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      West Virginia Republicans miss own deadline to pass schools race bill

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      West Virginia Republicans miss own deadline to pass schools race billSupermajority runs out of time to greenlight House version of bill but does pass abortion restriction Republicans who enjoy a supermajority in the West Virginia legislature nonetheless failed to pass a controversial bill restricting how race is taught in public schools because they missed a midnight deadline in the final moments of the 2022 session.Butt of the joke: Bette Midler fires back at West Virginia governor Jim JusticeRead moreLawmakers spent weeks during the legislative session debating and advancing proposed bills similar to the Anti-Racism Act of 2022. It wasn’t immediately clear why Republicans waited until late on Saturday to take a final vote. The act had passed the Senate and House overwhelmingly and the vote was merely to greenlight the House version. “We took the vote, but essentially that didn’t matter because it didn’t make deadline,” Senate spokesperson Jacque Bland said, adding that the education bill now has no path to becoming law. A separate bill restricting abortion access did pass, minutes before midnight. It bars parents from seeking abortion because they believe their child will be born with a disability. It provides exemptions in the case of a medical emergency or in cases where a fetus is “non-medically viable”. Republican lawmakers appeared unhurried as the clock ticked down on Saturday, spending about an hour passing resolutions honoring two outgoing senators. Supporters of the Anti-Racism Act of 2022 said it would prevent discrimination based on race in K-12 public schools, banning teachers from telling students one race “is inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously”. The bill said students can’t be taught moral character is determined by race, or that a person by virtue of their race “bears responsibility for actions committed by other members of the same race”. It would have created a mechanism for reporting complaints and for the legislature to collect data on how many complaints are substantiated each year. It did not specify punishment. Legislators convened at the snowy state Capitol on Saturday with dozens of bills to finalize. The House speaker, Roger Hanshaw, arrived late to a debate on the state budget bill because he was delayed by a car accident on roads which were still being cleared. The bill dealing with disabilities and abortion was passed minutes before midnight, following 90 minutes of discussion. It now moves to the desk of the Republican governor, Jim Justice. “This is about science and morality,” said Republican Kayla Kessinger. “It’s about, ‘When does life begin?’ and whether or not it has a value.” Democrats voiced their opposition, with Evan Hansen saying the bill does nothing substantial to help people with disabilities and their families. “This is an attempt to use people with disabilities as props for an anti-abortion agenda, something that the disability community has not asked for, as far as I know – and that’s just wrong,” Hansen said. “It creates government overreach into personal family medical decisions.” A physician who violates the law could see their license to practice medicine suspended or revoked. The bill also requires physicians to submit a report, with patients’ names omitted, to the state for each abortion performed and whether “the presence or presumed presence of any disability in the unborn human being had been detected”. The reports would include the date of the abortion and the method used, as well as confirming the doctor asked the patient if they chose an abortion because the baby might have a disability. These reports must be submitted within 15 days of each abortion. That bill wasn’t the only abortion-related legislation brought forward but lawmakers declined on Saturday to take up a bill banning abortions after 15 weeks. Lawmakers voted 90-9 to send a $4.635bn budget to the governor’s desk after two hours of discussion on the House floor. The bill includes 5% pay raises for state employees and teachers and an additional bump for state troopers. The budget does not include a 10% personal income tax cut passed by the House last month. Lawmakers also promised that social workers in the foster care system will see a 15% pay raise. After a bill to provide the increases was essentially gutted, they advised the Department of Health and Human Resources to provide the raises by eliminating open positions. Additionally, lawmakers passed a bill decriminalizing fentanyl test strips, which can signal the presence of synthetic opioid in illicit drugs. Other bills repealed the state’s soda tax and banned requiring Covid-19 vaccination cards to enter state agencies or public colleges and universities. TopicsWest VirginiaRepublicansRaceUS politicsUS educationnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Would-be tyrant’: Republican targeted by Trump at rally hits back

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      ‘Would-be tyrant’: Republican targeted by Trump at rally hits backTom Rice faces Trumpist challenger because of vote to impeach over the deadly Capitol attack A Republican congressman attacked by Donald Trump at a rally in South Carolina on Saturday called the former president a “would-be tyrant”.Republican Kinzinger: I should have voted to impeach Trump over UkraineRead moreTom Rice voted to impeach Trump over the deadly Capitol attack and will face a Trump-endorsed challenger later this year.In a statement, Rice said: “If you want a congressman who supports political violence in Ukraine or in the United States Capitol, who supports party over country, who supports a would-be tyrant over the constitution, and who makes decisions based solely on re-election, then Russell Fry is your candidate.”Trump has praised Vladimir Putin and avoided invitations to condemn him but he has called the Russian invasion of Ukraine a “crime against humanity”.The attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 happened after Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” in service of his lie that his defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud. Seven people died around the riot.Rice was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the attack. Trump was acquitted when only seven Senate Republicans voted to find him guilty.Like all House Republicans, Rice supported Trump when he was impeached a first time, for withholding military aid to Ukraine in an attempt to extract dirt on Biden.Trump has endorsed challengers to disloyal Republicans prominently including Liz Cheney of Wyoming, one of two Republican members of the January 6 committee.At his rally in Florence, South Carolina, on Saturday, Trump attacked Rice and Nancy Mace, a congresswoman with her own challenger after voting to certify election results.The former president called both “atrocious Rinos”, Republicans in name only, and “bad people”. He called Rice a “disaster” and “a total fool … laughed at in Washington”.“Thankfully this June you have a chance to dump these grandstanding losers and replace them with two rock-solid America-first champions,” Trump said.Rice retorted: “Trump is here because, like no one else I’ve ever met, he is consumed by spite. I took one vote he didn’t like and now he’s chosen to support a yes man candidate who has and will bow to anything he says.”Rice’s South Carolina district is deep Republican red. In 2020, Trump won it by 18 points. Rice won by nearly 24.The Associated Press reported on how Rice and Mace are trying to convince voters to back them. Mace emphasised her support for Trump, the AP said, while Rice took a “lower key” approach.The AP described the congressman “quietly winding through rural stretches of his congressional district to remind voters of his work securing federal relief for frequent – often disastrous – flooding, and of his advocacy for agricultural improvements”.Of his vote to impeach Trump, he said: “I’ve had some people come to me and say, ‘I was disappointed in your vote’. But 10 times as many have said, ‘Thank you.’”TopicsDonald TrumpRepublicansUS midterm elections 2022US politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesSouth CarolinanewsReuse this content More

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      Sandy Hook review: anatomy of an American tragedy – and the obscenity of social media

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      Sandy Hook review: anatomy of an American tragedy – and the obscenity of social media Elizabeth Williamson’s book on the 2012 elementary school shooting is a near-unbearable, necessary indictment of Facebook, YouTube and the conspiracy theories they spreadEven in a country now completely inured to the horrors of mass shootings, the massacre at Sandy Hook remains lodged in the minds of everyone old enough to remember it. Ten years ago, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fired 154 rounds from an AR-15-style rifle in less than five minutes. Twenty extremely young children and six adults were killed.Sandy Hook’s tragic legacy: seven years on, a loving father is the latest victimRead moreIt was the worst elementary school shooting in American history.Elizabeth Williamson’s new book is about that “American Tragedy”, but more importantly it is about “the Battle for Truth” that followed. In excruciating detail, Williamson describes the unimaginable double tragedy every Sandy Hook parent has had to endure: the murder of their child, followed by years and years of an army of online monsters accusing them of inventing this unimaginable horror.Alex Jones of Infowars is the best-known villain of this ghastly narrative. His Facebook pages and YouTube channels convinced millions of fools the massacre was either some kind of government plot to encourage a push for gun control or, even more obscenely, that it was all carried out by actors and no one was killed at all.While a single deranged shooter was responsible for the original tragedy, Williamson makes clear she believes Facebook and Google (the owner of YouTube) deserve most of the blame for the subsequent horror the relatives of victims have endured.As Congressman Ro Khanna reported in his new book, Dignity in a Digital Age, an internal Facebook document estimated that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendations”.Those recommendations are the result of the infernal algorithms which are at the heart of the business models of Facebook and YouTube and are probably more responsible for the breakdown in civil society in the US and the world than anything else invented.“We thought the internet would give us this accelerated society of science and information,” says Lenny Pozner, whose son Noah was one of the Sandy Hook victims. But “really, we’ve gone back to flat earth”.It horrified Pozner “to see the image of his son, smiling in his bomber jacket, passed round by an online mob attacking Noah as a fake, a body double, a boy who never lived”. Relentless algorithms pushed those “human lies to the top” on an internet which has become an “all-powerful booster of outrage and denial”.Noah’s mother, Veronique De la Rosa, was another victim of Jones’s persistent, outrageous lies.“It’s like you’ve entered the ninth circle of hell,” she tells Williamson. “Never even in your wildest, most fear-fueled fantasies would you have guessed you’d find yourself having to fight not only through your grief, which you know is at times paralyzing, but to even prove that your son existed.”Lenny Pozner regularly saw his dead son described as an “alleged victim”, but it took years before Facebook and YouTube and Twitter took substantial action to quiet the insane conspiracies their own algorithms had done so much to reinforce.Facebook allowed a Sandy Hook Hoax group and dozens of others to operate virtually uninterrupted for two years. Hundreds of videos on YouTube, owned by Google, wallowed in the hoax, drawing thousands who made threats against the families.“Facebook and Twitter are monsters,” says Pozner. “Out-of-control beasts run like mom-and-pop shops.”Facebook “focuses on growth, to the exclusion of most everything else”, Williamson writes. The algorithms are designed to keep all of us on the platform as long as possible, and they operate “with relentless, sometimes murderous neutrality, rewarding whatever horrible behavior and false or inflammatory content captures and retains users”.In 2018, an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg by Pozner and De La Rosa, published in the Guardian, accused the Facebook chief of “allowing your platform to continue to be used as an instrument to disseminate hate”.Two days later, Facebook finally suspended Jones’s personal page but “took no action against Infowars’ account, which had 1.7 million followers”. YouTube removed four videos from Infowars’ channel and banned Jones from live-streaming for all of 90 days.An open letter to Mark Zuckerberg from the parents of a Sandy Hook victimRead moreHarry Farid heads the school of Information at the University of California Berkeley. He describes the perfect storm which is threatening democracy and civility everywhere: “You have bad people and trolls and people trying to make money by taking advantage of horrible things … you have social media websites who are not only welcoming and permissive of it but are promoting it, and then you have us, the unsuspecting public.”Williamson makes the important and usually forgotten point that nothing in the first amendment gives anyone the right to use a social media platform. All it says on this subject is that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”As Farid points out, platforms have an absolute right to ban all forms of content “without running afoul of the constitution” – which is why Donald Trump had no judicial recourse when he was banned from Facebook and Twitter after the Capitol riot.But most of the time, Farid says, the platforms just look the other way: “Because they’re making so much goddamned money.”Last fall, the California Democrat Adam Schiff told the Guardian the blockbuster testimony of the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen would finally be enough to spur Congress to regulate the worst excesses of the big platforms. So far, their lobbyists have prevented such action. On Saturday, the Guardian asked Schiff if he still believed Congress might act in this session. “There is still a chance,” he wrote in an e-mail, adding that “the degree of Russian propaganda on social media attempting to justify their bloody invasion of Ukraine” might finally provide the “impetus” needed for change.
      Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for the Truth is published in the US by Dutton Books
      TopicsBooksNewtown shootingGun crimeSocial mediaInternetFacebookYouTubereviewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Don’t Say Gay’: Disney clashes with DeSantis over Florida bill

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      ‘Don’t Say Gay’: Disney clashes with DeSantis over Florida billEntertainment giant suspends political donations as CEO apologises for silence and governor hits back with ‘communist’ barb The Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, claimed the Walt Disney Company was too cozy with communist China, as the chief executive of the tourism and entertainment criticized a state bill that bars teachers from instructing early grades on LGBTQ+ issues.Disney accused of removing gay content from Pixar films Read moreDeSantis, who has not yet signed the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, also reportedly criticized Disney as “woke”, after the company’s leader opposed the legislation.Controversy surrounding the bill could cut off a significant fundraising pipeline for Florida Republicans: Disney said it would suspend political donations in the state.The move came after the Disney chief executive, Bob Chapek, experienced extensive blowback for not using the company’s influence to thwart the controversial bill.“I do not want anyone to mistake a lack of a statement for a lack of support,” Chapek said early this week in a memo obtained by USA Today.“We all share the same goal of a more tolerant, respectful world. Where we may differ is in the tactics to get there.“And because this struggle is much bigger than any one bill in any one state, I believe the best way for our company to bring about lasting change is through the inspiring content we produce, the welcoming culture we create, and the diverse community organizations we support.”Chapek’s first public statements on the bill came in a shareholder’s meeting on Wednesday.“We were opposed to the bill from the outset but we chose not to take a public position on it because we thought we could be more effective working behind the scenes engaging directly with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle,” he reportedly said.Chapek claimed such efforts had taken place for weeks. The executive said he had called DeSantis to express Disney’s “disappointment” with the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.Chapek posted a statement online and emailed staffers on Friday, saying Disney was wrong to stay silent as the Republican-majority Florida legislature greenlit a bill he called “yet another challenge to basic human rights”.Republicans contend that parents, not educators, should discuss gender issues with children in early grades. The bill bars prohibits instruction on “sexual orientation or gender identity” in kindergarten through grade three.DeSantis, who has indicated that he supports the measure, has chafed at calls for a veto. A potential frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, he sent a fundraising email that said: “Disney is in far too deep with the communist party of China and has lost any moral authority to tell you what to do.”The statement shocked Republicans and Democrats. Disney theme parks are a multibillion-dollar economic engine for Florida. The company has given outsize amounts to state parties and politicians and holds significant influence in state government.DeSantis also criticized Disney at a campaign event in South Florida Thursday.“Companies that have made a fortune catering to families should understand that parents don’t want this injected into their kid’s kindergarten classroom,” DeSantis said. “Our policies will be based on the best interest of Florida citizens, not the musing of woke corporations.”Rick Wilson, a former Republican operative now part of the Lincoln Project, told the Associated Press: “The weird hypocrisy of Florida politics right now is DeSantis has been happy to take Disney’s money but to pass a bill that’s anathema to the values of their customers and their institution.”A Republican lawmaker who didn’t want to be named because he or she did not want to comment publicly against the governor told the same outlet Disney was the third-highest contributor to state Republican candidates. Disney has given millions to both Democrats and Republicans.Disney opened a theme park in China six years ago and has landed access to that country’s booming film market. It has also been accused of altering content to satisfy China’s leaders.DeSantis’s critics charged that he was opposing Disney out of his ambition to win the Republican primary.“It’s really pretty shocking,” former Republican governor Charlie Crist, now a Democratic congressman who hopes to challenge DeSantis, told the AP.Outcry as Georgia lawmakers aim to pass Florida-style ‘don’t say gay’ bill Read moreCrist noted that DeSantis has gone head-to-head with other industries important to Florida, pointing to a legal fight with cruise companies which wanted passengers to show proof of Covid-19 vaccinations.“Now it’s Disney. Who’s next on the hit list for this governor?” Crist commented.The Democratic US congressman Darren Soto also questioned the governor’s attack.“This is another strike in the hate agenda that Governor DeSantis is pushing right now,” Soto said, noting that Florida’s budget relies heavily on sales tax generated by Disney and other theme parks.“Now he’s putting that in jeopardy because he wants to attack LGBTQ+ families, families that make up a fundamental part of the Disney atmosphere.”
      The Associated Press contributed to this report
      TopicsFloridaRon DeSantisRepublicansLGBT rightsWalt Disney CompanyUS politicsUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More

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      Clarence Thomas: supreme court could be ‘compromised’ by politics

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      Clarence Thomas: supreme court could be ‘compromised’ by politicsThe court is set to rule this year on divisive issues including abortion, gun control, the climate crisis and voting rights

      The Agenda: how the supreme court threatens US democracy
      The US supreme court could “at some point” become “compromised” by politics, said Clarence Thomas – one of six conservatives on the nine-member court after Republicans denied Barack Obama a nomination then rammed three new justices through during the hard-right presidency of Donald Trump.Who has more influence on supreme court: Clarence Thomas or his activist wife?Read more“You can cavalierly talk about packing or stacking the court,” said Thomas, whose wife, Ginni Thomas, has come under extensive scrutiny for work for rightwing groups including supporting Trump’s attempts to overturn an election.“You can cavalierly talk about doing this or doing that. At some point the institution is going to be compromised.”Thomas was speaking at a hotel in Salt Lake City on Friday.“By doing this,” he said, “you continue to chip away at the respect of the institutions that the next generation is going to need if they’re going to have civil society.”The court is set to rule this year on divisive issues including abortion, gun control, the climate crisis and voting rights. Conservative victories are expected. The conservative-dominated court has already ruled against the Biden administration on coronavirus mitigation and other matters.The US constitution does not mandate that the court consist of nine justices. Some progressives and Democratic politicians have therefore called to expand it, in order to reset its ideological balance. Democrats in Congress last year introduced a bill to add four justices and Joe Biden has created a commission to study expansion.Few analysts think expansion is likely to happen.Republican senators are currently attacking Biden for his campaign promise to nominate a first Black woman to the court, a promise he fulfilled by nominating Ketanji Brown Jackson to replace the retiring Stephen Breyer.Republican presidents have nominated justices on grounds of identity, most recently when Trump said he would pick a woman to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the liberal lion who died in September 2020.Ignoring their own claims about the impropriety of confirmations in election years, made in denying Merrick Garland even a hearing to replace Antonin Scalia in 2016, Senate Republicans installed Amy Coney Barrett, a hardline Catholic conservative, as Ginsberg’s replacement.In Utah on Friday, Thomas also voiced a familiar conservative complaint about so-called “cancel culture”, the supposed silencing of voices or world views deemed unacceptable on political grounds.He was, he said, “afraid, particularly in this world of cancel culture attack, I don’t know where you’re going to learn to engage as we did when I grew up.“If you don’t learn at that level in high school, in grammar school, in your neighborhood, or in civic organizations, then how do you have it when you’re making decisions in government, in the legislature, or in the courts?”Thomas also attacked the media for, he said, cultivating inaccurate impressions about public figures including himself, his wife and Scalia.Ginni Thomas has faced scrutiny for her involvement in groups that file briefs about cases in front of the supreme court, as well as using Facebook to amplify partisan attacks.Thomas has claimed the supreme court is above politics – a claim made by justices on either side of the partisan divide.Congress is preparing for confirmation hearings for Jackson. She will be installed if all 50 Democratic senators back her, via the casting vote of the vice-president, Kamala Harris. Some Republicans have indicated they could support her too.In Utah, Thomas recalled his own confirmation in 1991 as a humiliating and embarrassing experience. Lawmakers including Biden grilled Thomas about sexual harassment allegations from Anita Hill, a former employee, leading him to call the experience a “high tech lynching”. Biden has also been criticised for his treatment of Hill.‘The Scheme’: a senator’s plan to highlight rightwing influence on the supreme courtRead moreOn Friday, Thomas said he held civility as one of his highest values. He said he learned to respect institutions and debate civilly with those who disagreed with him during his years in school.Based on conversations with students in recent years, he said, he does not believe colleges are now welcoming places for productive debate, particularly for students who support what he described as traditional families or oppose abortion.Thomas did not reference the future of Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that guaranteed abortion rights. The court on which he sits is scheduled to rule this year on Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, concerning whether Mississippi can ban abortions at 15 weeks.The court is expected to overturn Roe. While the justices deliberate, conservative lawmakers in Florida, West Virginia and Kentucky are advancing similar legislation.
      The Associated Press contributed to this report
      TopicsClarence ThomasUS supreme courtUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)US politicsRepublicansUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      Lincoln and the fight for peace: John Avlon on a president in the shadow of new war

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      InterviewLincoln and the fight for peace: John Avlon on a president in the shadow of new warMartin Pengelly The CNN analyst says the 16th president’s example can guide America through dark times – at home as well as abroadJohn Avlon has published a book about Abraham Lincoln and peace in a time of war. He sees the irony, of course.Why Abraham Lincoln’s meetings with Black Americans matterRead more“I’d like to think that sometimes I can look around corners,” says the CNN political analyst, a former editor-in-chief of the Daily Beast. “But I didn’t anticipate that Putin would invade Ukraine opposite the book.“But there is a foreign policy dimension to the book that is probably unexpected.”In Lincoln and the Fight for Peace, Avlon offers both narrative and analytical history. He retells and examines the end of the American civil war, Lincoln’s plans for reuniting his country, his assassination and how in the former slaveholding states Reconstruction was defeated and racism enshrined in law.He also considers how Lincoln’s ideas about reconciliation and rebuilding lived on, ultimately to influence the rebuilding of Germany and Japan after the second world war, and how the 16th president’s politics of “the golden rule” – treat others as you would have them treat you – offers a model for solving division at home and abroad.More than 15,000 books have been written about Lincoln, but Avlon’s arrives in an America still subject to the attentions of Donald Trump, while from Russia Vladimir Putin pitches Ukraine into war and the world into nuclear dread.“When people pick up a book about Abraham Lincoln now,” Avlon says, “I think the flow-through is [about how] we belatedly realised the dangers of taking democracy for granted, of embracing or encouraging these tribal divides, which can wreak havoc.“So, too, there’s a real danger at taking for granted the liberal democratic order that has preserved a high degree of peace and prosperity in Europe over the past 75 years.“… There are moments where we abruptly remember that defending democracy at home and abroad is a cause that can be as heroic as winning it in the first place, and no less urgent.“It gets back to, ‘Let us have faith that that right makes might’” – a key line from Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech of 1860 – “and the flip side of that is what’s being tested [by Russia]. There are people in the world who believe that might makes right.”‘Despotism taken pure’Lincoln said a famous thing about Russia in a letter in 1855, five years before his election as president.“Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid,” he wrote to a friend, Joshua Speed. “As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal’. We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes’. When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics’.“When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”Other than that there isn’t much to go on, Russia-wise. But as Avlon points out, Lincoln was writing not just about the curse of slavery but about a domestic political threat: the Know Nothings, a nativist-populist party.The link between the Know Nothings and the Republican party of Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene has been made before, including by Avlon himself.“It’s obviously safe to say that Lincoln wouldn’t recognise today’s Republican party. His Republican party was the modern progressive party of its time, it was a big tent party, dedicated to overturning slavery.“I think, as you are trying to root Lincoln in the context of contemporary politics, you definitely need to go beneath the party label. And the fact that the Republican party now finds its base among the states of the former Confederacy is a clue … The labels may change but the song remains the same, to a distressing extent.“I was struck by what [Ulysses S] Grant said in 1875. And I checked that quote three times, because it seemed too on the nose: ‘If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.’”‘Our nation is not evenly divided’Many observers think a second American civil war is possible, along fault lines widened by a white supremacist far right which may see Putin and Putinism as a model for negating demographic change. Avlon, whose book has been well received in the political centre and on the never-Trump right, does not think civil war is imminent.“I thought Jamelle Bouie made a great point in a column a few weeks ago,” he says, “where he said, ‘Look, we don’t have structural issues like slavery.’“I do think that the current trend of polarisation, where politics becomes a matter of identity and the incentive structures move our politicians towards the extremes, rather than finding ways to work and reason together, is incredibly dangerous.“But first of all, if you look at the numbers, our nation is not evenly divided. We’re not a 50-50 nation on most issues. We’re 70-30 nation and many issues, whether it’s gay marriage, marijuana, [which] run through the country [with 70% support].“The section that believes the big lie [that Trump’s defeat was caused by voter fraud], they’re very loud. But they’re 30%, a super-majority of the Republican party. We often forget that a plurality of Americans are self-identified independents.‘What it means to be an American’: Abraham Lincoln and a nation dividedRead more“That does not diminish the danger to democracy when one party buys into a self-evident lie. Or when around a quarter of the country refuses to get vaccinated during a pandemic.“But you have to have faith in American democracy, when you look at history, because we have been through far worse before. Every generation faces great challenges. And if you’re overwhelmed by them, or pessimistic … that will not help solve them. You know, difficulty is the excuse that history never accepts.”Histories like his, Avlon says, can help readers “draw on the past to confront problems and then aim towards a better future”. His book aims “in part to give us perspective on our own problems. We’ve been through worse. We’ll get through this.“We need to be aware it’s dangerous to play with these tribal divisions for short-term political gain. And that we have an obligation to form the broadest coalition possible to defend democracy and our deepest values, which we forget sometimes.“Rooting things in the second founding and Lincoln, I think, can be clarifying and can help build that big tent again.”
      Lincoln and the Fight for Peace is published in the US by Simon & Schuster
      TopicsBooksHistory booksAbraham LincolnAmerican civil warUS politicsinterviewsReuse this content More

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      One Damn Thing After Another review: Bill Barr’s self-serving screed

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      One Damn Thing After Another review: Bill Barr’s self-serving screed Donald Trump’s attorney general wants you to know the bad stuff wasn’t his fault and the media and Democrats were nastyTake Bill Barr literally, but not too seriously. One day before his memoir was published, the former attorney general told NBC he would vote for Donald Trump for president in 2024, if Trump were the Republican nominee. For all Barr’s protestations about how the man was unsuited to the job, he continues to resist being banished from Trump’s garden.William Barr: Trump is full of bull – but I’ll vote for himRead moreSaid differently, Barr’s memoirs are best viewed as just one more installment of Trump-alumni performance art.As a read, One Damn Thing After Another delivers the expected. Barr gives Trump a thumbs-up for galvanizing the Republican white working-class base, satisfying social conservatives and meeting the demands of donors.At the same time, Barr lets us know suburbia came to find Trump offensive and insists that in the end, Trump crashed and burned despite Barr’s best efforts. Ultimately, like everyone else the 45th president ceased to find useful, Barr was simply spat out – a reality his memoir does at least acknowledge.The book is informative – to a point. As expected, Barr omits relevant facts and engages in score-settling. It’s a first-person tell-all, after all.Barr records the suicide in federal custody of Jeffrey Epstein, predator and friend of presidents Trump and Clinton. He makes no mention of the fact that his own father, Donald Barr, gave Epstein one of his first jobs, as a high-school math teacher at the Dalton school, a tony Manhattan establishment. Even then, former students have said, Epstein creeped out young women.Barr was attorney general for the first time under George HW Bush. In his book, he attacks Democrats and the media for their pursuit and coverage of “Iraqgate” and the US government’s extension of loan guarantees to Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the invasion of Kuwait. Barr singles out William Safire, the late Nixon speechwriter and New York Times columnist, for special condemnation.A Clinton administration investigation cleared Barr of legal wrongdoing – a fact he rightly emphasizes. But he neglects to mention that in October 1989, Bush signed National Security Directive 26, which effectively boosted Iraq as a counterbalance to Iran. From there, things didn’t exactly work out as planned. The president and his team overly emboldened Saddam. His unprovoked land grab was an unintended consequence of a policy pivot.Barr lets us know he grew up in a loving home, a product of a Catholic education, a player of the bagpipes. He attended the Horace Mann school in Riverdale, an affluent part of the Bronx. As Barr notes, the school was liberal and predominately Jewish.As a Columbia undergraduate, he stood against Vietnam war protesters. His antipathy toward the radical left is longstanding. He joined the Majority Coalition, a group of students and faculty members who defended the main administration building. As recorded by the late Diana Trilling, some rioters had no qualms about trashing the school, then demanding academic honors.Unstated by Barr is the operative campus divide, “Staten Island v Scarsdale”: conservative, often Catholic students from the blue-collar outer borough versus liberal, often Jewish students from the well-heeled suburbs. Though far from working class, Barr was firmly in the first camp.Barr came by his conservatism organically. His father served in the second world war. His older brother fought in Vietnam. In 1964, Barr helped his dad distribute campaign literature for Barry Goldwater’s ill-fated presidential campaign. Amid the turmoil of the 60s, Barr yearned for the stability of yesterday. He still does: he is a culture warrior in a Brooks Brothers suit.He takes shots at James Comey and Robert Mueller, key figures in the Russia investigation. Of course he does. He also takes aim at Lawrence Walsh, special counsel in Iran-Contra. Barr accuses Walsh, now dead, of torpedoing Bush’s campaign comeback in ’92 by filing election-eve charges against Casper Weinberger, Ronald Reagan’s defense secretary. Barr’s ire is understandable.But he also offers up a full-throated defense of his own decision to drop government charges against Michael Flynn, despite the Trump ally’s guilty plea to lying to the FBI and, later, demand for martial law. Furthermore, Barr says nary a word in response to the volley of criticism he earned from the federal bench.In spring 2020, Judge Reggie Walton, a George W Bush appointee, “seriously” questioned the attorney general’s integrity and credibility. To drive home the point, to describe Barr’s behavior over the Russia report, Walton deployed words like “distorted” and “misleading”.Emmett Sullivan scorned Barr’s legal gymnastics over Flynn. Amy Berman Jackson ruled that the government had to turn over a memorandum it relied upon in declining to prosecute Trump. Her take was lacerating. Not only had Barr been personally “disingenuous” by announcing his decision before Mueller’s report was released, Berman Jackson said, but the Department of Justice itself had been “disingenuous to this court”.Insurgency review: how Trump took over the Republican partyRead moreSuffice to say, Walton, Sullivan and Berman Jackson do not appear in Barr’s book.As luck would have it, though, Barr does take aim at Joe Biden for his stance on Russia. “Demonizing [Vladimir] Putin is not a foreign policy,” Barr writes, nor “the way grown-ups should think”.Really? Looks like Barr didn’t have an invasion of Ukraine on his bingo card. Trump’s admiration for Putin, of course, continues.As it turned out, Barr wasn’t alone in spilling his guts to NBC. In a letter to Lester Holt, its lead anchor, Trump wrote of his former attorney general: “He is groveling to the media, hoping to gain acceptance that he doesn’t deserve.”So true.
      One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General is published in the US by HarperCollins
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      US and allies set to revoke normal trade relations with Russia over Ukraine war, says Biden – follow live

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      Biden to House Democrats: November midterms are the ‘most important in modern history’

      11.07am EST

      11:07

      Biden: Russia would pay a ‘severe price’ for use of chemical weapons

      10.37am EST

      10:37

      Biden: US and allies to deny ‘most favored nation’ status to Russia

      10.02am EST

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      Pelosi: US will seek to end normal trade relations with Russia

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      Harris: US commitment to Nato’s article 5 ‘ironclad’

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      10.37am EST

      10:37

      Biden: US and allies to deny ‘most favored nation’ status to Russia

      Joe Biden has announced that the US was moving to revoke Russia’s “most favored nation status” in coordination with allies.
      Revoking Russia’s permanent normal trade relations will “make it harder for Russia to business with the United States”. He said the US was “taking the first steps” to ban imports of Russian vodka, seafood and diamonds.
      Biden thanked Pelosi for pushing the US to take this action, and for holding off on a measure in Congress until he “could line up all of our key allies.”
      “Putin is the aggressor and Putin must pay a price,” he said.
      He also detailed other economic sanctions the US has taken to destabilize the Russian economy and squeeze Putin and those around him.
      Biden said the US and its allies were targeting an expanded list of Russian oligarchs,and ramping up efforts to capture their “ ill-begotten gains.”
      “They support Putin. They steal from the Russian people and they seek to hide their money in our countries,” Biden said, emphasizing one of the most popular aspects of the west’s crackdown on Russia. “They’re part of that kleptocracy that exists in Moscow and they must share in the pain of these sanctions.”
      In addition to seizing their “superyachts” and vacation homes, Biden said the US was also banning the export of luxury luxury goods to Russia, calling it the latest, but “not the last step we’re going to take.”

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      4.52pm EST

      16:52

      State department spokesman Ned Price denounced Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, for downplaying the strike on a maternity hospital during a security council meeting convened by Moscow earlier today.
      “This was a brutal strike against a maternity hospital that killed innocent Ukrainians,” he said.

      The Recount
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      State Deptartment spokesperson Ned Price calls out Russian Ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzya for peddling misinformation at the Security Council:“This was a brutal strike against a maternity hospital that killed innocent Ukrainians.” pic.twitter.com/W38FHUNxNV

      March 11, 2022

      4.43pm EST

      16:43

      The Senate confirmed George Tsunis to be the US ambassador to Greece on Friday.

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      The #Senate confirmed by voice vote: Executive Calendar #782 George J. Tsunis to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Greece.

      March 11, 2022

      Earlier this year, The Guardian’s David Smith wrote about Biden’s nomination of Tsunis, a hotel developer and Democratic donor with no diplomatic experience. Tsunis was previously nominated by Obama to be the ambassador to Norway. It did not go well, per Smith’s report.

      On that occasion Tsunis was Barack Obama’s nominee for ambassador to Norway. Bumbling and ill-prepared, he admitted that he had never been to Norway and referred to the country as having a president when, as a constitutional monarchy, it does not.

      4.18pm EST

      16:18

      Martin Pengelly

      At an Oval Office meeting with the then Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, in 2017, Donald Trump asked his national security adviser if US troops were in Donbas, territory claimed by Russian-backed separatists, which Vladimir Putin last month used as pretext for a full and bloody invasion. More