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      The fight for federal voting rights legislation is far from over | Jared Evans

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      The fight for federal voting rights legislation is far from overJared EvansThe Freedom to Vote: John R Lewis Act would restore key voting rights provisions and protect American democracy. We can’t give up American democracy is in a state of emergency. Without federal voting rights legislation, discriminatory voting laws will continue to pass unchallenged and harm millions in their wake. Following the US Senate’s recent failure to pass the Freedom to Vote: John R Lewis Act, civil rights leaders urged senators to continue pressing for the bill. But understanding how deeply the absence of its protections will continue to affect voters is key to the bill’s success.Arguably the most crucial measure of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was section 5’s pre-clearance requirement that states with a recent history of voter discrimination get approval from the justice department before implementing voting changes. However, the US supreme court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v Holder struck down the pre-clearance requirement claiming that voting conditions for racial minorities had improved and that its use was outdated. Since then, numerous states passed laws they had previously abandoned due to the threat of pre-clearance. Other states continued to enact laws restricting voting that were already under way before Shelby. These statutes are so restrictive they would have never seen the light of day if pre-clearance was still intact. New voter suppression laws in Texas, Georgia and Florida are the most recent examples of these efforts.The Freedom to Vote: John R Lewis Act (FTV) – which combines two previous bills to defend voting rights and democracy more broadly – would restore the section 5 pre-clearance provisions and create protections against the most common obstacles faced by voters.Those of us on the frontlines in the fight for voting rights know the immediate impact these bills would have on our communities. Last year in Iberia parish, a rural community on the Louisiana Gulf coast that is one-third Black, election officials closed eight polling locations – five of which were in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Voters were not properly notified of this change and, even more troubling, the closures were implemented just weeks before an election. At least 20,000 voters were affected, many of whom did not discover their polling location had changed until they arrived at the location they had been voting at for years. Under FTV, election officials would be required to publicly announce all voting changes at least 180 days before an election, allowing voters adequate time to become familiar with their new polling location, secure child or adult care, and notify their employer, if necessary.In Texas, FTV would immediately reduce the challenges voters of colors face. Nearly all the population growth from 2010 to 2020 in Texas was from communities of color, yet the map that the state legislature enacted reduced the number of districts in which voters of color make up the majority of eligible voters. If FTV were enacted, the redrawing of districts would be the responsibility of a non-partisan redistricting commission that would prevent elected officials from choosing their own constituents. States would also not be able to enact racially discriminatory maps without first submitting them for approval to the DoJ.Mississippi, the state with the largest percentage of Black voters, offers no opportunity for early voting and voters must get documents notarized to vote by mail. When every voter is forced to vote in-person on election day, it often leads to long lines at polling sites and heavy traffic. When voters are forced to get signatures on both the application to vote by mail and the ballot itself, it is especially difficult for elderly voters who often live alone to have their ballot counted.In 2020, this requirement’s burden increased dramatically due to the pandemic, particularly for the elderly, whose increased vulnerability to Covid meant attaining these necessary signatures risked exposure. During the 2020 general election, elderly Mississippians were forced to risk their health to vote in person on election day, unless they met the standards for one of the limited qualifications that allowed someone to vote by mail. FTV would require all states to have at least 15 consecutive days of early in-person voting, including two weekends, giving voters in states like Mississippi another option to cast their ballot.Without pre-clearance, states and localities will continue to suppress votes by enacting restrictive voting changes that target voters of color. While we still have section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices that dilute minority voting strength, this measure is reactive, meaning advocates can only challenge a voting change after its implementation. However, section 2 was also weakened by the supreme court in 2021 by creating new and additional atextual burdens to the Voting Rights Act’s primary mechanism for challenging voting laws that have a discriminatory result. Until pre-clearance is restored, discriminatory changes will continue to be enacted – and will affect every election. The Senate must act to protect the fundamental right to vote and pass federal voting rights legislation by any means necessary – before it is too late.
      Jared Evans is a policy counsel at NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
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      US conservatives linked to rich donors wage campaign to ban books from schools

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      US conservatives linked to rich donors wage campaign to ban books from schools Experts say trend is accelerating as groups push for bans of works that often address race, LGBTQ issues and marginalized peopleConservative groups across the US, often linked to deep-pocketed rightwing donors, are carrying out a campaign to ban books from school libraries, often focused on works that address race, LGBTQ issues or marginalized communities.Literature has already been removed from schools in Texas, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming. Librarians and teachers warn the trend is on the increase, as groups backed by wealthy Republican donors use centrally drawn up tactics and messaging to harangue school districts into removing certain texts.In October, the Texas state representative Matt Krause sent a list of 850 books to school districts, asking that they report how many copies they have of each title and how much had been spent on those books.Michael Flynn allies allegedly plotted to lean on Republicans to back vote auditsRead moreThe Texas Tribune reported that the books included two by Ta-Nehisi Coates; LGBT Families by Leanne K Currie-McGhee; and ‘Pink is a Girl Color’ … and Other Silly Things People Say, a children’s book by Stacy and Erik Drageset. Krause’s list sparked panic in schools, and by December a district in San Antonio said it was reviewing 414 titles in its libraries.In Pennsylvania, the Central York school board banned a long list of books, almost entirely titles by, or about, people of color, including books by Jacqueline Woodson, Ijeoma Oluo and Ibram X Kendi, and children’s titles about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. “Let’s just call it what it is – every author on that list is a Black voice,” one teacher told the York Dispatch.Four high schools in Utah’s Canyons school district removed copies of at least nine books, the Deseret News reported, including Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe; the Bluest Eye, a book by the Pulitzer winner Toni Morrison that addresses racial and gender oppression; and Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez, a story about romance in a racially divided 1930s Texas.Groups purporting to be “grassroots” efforts have frequently led the charge, petitioning school boards or elected officials to remove certain books. Though some of these organizations present themselves as a local effort that sprang up around groups of parents united behind a cause, many of the groups involved in banning books are in fact linked, and backed by influential conservative donors.Most of the books relate to race or gender equality, at a time when some Republicans are mounting an effort to prevent teaching on race in schools by launching a loud campaign against critical race theory, an academic discipline that examines the ways in which racism operates in US laws and society.Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said the number of attempts to ban books had soared through 2021.“What’s unique is it appears to be an organized effort by a number of advocacy groups to activate members in local chapters to challenge books in school libraries and public libraries in the United States,” she said.“We’ve noted that there are a number of groups like Moms for Liberty, Parents Defending Education, No Left Turn in Education that have particular views on what is appropriate for young people, and they’re trying to implement their agenda – particularly in schools, but also taking their concerns to public libraries as well.”Caldwell-Stone said ALA received 156 book challenges – an attempt to remove or restrict one or more books – in 2020. In the last three months of 2021 alone, the organization saw 330 book challenges.In most incidents there is a common format. According to the conservative groups, one parent of a child at school has spotted an allegedly unsuitable book, and has raised the alarm. But the movement is far from organic.The name Moms for Liberty might suggest a homely, kitchen-table effort. In reality, Moms for Liberty is associated with other supposed grassroots groups backed by conservative donors, who appear to be driving the book-banning effort.Moms for Liberty groups are promoted on the website of Parents Defending Education (PDE), another conservative group, and in May Moms for Liberty joined with PDE to write a letter to Miguel Cardona, the US education secretary, expressing concerns over federal efforts to include teaching about the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans in US society.Moms for Liberty did not respond to a request for comment.Asra Nomani, PDE’s vice-president for strategy and investigations, has appeared on Fox News to rail against some books, including Woke Baby and Gender Queer, being in Virginia libraries, and PDE carries a list of books it deems problematic on its website.PDE, which launched in spring of 2021, has emerged as one of the key organizations in the conservative fight for influence in public schools. The group describes itself as a “grassroots organization”, but has ties to deep-pocket conservative money and influence.PDE’s president, Nicole Neilly, was previously the executive director of the Independent Women’s Forum and worked at the Cato Institute, a rightwing thinktank co-founded by Republican mega-donor Charles Koch. The Intercept reported that the IWF has received large donations from Republican donor Leonard Leo, a former vice-president of the Koch-funded Federalist Society who advised Donald Trump on judicial appointments.PDE’s website offers templates as to how aggrieved people can get involved. The group is behind an effort to create a web of coordinated Instagram pages that highlight perceived liberal bias at specific schools, and offers a step-by-step guide to doing the same, from how to create a specific gmail address to match the mission to how to describe the instagram account. The guide advises: “For the ‘full name’ field, use ‘Woke at [school name].’ For the ‘username’ field, use ‘wokeat[school name].’”PDE, which has also railed against critical race theory, even tells parents they should spy on teachers’ online activity to seek incriminating material.“Look at the social media pages of teachers and administrators at your school. They are often quite proud of what they’re doing and sometimes post incriminating statements or materials,” PDE’s website says.Another aim, beyond banning books, is exposed in PDE’s efforts to encourage conservative parents to run for school boards – an often ignored position that wields a considerable amount of power.PDE offers a guide on how parents can run, and while also describing how to gain influence on Parent Teacher Student Associations. It even offers specific questions disgruntled parents can pose to their school boards.PDE did not respond to a request for comment.No Left Turn in Education, whose chapters are promoted on PDE’s website, is another of the groups leading the charge. No Left Turn’s website contains a list of more than 60 books it deems inappropriate.Again, the group has links to deep-pocketed conservatives. The Milwaukee Journal reported that Elana Fishbein, No Left Turn in Education’s founder, has provided free legal representation for parents wishing to challenge school districts. According to Journal, most of those lawyers are affiliated with the Liberty Justice Center and Pacific Legal Foundation, which receive funding from the prominent GOP donor Dick Uihlein, a Wisconsin-based billionaire.No Left Turn in Education did not respond to requests for comment.The banning of books about race or LGBTQ issues does not just affect those communities, said Kim Anderson, executive director of the National Education Association. It also withholds the opportunity for all students to learn “an honest and accurate truth of our history”.“Censoring the full history of America impacts all of us as a country,” Anderson said.“If we’re not willing to embrace the beauty of America, which is that our diversity is our strength, then we weaken the core idea of America. So it’s offensive, certainly, to people of color and other Americans who have traditionally been marginalized, but ultimately we’re short-changing every single student if we don’t tell the truth.”In Texas, Krause, who was running for state attorney general when he released his list of 850 books – he has since dropped out of the race – did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about how he came up with his list of books.Krause told Education Week he chose to act after school boards began reviewing books of “an inappropriate nature”.“None of us wants grossly inappropriately material in our schools,” he said.As the conservative effort has grown, there has been pushback in many states, from authors, teachers, librarians and students. Carolyn Foote, a library advocate who co-founded the group FReadom Fighters to push back against banning efforts, said the conservative efforts represent a “danger to democracy”.“The supreme court protects young people’s right to choose library materials to read as a first amendment right. It also is growing to include more and more titles, which is concerning, and a minority of parents are impacting all students,” Foote said.The Pennsylvania ban was overturned in September 2021 after students protested outside their York County high school and outside school board meetings. In Virginia, high school students managed to overturn the Spotsylvania book ban in similar fashion, while Caldwell-Stone said the ALA will continue to highlight the book-banning efforts.“We don’t oppose the ability of parents to guide their children’s reading,” she said.“What we have deep concerns about is one parent, or one small group of parents, making decisions for an entire community about what is appropriate reading, based on their own moral and religious values.”TopicsUS newsRepublicansUS educationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Capitol attack committee has spoken to Trump AG William Barr, chairman says

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      Capitol attack committee has spoken to Trump AG William Barr, chairman says
      Bennie Thompson reveals attorney general interviews
      Trump complains panel is going after his children
      ’Walls closing in’: Trump reels from week of political setbacks
      The chairman of the congressional committee investigating the US Capitol attack and Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election revealed on Sunday that the panel has spoken to the former attorney general William Barr, a further indication that the inquiry has moved closer to the ex-president’s inner circle.‘House of Trump is crumbling’: why ex-president’s legal net is tighteningRead moreBennie Thompson told CBS’s Face the Nation that Barr, who was accused of making the justice department Trump’s tool but who resigned before Trump left office, had spoken more than once with the panel.“To be honest with you, we’ve had conversations with the former attorney general already,” Thompson said.His host, Margaret Brennan, asked if the panel would seek answers from Barr over the discovery of a draft executive order for the US military to seize voting machines in contested states.“We have talked to Department of Defense individuals,” Thompson said. “We are concerned that our military was part of this big lie on promoting that the election was false. If you are using the military to potentially seize voting machines, even though it’s a discussion, the public needs to know.”News of the interviews with Barr, who angered Trump by insisting there was no evidence to support his lies of a stolen election, dealt another blow to the former president, whose political and legal woes escalated significantly this week.Unlike other Trumpworld insiders who have refused to cooperate with the January 6 committee, such as the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, strategist Steve Bannon and national security adviser Michael Flynn, Barr appears to have spoken willingly.It reflects moves by the House panel to focus more closely on Trump’s actions following the election, including his inciting of the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol.This week, the committee asked for the cooperation of Trump’s daughter Ivanka.“Our strategy is to get to all the facts and circumstances that brought about January 6,” Thompson said.“And obviously Ivanka Trump was a major adviser to the president all along, a number of items [are] attributed to what she’s been saying and so we asked her to come in voluntarily and give us the benefit of what she knows.”The inquiry has also subpoenaed phone records of Trump’s son Eric and Kimberly Guilfoyle, partner of Donald Jr.Trump is not pleased, complaining in an interview with the rightwing Washington Examiner that the committee was made up of “vicious people” who “go after children”.Donald Trump Jr is 44, Ivanka Trump is 40 and Eric Trump is 38.TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpWilliam BarrUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Sanders: ‘anti-democratic’ Republicans to blame for Biden woes, not just Manchin and Sinema

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      Sanders: ‘anti-democratic’ Republicans to blame for Biden woes, not just Manchin and SinemaSenator confirms he will campaign against moderate Democrats if they face primary challenges

      Robert Reich: Manchin and Sinema are all about their egos
      Bernie Sanders on Sunday sought to turn fire aimed by Democrats at two of their own, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, onto Republican senators he said were “pushing an anti-democratic agenda”.Kyrsten Sinema: Arizona Democrats censure senator for voting rights failureRead more“Republicans are laughing all the way to election day,” the Vermont senator told CNN’s State of the Union. “They have not had to cast one bloody vote which shows us where they’re at.”But the Vermont progressive also confirmed that he will campaign against Manchin and Sinema, both Democrats, should they face viable primary challengers.Manchin, from West Virginia, and Sinema, from Arizona, have blocked Democratic priorities including the Build Back Better spending plan and, this week, voting rights reform.Their refusal to contemplate reform to the filibuster, the rule which requires 60-vote majorities for most legislation, meant two voting rights bills in answer to Republican attacks on voting in states were always doomed to fail.On Saturday, Sinema was formally censured by her state party. Sanders said he supported that move. He also confirmed his threat to campaign against Sinema and Manchin in 2024.“If there was strong candidates prepared to stand up for working families who understand that the Democratic party has got to be the party of working people, taking on big money interests, if both candidates were there in Arizona and West Virginia, yes, I would be happy to support them.”But, Sanders insisted, “it’s not only those two. It is 50 Republicans who have been adamant about not only pushing an anti-democratic agenda but also opposing our efforts to try to lower the cost of prescription drugs, trying to expand Medicare … to improve the disaster situation in home healthcare, in childcare, to address the existential threat of climate change. “You’ve got 50 Republicans who don’t want to do anything except criticise the president and then you have, sadly enough, two Democrats who choose to work with Republicans rather than the president, and it will sabotage the president’s effort to address the needs of working families in this country.”Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press, Sanders insisted the Biden administration made “a great start”, in part with a Covid relief bill passed with just 50 votes and the casting vote of Vice-President Kamala Harris, but was now bogged down thanks in large part to Manchin and Sinema.“The president and the Democratic Congress,” Sanders said, “… looked at the economic crisis that was caused by Covid. We passed the American Rescue Plan … and we also passed along the way the strongest infrastructure bill that has been passed since Dwight D Eisenhower … We were off to a great start. “And then I will tell you exactly what happened. Fifty members of the Republican party decided that they were going to be obstructionist … and then you had two United States senators joining them, Mr Manchin and Senator Sinema. “For five months now there have been negotiations behind closed doors trying to get these two Democratic senators on board. That strategy, in my view, has failed. It has failed dismally. We saw it last week in terms of the Voting Rights Act. We now need a new direction.”Asked if he was frustrated, Sanders told CNN he was.But, he insisted, “we need to start voting. We need to bring important pieces of legislation that impact the lives of working families right onto the floor of the Senate. And Republicans want to vote against lowering the cost of climate change, home healthcare, whatever it may be. And if the Democrats want to join them, let the American people see what’s happening. “Then we can pick up the pieces and pass legislation.”Abolishing the filibuster won’t lead to a ‘tyranny of the majority’. It’s quite the opposite Read moreSome Democrats advocate splitting Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan into separate bills, in order to pass what they can.Sanders conceded that most such legislation will not pass, given Republican obstruction and the machinations of Manchin and Sinema. Bringing bills to the floor, he conceded, would really be about electoral politics ahead of midterms this year in which Republicans expect to take back the House and possibly the Senate, and the presidential contest in two years’ time.“Once we know where people are at,” he said, “then we can say, ‘All right, look, we have 50 votes here, we have just one vote here, 49 votes here. “But what has bothered me very much is Republicans are laughing all the way to election day. They have not had to cast one bloody vote, or two, which shows us where they’re at. And we’ve got to change.”TopicsBernie SandersUS SenateUS CongressDemocratsBiden administrationUS politicsUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More

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      The Biden doctrine: Ukraine gaffe sums up mixed year of foreign policy

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      The Biden doctrine: Ukraine gaffe sums up mixed year of foreign policy On Russia and Putin, the president said the quiet part loud. Re-engagement has been welcomed but the exit from Afghanistan was a disaster. Analysts see much to do to rebuild US credibilityJoe Biden marked his first anniversary in office with a gaffe over Ukraine that undid weeks of disciplined messaging and diplomatic preparation.Russian ships, tanks and troops on the move to Ukraine as peace talks stallRead moreThe president’s suggestion that a “minor incursion” by Russia might split Nato over how to respond sent the White House into frantic damage limitation mode.Officials insisted Biden had been referring to cyber attacks and paramilitary activities and not Russian troops crossing the border. That failed to entirely calm nerves in Kyiv and other European capitals, especially as Biden also raised eyebrows by predicting that Vladimir Putin would “move in” to Ukraine because “he has to do something” and would probably prevail.The analysis of Nato’s weaknesses and Putin’s intentions was no doubt widely shared but Biden had said the quiet part loud, contradicting what his own officials had been saying. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, had just been telling Foreign Policy that one of the great successes of the Biden administration was that “the 30 allies of Nato [were] speaking with one voice in the Russia-Ukraine crisis”.Aides who have shadowed Biden through his long career as senator and vice-president are used to his prolix ways, his tendency to draw on his deep foreign policy expense to over-explain, but the stakes are immeasurably greater as a president, trying to stare down Putin as Europe stands on the threshold of war.The stumble distracted from some of the foreign policy achievements of Biden’s first year – the mending of transatlantic ties, the bolstering of US support for the embattled government in Kyiv and the development of a consistent policy towards Moscow – which combined a openness to talks with a readiness to inflict punitive measures and a refusal to be divided from Nato allies.None of those gains were a given in US foreign policy after four years of Donald Trump, a president who frequently put domestic political and business advantage ahead of strategic national interests, particularly when it came to Russia. Mending alliances, returning to multilateralism and restoring predictability to US policy after the volatile Trump era is widely regarded as Biden’s greatest success so far in foreign policy.His claim on taking office that “America is back” was backed up by a quick deal to extend the New Start treaty in Russia and thereby salvage the only major arms control agreement to survive Trump. The US rejoined the Paris climate accord and the United Nations Human Rights Council, re-engaged with major powers in nuclear talks with Iran, and convened a virtual Summit for Democracy in December.All those steps were in line with a broad strategy which Nathalie Tocci, director of the Rome-based Institute of International Affairs, describes as a Biden doctrine.“I think it’s a strategic reorientation towards competition/conflict with China and, the other side of that coin, strengthening relationships with partners in Europe and in Asia, both bilaterally and multilaterally,” Tocci said. “And relying less on the military instrument in order to pursue US foreign policy goals.”The Ukraine stumble was not the first time that strategy has been impaired by its execution. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was intended to be a decisive break with the past, extricating the US from its longest war so it could focus on its most important geopolitical challenge, the rapid rise of China.The departure turned to chaos when the Afghan army, which the US had spent $83m and 20 years trying to build, collapsed in a few days in the face of a Taliban offensive. The scenes of desperate Afghans trying to cling to departing US planes, some dying in the attempt, are an inescapable part of Biden’s legacy.Biden has argued he was boxed in by the Doha agreement the Trump administration signed with the Taliban in February 2020, under which the US was due to leave by May 2021. Biden was able to stretch that deadline by four months but maintained that staying any longer would have led to renewed attacks on US troops.Nathan Sales, an acting under secretary of state in the Trump administration, argued that the Doha deal was no longer binding on Biden, and he could have left a force to maintain US leverage.“When one side of an agreement breaches it serially and flagrantly like the Taliban did, I think the Biden administration would have been well within its rights to say: ‘We’re not bound by it either,’” said Sales, now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.Current US officials argue that whether the US declared the Taliban had been in violation or not, there would have been renewed attacks on US troops, forcing a decision to cut and run or send large-scale reinforcements. The status quo, they say, was not sustainable.Putin, a ‘rogue male’ on the rampage, threatens to start a war no one wants | Simon Tisdall Read moreEven considering the constraints imposed by the previous administration, the withdrawal was a fiasco. US planners failed to anticipate the speed of the collapse even though a government watchdog, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, had warned in 2021 that without US contractors to service planes and helicopters, the Afghan air force would no longer be able to function, depriving troops on the ground of a key advantage.For Afghans who worked with the US and its allies, and for the country’s women and girls, the departure seemed like a betrayal, raising a serious question mark over the administration’s claims to have restored human rights to the heart of US foreign policy.Its record in that regard was already mixed.On one hand, the administration had taken a firm stand against China’s mass persecution of Muslim Uyghurs, declaring it a genocide. Furthermore, the assembly of a coalition of some 130 countries to establish a global minimum tax was, according to Matt Duss, foreign affairs adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, “a step toward addressing global economic inequality which is one of the drivers of conflict and authoritarianism”.“It’s an important first step and a courageous one,” Duss said. He also pointed to the sanctions against surveillance companies like the Israeli NSO group, whose software was used by authoritarian regimes to target dissidents.“​​That was a very consequential move, and there has been a massive pressure campaign trying to get them to roll it back, but they’ve stood firm,” he said.However, the steps taken against the Saudi monarchy for the heavy civilian toll from its air war in Yemen and the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi felt well short of what human rights campaigners and progressive Democrats had hoped for. The Biden administration continued to sell Riyadh substantial quantities of advanced weaponry.“We’ve basically returned to the traditional US approach of supporting human rights in countries that don’t buy our weapons,” Duss said. “I very much hope that changes.”‘A lot of bad blood’Another way in which the manner of the US exit from Afghanistan undermined the administration’s wider objectives was by alienating European allies, who felt left out of a decision they were obliged to follow.“The pull-out really caused a lot of bad blood unnecessarily,” Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said. “You can call it the root cause of unhappiness within the alliance.”The formation in September of Aukus, a partnership with the UK and Australia to help the latter acquire nuclear-powered submarines, was another sweeping move in the pivot towards Asia.Confusion over UK claim that Putin plans coup in UkraineRead moreBut the protagonists had omitted to inform France, who discovered on the same day that their contract to sell Australia diesel submarines had been cancelled. Biden was forced to acknowledge the “clumsy” way it had been handled, and the rift clouded bilateral relations for months.Putin’s threat to Ukraine has helped rally the transatlantic alliance but as Biden revealed in his own public reflections, there are still serious divisions below the surface, limiting his room for manoeuvre.The president’s freedom of action on other global issues, like making progress in climate action or finding a nuclear compromise with Iran, will be hindered still further if Republicans gain control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections. In that case, the administration’s record until now, mixed as it is, may prove to be the high point of the Biden doctrine.TopicsJoe BidenBiden administrationUS foreign policyUS national securityUS militaryUS politicsUkrainefeaturesReuse this content More

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      ‘The walls are closing in’: Trump reels from week of political setbacks

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      ‘The walls are closing in’: Trump reels from week of political setbacks It was a terrible seven days, with major developments in investigations of his election lies and the Capitol riot reaching into his inner circle

      ‘House of Trump is crumbling’: why the legal net is tightening
      The last time Donald Trump heard such hammer blows, they were from renovations at Mar-a-Lago that displeased the former president. But not even that sound would have left his ears ringing like last week’s avalanche of bad news that some believe nudged a criminal indictment one step closer.Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn to see honorary university degrees revokedRead moreNo single week in the year since Trump left the White House has been as dramatic, or for him as potentially catastrophic, as the one just passed.It included a rebuke from the supreme court over documents related to the 6 January insurrection which Trump incited; news that the congressional committee investigating the riot was closing in on Trump’s inner circle; evidence from New York’s attorney general of alleged tax fraud; and, perhaps most damaging of all, a request from a Georgia prosecutor for a grand jury in her investigation of Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.The week ended with the leaking of a document showing that Trump at least pondered harnessing the military in his attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.It all left the former president with plenty to ponder.“He’s Teflon Don, he said he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and survive it, his supporters are going to support him no matter what, but I’m starting to think more and more that the walls are closing in on this guy,” said Kimberley Wehle, a respected legal analyst and professor of law at the University of Baltimore.“The most immediate thing is the grand jury in Georgia because there’s audio of him trying to get [secretary of state] Brad Raffensperger to ‘find’ votes. Under Georgia election laws as I read them that is potentially a crime.“The looming question is whether Trump will be indicted along with 11 others so far for seditious conspiracy [over the 6 January Capitol attack]. To me that’s the biggest turn of events … the justice department believes they have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt of an agreement, a meeting of minds to overturn a legitimate election.“And that there are a lot of high-level people that are looped into it, including potentially Donald Trump himself, and of course he’s not president, so he’s not immune from prosecution any more.”It is that Department of Justice investigation into the deadly Capitol assault, parallel but separate to the 6 January House committee, which harbors the most legal peril for Trump. Some believe sedition charges for members of the Oath Keepers militia indicate that the inquiry has moved into a higher gear.Others, most recently Preet Bharara, former district attorney for the southern district of New York, have questioned why it appears members of Trump’s inner guard, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows, have not yet been questioned.“It’s just not a possibility they’ve tried to interview, you know, a dozen of the top people at and around the White House like the [6 January] committee has [because] they squeal like stuck pigs when people approach them,” Bharara told The New Abnormal podcast, a Daily Beast podcast.“It’s odd to have allowed all this testimony to be collected, all these documents to be subpoenaed and compiled, and they don’t look like they’ve done any of these interviews. There are some lower-level people who breached the doors to the Capitol, but I don’t think those people are giving it up in a straight line to Trump.”At a rare press conference earlier this month, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, did not mention Trump by name but sought to reassure critics of his investigation.“The justice department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law – whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy,” he said in a carefully worded address.The objectives of the House committee are easier to divine and more likely in the immediate term to cause political harm to Trump as he mulls another White House run.Thursday’s request for testimony from his daughter Ivanka, a former White House adviser, brings the investigation to the heart of Trump’s inner circle. Trump’s actions are also set to be explored in primetime TV hearings that Jamie Raskin, a Democratic member of the committee, has promised will “blow the roof off the House”.The panel also scored a big victory on Wednesday when the supreme court ended Trump’s efforts to shield more than 700 pages of White House records. The treasure trove of documents included a draft executive order directing the Department of Defense to seize voting machines, and appointing a special counsel to look into the election, in support of Trump’s “big lie” that the election was stolen.“Documents don’t die, they don’t lie,” Wehle said. “A witness can say, ‘Oh, I don’t recall,’ and dance around it. Documents cannot. Secondly, the documents will lead to more people to discuss what happened, including Ivanka Trump.”Trump himself has been uncharacteristically quiet about his week of setbacks, other than two statements attacking Fani Willis, the Democratic district attorney for Fulton county, Georgia, for requesting a grand jury to assist her investigation into his election interference.Draft Trump order told defense chief to seize swing-state voting machinesRead more“The people looking for the crime are being hounded and the people who committed the crime are being protected,” he said. “This is not the American way.”To Wehle, the week’s developments have significance not only for Trump but for November midterm elections in which Republicans are tipped to reclaim Congress.“We have to think about the January 6th committee as getting information to voters before November about sitting members who might be up for reelection,” she said.“The question is not so much whether Trump will be indicted, but who in a seat of power in the US Congress was potentially involved in this conspiracy.“Frankly, if American democracy is to be saved from single-party minority rule, November is absolutely vital.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsUS elections 2020US midterm elections 2022US elections 2024US CongressfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Where egos dare: Manchin and Sinema show how Senate spotlight corrupts

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      Where egos dare: Manchin and Sinema show how Senate spotlight corruptsRobert ReichThe two Democratic senators chose to wreck American democracy, simply to feed their sense of their own importance What can possibly explain Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema’s decision to sink voting rights protections? Why did they create a false narrative that the legislation had to be “bipartisan” when everyone, themselves included, knew bipartisanship was impossible?Arizona Democrats censure Kyrsten Sinema for voting rights failureRead moreWhy did they say they couldn’t support changing Senate filibuster rules when only last month they voted for an exception to the filibuster that allowed debt ceiling legislation to pass with only Democratic votes?Why did they co-sponsor voting rights legislation and then vote to kill the very same legislation? Why did Manchin vote for the “talking filibuster” in 2011 yet vote against it now?Part of the answer to all these questions can be found in the giant wads of corporate cash flowing into their campaign coffers. But if you want the whole answer, you need also to look at the single biggest factor affecting almost all national politicians I’ve dealt with: ego. Manchin’s and Sinema’s are now among the biggest.Before February of last year, almost no one outside West Virginia had heard of Manchin and almost no one outside Arizona (and probably few within it) had ever heard of Sinema. Now, they’re notorious. They’re Washington celebrities. Their photos grace every major news outlet in America.This sort of attention is addictive. Once it seeps into the bloodstream, it becomes an all-consuming force. I’ve known politicians who have become permanently and irrevocably intoxicated.I’m not talking simply about power, although that’s certainly part of it. I’m talking about narcissism – the primal force driving so much of modern America but whose essence is concentrated in certain places such as Wall Street, Hollywood and the United States Senate.Once addicted, the pathologically narcissistic politician can become petty in the extreme, taking every slight as a deep personal insult. I’m told Manchin asked Joe Biden’s staff not to blame him for the delay of Build Back Better and was then infuriated when Biden suggested Manchin bore some of the responsibility. I’m also told that if Biden wants to restart negotiations with Manchin on Build Back Better, he’s got to rename it because Manchin is so angry he won’t vote for anything going by that name.The Senate is not the world’s greatest deliberative body but it is the world’s greatest stew of egos battling for attention. Every senator believes he or she has what it takes to be president. Most believe they’re far more competent than whoever occupies the Oval Office.Yet out of 100 senators, only a handful are chosen for interviews on the Sunday talk shows and very few get a realistic shot at the presidency. The result is intense competition for attention.Again and again, I’ve watched worthy legislation sink because particular senators didn’t feel they were getting enough credit, or enough personal attention from a president, or insufficient press attention, or unwanted press attention, or that another senator (sometimes from the same party) was getting too much attention.Several people on the Hill who have watched Sinema at close range since she became a senator tell me she relished all the attention she got when she gave her very theatrical thumbs down to increasing the minimum wage, and since then has thrilled at her national celebrity as a spoiler.Biden prides himself on having been a member of the senatorial “club” for many years before ascending to the presidency and argued during the 2020 campaign that this familiarity would give him an advantage in dealing with his former colleagues. But it may be working against him. Senators don’t want clubby familiarity from a president. They want a president to shine the national spotlight on them.Lindsey Graham, reverse ferret: how John McCain’s spaniel became Trump’s poodleRead moreSome senators get so whacky in the national spotlight that they can’t function without it. Trump had that effect on Republicans. Before Trump, Lindsey Graham was almost a normal human being. Then Trump directed a huge amp of national attention Graham’s way, transmogrifying the senator into a bizarro creature who’d say anything Trump wanted to keep the attention coming.Not all senators are egomaniacs, of course. Most lie on an ego spectrum ranging from mildly inflated to pathological.Manchin and Sinema are near the extreme. Once they got a taste of the national spotlight, they couldn’t let go. They must have figured that the only way they could keep the spotlight focused on themselves was by threatening to do what they finally did last week: shafting American democracy.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsUS voting rightsOpinionUS politicsDemocratsUS SenateBiden administrationUS CongressJoe ManchincommentReuse this content More

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      Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn to see honorary university degrees revoked

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      Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn to see honorary university degrees revokedUniversity of Rhode Island board votes unanimously to revoke degrees given to key allies of Donald Trump in 2003 and 2014

      ‘House of Trump is crumbling’: the legal net tightens
      The University of Rhode Island will revoke honorary degrees given to Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn, key allies of Donald Trump in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.Michael Flynn allies allegedly plotted to lean on Republicans to back vote auditsRead moreThe URI board of trustees on Friday voted unanimously to revoke the degrees, which were given to Giuliani in 2003 and Flynn in 2014.Giuliani’s doctorate of laws was given for his leadership as mayor of New York City after the 9/11 attacks, the Providence Journal reported.Flynn, a retired general and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who graduated from URI in 1981, was given a doctorate of humane letters.The trustees voted on the recommendation of the URI president, Marc Parlange, who said the two men “no longer represent the highest level of our values and standards that were evident when we first bestowed the degree”.Giuliani has acted as Trump’s attorney, work that led to the suspension of his law licenses in New York and Washington DC.A leader of legal attempts to overturn election results in key states, Giuliani spoke at a rally near the White House on 6 January, urging “trial by combat”.Parlange said Giuliani “encouraged domestic terrorist behavior aimed at preventing Congress from certifying the outcome of the 2020 presidential election”.Seven people died around the storming of the US Capitol. Trump was impeached but acquitted. More than 700 people have been charged. Eleven members of a far-right militia have been charged with sedition.This week, Giuliani was among Trump allies served subpoenas by the House select committee investigating the attack. Trump’s former adviser, Steve Bannon, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of contempt of Congress arising from a refusal to co-operate. Trump’s final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, could face the same charge. Leading Republicans in Congress have also refused to co-operate.On Friday, the Washington Post reported that a judge has released to prosecutors more than 3,000 of Giuliani’s communications, in an investigation of work in Ukraine which contributed to Trump’s first impeachment, for seeking dirt on rivals including Joe Biden.Flynn, who was fired from the Defense Intelligence Agency by Barack Obama, became Trump’s national security adviser before being fired for lying to the FBI about contacts with Russian officials.He pleaded guilty but was pardoned by Trump. A leading figure on the far right, he has advocated a military coup and the establishment of Christianity as the state religion.Texts show Fox News host Hannity’s pleas to Trump aide after Capitol attackRead moreFlynn has been implicated in aspects of Trump’s attempt to stay in power including plans to seize election machines, the subject of a draft executive order revealed on Friday by Politico. He has resisted a subpoena from the 6 January committee.Also on Friday, the Guardian reported that law enforcement agencies have learned of an alleged plan by “allies of Flynn” to “gather ‘intelligence’ on top Republicans”, in order to compel them to back election audits in key states.Recommending the revocation of the honorary degrees, Parlange said: “As a civic institution, URI has the privilege and responsibility to sustain and preserve American democracy by insuring and modeling good citizenship. Revoking these honorary degrees reinforces our values and allows us to lead with truth and integrity.”The chairwoman of the URI trustees, Margo Cook, said the board “supports the university and its mission to uphold its values, especially its commitment to intellectual and ethical leadership and fostering an environment of diversity and respect”.TopicsRudy GiulianiThe ObserverMichael FlynnDonald TrumpTrump administrationRhode IslandUS educationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More