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      in US Politics

      Billionaire backer feels 'deceived' by Josh Hawley over election objections

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      A secretive billionaire supporter of Josh Hawley and other rightwing lawmakers suggested he had been “deceived” by the Republican senator from Missouri, who led the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Jeffrey Yass is a co-founder of Susquehanna International Group – headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a critical swing state – who has donated tens of millions of dollars to hardline Republican groups who supported Donald Trump’s effort to invalidate his defeat at the polls by Joe Biden.Yass privately told a longtime associate he had not foreseen how his contributions would lead to attempts to overturn US democracy.“Do you think anyone knew Hawley was going to do that?” Yass wrote to Laura Goldman, a former stockbroker who has known him for more than three decades.“Sometimes politicians deceive their donors.”Yass, who does not give interviews and generally avoids publicity, also told Goldman he did not believe the 2020 election had been “stolen”, even though he has directly and indirectly supported rightwing Republicans who have repeatedly – and falsely – sought to discredit the results.The latest fallout of the 6 January attempt to invalidate the election, in which 147 Republicans in Congress objected to electoral college results in the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol, comes as both Hawley and his donors face pressure and criticism for his role.Hawley has said he objected to the counting of electoral votes in order to instigate a “debate” on the issue of election integrity. He has denied that his actions helped to incite the violent outburst and breach of the Capitol in which five people died, including a police officer.Goldman told the Guardian she emailed Yass because she was upset to learn about his support for Hawley and other Republicans, especially since the lawmakers were seeking to invalidate the election results in their home state, Pennsylvania, which helped Biden clinch the White House.“I approached Jeff Yass upset after reading the Guardian’s article [about his involvement in donations] because I was shocked he would allow my vote and the vote of his neighbors to possibly be invalidated by politicians to whom he gives millions of dollars,” she said.She added: “Yass lives here. He knows local politicians … he could simply call them and ask questions if he thought the election results were funky, which they absolutely were not. He doesn’t need Josh Hawley, a senator from Missouri, or Ted Cruz, a senator from Texas, to question the election results in the state that he has lived almost 40 years.”Goldman published snippets of Yass’s private remarks to her on Twitter. The Guardian was able to verify the authenticity of the statements.Yass, a trader and poker aficionado who is an active Republican donor and has been a force in Pennsylvania elections, donated about $30m to conservative Super Pacs in the 2020 election cycle, making him the eighth-largest donor in the election, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.Most of those donations were made to the Club for Growth, an anti-tax group that in 2018 and 2020 supported 42 Republican hardliners who ultimately voted to overturn election results even after insurrectionists stormed the US Capitol.The Club for Growth has been a major back of both Hawley and Cruz, his partner in seeking to invalidate the election.Yass has not responded to requests for comment from the Guardian. Nor has he responded to questions about whether he will continue to donate to the Club for Growth or whether he discussed issues with Hawley and others. Goldman said she sought out a discussion with him in part because she knows he is a “hands on” political donor.The Club for Growth did not respond to a request for comment. The group’s president, David McIntosh, has been an avid supporter of some of most anti-democratic lawmakers elected in 2020, including Lauren Boebert, a QAnon follower and gun rights advocate from Colorado who has been criticized for tweeting the location of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, during the riot in the Capitol, against the advice of police.In an endorsement of Boebert in July 2020, McIntosh lauded the the restaurant owner and political novice for her understanding of the “irreparable harm” caused by “government overreach” and said he had no doubt Boebert would be a “conservative firebrand” in Washington.Yass told Goldman he donated to the Club for Growth a year ago and suggested he could not have anticipated what Hawley and others might do.But public records show Yass also donated $2.5m to the Protect Freedom Pac on 10 November 2020, a week after the US election. The Protect Freedom Pac, affiliated with the Kentucky Republican senator Rand Paul, ran advertisements against Democrats ahead of two January runoff elections in Georgia, including ads that claimed Democrats were seeking to defund the police, institute “socialist healthcare” and raise “trillions in new taxes”.The Protect Freedom Pac’s website currently – and falsely – states that Democrats “stole” the 2020 election and used the Covid-19 crisis to illegally change election laws. It has also endorsed an in-person voter ID law, a policy that would disproportionately block minority voters.Yass has received far less attention than other billionaire donors, such as Mike Bloomberg or the late Sheldon Adelson, but has been known to get involved in local politics, donating money to candidates who support charter schools.Goldman told the Guardian Yass has been a longtime supporter of the Republican majority in the Pennsylvania legislature that led the fight to stop mail-in ballots from being counted until election day. Pennsylvania’s final results were not known until days after the election and Biden’s victory was clinched in large part because of hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots that were counted after in-person ballots.Hawley’s office did not respond to a request for comment. More

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      in US Politics

      Biden inauguration: 25,000 National Guard vetted over insider attack fears as state protests fizzle

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      The FBI is vetting all 25,000 National Guard troops arriving in Washington DC for president-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration amid fears of an insider attack, as heavily fortified state capitals across the US saw only small-scale protests by far-right groups on Sunday.
      Commanders have been warned to be on the lookout for problems within their ranks, and Guard members are being trained to identify potential insider threats, army secretary Ryan McCarthy told the Associated Press.
      “We’re continually going through the process, and taking second, third looks at every one of the individuals assigned to this operation,” McCarthy said in an interview on Sunday after he and other military leaders went through a three-hour security drill. So far, however, he and other leaders said they had not seen evidence of any such threats, and officials said the vetting hadn’t flagged any issues.
      The warning came after muted protests across the country saw only a handful of armed men showing up to planned rightwing demonstrations.
      Following the pro-Trump insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January, governors in many states had mobilized the national guard, erected fences around government buildings, and in some cases even cancelled official business, amid warnings from law enforcement agencies of armed protests in all 50 states ahead of Biden’s inauguration.
      On Sunday, the only far-right groups that were visible at the protests were the ones who had first promoted the event: members of the “Boogaloo Bois”, an extremist pro-gun and anti-government movement fixated on a coming civil war. Their desire to make the protest happen across all 50 states was not realized, and even in the states where protests took place, they were unable to muster significant numbers.
      In Salem, Oregon, where the state capitol was breached in December, and where dozens of far-right protesters clashed with Oregon state police on 1 January, the entire protest consisted of eight heavily armed Boogaloo Bois, compared with more than 20 reporters.
      In Lansing, Michigan, where the state’s capitol was also breached by armed men in April, and where men with alleged Boogaloo ties were charged in a plot to kidnap the Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, this fall, about a dozen Boogaloo Bois showed up to protest, according to local news reports. One journalist estimated the Boogaloo Bois stayed for about 30 minutes.

      Dave Boucher
      (@Dave_Boucher1)
      About a dozen people who appear to be boogaloo boys accompanied by a fair number of media members walk to the front of the Capitol pic.twitter.com/rUjWvP6F3C

      January 17, 2021

      In Ohio, there were about two dozen protesters at the capitol in all, some armed with assault-style rifles and wearing military gear. Several identified themselves as part of the Boogaloo movement. In Colorado, there were a handful of Boogaloo Bois at the state capitol, and in New Hampshire, there were five, the New York Times reported. In Arizona, there were about 10 protesters at the state capitol, the Arizona Republic reported, with two men captured in photographs wearing the Hawaiian shirts paired with a military-style rifle that the Boogaloo Bois chose as their uniform.
      The National Guard vetting process began as the first troops began deploying to DC more than a week ago, according to multiple officials.
      “The question is, is that all of them? Are there others?” said McCarthy. “We need to be conscious of it and we need to put all of the mechanisms in place to thoroughly vet these men and women who would support any operations like this.”
      “This is a national priority. We have to be successful as an institution,” said McCarthy. “We want to send the message to everyone in the United States and for the rest of the world that we can do this safely and peacefully.”
      Since June, prosecutors have charged multiple Boogaloo Bois in a series of violent incidents, including the alleged murders of a federal security officer and a sheriff’s deputy in California, an alleged plot to set off molotov cocktails at a Black Lives Matter protest in Las Vegas, and the alleged plot to kidnap a Democratic governor of Michigan.

      Anna Liz Nichols
      (@annaliznichols)
      View from Lansing, MI https://t.co/syDrL5Kv4n

      January 17, 2021

      Asked in a text message about the limited success of the protests on Sunday, Southern Poverty Law Center spokesman Michael Edison Hayden said: “Boogaloo adherents voiced quixotic plans for Sunday. They ran up against obstacles in achieving them in the aftermath of the violence on 6 January and lost access to websites they typically use to bring crowds together.”
      An influential Boogaloo movement website that analysts said had first advertised the national protests on Sunday was taken offline last week.
      And amid fallout from the Capitol riot, Sunday’s protests themselves had become a point of contention in the remaining online platforms that far-right activists could access.
      In a group dedicated to refugees from Parler, the far-right-friendly social media platform whose hosting was yanked by Amazon a week ago, users clashed over the planned protests, with some arguing the events were a “false flag”, and a trap laid by antifascists or law enforcement. More

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      in US Politics

      Inflated ego: Trump baby blimp joins Museum of London collection

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      The the Donald Trump baby blimp, a 6-metre-high inflatable caricature that became a symbol of UK protest against the US president, has secured its place in history at a leading museum.The helium-filled balloon, paid for through crowdfunding, depicts the outgoing president as a snarling orange baby wearing a nappy, with its tiny hands clutching a smartphone. It first took to the skies above Parliament Square during protests over Trump’s first presidential visit to the UK in 2018.It was present again on his state visit in 2019, and has also been flown in France, Argentina, Ireland, Denmark and various locations in the US.Now, after a global tour, the Trump baby, designed by Matt Bonner, and constructed by Imagine Inflatables of Leicester, has been acquired by the Museum of London. It will be conserved and could be displayed as part of the museum’s protest collection, which includes artefacts from the Suffragette movement, climate-crisis rallies and peace activism.The creators of the effigy said they hoped it served as a reminder of the fight against the “politics of hate”.“While we’re pleased that the Trump baby can now be consigned to history along with the man himself, we’re under no illusions that this is the end of the story,” they said in a statement to PA Media.“We hope the baby’s place in the museum will stand as a reminder of when London stood against Mr Trump – but will prompt those who see it to examine how they can continue the fight against the politics of hate.“Most of all, we hope the Trump baby serves as a reminder of the politics of resistance that took place during Trump’s time in office.”On the blimp’s first outing in 2018, Nigel Farage called it “the biggest insult to a sitting US president ever”. Trump himself said: “I guess when they put out blimps to make me feel unwelcome, no reason for me to go to London.”Sharon Ament, the director of the Museum of London, said: “Of course the museum is not political, and does not have any view about the state of politics in the States.” But the blimp touched on a typical British response, she said: satire. “We use humour a lot. And we poke fun at politicians. This is a big – literally – example of that.”The blimp had just arrived at the museum, she said, squashed into a suitcase. “It is timely, because it’s coming to us in the final days of President Trump being President Trump … the most ironic and fitting thing now is that it’s currently in quarantine in the museum. All objects have to be put into quarantine before they go into the collection because they could have insects.”The museum is a fitting home for the effigy, which is “a response from Londoners”, she said. “It was born in London … it was an extraordinary and imaginative idea.”“This large inflatable was just a tiny part of a global movement,” said the blimp’s creators. “A movement that was led by the marginalised people who Trump’s politics most endangered – and whose role in this moment should never be underestimated.” More

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      in Elections

      Biden will appeal for unity as US braces for violence by Trump supporters

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      Joe Biden will deliver a message of national unity when he assumes the presidency on Wednesday, seeking to begin healing a country fractured by the acrimony of Donald Trump’s administration and ongoing threats of violence by his supporters.The preview of the theme of Biden’s inauguration address came as cities across the US braced for violent protests and Washington DC resembled a fortress with up to 25,000 national guard troops deployed.“It’s a message of moving this country forward, it’s a message of unity, it’s a message of getting things done,” Ron Klain, the incoming White House chief of staff, told CNN’s State of the Union.“There’s no question we’ve seen the most divisive four years in over a century from President Trump, it’s one reason Joe Biden ran, to restore the soul of America. The events of the past few weeks have proven out just how damaged the soul of America has been, and how important it is to restore it. That work starts on Wednesday.”Biden will act quickly to reverse many of Trump’s most controversial policies, Klain said, beginning with a 10-day flurry of executive orders that will return the US to the Paris climate agreement and Iran nuclear deal, aim to speed the delivery of Covid-19 vaccines and erase the immigration ban on Muslim-majority countries.The promise of new beginnings, however, is set against the backdrop of threats of domestic terrorism this weekend and around the inauguration. Throughout the day on Sunday, small groups of rightwing protesters gathered outside statehouses across the country, outnumbered by national guard troops and police. By late afternoon Sunday, no incidents were reported. There was an attack on our people. This was the most terrible crime ever by a president against our countryThe Washington DC mayor, Muriel Bowser, told NBC’s Meet the Press she was concerned about several areas of her city following FBI warnings of armed individuals heading there, and to state capitals, bent on repeating the insurrection that left five dead when a mob incited by Trump overran the US Capitol on 6 January.With the massive national guard presence in Washington, and federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies including the Secret Service working with local police, Bowser said she was confident Wednesday’s inauguration would be “a safe event”.But, she said, “this will be an inauguration unlike any other. It was already destined to be given Covid concerns and limited seating and public access. But having our fellow Americans storm the Capitol, in an attempt to overthrow the government, certainly warrants heightened security.”Adam Schiff, the Democratic chair of the House intelligence committee, likened the scene in Washington to Baghdad’s Green Zone, “with so much military presence and barricades”.“I never thought I would see that in our own capital or that it would be necessary, but there was a profound threat from domestic violent extremists of the nature we saw on 6 January,” he said told CBS’s Face the Nation.“There are people coming to the Washington DC area that are bringing weapons, and we see threats to all 50 state capitals. There will be gatherings of individuals and those gatherings could turn violent, so there’s a very high level of risk.”An FBI bulletin warned of the likelihood of violence from armed protesters in Washington and every state capital between 16 and 20 January, Trump’s last day in office. The president, impeached for the second time for inciting the Capitol attack with lies about a stolen election, remained isolated and silent in the White House on Sunday, reportedly assembling a legal team for his Senate trial.Christopher Wray, the FBI director, outlined on Thursday threats by rightwing agitators including QAnon and white supremacist groups such as the Proud Boys.“We are seeing an extensive amount of concerning online chatter,” he said. “One of the real challenges is trying to distinguish what’s aspirational versus what’s intentional.”As a precaution, Capitol buildings were boarded up and extra law enforcement resources deployed in numerous states. On Saturday, Washington police arrested a Virginia man found with a fake inaugural ID, a loaded handgun and ammunition. The man later told the Washington Post the he had been working security in the capital all week and pulled up to the checkpoint after getting lost. He told the paper he forgot the gun was in his truck and denied having so much ammunition. He was released after an initial court appearance and is due back in court in June, records show.“We have intelligence that there’s going to be activity around our capital and capitals across the country,” Asa Hutchinson, the Republican governor of Arkansas, told Fox News Sunday. “We’re taking necessary precautions to protect our capital and our citizens. I know some governors have beefed up even more, but I think the deterrent value hopefully has diminished that threat level.”In Washington, a large area including the White House, the Capitol, the National Mall and several blocks on either side was sealed off by thousands of national guard troops. High steel fences on concrete stands protected government buildings.In the run-up to the inauguration, troops from DC and neighbouring states will garrison the city. By several measures, it is a bigger response than the aftermath of 9/11. Large numbers of soldiers resting in the corridors of the Capitol, have not been seen since the civil war.The protected area was divided into a highly restricted “red zone” and around that a “green zone” accessible to residents, an echo of the Iraq war, and the fortified government and diplomatic area in central Baghdad.By lunchtime on Sunday, the city was quiet, with white supremacist militia leaders telling followers to stay away.In an email to supporters on Thursday, Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, joined other extremists in begging Trump to declare martial law. But he also told supporters they should not gather at state capitols, warning them of “false-flag traps”.Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the neo-fascist Proud Boys, told USA Today his group was not mobilising, saying: “I feel like this part of the battle is over.”A majority of respondents in a USA Today/Suffolk poll published on Sunday said they were still expecting violence.Trump was consumed on Sunday with his Senate trial for “incitement of insurrection”, which could begin as early as Wednesday afternoon.Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman from Maryland and the lead impeachment manager, gave a moving interview to CNN in which he recalled the Capitol riot and remembered his son Tommy, who died on New Year’s Eve at the age of 25.“When we went to count the electoral college votes and [the Capitol] came under that ludicrous attack, I felt my son with me and I was most concerned with our youngest daughter and my son in law, who is married to our other daughter, who were with me that day and who got caught in a room off of the House floor,” he said.“In between them and me was a rampaging armed mob, that could have killed them easily. These events are personal to me. There was an attack on our country, there was an attack on our people.“This was the most terrible crime ever by a president of the United States against our country.”Reuters contributed to this report. More

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      in US Politics

      As Johnson finally condemns Trump, Britain should examine its own shift to the right | Nesrine Malik

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      The writer Alistair Cooke once observed: “As always, the British especially shudder at the latest American vulgarity, and then they embrace it with enthusiasm two years later.” That is a kind way of saying that the British are always a few years behind the Americans, emulating them and then pretending that we came up with whatever it is we are mimicking, or coming up with a uniquely British version of it.For example, Britain’s allegedly evidence-based involvement in the Iraq war was largely – as President George W Bush wrote in an internal memo months before military action – a matter of it following the US’s lead. So much of the special relationship between the two countries hinges on this keeping up of appearances, where the British political classes – who like to maintain their nation is the superior of the two, the original superpower – can admire and obey while holding on to the fiction that the UK is a more restrained country, less prone to the excesses of the other.Margaret Thatcher hit both of these notes, fawning over the US president, Ronald Reagan, when she said that they both “had almost identical beliefs” even though they were from “very different backgrounds”. And on her first visit to the White House, she said that the two countries were “inextricably entwined” because George Washington himself “was a British subject until well after his 40th birthday”.But then Donald Trump became president and upset this taut balance of adulation and snootiness. He publicly flaunted the influence over Britain that had always been wielded in secret, humiliated Theresa May, insulted London mayor Sadiq Khan, and took a swipe at the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. He flourished the power and vulgarity of the US without any of its refining rhetoric or protocol. And the country he presided over became not just one of inelegant indulgence but a darker place where white supremacists, backed by the White House itself, marched in the streets.With that erosion of reputation, Trump’s America has gained a new utility for the British: it is not a place that Britain secretly looks up to, but a place that Britain is unlike; a place that demonstrates why things over here are not to be compared with how bad it is over there. A country that is struggling with its demons, and which we observe from a safe distance while lamenting its decline.Whether it’s the US’s culture wars, its race crisis or its succumbing to far-right politics and white supremacy, these are things that do not map neatly on to Britain’s faultlines. Poor America, the country we no longer share beliefs or an inextricably entwined history with.The distancing began in earnest in the summer of Black Lives Matter, but the storming of the Capitol was the final dividing line. Boris Johnson was appalled at the “disgraceful scenes” and “unreservedly” condemned Trump’s incitement of the crowd, even though he had little to say when Trump was building momentum for the insurrection in the preceding weeks.The prime minister’s transition from spectating to actively condemning was in part because the scenes in Washington DC were simply too shocking to be silent on. But the more important factor is that Trump is on the way out. He can be repudiated with no risk of blowback or diplomatic crisis. Had the events at the Capitol happened in the middle of Trump’s term in office, I would wager that much of the scrambling to denounce, from Twitter to Johnson, would have been absent.And so again, circumstances help the UK to distance itself, pretend it was not complicit in Trump’s ascendancy, that there was no aiding and abetting of the president and his extremist supporters (despite refusing to condemn his Muslim flight ban, and rolling out “the reddest of red carpets” for him). The scenes at the Capitol serve a useful purpose, which is to overshadow the path that led to the steps of the building: with images so vivid and rich, and with so many colourful characters, we become preoccupied with their detail and fail to see all the arteries that nourished them.The insurrection was just one point on a continuum that involves not just Trump and the Republican party, but an entire hinterland of conservative politics. It includes those in Congress who didn’t quite disavow Trump, and respectable conservative pundits who, even if they repudiated the president’s most extreme acts, still played on his themes, such as the conspiring leftwing elite who hate the “real America”. The connective tissue between Trump and the white supremacist on the street is much more fibrous than it serves many to admit.In the UK we are prone to the same impulses of denial – using the high-octane events of the past few weeks to claim that a difference in degree means all the difference in the world. The reality is that, even though our parliament wasn’t stormed, British members of parliament were jostled and abused on their way to work by hardcore Brexit supporters. One of those MPs was assassinated by a far-right nationalist. Another almost was.Britain’s culture war is so potent that we have our own mobs scuffling with the police, responding to the dog whistles of our own government. We have respectable sections in the media who pump out conspiratorial theories about the woke and the elite, and now preach against mask-wearing and lockdowns. When the far right spills out on to the streets, claiming lives and attacking democracies, it’s the result of a million compounded complicities and complacencies. Like a jigsaw, when these details come together they create a larger image. Today that image is Donald Trump. When he is gone, the jigsaw will be broken up again and both the US and the UK will choose not to see what together those pieces can create. More

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      in Elections

      How Trump supporters are radicalised by the far right

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      Far right “playbooks” teaching white nationalists how to recruit and radicalise Trump supporters have surfaced on the encrypted messaging app Telegram ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration.
      The documents, seen by the Observer, detail how to convert mainstream conservatives who have just joined Telegram into violent white supremacists. They were found last week by Tech Against Terrorism, an initiative launched by the UN counter terrorism executive directorate.
      Large numbers of Trump supporters migrated on to Telegram in recent days after Parler, the social media platform favoured by the far right, was forced offline for hosting threats of violence and racist slurs after the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January.
      The documents have prompted concern that far right extremists congregating on Telegram instead of Parler has made it far harder for law enforcement to track where the next attack could come from.
      Already, hundreds of suspects threatening violence during this week’s inauguration of Biden have been identified by the FBI.
      One of the playbooks, found on a channel with 6,000 subscribers, was specially drawn up to radicalise Trump supporters who had just joined Telegram and teach them “how to have the proper OPSEC [operations security] to keep your identity concealed”.
      The four-page document encourages recruiters to avoid being overtly racist or antisemitic initially when approaching Trump supporters, stating: “Trying to show them racial IQ stats and facts on Jewish power will generally leave them unreceptive… that material will be instrumental later on in their ideological journey.
      “The point of discussion you should focus on is the blatant anti-white agenda that is being aggressively pushed from every institution in the country, as well as white demographic decline and its consequences.”
      The document concludes with its author stating: “Big Tech made a serious mistake by banishing conservatives to the one place [Telegram] where we have unfettered access to them, and that’s a mistake they’ll come to regret!”
      The document is named the “comprehensive redpill guide”, a reference to the online term red-pilling, used to describe a conversion to extreme far-right views.
      The document adds: “Not every normie can be redpilled, but if they’re receptive and open-minded to hearing what you have to say, you should gradually be sending them edgier pro-white/anti-Zionist content as they move along in their journey.”
      Another white nationalist recruitment guide uncovered by Tech Against Terrorism, which is working with global tech firms to tackle terrorist use of the internet, shares seven steps of “conservative conversion”. More

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      in Elections

      Trumpists on top? President exits having cleaved the Republican party in two

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      The presidency of Donald Trump may be ending with both a bang and a whimper: one insurrection, two impeachments and no more characters on Twitter. But the legacy he leaves to American politics – and especially the Republican party – will not end neatly with the inauguration of his successor.That’s not just because Trump has toyed openly with the notion of running for president again in four years. Trump may or may not be able or willing to run for elected office again, if he survives his second impeachment trial and the multiple investigations into his business and tax affairs.Whether or not he stalks Washington on social media or television, Trump leaves the nation’s capital having cleaved his own party in two.On one side is the Trumpist base, willing to follow an autocratic leader wherever his whims lead: blowing up democratic and diplomatic norms, while stoking up racial and social divisions. On the other are establishment conservatives, committed to the institutions and culture that have served their traditional priorities: business, national security and suburban privilege.That schism was on display and on the record as 10 House Republicans – including Liz Cheney, the third-ranking Republican leader – voted for Trump’s impeachment this week, joining Democrats for the most bipartisan impeachment vote in American history. That left 197 Republicans voting to support Trump, reflecting the overwhelming sentiment of the party.According to recent polling by Quinnipiac University, Trump may have plunged to a new low of 33% in his approval ratings, but fully 71% of Republicans still think he’s doing a great job as president.Such numbers help explain the wobbling positions of Republican congressional leaders.Senator Mitch McConnell has let it be known that he welcomes Trump’s impeachment but has curiously not taken a position on convicting the outgoing president – except to delay his trial. Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, voted against impeachment while also blaming Trump for inciting insurrection. They are ironically leading a party that once built an entire election campaign around attacking the Democrats for flip-flopping.These are not new divisions for the Republican party: their roots lie in past divisions like Pat Buchanan’s pitchfork rebellion, Ross Perot’s barn-cleaning reforms, Barry Goldwater’s embrace of extremism and Joe McCarthy’s red scare. But no other Republican president since Richard Nixon has left his party in such a conflicted state, and Nixon himself was ejected from the White House by an establishment led by Goldwater himself.Seasoned conservative intellectuals, operatives and analysts are frankly perplexed by what lies ahead.Pete Wehner, a veteran of three Republican administrations and senior fellow at the conservative Ethics & Public Policy Center, is a staunch Trump critic who does not see an immediate path beyond Trumpism.“It was confusing to me before this week and it’s probably more confusing to me after this week what the future of the Republican party is,” he said. “The reason I say that is because prior to this week, the populist, nihilistic Trumpist movement was in the stronger position. Now it’s in a weaker position, but it doesn’t mean it’s in a weak position.”Wehner says the party’s challenges go far beyond the current crop of Republicans in Congress.“For all of my criticism of Republican lawmakers – and I have had a lot – I have always believed that the fundamental problem isn’t them,” he said. “It’s the base of the party that is where the pathologies are. They are very attuned to what the base wants and what their constituents want. A lot of them were acting in ways that weren’t true to what they believed or their philosophy. They felt constrained and pressured and intimidated. They are scared of Trump supporters and don’t want to be defeated in primaries.”Since November, the dynamic has changed inside the Republican party but it’s not at all clear that the change is enough to move the party away from its obsession with Trump himself. For all the jockeying among Trump-like figures – such as senators Ted Cruz of Texas or Josh Hawley of Missouri – there may be no oxygen left after Trump consumes it all for the next four years. There may be even less oxygen for less toxic conservatives like Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Trump’s UN ambassador, or the Nebraska senator Ben Sasse.What’s the plan and who are the leaders to do that? There’s no clear answer as of right now“Before 6 January, there was a much more complex coalition of factions inside the Trump GOP,” says Kevin Madden, a former senior aide to Mitt Romney and congressional Republican leaders. “There was a variation of Trump supporters and skeptics who were at least united against what they believed were the excesses of the political left. That’s how he enjoyed a 90% approval rating.“After January 6, there was a shift and the fracture in the party is more obvious and out in the open. Now it’s a split between Republicans devoted to the rule of law and those who are devoted to Donald Trump above all else. It’s too early to tell how deep that fracture is and whether it can ever be repaired but, as of right now, those devoted to Donald Trump outnumber the others.”Madden is skeptical that anybody can challenge Trump’s hold on the party while he remains a vocal president-in-exile.“Anyone who believes that they can just draft behind him and build or maintain support with his base while Trump himself fades out is embarking on a fool’s errand,” he says. “This was the conceit of the entire 2016 field, thinking Trump was someone else’s fight. Trump has to be confronted, otherwise the party will look and sound like him for the next 15 years. That’s the question for the so-called establishment. What’s the plan and who are the leaders to do that? There’s no clear answer as of right now.”One clear sign of Trump’s domination is that there is no substantive debate about what amounts to Trump’s policy legacy.There is little dispute about the wisdom of Trump’s massive deficit spending, even as Republicans say they will reject deficit spending by the Biden administration. There is little soul-searching about the nativist anti-immigrant policies of the Trump years, including the forced separation of children at the border. And there’s almost no dispute about Trump’s catastrophic response to the pandemic – from his opposition to mask-wearing, to his failures of testing and tracing, to the botched rollout of mass vaccinations.“He hasn’t weakened the Republican party in all respects,” said Wehner. “It’s true that the Democrats have the Senate and the House and the presidency. There’s no question there’s been some cost. But there’s also no empirical doubt that Trump brought in new people and the party won down-ballot in ways that people didn’t foresee. I can’t say that Trump has been a catastrophe for the party when at the state level they are doing pretty well.”Still, Wehner believes that the best outcome for Republicans is an open dispute about its future: “In my view, a figurative civil war is better than the alternative, which is a massacre of the good guys. Our best hope is that there’s a fight for the soul of the party.”Could that dispute lead to a permanent rupture in the party? The United States has a poor track record with third parties, unlike European politics, where multi-party legislatures have long represented the status quo.Michael Barone, the co-author of The Almanac of American Politics and a conservative analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, has heard it all before. “In my 60-plus years of observing these things, I’ve seen numerous prophecies that the Republican party was going out of business, and none of those prophecies has yet come true,” he said “I suppose one will some day.” More