government funding bill.It was ultimately cut from the final spending bill. A spokesperson told the Guardian Dingell was “disappointed” the legislation was not included, but said she planned to reintroduce it next session. With the Republicans in control of the House, it is unlikely to move.Though the cosmetics legislation met a similar fate, Dingell noted that a provision in the spending bill directs the Department of Health and Human Services to analyze whether PFAS can be used safely in cosmetics.The failures come as a growing number of states, including California and New York, have banned the use of PFAS in cosmetics, textiles and food packaging. Meanwhile, a new Maine ban on all PFAS in products except those that qualify as “unavoidable” uses goes into effect in 2030.The lack of Republican support for basic measures at the federal level can be explained by industry’s philosophy that giving public health advocates an inch on PFAS restrictions will lead to them taking a mile, Olson said.“There is concern from industry folks that any admission that there’s a problem with PFAS could come back to haunt them – why is it OK in one thing but bad in another?” Olson said.TopicsPFASUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      Can George Santos outrun his lies? Politics Weekly America

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      Last week, the much-talked-about George Santos, of Long Island, New York, was sworn into office. The Democrats and even some Republicans think he should have resigned after he admitted to lying about a lot of things during his campaign.
      So who is the real George Santos? How likely is it that he’ll see out his full term in office? And does his success tell us more about the state of US politics than it does an individual’s misgivings? Jonathan Freedland and Will Bredderman of the Daily Beast discuss the man behind the lies

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      Archive: CNN, NBC, MSNBC Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to theguardian.com/supportpodcasts More

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      White House pledges to cooperate with special counsel over classified documents – as it happened

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      Here’s the Guardian’s David Smith on what little we know about the reports that emerged yesterday of a second batch of classified materials found somewhere linked to Joe Biden, and how it compares to what was found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort:Joe Biden was facing fresh scrutiny over his handling of government secrets on Wednesday after a second batch of classified materials was reportedly found at a location linked to him.The White House was already on the defensive after revelations that classified documents were discovered last November in an office used by Biden after he served as US vice-president. On Tuesday he said he was “surprised to learn” of their existence.Then came a report from the NBC News network, followed by other media outlets, that said the president’s aides had found another set of classified documents at a separate location. The classification level, number and precise location of the material was not immediately clear, NBC News added.Biden under scrutiny as second batch of classified documents reportedly foundRead moreAttorney general Merrick Garland appointed former US attorney Robert Hur as special counsel to handle the inquiry into classified material found at Joe Biden’s home and former office. That means there are now two special counsels looking into the conduct of American presidents, the other being Jack Smith, who is overseeing the investigation of former president Donald Trump for the government secrets found at Mar-a-Lago, the January 6 insurrection and the broader plot to overturn the 2020 election. The decisions of Hur and Smith could have major consequences for American politics in the months to come.Here’s what else happened today:
      House Republicans said they’d mount their own investigation of the classified files found at the president’s properties.
      The House Democratic leader called on George Santos to resign for lying about his qualifications. Speaker Kevin McCarthy says the chamber’s ethics body will handle the complaints against the Republican lawmaker.
      Inflation is on the decline in the United States, according to government data released today.
      Hunter Biden has issues that are more significant than Democrats would like to admit, but may add up to less than Republicans believe, the New York Times reports.
      The daily sparring match is ongoing in the White House briefing room, as press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre parries questions from reporters wanting to know more about the classified documents inquiry.As the Guardian’s David Smith reports, Jean-Pierre wouldn’t get into whether Joe Biden would consent to an interview with investigators:Asked if Biden is willing to be interviewed by federal investigators, Jean-Pierre replies: “I’m just not going to get into hypotheticals… The president has said he takes classified documents and information very seriously.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) January 12, 2023
      But she said the president does not know what was in the documents:Jean-Pierre on Biden: “He was surprised that the records were found. He does not know what was in them. That hasn’t changed.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) January 12, 2023
      And didn’t have much more to say besides that:Jean-Pierre: “I’m not going to get into the decision that was made by the Attorney General… This is a president who believes in the independence of the justice department.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) January 12, 2023
      Here’s more from Richard Luscombe on what we know about Robert Hur, the just-appointed special counsel tasked with getting to the bottom of how classified documents ended up in Joe Biden’s home and former office:Robert Hur, appointed on Thursday as special counsel in the case of Joe Biden’s retention of classified documents while out of office, is according to his LinkedIn profile a “seasoned trial lawyer, former supreme court law clerk and former US attorney … with decades of experience in government and in private practice”.An appointee of Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, the 50-year-old was US attorney for Maryland from 2018 to 2021 before becoming a partner at Gibson Dunn, a Washington law firm specializing in white-collar “enforcement, investigations and litigation”.Andrew McCabe, a former FBI deputy director turned CNN law enforcement analyst, said Hur was a “well-informed, industrious, hard-working guy”.Robert Hur: special counsel in Biden documents case was Trump appointeeRead moreA top Republican government watchdog in Congress announced he would open an investigation into the classified documents found at Joe Biden’s home and former office.“With or without a special counsel, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee will investigate President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents and the Swamp’s efforts to hide this information from the American people,” House oversight committee chair James Comer said in a statement.“The National Archives and Records Administration, the White House, and the Department of Justice were aware of the classified documents stashed in a closet at the Penn Biden Center before the election, and now we’ve learned classified documents kept in President Biden’s garage were found in December. There are many questions about why the Biden Administration kept this matter a secret from the public, who had access to the office and the residence, and what information is contained in these classified documents. Republicans will push for transparency, accountability, and answers for the American people.”Comer is leading the House GOP’s investigations of the Biden administration. Yesterday, he demanded records from the Treasury related to the president’s son Hunter Biden and other family members, as well as the testimony of former Twitter executives involved in the response to the publication of stories related to Hunter’s laptop in 2020.This is what George Santos’s days are like in the Capitol.He walks out of his office to a mob of reporters all wanting to know the same thing: will he resign after admitting to making up big parts of his resume? Yesterday, he said, he would not, but today, he caused some confusion by saying he’d do so if 142 people requested it. ABC News caught the moment:Rep Santos tells reporters “If 142 people ask for me to resign, I’ll resign.” pic.twitter.com/Q4jBHFUTVh— Lalee Ibssa (@LaleeIbssa) January 12, 2023
      According to NBC News, he appeared later in the day on Trump confidante Steve Bannon’s podcast to clarify that he would resign at the request of the 142,000 people who voted for him in the Republican’s New York district.House speaker Kevin McCarthy would consider releasing more surveillance footage from the January 6 assault on the US Capitol, despite the objections of police and the justice department, Politico reports.“I think the American public should actually see all what happened instead of a report that’s written for a political basis,” the Republican House leader said at his press conference today.Some footage has already been made public as part of court cases or the January 6 committee’s investigation, but much of the 14,000 hours of footage recorded by surveillance cameras that day remains held by Congress, Politico says. Both the justice department and Capitol police have objected to past efforts to release more of the video, saying it could help plan another attack.There are now two special counsels investigating two American presidents – one current, one former – related to the discovery of classified documents in their possession. The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe takes a look at what kind of trouble Joe Biden and Donald Trump could be in:The discovery of documents from the Biden-Obama administration in at least two locations linked to Joe Biden has been greeted with dismay by Democrats and glee by Republicans, given the extensive legal troubles that Donald Trump faces for taking classified papers to his Florida resort.Republicans believe the incident shows that Biden has committed the same transgression as the former president, and argue that the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago and subsequent investigation were politically motivated point-scoring.But Democrats insist the two incidents are different legally, while acknowledging that they present a political problem for Biden that allows Republicans to go on the offensive.Classified documents: how do the Trump and Biden cases differ?Read moreThe Biden administration says it will cooperate with special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into the classified documents found at the president’s Delaware home and at a former office in Washington DC:Statement from the White House on continued cooperation with the Justice Department and the Special Counsel: pic.twitter.com/pVS46b2KII— Ian Sams (@IanSams46) January 12, 2023
      Special counsel Robert Hur has released a statement following his appointment by attorney general Merrick Garland.“I will conduct the assigned investigation with fair, impartial, and dispassionate judgment. I intend to follow the facts swiftly and thoroughly, without fear or favor, and will honor the trust placed in me to perform this service,” Hur said.Merrick Garland closed his speech with a few words of support for Robert Hur.“I am confident that Mr Hur will carry out his responsibility in an even-handed and urgent matter, and in accordance with the highest traditions of this department,” he said.He ignored a question from a reporter about whether he’d spoken with Biden about the investigation.In his brief speech, Merrick Garland gave a timeline of how the document discovery unfolded behind the scenes.He confirmed that last November, he ask John Lausch, the Trump-appointed US attorney for the northern district of Illinois, to look into whether the materials found in an office formerly used by Biden in Washington DC warranted the appointment of a special counsel.The following month, a personal lawyer for Biden informed Lausch that more classified items were found in Biden’s garage at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, Garland said. These were turned over to the FBI. Garland also noted that Lausch was informed this morning by Biden’s attorney that another classified document was found at the president’s Wilmington home.Last week, Lausch informed Garland that he believed the matter warranted such an appointment, but he was unable to fill the role himself. Garland chose Robert Hur, another Trump appointee who stepped down as US attorney for Maryland after Biden took office, for the role.“I strongly believe that the normal processes of this department can handle all investigations with integrity,” Garland said. “But under the regulations, the extraordinary circumstances here require the appointment of a special counsel for this matter.”Merrick Garland named the special counsel as Robert Hur, who served as US attorney for Maryland from 2018 to 2021.He was nominated to that role by Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump.Attorney general Merrick Garland has announced the appointment of a special counsel to handle the inquiry into classified documents found at Joe Biden’s properties.Follow this blog for more.Oliver Milman reports on a key issue occupying Washington this week…Joe Biden has ruled out any ban of gas stoves in the US, following a furious backlash from Republicans to suggestions they could be phased out due to their contribution to indoor air pollution linked to childhood asthma and other conditions.Biden “does not support banning gas stoves”, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said on Wednesday. Jean-Pierre added that the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the federal agency responsible for consumer safety, “is not banning gas stoves. I just want to be very clear on that.”The president’s intervention follows the possibility of a ban raised by Richard Trumka Jr, a CPSC commissioner, who called gas stoves a “hidden hazard” and said any option restricting their ongoing sale was “on the table”. In December, Trumka said that “we need to be talking about regulating gas stoves, whether that’s drastically improving emissions or banning gas stoves entirely”.Gas stoves have become a target for public health advocates, as well as climate campaigners, due to their leakage even when turned off of pollutants such as carbon monoxide and formaldehyde. The biggest concern is over their emission of nitrogen dioxide, which can trigger cardiovascular problems and cause the inflammation of airways.Read on…Biden rules out gas-stove ban after Republican backlashRead moreHere’s a thought-provoking lunchtime, pre-DoJ presser read from Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, about Joe Biden’s classified-document problem, how it compares to Donald Trump’s retention of such papers and why the Espionage Act itself is the problem…With Joe Biden now embroiled in his own classified documents controversy, partisan commentators will surely have a field day playing the tired old game of “no, you endangered national security.” Instead, I’d like to focus on the real issues: the overly broad and often-abused Espionage Act and the massive, draconian secrecy system that does far more harm than good in the United States.This should be yet another wake up call that both the classification system and the Espionage Act need a dramatic overhaul. The question is — as more secret documents are found at a second Biden location and Donald Trump’s special prosecutor continues to work — will anyone listen?Now, before someone accuses me of “both side-ing” the separate Trump and Biden scandals here: no, they are not the same. Trump had mountains of secret documents he purposefully absconded with that he both refused to give back and arguably lied to authorities about. Whereas it seems Biden’s team actually alerted the authorities that the president had them in his office and is fully cooperating in their return.But here’s the thing: that doesn’t mean Biden didn’t potentially violate the Espionage Act – at least according to some legal experts.That’s because the Espionage Act is incredibly broad and spares no one.Read on…Joe Biden may have broken the Espionage Act. It’s so broad that you may have, too | Trevor TimmRead moreA growing number of Republicans are calling for George Santos to resign, though as yet party leaders have not moved against the newly elected congressman whose resumé has been shown to be largely fictional and whose campaign finances are the subject of formal complaints.Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the House, had stern words for Santos and Republican leaders when he spoke to reporters earlier:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}He’s a complete and total fraud. He lied to the voters of the third congressional district in New York. He deceived and connived his way into Congress, and is now the responsibility of House Republicans to do something about it.
      “This is not a partisan issue, but it is an issue that Republicans need to handle. Clean up your house. You can start with George Santos.”Six New York Republicans have called for Santos to quit. Santos has said he will not.Of a move earlier this week by two New York Democrats, Daniel Goldman and Ritchie Torres, to hand-deliver to Santos their request for an investigation of his campaign finances, Jeffries said: “I was well-aware of their decision to do so.“But any matters before the ethics committee are before the ethics committee, and should be resolved by members of the ethics committee.”Kevin McCarthy would seem – up to a point – to agree. The Republican House speaker told reporters today: “What I find is that voters have elected George Santos. If there is a concern he will go through ethics. If there is something that is found it will be dealt with in that manner. But they [voters] have a voice in this process.”Read on:More Republicans call for George Santos to resign over fictional resuméRead moreAttorney general Merrick Garland has a public address planned for 1.15pm eastern time after a second batch of classified materials was found at Joe Biden’s house in Delaware. Garland may indirectly respond to calls from Republicans to appoint a special prosecutor to handle the matter, as he did for the government secrets found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Follow this blog for the latest from his press conference as it happens.Here’s what else has happened so far today:
      The House Democratic leader has called on George Santos to resign for lying about his qualifications. Speaker Kevin McCarthy says the chamber’s ethics body will handle his case.
      Inflation is on the decline in the United States, according to government data released today.
      Hunter Biden has issues that are more significant than Democrats would like to admit, but may add up to less than Republicans believe, the New York Times reports.
      The trial of five members of the Proud Boys militia group has started today in Washington DC, Politico reports. The group is facing seditious conspiracy charges related to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol:NOW: The Proud Boys seditious conspiracy jury is in the courtroom and being sworn in. DOJ opening arguments should begin momentarily.— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 12, 2023
      MCCULLOUGH starts with reciting history of peaceful transfer of power”On Jan. 6, 2021, these men — Enrique Tariro, Ethan Nordean, Joe Biggs, Zacahry Rehl and Dominic Pezzola — sought to change that history.”“These men did not stand back. They did not stand by. They mobilized”— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 12, 2023
      In November, the founder of the Oath Keepers, another militia group involved in the insurrection, was found guilty of the same charge by a federal jury, along with a co-defendant.Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes found guilty of seditious conspiracyRead more More