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      Progressive Katie Porter launches bid for Dianne Feinstein’s US Senate seat

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      Progressive Katie Porter launches bid for Dianne Feinstein’s US Senate seatDemocratic congresswoman announces candidacy for seat held by Feinstein, 89, who has not yet said if she will retire Democratic representative Katie Porter, the progressive former law professor known for her sharp questioning of witnesses and her use of a whiteboard during hearings, said she will seek the California Senate seat currently held by Dianne Feinstein.Feinstein, a fellow Democrat, is the oldest member of the chamber, and has not yet said if she will retire.“Especially in times like these, California needs a warrior in Washington,” Porter said in a video posted on Twitter. “That’s exactly why I’m announcing my candidacy for the United States Senate in 2024.”Porter was first elected to Congress in 2018 and won a tight race for re-election to her newly redrawn southern California district in November. She said in the video that she had “challenged the status quo” in Washington, taking on “big banks,” Wall Street and the pharmaceutical industry. She wants to ban members of Congress from stock trading.“To win these fights, it’s time for new leadership in the US Senate,” she said.California needs a warrior in the Senate—to stand up to special interests, fight the dangerous imbalance in our economy, and hold so-called leaders like Mitch McConnell accountable for rigging our democracy.Today, I’m proud to announce my candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 2024. pic.twitter.com/X1CSE8T12B— Katie Porter (@katieporteroc) January 10, 2023
      Feinstein, 89, has faced questions about her age and memory and whether she will seek another term. She has not announced whether she will seek re-election in 2024, though she is widely expected to retire.“Everyone is, of course, welcome to throw their hat in the ring, and I will make an announcement concerning my plans for 2024 at the appropriate time,” Feinstein said in a statement on Tuesday. She added that she is currently “focused on ensuring California has all the resources it needs” to deal with deadly storms hitting the state.Feinstein won her sixth election in 2018 and has been a force for Democrats, serving for a time as chair of the intelligence and judiciary committees. But she also has seen pushback from Democrats who view her as too bipartisan at a time when politics is more polarized and her state is increasingly liberal.In 2020, Feinstein announced she would step down as the top Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee. The move followed criticism that she was too friendly with Republicans during supreme court confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett. That included an embrace of the Republican chairman, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, at the conclusion of the hearings and kind words for what she called a job well done.Feinstein has defended her performance and said in 2021 that she planned to serve her full term, even as there was open speculation and discussion about the future of the seat. Governor Gavin Newson said in 2021 that he would appoint a Black woman to replace Feinstein, who is white, if she were to retire early.Porter, 49, was a consumer protection attorney before her election to the House, and she has earned a reputation for her tough questioning of chief executives and other witnesses at congressional hearings – often using a whiteboard to break down information.Porter’s media savvy was again on display during the recent meltdown in the US House over the election of a new speaker. As Republicans argued, Porter was seen sitting in the chamber, disinterestedly, reading a book on “the subtle art” of not caring about what’s happening.TopicsDemocratsCaliforniaHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressUS SenateUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Ex-secretary of state George Shultz was besotted by Theranos fraudster Holmes, book says

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      Ex-secretary of state George Shultz was besotted by Theranos fraudster Holmes, book saysHe was either ‘corrupt’, ‘in love’ or had ‘completely lost’ his mental edge, says grandson who blew whistle on Holmes’s scheme Former US secretary of state George Shultz’s support for Elizabeth Holmes and her fraudulent blood testing company, Theranos, which devastated his family and caused a bitter feud with his grandson, receives fresh scrutiny in a biography published on Tuesday.Year of the tech grifter: will Silicon Valley ever learn from its mistakes? Read moreShultz was Ronald Reagan’s top diplomat at the end of the cold war. Before that, he was secretary of the treasury and secretary of labor under Richard Nixon. He is now the subject of In the Nation’s Service, written by Philip Taubman, a former New York Times reporter.Shultz joined the Theranos board of directors in 2011.Taubman recounts how Shultz – then in his 90s and with no biomedical expertise – was impressed by Holmes’s startup and its promise to revolutionise blood testing. He helped the young entrepreneur form a board of directors and raise money from heavyweight investors including Rupert Murdoch.“Shultz repeatedly told friends that Holmes was brilliant,” Taubman writes. “Over time, his associates grew alarmed, fearing that his enthusiasm was colored by personal affection for Holmes. He talked by phone with her almost every day and invited her to join Shultz family Christmas dinners. She encouraged his attention by leaning in close to him when they were seated together on sofas.”Dismissing scepticism regarding Holmes’s claim to have come up with a quick and easy blood test that would dramatically simplify healthcare, Shultz encouraged his grandson, Tyler Shultz, to work a summer internship at Theranos and become a full-time employee.But Tyler Shultz came to suspect that Holmes was overselling her technology and took his concerns to the Wall Street Journal. Suspecting the younger Shultz was the whistleblower, Holmes set her lawyers on him and put him under surveillance. Alarmed, Tyler Shultz went to his grandfather for help.Taubman writes: “Instead of hugging his grandson and disowning Holmes, Shultz equivocated. He tried unsuccessfully to mediate between Tyler and Holmes.”When that effort failed, Shultz refused to cut ties with the businesswoman. He told Tyler: “I’m over 90 years old. I’ve seen a lot in my time, I’ve been right almost every time and I know I’m right about this.”Tyler felt betrayed. In a 2020 podcast, Thicker Than Water, he imagined three reasons why his grandfather sided with Holmes.“One is that you were corrupt and have invested so much money in Theranos that you were willing to make ethical compromises in order to see return on your investment. The second is that you are in love with Elizabeth.“So no matter how many times she lies to you, no matter how many patients she injures and no matter how badly she harms your family, you will put her above everything else. The last possibility is that you have completely lost your mental edge and despite an abundance of data showing that she was a criminal, you somehow are incapable of connecting these very, very big dots.”Taubman also suggests motives: financial gain, as Shultz’s holdings in Theranos stock soared before Holmes fell to disgrace, peaking at $50m; or personal loyalty to Holmes, just as Shultz showed to Richard Nixon during the Watergate crisis and Reagan during the Iran-contra affair.The author writes: “Shultz’s performance left his family broken. Saddened friends and associates attributed the conduct to his advanced age.”In 2018, Holmes was indicted on charges involving defrauding investors and deceiving patients and doctors. Last year, she was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison, made a symbol of Silicon Valley ambition that veered into deceit.Shultz sought to heal the rift with his grandson, stating that he had “made me proud” and shown “great moral character”. Tyler Shultz said his grandfather never apologised but their relationship “started to heal”. Taubman notes that the Holmes issue “remained unfinished business” when Shultz died in 2021, at the age of 100.The biography was written over 10 years and draws on exclusive access to Shultz’s papers. It explores his involvement in the summits between Reagan and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that ended the cold war, the Iran-contra affair and Internal Revenue Service investigations into Nixon’s “enemies”.TopicsBooksTheranosUS politicsRepublicansUS crimenewsReuse this content More

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      Brazil capital attack complicates US relationship with Bolsonaro

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      Brazil capital attack complicates US relationship with BolsonaroThe former Brazilian president has taken up residence in Florida, and some Democrats are calling for his visa to be revoked The future of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who flew to Florida in his last days in office, is emerging as a potential diplomatic issue between Brazil and the US amid calls for his expulsion for inciting insurrection.Bolsonaro has distanced himself from the mob which stormed government buildings in the capital, Brasília, on Sunday, denying accusations from his successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, that he had encouraged the rioters from the US.‘They were in ecstasy’: how Bolsonaro mob’s orgy of violence rocked BrasíliaRead moreLeading Democrats have called for Bolsonaro’s visa to be revoked, so that he would not be allowed to use Florida as a base for destabilising Lula’s government.“Bolsonaro should not be in Florida,” Joaquín Castro, a Democratic congressman, told CNN. “The United States should not be a refuge for this authoritarian who has inspired domestic terrorism in Brazil. He should be sent back to Brazil.”Joe Biden issued a joint statement on Monday with the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, condemning “the January 8 attacks on Brazil’s democracy and on the peaceful transfer of power”.“We stand with Brazil as it safeguards its democratic institutions. Our governments support the free will of the people of Brazil,” the statement said, adding that the three leaders looked forward to working with President Lula.The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told journalists on Monday that there had been no contact between the administration and Bolsonaro, and the US had yet to receive any requests from the Brazilian government related to the former president.“Of course, if we did receive such requests, we treat them the way we always do. We treat them seriously,” Sullivan said.Democrats are concerned that Florida, run by a hardline Republican governor and presidential contender, Ron DeSantis, is increasingly becoming a hotbed for far-right putschists. Recent attempted coups in Haiti and Venezuela have been plotted from there and the state has become the permanent home of Donald Trump, a close Bolsonaro ally who continues his refusal to acknowledge his own election defeat in 2020, at his Mar-a-Lago resort.The Washington insurrection by Trump supporters on 6 January 2021 is widely seen as a model for the Brasília attacks, and a top Trump aide, Steve Bannon, has been linked to the Bolsonaro family, spreading false claims on social media alleging that last year’s Brazilian presidential election was rigged and referring to the Brazilian rioters as “freedom fighters”.“There’s a kind of hotbed of far-right communities there, that are clearly building on each other,” said a US congressional aide familiar with discussions on the unfolding situation in Brazil. “Governor DeSantis and former president Trump’s presence at Mar-a-Lago have both made Florida a place where these things seem to happen, so I wouldn’t be surprised if any of the planning for this had happened in Florida.”Republicans, including Trumpists, have largely stayed silent on the Brasília riot, with the exception of a Pennsylvania congressman, Brian Fitzpatrick, a member of the House foreign affairs committee, who condemned the violent attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power. Fitzpatrick said on Twitter he looked forward to working with Lula.Bolsonaro is reported to be staying in Kissimmee, near Orlando’s Disney World, in the vacation home of a retired Brazilian martial arts star, José Aldo, part of a resort condominium near a busy highway. On Monday he was reported to have been admitted to hospital, complaining of “severe abdominal pains”.Bolsonaro arrived in Florida on 30 December when he was still president, in which case he could have entered on an A-1 visa reserved for foreign leaders. The state department said on Monday it could not comment on individual cases, but said in general if a foreign official entered the US on an A-1 visa and then ceased to be engaged on official business, it would be the responsibility of that official to leave within 30 days, or be subject to removal by the Department of Homeland Security.The Brazilian government inquiry into the Brasília insurrection is also likely to focus on the role of Anderson Torres, Bolsonaro’s justice minister who was in charge of security in Brasília, who was also in Orlando over the weekend. Torres, who was fired on Sunday, claimed to be there on a family holiday and to have had no contact with Bolsonaro.If Brazil’s supreme court issued an arrest warrant for Bolsonaro and he then refuses to return to Brazil to give himself up, Brazil could issue an Interpol red notice prompting his arrest by US federal agents. Bolsonaro could then try to fight extradition and seek asylum in US courts, potentially triggering a prolonged legal battle.TopicsJair BolsonaroFloridaBrazilUS politicsAmericasLuiz Inácio Lula da SilvaInterpolnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden finally heads to border as critics condemn his migrant crackdown

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      Biden finally heads to border as critics condemn his migrant crackdown Advocates attack president’s failure to uphold campaign pledges ahead of first visit to southern border since he took officeUnder pressure to address a surge of migrants at the US-Mexico border, Joe Biden announced a far-reaching crackdown on migrants seeking asylum last week, expanding the use of a controversial public health measure known as Title 42 to restrict people from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela from illegally entering the US, while offering those legally seeking relief a new pathway to America.Before the president’s first trip to the US-Mexico border since he took office in 2020, immigration advocates condemned the Biden administration’s decision to expand Title 42 as disheartening and a failure to uphold his campaign promises. They took some solace in the creation of a legal pathway to asylum for those in four countries, but still, for them, Biden’s actions were not enough – they leave out other migrants, and the parole program is beset by requirements that impose significant barriers to migrants without access to resources, perpetuating inequities within the US immigration system.In other words, immigration advocates say, the cost of expanded expulsion of migrants under the guise of public health without a clear path to asylum outweighs the promise of expanded refugee access and a legal outlet for asylum. “For a lot of us working in immigration justice, at the start of the administration, there was incredible hope that Title 42 would end and push forward to re-establish access to asylum,” the director of the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Justice Campaign, Alex Miller, said. “We’ve been disappointed.”The Biden administration’s so-called “carrot and stick” approach aims to deter the historic-high millions of migrants fleeing persecution from their home countries and seeking US asylum from entering the country illegally. Federal figures from the 2022 fiscal year show that US border agents stopped migrants more than 2m times along the southern border, setting an all-time record. They turned migrants away under the Title 42 provision more than 1m times.“The problem is the carrot is not universally accessible,” Miller added. “Legal access to asylum will be limited to those who are the right nationalities, have the right means and support, to apply for parole … The sticks they are offering are restricting access, and that’s not a fair trade.”Under the Biden administration’s new policy, if migrants from those countries pass background checks, buy a plane ticket, obtain financial sponsorship, and meet other requirements, they would be allowed to legally enter under the “parole program”. They would be authorized to live and work in the US for two years.But immigration advocates worry about the Department of Homeland Security’s proposed rule – which they say is similar to the Donald Trump White House’s “transit ban” – because it would make migrants seeking asylum ineligible if they failed to seek protection in a third country before reaching the US and if they “circumvent available, established pathways to lawful migration,” as homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last week.They also worried that the parole program’s requirements – modeled after the administration’s approach to refugees fleeing Afghanistan, Venezuela, and Ukraine – impose barriers to migrants who lack the resources to buy flights and find a financial sponsor.On Twitter, United We Dream, an immigrant youth-led rights group, slammed Biden’s new policy “a racist and classist attack” on migrants. United We Dream’s deputy director of federal advocacy, Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, said in a statement that the Biden administration’s expansion of Title 42 would hurt “the same people seeking asylum that they purport to protect”.The American Civil Liberties Union’s director of border strategies, Jonathan Blazer, said in a statement that the Biden administration’s “knee-jerk expansion of Title 42 will put more lives in grave danger”, adding that his plan “ties his administration to the poisonous anti-immigrant policies of the Trump era instead of restoring fair access to asylum protections”.“His commitments to people seeking safety will ring utterly hollow if he moves forward in substituting one illegal anti-asylum Trump policy for another,” Blazer said.Miller told the Guardian that the administration’s new proposals include allowing asylum seekers to use an app in English and Spanish to schedule appointments. That, the administration argues, will reduce “wait times and crowds at the US port of entry and allow for safe, orderly, and humane processing”. Miller said that effort makes the legal asylum seeking process harder for migrants who lack technological access and speak indigenous dialects beyond Spanish as well as for those who cannot obtain legal representation to help them navigate the process.Biden has said that Congress needs to enact a more comprehensive immigration reform. In the interim, the administration’s new parole process, which he described as “safe, orderly” and humane, would “make things better but will not fix the border problem completely”.The National Immigration Law Center’s vice-president of law and policy, Lisa Graybill, told the Guardian that while the administration’s creation of the asylum that gives 30,000 people access is better than nothing, its overall approach reflects seeing immigration enforcement and creating outlets for asylum as a “zero-sum game”. It’s a mistake presidents and politicians have made before, she said.She added that Biden had been “following an old playbook that does not work” by allocating resources toward enforcement rather than creating a “humane and orderly processing system that is built around recognizing the right to asylum instead of violating it”. Instead, the parole program as designed, she said, will hurt impoverished migrants and those who fled their countries in haste without meeting all requirements, acting as barriers to even those who have legitimate asylum claims while helping middle and higher income migrants with access to resources.The chief adviser for policy and partnerships at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Angela Kelley, said that Biden’s creation of the parole program was “smart” and reflected an attempt to use the “tools in his toolbox and use them in more creative ways”. She pointed out that the Biden administration aimed to triple the number of refugees resettled seeking asylum from Latin American and Caribbean countries. Yet, she added, the outdated US immigration laws have not kept up with who qualifies for asylum, such as those fleeing the damaging effects of climate change.“That’s the difference maker: under Trump, it was all about kicking out people – they were systematic in dismantling the refugee program, legal immigration channels of people coming for employment for families, for students. That’s not the approach of the Biden administration,” Kelley said, noting that it will take time to see the effects Biden’s actions will take on the migration system. “They’re restoring all of that. The unfortunate continued reliance on Title 42 is a monkey on their back that they have to figure out how to shake and use the resources you have … to try [to] manage the migration of people the best you can.”Title 42’s future is uncertain as the US supreme court in December stopped Biden’s administration from ending the program to give the justices more time to weigh in on whether states have the legal grounds to intervene in an ongoing case over the program.Kelley, who had previously done immigration work for Biden and the Barack Obama White House, saw the expansion of its Title 42 program as “worrisome” for vulnerable migrants who would be sent back to dangerous conditions in Mexico. She noted that by creating legal pathways to asylum, the administration is trying to “to ease the pressures” at the US border in the hope that they wouldn’t need the pandemic program any longer.“What is heartbreaking is that in an effort to limit the number of people who are coming, you are turning away asylum seekers, who are the migrants you want to protect,” Kelley said.Immigration advocates and Biden agree that long-term changes needed to come from Congress – a questionable prospect given that the Republican-controlled House struggled to elect its speaker, and past bipartisan efforts at immigration reform had also failed.Even so, some advocates say now it’s a question of where resources are sent: They called for more resources to be directed toward assisting nonprofits and NGO groups working with asylum seekers at the border, hiring more asylum officers and more immigration judges, and investing in more legal assistance for migrants unable to afford private attorneys.“For three years under Title 42, access to asylum has been undermined,” Miller said. “All of the documented evidence of kidnapping, rape, and extortion of migrants in Mexico, in particular at the border – it’s incredibly troubling that we’re expanding the expulsions of migrants to Mexico.“These are not just numbers, these are people with individual stories with their own lives they’re trying to defend. It’s really easy to get lost in the big picture. We’re talking about people here.”TopicsUS immigrationUS politicsUS-Mexico borderVenezuelaHaitiCubaNicaraguanewsReuse this content More

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      Harvard Kennedy School condemned for denying fellowship to Israel critic

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      Harvard Kennedy School condemned for denying fellowship to Israel criticACLU and Pen America back former Human Rights Watch chief Kenneth Roth and say decision ‘raises serious questions’ Leading civil rights organisations have condemned Harvard Kennedy School’s denial of a position to the former head of Human Rights Watch over the organisation’s criticism of Israel.Harvard blocks role for former Human Rights Watch head over Israel criticismRead moreThe American Civil Liberties Union called the refusal of a fellowship to Kenneth Roth “profoundly troubling”. PEN America, which advocates for freedom of expression, said the move “raises serous questions” about one of the US’s leading schools of government. Roth also received backing from other human rights activists.But the Kennedy School found support from organisations that have been highly critical of Roth and HRW, particularly over the group’s report two years ago that accused Israel of practising a form of race-based apartheid in the Palestinian occupied territories.The Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy offered Roth a position as a senior fellow shortly after he retired as director of HRW in April after 29 years. But the school’s dean, Douglas Elmendorf, allegedly vetoed the move.A professor of human rights policy at the Kennedy School, Kathryn Sikkink, told the Nation that Elmendorf said to her that Roth would not be permitted to take up the position because HRW has an “anti-Israel bias” and its former director had written tweets critical of Israel.Roth told the Guardian that Harvard’s move was a reflection of “how utterly afraid the Kennedy School has become of any criticism of Israel” under pressure from donors and influential supporters within the school of Israel’s rightwing government.The director of the ACLU, Anthony Romero, urged the Kennedy School “to reverse its decision”.“If Harvard’s decision was based on HRW’s advocacy under Ken’s leadership, this is profoundly troubling – from both a human rights and an academic freedom standpoint, he said. “Scholars and fellows have to be judged on their merits, not whether they please powerful political interests.”PEN America also backed Roth.“It is the role of a human rights defender to call out governments harshly, to take positions that are unpopular in certain quarters and to antagonize those who hold power and authority,” the group said. “There is no suggestion that Roth’s criticisms of Israel are in any way based on racial or religious animus.“Withholding Roth’s participation in a human rights program due to his own staunch critiques of human rights abuses by governments worldwide raises serious questions about the credibility of the Harvard program itself.”The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which promotes free speech on college campuses, wrote to Elmendorf saying that the Kennedy School “undermines its laudable commitment to intellectual diversity and free inquiry when it rescinds a fellowship offer based on the candidate’s viewpoint or speech”.But Harvard found support from organisations that have been highly critical of Roth and HRW over the group’s reports on Israel.NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based organisation that campaigns against humanitarian groups critical of Israeli government policies, accused HRW under Ross’s leadership of seeking to “delegitimize Israel”.“The dean at Harvard was not fooled by the moral facade granted to Roth and HRW. He recognized Roth’s central contributions to legitimizing antisemitism,” NGO Monitor’s president, Gerald Steinberg, said.UN Watch, a pro-Israel lobby group, described the Kennedy School’s move as “good news”.“Ken Roth had a pathological obsession with singling out Israel for differential and discriminatory treatment, disproportionately to shocking degrees, with the apparent aim to portray the Jewish state in a manner that would evoke repulsion and disgust,” it said.Roth has long been the target of a personalised campaign of abuse, including charges of antisemitism, even though his father was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. He said HRW faced similar attacks on its motives when it released its report titled A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution, even though leading Israeli politicians have also “warned that the occupation has become a form apartheid”.“The irony is that when we issued the report, the Israeli government was at a loss to find anything wrong with it. They fell back on the usual arguments of, ‘you must be antisemitic’. I take that as a … victory because if all they can do is name call, they have nothing substantive to say,” he said.The Kennedy School did not respond to requests for comment.TopicsUS newsUS politicsHarvard UniversityHigher educationUS universitiesIsraelPalestinian territoriesnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘One more embarrassment’: McCarthy debacle wearily received in California home town

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      ‘One more embarrassment’: McCarthy debacle wearily received in California home townBakersfield, in California’s unfashionable Central Valley, has been thrown back into focus by the sorry saga in Congress Kevin McCarthy’s home town – the hardscrabble city of Bakersfield, in California’s Central Valley – has experienced plenty of bruised feelings over the past week, but not necessarily because people have felt the pain of their congressman’s tortured path to the House speakership.Many have bristled at being under a national spotlight during what even Fox News has described as a political clown show. Local Republicans appeared increasingly defensive as McCarthy fell short in vote after vote – before finally prevailing in the early hours of Saturday morning. Democrats, meanwhile, expressed growing concern that McCarthy had been taken captive by his party’s far-right wing and, especially, by apologists for the violent insurrection at the US Capitol two years ago.None of it reflected well on a distinctly unfashionable city known for its hot, dusty climate and polluted skies, its big agricultural businesses and the hundreds of oil wells dotting the surrounding hills. “I only wish they would have stopped saying Mac [McCarthy] was from Bakersfield,” a local insurance salesman, Mark Pearse, wrote in a letter to the local newspaper. “We do not need any more negative publicity.”Reached by phone, Pearse elaborated: “We’re already in the top ten of a lot of negative things. Pedestrians getting run over. Our police and sheriff’s department shooting and killing people. This is just one more embarrassment.”Certainly, nobody has been out in the streets cheering on the local celebrity. McCarthy’s district office, which sits in a business park next to a cluster of medical offices, resembled a suburban fortress with blacked out windows, a door kept locked at all times, and a sign under the door bell saying the only way to be invited in was to call by phone. Staff referred all questions – even questions about a protest on the anniversary of the January 6 uprising taking place directly outside – to McCarthy’s Washington office.More forthcoming was Cathy Abernathy, a seasoned Republican consultant who gave McCarthy his first taste of rejection back in 1987 when she turned him down for an internship with the district’s previous congressman, Bill Thomas. (She later hired him anyway and eventually groomed him to succeed Thomas in 2007.)Sitting in front of a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Abraham Lincoln on Friday, with Fox News reporting the 13th of the 15 vote counts on the television, Abernathy dismissed the week’s drama as an uncommonly visible version of business as usual on Capitol Hill and said the characterizations of McCarthy as weak or politically tone-deaf were grossly unfair.“This is the way things get done in Washington,” she insisted. “It takes hours and hours to achieve anything … It’s unfortunate that a group of 20 members have given such a negative impression of him. He’s a happy-go-lucky, friendly guy. It’s too bad some people mistake that for brainless.”Democrats, meanwhile, took advantage of the January 6 anniversary to stage a series of small protests in and around Bakersfield and tell whoever was willing to listen that McCarthy was one of 147 Republican House members who voted against the certification of Joe Biden’s election as president in 2021, quickly forgave Donald Trump for his role in stirring up the Capitol riot, and has sought to build his power base accordingly ever since.“All of this stems from his decision to kiss Trump’s ring,” said Mari Goodman, one of the protesters outside McCarthy’s district office.“We’re here to remember the people who were hurt and the damage caused,” said Laura Hardman, one of a cluster of January 6 protesters at a busy traffic intersection in Tehachapi, a farm town in McCarthy’s district 40 miles from Bakersfield. “The leaders are still not accountable.”Hardman said she took no pleasure in seeing McCarthy struggling to win over House members who were among the biggest apologists for the insurrection. “As one of his constituents, I find it embarrassing,” she said. “I voted for him in 2006, and he worked with us on some issues. But the longer he’s stayed in Washington, the further he’s drifted from his district.”Such sentiments are a distinct minority view in a part of California that prides itself on bucking the West Coast liberal stereotype. Many of the resentments and frustrations with establishment politics that fueled the rise of Donald Trump seven years ago can be felt in the Central Valley, where farmers and business entrepreneurs often complain that the progressive politicians who run California do not give them the respect they deserve.That complaint extended, last week, to parts of the media. Abernathy, the Republican consultant, said she’d picked up a distinctly condescending tone from reporters and TV producers. One expressed surprise that a man in McCarthy’s position had not gone to an Ivy League university. (He graduated from the Bakersfield branch of California State University.) Another, searching for a way to distinguish Bakersfield from Los Angeles, its giant neighbor 100 miles to the south, offered: “You people have grit.”If some people in Bakersfield felt the country was making fun of them and their most prominent native son, though, others were more than willing to go along for the ride. As Mark Pearse, the insurance salesman, asked after a healthy dose of McCarthy-bashing on the phone: “Haven’t you heard me laughing?”TopicsCaliforniaUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      McCarthy clinches speaker’s gavel at 15th attempt as Republicans in disarray

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      McCarthy clinches speaker’s gavel at 15th attempt as Republicans in disarray With a wafer-thin majority, and few powers, Nancy Pelosi’s successor looks set to be one of the weakest speakers in historyHe had nothing to lose but his dignity. Congressman Kevin McCarthy knew the job he had always craved was within his grasp. All he needed was the vote of a 40-year-old Florida man under investigation over sex trafficking allegations.McCarthy walked over and begged Matt Gaetz to make him speaker of the US House of Representatives. Gaetz stared, pointed a finger and refused. Fellow Republican Mike Rogers stormed towards Gaetz and had to be forcibly restrained.After Brexit and Trump, rightwing populists cling to power – but the truth is they can’t govern | Jonathan FreedlandRead moreThat this tragicomedy played out on the second anniversary of the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol was almost too on the nose. That it was Gaetz, an ardent supporter of Donald Trump and smash-mouth media performer, who held McCarthy’s fate in his hands said everything about the Republican party in 2023.Midnight tolled, and within an hour McCarthy had achieved his dream of becoming speaker, securing a majority of votes from those present at the 15th attempt in the longest such election since the civil war. He beamed, punched the air and waved the gavel with childlike enthusiasm. “That was easy, huh?” he said. “I never thought we’d get up here.” But at what cost?After a historic humiliation, it was a pyrrhic victory. With a wafer-thin majority, and having surrendered numerous powers to far-right rebels so they would drop their opposition, McCarthy is set to be one of the weakest speakers in history.His concessions reportedly included allowing a single member to call for a vote to remove the speaker, putting him at risk of a shorter tenure than Liz Truss’s 50 days as British prime minister. He also offered key committee positions to the House Freedom Caucus, granting them outsized influence and raising the spectre of chaos for the next two years.The former Republican National Committee chairperson Michael Steele told the MSNBC network: “If it does come to, God forbid, a shutdown of the government, the American people have only one place to look and that is the man right there on our screen right now who gave away the House so he could take a seat.”The late-night drama capped a torrid week in which liberals indulged some guilt-free schadenfreude as the Republican party ate itself on live television, unable to coalesce around a choice for the position that is second in line in the presidential succession.The old House chamber resounded with a hubbub of voices, fiery speeches, shouts of “McCarthy” and “Jeffries” [Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries], chants of “Hakeem! Hakeem!”, roars of “Yea!” and “No!” to decide adjournments, the wails of babies (some members brought the families and, in one case, a pet dog) and, 14 times over, House clerk Cheryl Johnson uttering the words, “A speaker has not been elected.”Joe Biden described the saga as an “embarrassment”. For McCarthy, it was like a recurring nightmare. Nominating him on the sixth ballot, Florida Congresswoman Kat Cammack said: “Well, it’s Groundhog Day.”Trapped in a time loop, the elected representatives to the House could not be sworn in, leaving the lower congressional chamber in suspended animation. But still the Capitol hummed with tourists, reporters and banks of TV cameras. Trolleys of pizza rolled along marble corridors to sustain late-night negotiations behind closed doors.Commentators interpreted the disarray as evidence of a new generation of conservative Republicans, many aligned with Trump’s “Make America great again” (Maga) base, who want to upend business as usual in Washington. It also suggested that the former president has unleashed anti-establishment forces that even he can no longer control.McCarthy had initially condemned Trump over the January 6 attack but, before the month was out, went cap in hand to his home in Florida to pledge his fealty. In turn, Trump supported McCarthy for the speakership but the gesture appeared half hearted; notably the former president did not round on McCarthy’s opponents with his customary insults and nicknames.As the voting went on and on, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert of Colorado, a conservative firebrand, noted that “her favourite president” had called on the anti-McCarthy holdouts to “knock this off”. But she went on: “I think it actually needs to be reversed. The president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy, ‘Sir, you do not have the votes and it’s time to withdraw’.” The show of defiance prompted a loud “Oooh!” from many in the House.Speaking by phone on Friday morning with the House still in limbo, Newt Gingrich, a former Republican speaker, said: “It was very significant that these people who call themselves Trump supporters just shrugged off his endorsement of McCarthy. That was a significantly different reaction than he would have gotten a year or two ago. It certainly means he’s weaker than he was. He must have been very surprised by how casually they rejected him.”Some of the rebels’ motives would have been very familiar to Trump: money. Several McCarthy opponents used the stalemate as an opportunity to send out fundraising appeals. Gaetz’s campaign asked donors to “support our fight with critical reinforcements” and branded McCarthy “Kyiv Kevin” – a reference to his support for Ukraine. Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona urged donors “to turbocharge our emergency efforts to break the establishment”.Gingrich commented: “There is a wing of the Republican party which is very unhappy with Washington and that wing makes it profitable for some members to be very disruptive. If you look at Gaetz and Biggs, they’re making money every day this goes on because they’re sending out fundraising appeals by email, so they have a big vested interest in keeping it going. If you look at others, this is their chance to maximise their leverage.”He warned that this is “the most dangerous period” for Republicans since a divisive 1964 party convention that saw moderates facing off against conservative insurgents. But there are some critics who argue that Gingrich himself planted the seeds of the current crisis, pointing to his partisan shock tactics as speaker in the 1990s that transformed politics into a blood sport (a charge he vehemently denies, pointing to several bipartisan accomplishments during the Bill Clinton White House).The next mutation was the Tea Party in 2010, a grassroots conservative movement that endorsed small government and fed a racist backlash against President Barack Obama. Republican speakers including John Boehner had trouble fending off a rebellious right flank and ended up with government shutdowns, standoffs and early retirement.The right was further empowered by the rise of Trump and went on to adopt his style of performative populism. A majority of the members opposing McCarthy this week voted to overturn the 2020 election. Yet party leaders have repeatedly acquiesced to their demands rather than seeking to hold them accountable.Former Republican Capitol Hill communications director Tara Setmayer said: “The Maga wing are political nihilists and that’s evidenced by their behaviour and their demands. They’ve been rewarded for being political trolls, not professional elected officials who govern for the best interest of their constituents. This is all about political kabuki theatre and fundraising for them.”Many of the holdouts represent overwhelmingly majority Republican districts, Setmayer noted, and cannot be bought off with promises of infrastructure projects to impress voters. She added, “Bringing the bacon home to their districts? That is not the currency that the Maga wing operates in today’s political climate. In the era of Trumpism it’s attention, viral moments, media hits on Fox News and Steve Bannon’s podcast. The grift is the political currency.”Setmayer, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, warned that these are ominous signs for the coming Congress, saying: “The Republican party is incapable of governing like grownups in Washington and that’s unfortunate because it [affects] the entire country.“If you listen to what a lot of these Republicans are saying, their focus is on personal agendas and vendettas against Democrats or the Biden administration. They want to focus on nonsense like endless spurious investigations into Hunter Biden and the Department of Justice and the ‘deep state’ and Dr Fauci and relitigating Covid policies. This is all backward thinking, not putting a focus on real issues that impact Americans every single day. It’s going to be chaos. Chaos is their currency.”The power of the far-right extremists could jeopardise crucial agenda items such as passing a budget and lifting the debt ceiling limit to cover previously authorised spending.Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “I believed from the start that this would be a period of minimum legislative productivity and nothing that’s happened in the past four days has changed my mind. But this is a game for very high stakes because these people could blow up the world financial system if they’re not careful.”Democratic strategist Kurt Bardella agreed. “We’re going to have nothing but internal strife and gridlock within the Republican party that will create a dysfunctional House of Representatives,” he said. “This is what happens when you allow someone like Donald Trump to hijack an entire party, someone who only traffics in lies and conspiracy theories.”Kevin McCarthy wins House speaker bid after gruelling 15-vote sagaRead moreRepublicans’ identity crisis looks set to persist. Disappointing midterm election results suggested that Trump’s influence may be waning as he again seeks the party’s presidential nomination. But the decline of a strongman can create a leadership vacuum and fresh uncertainties. This week saw allies such as Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene on opposing sides and drove a wedge between Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, noted that for decades the Republican party had an ideologically-driven conservative wing that sought to change policy.“But we now have an almost anarchist element in the Republican party that has no real concern about governance,” he said. “In fact, they’re anti-governance. They don’t want to see Congress operate and so the normal rules for negotiations, the give and take, doesn’t apply because the only thing they want is mayhem. It’s a whole new radicalism.”TopicsHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Coward’ Josh Hawley mocked by Senate rival for fleeing Capitol mob he incited

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      ‘Coward’ Josh Hawley mocked by Senate rival for fleeing Capitol mob he incitedDemocrat Lucas Kunce says ‘I swear this coward is always running from something’ as he announces bid to challenge key Republican01:08Announcing a run for US Senate in 2024, the populist Missouri Democrat Lucas Kunce released an ad focusing on how his prospective opponent, the Republican senator Josh Hawley, ran from the mob he encouraged on the day the US Capitol came under attack.Republican Josh Hawley fled January 6 rioters – and Twitter ran with itRead more“I’ve done a lot of running in my life,” Kunce said, over footage of a man in a ripped suit running on a country road, dropping a US flag pin.“Running to stay healthy, running to fight for my country, running to defend democracy. And by the way, that guy you’re looking at, that’s not me. That’s our current US senator, Josh Hawley. This guy.”The ad then showed a famous picture from 6 January 2021, of Hawley raising a fist to Trump supporters outside the Capitol, a picture Hawley has used for fundraising purposes.Kunce said: “Or maybe you better recognise him running for his life a few hours later.”Last July, the House January 6 committee released security footage of Hawley running from supporters of Donald Trump after they breached the Capitol, looking for lawmakers to capture and possibly kill in a riot now linked to nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides.The footage of Hawley went viral, in many cases scored to satirical music.Nonetheless, Hawley is widely seen as a likely candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. Accordingly, he is due to release a book this year.According to promotional material, Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs, will argue “that the character of men and the male virtue that goes along with it is a necessary ingredient to a functioning society and a healthy, free republic”.Kunce said: “I swear this coward is always running from something and now this is the guy who’s writing a book telling every single one of us how to be a man.”A former US marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Kunce, 40, also worked on international arms control. He has already mounted a Senate run, last year, losing the primary to Trudy Busch Valentine, a brewing heiress who went on to lose to Eric Schmitt, a former state attorney general.Lucas Kunce: ‘Populism is about everyday people coming together’Read moreA Hawley spokesman told news outlets: “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.”Signing off the ad, Kunce said: “Josh Hawley is a fraud and a coward and by the time I’m done with him, the whole world’s gonna know it. So keep on running, Josh. Keep on running.”Released on the second anniversary of the January 6 attack, the ad was widely noted for its combative tone.Lis Smith, a Democratic consultant who ran Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign in 2020, said Kunce “takes a metaphorical bat to coward Josh Hawley in his first ad”.Hawley, Smith said, “should never able to live down how he helped stoke the crowd on January 6 then sprinted away as they stormed the Capitol”.TopicsUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsMissourinewsReuse this content More