Category: USA

(AP) — Former President Donald Trump can be sued by injured Capitol Police officers and Democratic lawmakers over the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the Justice Department said Thursday in a federal court case testing Trump’s legal vulnerability for his speech before the riot.

The Justice Department told a Washington federal appeals court in a legal filing that it should allow the lawsuits to move forward, rejecting Trump’s argument that he is immune from the claims.

The department said it takes no position on the lawsuits’ claims that the former president’s words incited the attack on the Capitol. Nevertheless, Justice lawyers told the court that a president would not be protected by “absolute immunity” if his words were found to have been an “incitement of imminent private violence.”

“As the Nation’s leader and head of state, the President has ‘an extraordinary power to speak to his fellow citizens and on their behalf,’ they wrote. “But that traditional function is one of public communication and persuasion, not incitement of imminent private violence.”

The brief was filed by lawyers of the Justice Department’s Civil Division and has no bearing on a separate criminal investigation by a department special counsel into whether Trump can be criminally charged over efforts to undo President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election ahead of the Capitol riot. In fact, the lawyers note that they are not taking a position with respect to potential criminal liability for Trump or anyone else.

Trump’s lawyers have argued he was acting within the bounds of his official duties and had no intention to spark violence when he called on thousands of supporters to “march to the Capitol” and “fight like hell” before the riot erupted.

“The actions of rioters do not strip President Trump of immunity,” his lawyers wrote in court papers. “In the run-up to January 6th and on the day itself, President Trump was acting well within the scope of ordinary presidential action when he engaged in open discussion and debate about the integrity of the 2020 election.”

A Trump spokesperson said Thursday that the president “repeatedly called for peace, patriotism, and respect for our men and women of law enforcement” on Jan. 6 and that the courts “should rule in favor of President Trump in short order and dismiss these frivolous lawsuits.”

The case is among many legal woes facing Trump as he mounts another bid for the White House in 2024.   A prosecutor in Georgia has been investigating whether Trump and his allies broke the law as they tried to overturn his election defeat in that state. Trump is also under federal criminal investigation over top secret documents found at his Florida estate.

In the separate investigation into Trump and his allies’ efforts to keep the Republican president in power, special counsel Jack Smith has subpoenaed former Vice President Mike Pence, who has said he will fight the subpoena.

Trump is appealing a decision by a federal judge in Washington, who last year rejected efforts by the former president to toss out the conspiracy civil lawsuits filed by the lawmakers and police officers. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Trump’s words during a rally before the violent storming of the U.S. Capitol were likely “words of incitement not protected by the First Amendment.”

“Only in the most extraordinary circumstances could a court not recognize that the First Amendment protects a President’s speech,” Mehta wrote in his February 2022 ruling. “But the court believes this is that case.”

One of the lawsuits, filed by Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., alleges that “Trump directly incited the violence at the Capitol that followed and then watched approvingly as the building was overrun.” Two other lawsuits were also filed, one by other House Democrats and another by officers James Blassingame and Sidney Hemby.

The House Democrats’ lawsuit cites a federal civil rights law that was enacted to counter the Ku Klux Klan’s intimidation of officials. The cases describe in detail how Trump and others spread baseless claims of election fraud, both before and after the 2020 presidential election was declared, and charge that they helped to rile up the thousands of rioters before they stormed the Capitol.

The lawsuits seek damages for the physical and emotional injuries the plaintiffs sustained during the insurrection. Even if the appeals court agrees that Trump can be sued, those who brought the lawsuit still face an uphill battle. They would need to show there was more than fiery rhetoric, but a direct and intentional call for imminent violence, said Laurie Levenson, a Loyola Law School professor and former federal prosecutor.

“We are really far away from knowing that even if the court allows the lawsuit to go forward whether they would be successful,” she said. “Even if the court says hypothetically you can bring an action against a president, I think they’re likely to draw a line that is very generous to the president’s protected conduct.”

In its filing, the Justice Department cautioned that the “court must take care not to adopt rules that would unduly chill legitimate presidential communication” or saddle a president with burdensome and intrusive lawsuits.

“In exercising their traditional communicative functions, Presidents routinely address controversial issues that are the subject of passionate feelings,” the department wrote. “Presidents may at times use strong rhetoric. And some who hear that rhetoric may overreact, or even respond with violence.”

Political scientists and forward-looking politicians have been debating the ultimate impact of the two youngest American generations — Plurals (Gen Z) and Millennials — on the nation’s partisan future for some time. With these two generations scheduled to become a majority of the American electorate later this decade, election results and a spate of recent data from Pew research are providing an increasingly persuasive answer. Younger voters should be a source of electoral strength for Democrats for some years to come.

Let’s start with the simple fact that, as Figure 1 illustrates, the Millennial generation is the largest generation in America today and the largest in American history.

FIGURE 1.

Population of Current U.S. Generations As Figure 2 illustrates, Millennials and some of their younger siblings, will be a majority of the electorate in just six years.

FIGURE 2.

Millennials and Plurals Will Be a Majority of Potential Voters by 2028 — Over Sixty Percent by 2036 Research on individual voting behavior over time supports the idea that early partisan predilections persist over an individual’s life span. Republicans need to take steps now to reverse these trends among young people before they become an unbreakable barrier to GOP electoral success and Democrats need to focus on Plurals and Millennials in the years ahead to take advantage of the opportunity that this emerging majority presents.[1]

Younger Americans are tilting the electoral playing field strongly towards the Democrats and making it very likely that the “over/under” line in American politics will be 45, if not 50, for at least the rest of this decade.

For instance, the results of the 2022 midterm elections surprised many who didn’t believe the Harvard Institute of Politics (IOP) surveys that showed young people were very enthusiastic about voting in the 2022 midterms. Their influence enabled the Democrats to win almost every battleground statewide contest and increase their majority in the U.S. Senate, as illustrated in Figures 3 and 4.

FIGURE 3.

The 2022 Democratic Advantage Among Young Voters in Battleground States Allowed the Democrats to Recapture Senate Control The 2022 Democratic Advantage Among Young Voters in Battleground States Allowed the Democrats to Recapture Senate ControlAnd even though the Democrats failed to retain their majority in the House of Representatives, the preference for Democratic candidates among members of the Pluralist and Millennial generations limited the size of the new Republican majority to just five votes.

FIGURE 4.

America’s Youngest Generations Voted Overwhelmingly Democratic for Congress in the 2022 Midterm Elections

What should be of even greater concern to Republicans is that this Democratic advantage, at least in the 2022 midterm election, was particularly strong among African American and Hispanic voters under the age of 45. Moreover, despite Republican efforts to make inroads in these communities and a large Republican vote among Hispanics in places like Florida, young minority voters supported Democrats by substantial margins. Eighteen to 29-year-old white voters also supported Democratic congressional candidates over Republican ones by a 58% to 40% margin, validating IOPs pre-election predictions as shown in Figure 5.

FIGURE 5.

The Democratic Advantage Among Young Voters Is True Among Key Racial and Ethnic Groups  

Although the impact of Millennials’ and Plurals’ preferences for Democratic candidates among racial and ethnic voters varies based on congressional district lines and the nature of each’s state’s population, when it comes to voters under 45, and particularly among female voters of that age, their presence can be felt in every precinct in the country. See Figure 6.

FIGURE 6.

Young Female Voters Voted Overwhelmingly for Democrats in 2022 Linear projections of past trends are never definitive, especially in politics, and one election does not a trend make. But young people have now been voting solidly Democratic, and in increasing numbers, in every election since Donald Trump’s victory in 2016. In the 2018 midterm election, more than two-thirds (68%) of voters under 45 cast ballots for Democratic congressional nominees and in 2020, 58% voted for President Biden.

The rising importance of the Millennial and Pluralist generation brings with it three challenges Republicans will need to deal with if they want to win national elections in the future.

First, younger voters overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party’s positions on issues like abortion and inclusion that Republicans have traditionally opposed. Even worse for the GOP’s future, a majority of younger Republican voters are closer to the Democratic Party’s positions on these cultural issues than they are to their own party’s posture. However, the Republican generational gap is not significant on economic issues. To take advantage of this potential opening with younger voters, the Republican Party would have to reverse their current emphasis on “wokeness” and pound away on the country’s economic unease instead. See Figure 7.[2]

FIGURE 7.

Younger and Older Republicans Diverge Significantly on Social Issues, Democrats Broadly United Second, this divide by age on social issues within the Republican electorate is accompanied by a shrinking gender gap among younger voters, further unifying Democrats and making it harder for machismo-type Republican candidates to expand their appeal. Fifty-five percent of white male voters under 45 voted Democratic in 2022, as did 52% of younger white females. As Figure 8 illustrates, upwards of nine in ten male and female African American voters under 45 also voted Democratic in the midterms. Among both male and female Hispanics under 45, two-thirds voted for Democratic congressional candidates. To the extent that a gender gap still exists, in 2022 it is centered among older white and Hispanic voters. As Plural and Millennial voters become a larger and larger part of the American electorate, the gender gap in American politics is likely to shrink faster than the ozone layer.

FIGURE 8.

Democratic Advantage Among Plural and Millennial Voters Spread to All Racial and Ethnic Groups With Minimal Gender GapIf those two challenges weren’t enough to deal with, Republicans reliance on broadcast media, such as Fox News and talk radio, means their message isn’t even being heard by Plurals and Millennials who live in an entirely different information ecosystem, built around social media, especially TikTok and YouTube.[3] Figure 9 shows how different younger voters are when it comes to trust in media.

FIGURE 9.

Reaching Younger Voters Requires Using Social Media (Plurals and Millennials Prefer To Use Digital To Get News and Trust It More as a News Source) Of course, the Democratic party is not without its own challenges in adapting their strategies to an electorate dominated by younger voters. Older, embedded media commentators, pollsters, and campaign consultants, who make up the Democratic “permanent campaign complex,” are often slow to learn new tricks and less familiar with how to communicate with younger voters using their preferred platforms to talk about their policy priorities. For example, even in 2022, Democratic candidates for Senate in swing states such as Colorado and Ohio, recoiled in horror from President Biden’s proposal to forgive a portion of the two generations’ student debts, even though one of younger voters’ top priorities is making college more affordable, if not tuition free — ranking right up there with preserving reproductive rights and dealing with climate change.

If Democrats don’t run campaigns that focus on voters under 45, wherever they live and whatever their current political preferences, they could not only lose their chance for a sweeping victory in 2024 but potentially lose the allegiance of the large and growing majority of American voters for decades to come.

(AP) — Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday appointed a special counsel to investigate the presence of classified documents found at President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, and at an unsecured office in Washington dating from his time as vice president.

Robert Hur, a onetime U.S. attorney appointed by former President Donald Trump, will lead the investigation and plans to begin his work soon. His appointment marks the second time in a few months that Garland has appointed a special counsel, an extraordinary fact that reflects the Justice Department’s efforts to independently conduct high-profile probes in an exceedingly heated political environment.

Both of those investigations, the earlier one involving Trump and documents recovered from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, relate to the handling of classified information, though there are notable differences between those cases.

Garland’s decision caps a tumultuous week at the White House, where Biden and his team opened the year hoping to celebrate stronger economic news ahead of launching an expected reelection campaign. But the administration faced a new challenge Monday, when it acknowledged that sensitive documents were found at the office of Biden’s former institute in Washington. The situation intensified by Thursday morning, when Biden’s attorney said an additional classified document was found at a room in his Wilmington home — later revealed by Biden to be his personal library — along with other classified documents in his garage.

The attorney general revealed that Biden’s lawyers informed the Justice Department of the latest discovery at the president’s home on Thursday morning, after FBI agents first retrieved documents from the garage in December.

Biden told reporters at the White House that he was “cooperating fully and completely” with the Justice Department’s investigation into how classified information and government records were stored.

“We have cooperated closely with the Justice Department throughout its review, and we will continue that cooperation with the special counsel,” said Richard Sauber, a lawyer for the president. “We are confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the president and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake.”

Garland said the “extraordinary circumstances” of the matter required Hur’s appointment, adding that the special counsel is authorized to investigate whether any person or entity violated the law. Federal law requires strict handling procedures for classified information, and official records from Biden’s time as vice president are considered government property under the Presidential Records Act.

“This appointment underscores for the public the department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters, and to making decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law,” Garland said.

Hur, in a statement, said: “I will conduct the assigned investigation with fair, impartial and dispassionate judgment. I intend to follow the facts swiftly and thoroughly, without fear or favor and will honor the trust placed in me to perform this service.”

While Garland said the Justice Department received timely notifications from Biden’s personal attorneys after each set of classified documents was identified, the White House provided delayed and incomplete notification to the American public about the discoveries.

Biden’s personal attorneys found the first set of classified and official documents on Nov. 2 in a locked closet as they cleared out his office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, where he worked after he left the vice presidency in 2017 until he launched his presidential campaign in 2019. The attorneys notified the National Archives, which retrieved the documents the next day and referred the matter to the Justice Department.

Sauber said Biden’s attorneys then underwent a search of other locations where documents could have been transferred after Biden left the vice presidency, including his homes in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Garland said that on Dec. 20, the Justice Department was informed that classified documents and official records were located in Biden’s Wilmington garage, near his Corvette, and that FBI agents took custody of them shortly thereafter.

A search on Wednesday evening turned up the most recently discovered classified document in Biden’s personal library at his home, and the Justice Department was notified Thursday, Garland revealed.

The White House only confirmed the discovery of the Penn Biden Center documents in response to news inquiries Monday and remained silent on the subsequent search of Biden’s homes and the discovery of the garage tranche until Thursday morning, shortly before Garland announced Hur’s appointment. Biden, when he first addressed the matter Tuesday while in Mexico City, also didn’t let on about the subsequent document discoveries.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted that despite the public omissions, Biden’s administration was handling the matter correctly.

“There was transparency in doing what you’re supposed to do,” she said, declining to answer repeated questions about when Biden was briefed on the discovery of the documents and whether he would submit to an interview with investigators.

Pressed on whether Biden could guarantee that additional classified documents would not turn up in a further search, Jean-Pierre said, “You should assume that it’s been completed, yes.”

The appointment of yet another special counsel to investigate the handling of classified documents is a remarkable turn of events, legally and politically, for a Justice Department that has spent months looking into the retention by Trump of more than 300 documents with classification markings found at the former president’s Florida estate.

Though the situations are factually and legally different, the discovery of classified documents at two separate locations tied to Biden — as well as the appointment of a new special counsel — would almost certainly complicate any prosecution that the department might bring against Trump.

New House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, said of the latest news, “I think Congress has to investigate this. Here’s an individual that sat on ‘60 Minutes’ that was so concerned about President Trump’s documents … and now we find that this is a vice president keeping it for years out in the open in different locations.” Contradicting several fellow Republicans, however, he said, “We don’t think there needs to be a special prosecutor.”

The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee has requested that intelligence agencies conduct a “damage assessment” of potentially classified documents. Ohio Rep. Mike Turner on Thursday also requested briefings from Garland and the director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, on their reviews by Jan. 26.

“The presence of classified information at these separate locations could implicate the President in the mishandling, potential misuse, and exposure of classified information,” Turner wrote the officials.

After more than a year of interviewing over 1,000 witnesses and the collection of hundreds of thousands of documents, gathering evidence and holding public meetings, the U.S. House of Representatives panel probing the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol has concluded its final hearing on December 20, 2022  by referring former President Donald Trump for four criminal charges.

Marking the first time in history that the Congress has referred a former president for criminal prosecution, the select Democrats-led panel voted unanimously to refer Trump and others to the US Justice Department on charges of obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement and conspiracy to defraud the US by assisting, aiding or comforting those involved in an insurrection.

It also referred four fellow members of Congress, all Republicans, to the House ethics committee for failing to comply with subpoenas. They are Reps. Kevin McCarthy of California, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-MD, a member of the Jan. 6 panel who previously served as the lead manager in Trump’s second impeachment trial — told the media that ignoring or burying those recommendations would set “a terrible precedent for the future.” And he wen on to state: “An insurrection is a rebellion against the authority of the United States. It is a grave federal offense, anchored in the Constitution itself.”

“It’s of special concern when there’s an attempt to overthrow our election and essentially subdue our constitutional order and have someone seize the presidency who didn’t win it,” he said. “And if members of Congress have knowledge of that and may have been involved in it but refuse to say anything about it, we’re setting a precedent for future attacks on democracy itself. And that’s really the burden of our committee, to make sure that we prevent coups, insurrections, electoral sabotage and political violence in the future.”

Trump gave a fiery speech to his supporters near the White House the morning of Jan. 6, and publicly chastised his vice president, Mike Pence, for not going along with his scheme to reject ballots cast in favor of Democrat Joe Biden. Trump then waited hours to make a public statement as thousands of his supporters raged through the Capitol, assaulting police and threatening to hang Pence.

Trump satisfies the elements for obstructing an official proceeding, Raskin said, adding, “that was the whole purpose of his scheme and he succeeded in interrupting it for four hours, the only time that’s ever happened in American history.”

According to him, the former president also engaged in a conspiracy to make false statements and defraud the U.S. (through the fake electors scheme specifically), and that he “acted to incite, assist and give aid and comfort to an insurrection.” And it’s based on those facts and laws that Trump should be held accountable, Raskin argued. “In a society where all of us are treated equally under the law, the fact that he’s a former president would make no more difference than the fact that he’s a former businessman or TV star,” he said.

On why Trump bears responsibility

More than 900 people have been prosecuted for crimes like assaulting federal officers, destroying federal property, seditious conspiracy, attempt to overthrow or put down the government. Why should the foot soldiers be going to jail and not the ringleaders and the masterminds of this scheme to defeat American democracy? Look, if Donald Trump had succeeded, he’d be bragging about it, how he was the one who came up with the whole plan, Raskin said.

After more than a year of interviewing over 1,000 witnesses and the collection of hundreds of thousands of documents, gathering evidence and holding public meetings, the U.S. House of Representatives panel probing the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol has concluded its final hearing on December 20, 2022  by referring former President Donald Trump for four criminal charges.

Marking the first time in history that the Congress has referred a former president for criminal prosecution, the select Democrats-led panel voted unanimously to refer Trump and others to the US Justice Department on charges of obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement and conspiracy to defraud the US by assisting, aiding or comforting those involved in an insurrection.

It also referred four fellow members of Congress, all Republicans, to the House ethics committee for failing to comply with subpoenas. They are Reps. Kevin McCarthy of California, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-MD, a member of the Jan. 6 panel who previously served as the lead manager in Trump’s second impeachment trial — told the media that ignoring or burying those recommendations would set “a terrible precedent for the future.” And he wen on to state: “An insurrection is a rebellion against the authority of the United States. It is a grave federal offense, anchored in the Constitution itself.”

“It’s of special concern when there’s an attempt to overthrow our election and essentially subdue our constitutional order and have someone seize the presidency who didn’t win it,” he said. “And if members of Congress have knowledge of that and may have been involved in it but refuse to say anything about it, we’re setting a precedent for future attacks on democracy itself. And that’s really the burden of our committee, to make sure that we prevent coups, insurrections, electoral sabotage and political violence in the future.”

Trump gave a fiery speech to his supporters near the White House the morning of Jan. 6, and publicly chastised his vice president, Mike Pence, for not going along with his scheme to reject ballots cast in favor of Democrat Joe Biden. Trump then waited hours to make a public statement as thousands of his supporters raged through the Capitol, assaulting police and threatening to hang Pence.

Trump satisfies the elements for obstructing an official proceeding, Raskin said, adding, “that was the whole purpose of his scheme and he succeeded in interrupting it for four hours, the only time that’s ever happened in American history.”

According to him, the former president also engaged in a conspiracy to make false statements and defraud the U.S. (through the fake electors scheme specifically), and that he “acted to incite, assist and give aid and comfort to an insurrection.” And it’s based on those facts and laws that Trump should be held accountable, Raskin argued. “In a society where all of us are treated equally under the law, the fact that he’s a former president would make no more difference than the fact that he’s a former businessman or TV star,” he said.

On why Trump bears responsibility

More than 900 people have been prosecuted for crimes like assaulting federal officers, destroying federal property, seditious conspiracy, attempt to overthrow or put down the government. Why should the foot soldiers be going to jail and not the ringleaders and the masterminds of this scheme to defeat American democracy? Look, if Donald Trump had succeeded, he’d be bragging about it, how he was the one who came up with the whole plan, Raskin said.

(AP) When members of the small Pennsylvania chapter of Secular Democrats of America log on for their monthly meetings, they’re not there for a virtual happy hour.

“We don’t sit around at our meetings patting ourselves on the back for not believing in God together,” said David Brown, a founder from the Philadelphia suburb of Ardmore.

The group, mostly consisting of atheists and agnostics, mobilizes to knock on doors and make phone calls on behalf of Democratic candidates “who are pro-science, pro-democracy, whether or not they are actually self-identified secular people,” he said. “We are trying to keep church and state separate. That encompasses LGBTQIA+, COVID science, bodily autonomy and reproductive rights.”

Brown describes his group as “small but mighty,” yet they’re riding a big wave.

Voters with no religious affiliation supported Democratic candidates and abortion rights by staggering percentages in the 2022 midterm elections.

And they’re voting in large numbers. In 2022, some 22% of voters claimed no religious affiliation, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 94,000 voters nationwide. They contributed to voting coalitions that gave Democrats victories in battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona.

The unaffiliated — often nicknamed the “nones” — voted for Democratic House candidates nationwide over Republicans by more than a 2-1 margin (65% to 31%), according to VoteCast. That echoes the 2020 president election, when Democrat Joe Biden took 72% of voters with no religious affiliation, while Republican Donald Trump took 25%, according to VoteCast.

For all the talk of the overwhelmingly Republican voting by white evangelical Christians in recent elections, the unaffiliated are making their presence felt.

Among all U.S. adults, 29% are nones — those who identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” — according a 2021 report by the Pew Research Center. That’s up 10 percentage points from a decade earlier, according to Pew. And the younger the adults, the more likely they are to be unaffiliated, according to a 2019 Pew analysis, further signaling the growing clout of the nones.

“People talk about how engaged white evangelicals are, but you don’t know the half of it,” said Ryan Burge, a professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University who focuses on the interaction of religious and political behavior.

Atheists and agnostics form only a subset of nones and are less numerous than evangelicals. But they are more likely than evangelicals to make a campaign donation, attend a political meeting or join a protest, Burge said, citing the Harvard-affiliated Cooperative Election Study.

“When you consider how involved they are in political activity, you realize how important they are at the ballot box,” he said.

The nones equaled Catholics at 22% of the electorate, though they were barely half the figure for Protestants and other Christians (43%), according to VoteCast. Other religious groups totaled 13%, including 3% Jewish and 1% Muslim. Separately, 30% of voters identified as born again or evangelical Christians.

In several bellwether races this year, the secular vote made its impact felt, according to AP VoteCast.

__About four in five people with no religious affiliation voted against abortion restrictions in referendums in Michigan and Kentucky.

__Between two-thirds and three-quarters of nones supported Democratic candidates in statewide races in Arizona and Wisconsin.

__About four in five people with no religion voted for Josh Shapiro and John Fetterman, the Democrats elected Pennsylvania’s newest governor and senator, respectively.

While Shapiro openly speaks about his Jewish values motivating his public service, Fetterman has not incorporated any discernible religious tradition in his public statements. He often frames issues in ethical terms— such as promoting criminal justice reform and raising the minimum wage, even calling abortion rights “sacred” — without reference to a religious tradition.

The secular population is a diverse group, Pew reported in 2021. Two-thirds identify as “nothing in particular” — a group that is alienated from politics as well as religion, Burge said.

But atheists and agnostics, though only a third of the nones, punch above their weight, given their heavy involvement in politics.

The twin trends of a growing secular cohort among Democrats and the increased religiosity of Republicans are not coincidental.

Several prominent Republican candidates and their supporters have promoted Christian nationalism, which fuses an American and Christian sense of identity, mission and symbols.

That prompts a reaction by many secular voters, Burge said: “At least among white people, it’s become clear the Democratic Party has become the party for the non-religious people.”

Yet it’s not their party alone. The Democratic coalition draws heavily from religious groups — Black Protestants, liberal Jews, Catholics of color. The Black church tradition, in particular, has a highly devout base in support of moderate and progressive policies.

“I think the Democrats have the biggest problem in the world because they have to keep atheists and Black Protestants happy at the same time,” Burge said.

Tensions surfaced in 2019 when the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution praising the religiously unaffiliated in language that some saw as overstating their clout and denigrating religious values.

Differences between secular and religious Democrats showed up in VoteCast. Majorities of Democratic voters across all religious affiliations say abortion should be legal at least most of the time, but 6 in 10 Democratic voters unaffiliated with a religion say it should always be legal, compared with about 4 in 10 Democratic voters affiliated with Christian traditions. In general, 69% of Democratic voters unaffiliated with a religion identify as liberal, compared with 46% of Christians who voted for Democrats.

But growing secular constituency doesn’t worry Bishop William Barber, a leader in one of the nation’s most prominent faith-based progressive movements.

“Jesus didn’t worry about it, so why would I?” said Barber, president of Repairers of the Breach, which calls for moral advocacy by faith and other leaders on behalf of the poor, immigrants and other marginalized communities. “Jesus said the one who is not against me is for me.”

“We have a lot of people who claim they’re agnostic or atheist, and they will come to our rallies,” said Barber, who is also co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign. “They will say, ‘I don’t necessarily believe in God, but I believe in right. I believe in love. I do believe in justice.’”

Brown, of the Secular Democrats group in Pennsylvania, said he had no problem supporting Democratic candidates like Shapiro, who talked openly about his Jewish values on the campaign trail. His opponent, Republican Doug Mastriano, incorporated Christian nationalist themes and imagery in his campaign.

“While on the one hand I am frustrated that politicians feel the need to justify their doing the right thing by religious affiliation, I also appreciate that this was a calculated decision to appeal to religious voters,” Brown said. “I have no problem with it because I feel it was in the service of defeating a Christian nationalist candidate on the other side.”

In fact, Brown even traveled to Georgia in late November to campaign door-to-door for an ordained minister — Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, the Democrat in a runoff election. And for the same reason — despite religious differences, he sees Warnock as sharing many of the values of secular voters. (AP polling director Emily Swanson contributed from Washington. Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.)

Two Indian Americans – Congressman Ro Khanna and Vijaya Gadde – prominently figure in US President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden’s laptop story whose full disclosure Twitter CEO Elon Musk has announced would be released on the micro-blogging site.

Ro Khanna is the Democratic Congressman representing Silicon Valley in the US House of Representatives, while Vijaya Gadde, an attorney, served as general counsel and the head of legal, policy, and trust at Twitter, before she was fired by new boss and CEO Musk.

Musk, the world’s richest man who purchased Twitter last month, said on Friday that he would release details about what he characterised as Twitter’s “suppression” of a controversial story done by the New York Post newspaper about Hunter Biden’s laptop that was published before the 2020 US election. He also tweeted that it would be “awesome” and there would be a “live Q&A” on the topic.

The story claimed to contain emails retrieved from a laptop belonging to Hunter. The New York Post said it learned of the emails’ existence from Trump’s ex-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, and obtained the emails from Trump’s personal lawyer at the time Rudy Giuliani.

Twitter initially limited the distribution of the story, citing concerns that it could be the result of a foreign disinformation campaign. But the social media company quickly backtracked on its response, with then-CEO Jack Dorsey calling the decision to block the link “unacceptable.”

Ro Khanna is the Democratic Congressman representing Silicon Valley in the US House of Representatives, while Vijaya Gadde, an attorney, served as general counsel and the head of legal, policy, and trust at Twitter, before she was fired by new boss and CEO Musk.

A series of tweets along with internal communications of Twitter was released by writer Matt Taibbi regarding the allegations that the social media platform during the 2020 election cycle had suppressed news and information related to the laptop of Hunter.

According to the information released by Matt Taibbi, Ro Khanna appears to have questioned the decision of Twitter to restrict access to an investigative report of the New York Post newspaper on the laptop of Hunter.

As the information started coming in, Musk in a tweet said: “Ro Khanna is great”. Mr Khanna in a confidential email to Vijaya Gadde opposed the so-called censorship by Twitter.

“I say this as a total Biden partisan and convinced he did not do anything wrong. But the story now has become more about censorship than relatively innocuous emails and it’s become a bigger deal than it would have been,” Ro Khanna wrote to Vijaya Gadde.

“In the heat of a presidential campaign, restricting dissemination of newspaper articles (even if New York Post is far right) seems like it will invite more backlash than it will do good,” Mr Khanna wrote to Vijaya Gadde and requested her not to share the text of their emails.

Khanna said that such a move by Twitter seems to be a violation of the 1st Amendment principles. “If there is a hack of classified information or other information that could expose a serious war crime and the NYT was to publish it, I think NYT should have that right. A journalist should not be held accountable for the illegal actions of the source unless they actively aided the hack,” Khanna said.

In response to Khanna’s email, Gadde defended Twitter’s policy and its decision on the Post story. “We put out a clarifying threat of Tweets earlier this evening to explain our policy around the posting of private information and linking directly to hacked materials,” she wrote.

“The press secretary’s account was not permanently suspended – we requested that she delete the tweet containing material that is in violation of our rules and her account is restricted until she complies,” Gadde wrote to Khanna.

Matt Taibbi wrote that some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters. “Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly,” Mr Taibbi wrote.

“By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: ‘More to review from the Biden team.’ The reply would come back: ‘Handled,'” he noted. According to Taibbi, both parties had access to these tools.

For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honoured. However, this system wasn’t balanced, he wrote.

“It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right,” he said in one of the tweets.

“The resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents you’re about to read. However, it’s also the assessment of multiple current and former high-level executives,” Mr Taibbi said.

(AP) — Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was convicted Tuesday of seditious conspiracy for a violent plot to overturn President Joe Biden’s election, handing the Justice Department a major victory in its massive prosecution of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

A Washington, D.C., jury found Rhodes guilty of sedition after three days of deliberations in the nearly two-month-long trial that showcased the far-right extremist group’s efforts to keep Republican Donald Trump in the White House at all costs.

Rhodes was acquitted of two other conspiracy charges. A co-defendant — Kelly Meggs, who led the antigovernment group’s Florida chapter — was also convicted of seditious conspiracy, while three other associates were cleared of that charge. Jurors found all five defendants guilty of obstruction of an official proceeding: Congress’ certification of Biden’s electoral victory.

The verdict, while mixed, marks a significant milestone for the Justice Department and is likely to clear the path for prosecutors to move ahead at full steam in upcoming trials of other extremists accused of sedition.

Rhodes and Meggs are the first people in nearly three decades to be found guilty at trial of seditious conspiracy — a rarely used Civil War-era charge that can be difficult to prove. The offense calls for up to 20 years behind bars.

It could embolden investigators, whose work has expanded beyond those who attacked the Capitol to focus on others linked to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland recently named a veteran prosecutor, Jack Smith, to serve as special counsel to oversee key aspects of a probe into efforts to subvert the election as well as a separate investigation into the retention of classified documents at Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.

Garland said after the verdict that the Justice Department “is committed to holding accountable those criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy on January 6, 2021.”

“Democracy depends on the peaceful transfer of power. By attempting to block the certification of the 2020 presidential election results, the defendants flouted and trampled the rule of law,” Steven M. D’Antuono, assistant director in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office, said in an emailed statement. “This case shows that force and violence are no match for our country’s justice system.”

Using dozens of encrypted messages, recordings and surveillance video, prosecutors made the case that Rhodes began shortly after the 2020 election to prepare an armed rebellion to stop the transfer of presidential power.

Over seven weeks of testimony, jurors heard how Rhodes rallied his followers to fight to defend Trump, discussed the prospect of a “bloody” civil war and warned the Oath Keepers may have to “rise up in insurrection” to defeat Biden if Trump didn’t act.

Defense attorneys accused prosecutors of twisting their clients’ words and insisted the Oath Keepers came to Washington only to provide security for figures such as Roger Stone, a longtime Trump ally. The defense focused heavily on seeking to show that Rhodes’ rhetoric was just bluster and that the Oath Keepers had no plan before Jan. 6 to attack the Capitol.

Rhodes intends to appeal, defense attorney James Lee Bright told reporters. Another Rhodes lawyer, Ed Tarpley, described the verdict as a “mixed bag,” adding, “This is not a total victory for the government in any way, shape or form.”

“We feel like we presented a case that showed through evidence and testimony that Mr. Rhodes did not commit the crime of seditious conspiracy,” Tarpley said.

On trial alongside Rhodes, of Granbury, Texas, and Meggs, were Kenneth Harrelson, another Florida Oath Keeper; Thomas Caldwell, a retired Navy intelligence officer from Virginia; and Jessica Watkins, who led an Ohio militia group.

Caldwell was convicted on two counts and acquitted on three others, including seditious conspiracy. His attorney, David Fischer, called the verdict “major victory” for his client and a “major defeat” for the Justice Department. He also said he would appeal the two convictions.

Jury selection for a second group of Oath Keepers facing seditious conspiracy charges is scheduled to begin next week. Several members of the Proud Boys, including the former national chairman Enrique Tarrio, are also scheduled to go to trial on the sedition charge in December.

In an extraordinary move, Rhodes took the stand to tell jurors there was no plan to attack the Capitol and insist that his followers who went inside the building went rogue.

Rhodes testified that he had no idea that his followers were going to join the mob and storm the Capitol and said he was upset after he found out that some did. Rhodes said they were acting “stupid” and outside their mission for the day.

The US will have a divided government for the next two years as the Republican party finally secured the House of Representatives last week after polling in midterm elections closed on November 8^th, 2022. Democrats will control the Senate, which they secured last week, and the White House, which was not on the ballot.

Republicans were expected to win both chambers, especially the House and with a huge majority in keeping with history. The party in control of the White House has always lost the first midterm of the incumbent president’s first term, and by huge numbers. In 2010, President Barack Obama’s first midterm, Democrats lost the House by 63 seats; and in 2018, President Donald Trump’s first midterm, the Republicans lost the House by 41 seats.

The days of ambitious legislations such as those that marked the first two years of President Joe Biden’s term – infrastructure, climate change and healthcare extension, are over. There will be instead a litany of congressional investigations into the Biden administration and bitter confrontations between the White House and the Republican-controlled House.

These tensions will be exacerbated by the 2024 presidential elections that got underway with former President Donald Trump announcing his third bid for the White House – 2016 and 2020 were the earlier two – on Tuesday. It will only pick up more heat from hereon.

For now, however, Biden, who takes pride in his ability to work with the other side drawing upon nearly 50 years of political experience as senator, vice-president and now president, congratulated the Republicans and promised to work with them. “I congratulate Leader McCarthy on Republicans winning the House majority, and am ready to work with House Republicans to deliver results for working families,” he said in a statement.

But he also reminded the Republicans of the midterm verdict, which spared the Democrats the kinds of searing defeats that parties in power have historically suffered in the first midterm election of the first term of their man (there hasn’t been a woman president yet in the US) in the White House. Former President Barack Obama called his first midterm verdict a “shellacking”.

Democrats did stunningly better than anticipated and lost the House by what is likely to be a very thin margin, and have retained the Senate (they have also flipped three states snatching their governorships from Republicans).

“In this election, voters spoke clearly about their concerns: the need to lower costs, protect the right to choose, and preserve our democracy,” Biden said, adding, “As I said last week, the future is too promising to be trapped in political warfare. The American people want us to get things done for them. They want us to focus on the issues that matter to them and on making their lives better. And I will work with anyone – Republican or Democrat – willing to work with me to deliver results for them.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement House Democrats “will continue to play a leading role in supporting President Biden’s agenda – with strong leverage over a scant Republican majority.”

Democrats have been buoyed by voters’ repudiation of a string of far-right Republican candidates, most of them allies of Trump, including Mehmet Oz and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania’s Senate and governor’s races respectively, and Blake Masters in Arizona’s Senate contest.

Even though the expected “red wave” of House Republicans never reached shore, conservatives are sticking to their agenda. In retaliation for two impeachment efforts by Democrats against Trump, they are gearing up to investigate Biden administration officials and the president’s son Hunter’s past business dealings with China and other countries – and even Biden himself.

Republicans have threatened to launch congressional investigations into the Biden administration’s handling of the migrant crisis on the southern border and its handling of the Afghanistan exit. They also plan to probe his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings when the senior Biden was vice-president.

But the Republicans will also be under tremendous strain because of its razor-thin majority. It will face its first stress test on January 3 when Kevin McCathy, who was re-elected leader of the congressional caucus on Wednesday, seeks the speakership, a position that goes to the leader of the majority party. McCarthy will need 218 votes to win. He cannot afford defections, because he is unlikely to make up for their loss with Democratic crossovers.

More than 40 Republican lawmakers voted for Andy Biggs, the challenger for the majority leadership, all of whom from the party’s ultraconservative wing known as the Freedom Caucus, many of whose members are fiercely loyal to Trump, and their votes and congressional positions could be cued by the ups and downs of the presidential primaries.

Trump, who still polls as the top choice among Republicans for the party’s presidential nomination, nevertheless suffered a series of setbacks as far-right candidates he either recruited or became allied with performed poorly on Nov. 8. Some conservative Republican voters voiced fatigue with Trump.

Former US President Donald Trump has announced his fourth bid for the White House, kicking off the 2024 presidential election cycle. “To make America great again, I am today announcing my candidacy for the President of the US,” Trump said at an event on Tuesday at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

Shortly before his announcement, Trump also filed paperwork to officially run for President.
At the event, a voice over the loudspeaker introduced Trump as “the next president of the United States”, the BBC reported. He started his speech by digging into his successor President Joe Biden’s record and told supporters that “America’s comeback starts right now”.

Surrounded by allies, advisers, and conservative influencers, Trump delivered a relatively subdued speech, rife with spurious and exaggerated claims about his four years in office. Despite a historically divisive presidency and his own role in inciting an attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump aimed to evoke nostalgia for his time in office, frequently contrasting his first-term accomplishments with the Biden administration’s policies and the current economic climate.

Many of those perceived accomplishments – from strict immigration actions to corporate tax cuts and religious freedom initiatives – remain deeply polarizing to this day.

Touting his four years in office, the former President said: “In four short years, everyone was doing great… Everyone was thriving like never before.” He further claimed that the country’s economy was making a swift recovery when he left office, after falling during the coronavirus pandemic. “Now we are a nation in decline,” he said, citing high inflation rates.

Trump also said that Biden has brought the US to the brink of nuclear war with its handling of the conflict in Ukraine. “Even just today a missile sent in, probably by Russia, to Poland. The people are going absolutely wild and crazy and they’re not happy. They’re very very angry,” the BBC quoted the former President as saying.

Prior to his announcement on Tuesday, Trump had said that he would make an important announcement on November 15. In the recent months, he had been dropping hints about a potential third campaign for the White House, the BBC reported.

In October, he told a rally in Texas that he “will probably have to do it again”, while in September at an event in Pennsylvania, the former President said: “I may just have to do it again.” Just before the November 8 midterm elections, he told a Republican campaign rally in Sioux City, Iowa, that he would “very, very, very probably” be running for the White House again.

On the heels of last week’s midterm elections, Trump has been blamed for elevating flawed candidates who spent too much time parroting his claims about election fraud, alienating key voters and ultimately leading to their defeats. He attempted to counter that criticism on Tuesday, noting that Republicans appear poised to retake the House majority and touting at least one Trump-endorsed candidate, Kevin Kiley of California. At one point, Trump appeared to blame his party’s midterm performance on voters not yet realizing “the total effect of the suffering” after two years of Democratic control in Washington.

“I have no doubt that by 2024, it will sadly be much worse and they will see clearly what has happened and is happening to our country – and the voting will be much different,” he claimed.

Various media outlets have said this is the third; however, they have not taken into account his bid in 1999-2000 after affiliating with the Reform Party. In October 1999, during an episode of Larry King Live, Trump had announced his candidacy for the Reform Party nomination. A few months later, however, he suspended his campaign. Trump’s four presidential runs were, therefore, in 2000 (suspended), 2016 (won), 2020 (lost) and now, in 2022 (just announced).

“The American people proved once again that democracy is who we are. There was a strong rejection of election deniers at every level from those seeking to lead our states and those seeking to serve in Congress and also those seeking to oversee the elections,” President Joe Biden summarized the outcome of the Mid Term Elections 2022, during a news conference in Bali, Indonesia this week, where Biden sought to cast the election results seen so far as a victory for the future of American democracy – a matter he had said was at stake at the polls.

As the dust settled on a most unusual election, most signs point to a defeat of falsehood, strong rejection of political violence and voter intimidation. In the US Senate, Republicans fell short of their hopes, with control of the chamber staying with the Democrats. Vulnerable House Democratic incumbents held onto contested seats from Arizona to Nevada, while snatching victory in Pennsylvania. Several Governor’s races, including the victory in Arizona vindicated that the American people proved that “democracy is who we are” and sent a strong rejection to “election deniers” who were seeking state offices and congressional seats. The Democrats flipped governor’s mansions in Maryland and Massachusetts while thwarting challenges from Donald Trump acolytes in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

In Pennsylvania, Democratic Lt. Governor John Fetterman defeated celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, taking a Senate seat previously in GOP hands. Democrats hung on in Senate races the Republicans targeted in New Hampshire, Colorado, Washington, and likely Arizona. The far-right GOP Congresswoman Lauren Boebert appeared in danger of a shocking loss in a deep-red Colorado district.

The ingredients had been there for a Republican rout: inflation at a four-decade high, real wages shrinking, gas prices up, an unpopular aging president. But the predicted red wave was barely a ripple. The abortion-rights side swept ballot initiatives in Michigan, Kentucky, California and Vermont.

After months of infighting, Biden’s legislative agenda revived, with bipartisan bills on infrastructure, veterans, China, NATO and even gun control, and a last-minute resurrection of his party-line climate-and-health-care bill, rebranded the Inflation Reduction Act. He succeeded in unifying the West against Russian aggression in Ukraine, bolstering the former Soviet state’s surprisingly effective resistance to Vladimir Putin.

While the balance of power in the Congress shifted in Republicans’ direction, their failure to capitalize on a favorable political environment will lead to more recriminations than celebrations. And while Democrats breathed a sigh of relief, voters’ dissatisfaction with the country’s direction was evident, particularly when it came to the economy and public safety. Caught between Democratic fecklessness and Republican lunacy, voters delivered a stalemate—not a vote of confidence, but a repudiation of sorts for both parties.

Despite the mixed verdict, messages emerged from the morass. Americans broadly support abortion rights and continue to consider them a high priority in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June overturning of Roe v. Wade. The electorate is angry, frustrated, pessimistic—and motivated, with turnout approaching 2018’s record levels. And in the first national election since Trump left office, his continued attempts to remake the GOP in his image appeared more poison pill than Midas touch, with Trumpist candidates underperforming across the map.

The mainstream Republicans who ignored Trump often prevailed, holding governorships in Georgia, Ohio and New Hampshire. Whether despite or because of panicked liberals’ insistence that democracy itself was under siege, election deniers were defeated in droves. Losing candidates conceded gracefully and election systems functioned as planned, bolstering confidence in institutions of governance. The two parties traded victories, but the election was a triumph for normal politics in abnormal times.

In the end, the U.S. midterm elections showed the strength and resiliency of U.S. democracy and was a rejection of so-called “election deniers” who have falsely argued the 2020 election was rigged. To quote President Biden, “What we saw was the strength and resilience of American democracy and we saw it in action.”

There is no debate at this point that Joe Biden is in the midst of a political comeback. President Joe Biden’s popularity improved substantially from his lowest point this summer, but concerns about his handling of the economy persist, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

President Joe Biden’s popularity improved substantially from his lowest point this summer, but concerns about his handling of the economy persist, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Support for Biden recovered from a low of 36% in July to 45%, driven in large part by a rebound in support from Democrats just two months before the November midterm elections. During a few bleak summer months when gasoline prices peaked and lawmakers appeared deadlocked, the Democrats faced the possibility of blowout losses against Republicans.

Their outlook appears better after notching a string of legislative successes that left more Americans ready to judge the Democratic president on his preferred terms: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative.”

From falling gas prices to the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act to the re-emergence of Donald Trump as a 2022 campaign issue, things have been going very well for the President of late. This, from a New York Times/Siena College poll released Friday, is telling on that front:

“[The] shift in political momentum has helped boost, in just two months, the president’s approval rating by nine percentage points and doubled the share of Americans who believe the country is on the right track.” The poll found that 42% of registered voters nationally approve of Biden’s job performance, up from 33% in July.

And a look at the CNN Poll of Polls on Biden’s average approval rating makes clear that the Times/Siena poll is not a one-off. Biden’s numbers hit rock bottom around late July/early August at 36% and have been, generally speaking, on the rise since, up to 41% now.

The key question to ask now, then, is not whether Biden is on the comeback trail. He clearly is. The real question is: How high Biden’s numbers will get between now and Election Day?

Biden says railroad agreement is a ‘big win for America’ 02:05

“In Gallup’s polling history, presidents with job approval ratings below 50% have seen their party lose 37 House seats, on average, in midterm elections. That compares with an average loss of 14 seats when presidents had approval ratings above 50%.”

As per Reuters, Biden has been plagued by 40-year highs in inflation, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine restricting global fuel supply and supply chains still constrained by the COVID-19 pandemic. Amid these troubles, Biden’s support within his own Democratic Party has declined somewhat.

This week, 79% of Democrats approved of his performance, compared to about 85% in August 2021. Biden’s approval rating has approached – but has yet to reach – the lowest levels of his predecessor, Donald Trump, who had a 33% approval rating in December 2017.

Which is a pretty startling difference, right?

Now, it’s worth noting here that the margins in Congress are so tight that if even if Democrats lost 14 seats in the House this year, they would lose their majority. And if they lost even a single seat in the Senate, they would find themselves in the minority there, too.

That said, there’s no doubt that Biden at, say, 47% or 48% job approval, is a far better thing for Democrats than Biden at 37% or 38%. That’s particularly true if the trend line is, as it is right now, moving upward for Biden as the election approaches, helping provide Democrats with momentum where there was none before.

Still, the poll suggests Biden and his fellow Democrats are gaining momentum right as generating voter enthusiasm and turnout takes precedence. Can Biden get over the critical 50% barrier? It seems unlikely given that the election is now only 53 days away. The last time Biden’s job approval rating hit 50% in Gallup’s polling was more than a year ago — in July 2021.

President Joe Biden issued a midterm-minded message on Thursday last week that America’s democratic values are at risk and that former President Trump and his most ardent backers are the chief reason why as his party seeks to continue momentum ahead of the November elections.

Biden charged in a prime-time address that the “extreme ideology” of Donald Trump and his adherents “threatens the very foundation of our republic,” as he summoned Americans of all stripes to help counter what he sketched as dark forces within the Republican Party trying to subvert democracy.

In his speech Thursday at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, Biden unleashed the trappings of the presidency in an unusually strong and sweeping indictment of Trump and what he said has become the dominant strain of the opposition party. His broadside came barely two months before Americans head to the polls in bitterly contested midterm elections that Biden calls a crossroads for the nation.

“Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal,” he said before an audience of hundreds, raising his voice over pro-Trump hecklers outside the building where the nation’s founding was debated. He said he wasn’t condemning the 74 million people who voted for Trump in 2020, but added, “There’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans,” using the acronym for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan.

Biden, speaking during a prime-time address to the nation from the perch of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, namechecked his 2020 general election opponent frequently as he sought to up the stakes for voters heading into the stretch run of the political season. During the 24-minute address, the president said that Trump “represents an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.”

But there’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans,” said Biden, who was flanked on stage by Marine guards. “And that is a threat to this country.”

White House officials insisted Thursday night’s speech would not be political in nature. However, that idea evaporated quickly as Biden levied multiple criticisms of his predecessor and Republicans, while rounding out the address by touting policy victories on issues such as on police funding and the pandemic.

The address came at a key time for Biden and Democrats. The party in power is on the upswing after a number of key wins over the past month — including two special election victories that have helped buoy the spirits of Democrats after spending much of the past year struggling to counter GOP messages on the economy and inflation.

Notably, the president has also grown more combative amid the Democratic resurgence. In recent weeks, he has called out “MAGA Republicans” on a number of occasions. The rhetoric hit a crescendo last week at a political rally in Maryland where he described the movement as akin to “semi-fascism” (The New York Times).

That remark has drawn rebukes from across the GOP spectrum. The latest came in a prebuttal speech on Thursday by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who said that the first line of Biden’s speech should have been an apology “for slandering tens of millions of Americans as fascists” (The Hill).

The explicit effort by Biden to marginalize Trump and his followers marks a sharp recent turn for the president, who preached his desire to bring about national unity in his Inaugural address.

Biden, who largely avoided even referring to “the former guy” by name during his first year in office, has grown increasingly vocal in calling out Trump personally. Now, emboldened by his party’s summertime legislative wins and wary of Trump’s return to the headlines, he has sharpened his attacks, last week likening the “MAGA philosophy” to “semi-fascism.”

Wading into risky political terrain, Biden strained to balance his criticism with an appeal to more traditional Republicans to make their voices heard. Meanwhile, GOP leaders swiftly accused him of only furthering political divisions.

President Biden has warned during a stump speech in Maryland that the country’s right-wing movement, which remains dominated by his predecessor, former president Donald Trump, has embraced “political violence” and no longer believes in democracy.

“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy,” Biden said, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something — it’s like semi-fascism.”

Biden was gesturing to various ongoing Republican initiatives to restrict voting access as well as a slate of Republican midterm candidates who, to this day, deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election. There’s also the tacit support of some Republicans for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the violent rhetoric that has emerged among some corners of the right in the wake of a publicized FBI investigation into classified documents Trump kept in his private Florida golf club residence.

The simple invocation of “fascism” elicited howls of outrage from Republicans and triggered a weekend of political chatter. A spokesman for the Republican National Committee described the president’s remarks as “despicable.” Gov. Chris Sununu (R-N.H.) said on CNN that it was “horribly inappropriate” to brand a segment of the U.S. population as “semi-fascist” and called on Biden to apologize.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) tweeted that “communists have always called their enemies ‘fascists.’” One historian of Latin America responded to Cruz, noting that, while communists had other names for their opponents before the rise of fascist parties in the 1920s, fascists have always used anti-communist hysteria to “stir violence” and “augment their power.” (Never mind the relative absurdity of casting a figure with as centrist a record as Biden as a “communist.”)

For his part, Trump posted Monday on his personal social media website another complaint about the 2020 election having been stolen from him and an unconstitutional demand that he be declared its victor, two years later. Over the weekend, leading Republican lawmakers warned of violence in the streets should the Justice Department move to prosecute as a number of investigations into his activities go forward.

Biden and his allies did not back down from the message. “You look at the definition of fascism and you think about what they’re doing in attacking our democracy, what they’re doing and taking away our freedoms, wanting to take away our rights, our voting rights ― I mean, that is what that is,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday. “It is very clear.”

American democracy sits at a crucial crossroads, argues Darrell West, vice president of Governance Studies at Brookings and author of the new Brookings Press book, “Power Politics: Trump and the Assault on American Democracy.” The rise of extremism and a decline of confidence in trusted institutions have created the perfect storm for illiberalism and authoritarianism to take root. While it is easy to blame Donald Trump for the sad state of our democracy, Trumpism is almost certainly likely to outlast Trump himself.

Donald Trump’s presidency merely exposed existing cracks in our democracy that are built into the foundations of elections, political institutions, and information ecosystem. ”Power Politics” is filled with a clear delineation of the problems and possible remedies for the threats drawn from West’s extensive experience in the D.C. policy world. West urges us to act now to protect our democracy—and provides a roadmap for how to strengthen our political system and civil society.

Colorado’s secretary of state, Jena Griswold, has said the fate of free and fair elections in the United States hangs in the balance in this November’s midterm contests. In many of the most competitive races for offices with authority over US elections, Republicans nominated candidates who have embraced or echoed Donald Trump’s myth of a stolen election in 2020.

Griswold, who chairs the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State (Dass) and is running for re-election, is urging Americans to pay attention to the once-sleepy down-ballot contests for secretary of state – lest they lose their democracy.

“What we can expect from the extreme Republicans running across this country is to undermine free and fair elections for the American people, strip Americans of the right to vote, refuse to address security breaches and, unfortunately, be more beholden to Mar-a-Lago than the American people,” Griswold, 37, said in an interview with the Guardian. She added: “For us, we are trying to save democracy.”

Having failed to overturn the 2020 vote, Trump and his loyalists are now strategically targeting positions that will play a critical role in supervising the next presidential election, turning many of the 27 secretary of state contests this year into expensive, partisan showdowns.

“In 2020, you and 81 million Americans voted to save our democracy,” he reminded the crowd. “That’s why Donald Trump isn’t just a former president. He is a defeated former president.” As for the midterms, Biden declared, “Your right to choose is on the ballot this year. The Social Security you paid for from the time you had a job is on the ballot. The safety of your kids from gun violence is on the ballot, and it’s not hyperbole, the very survival of our planet is on the ballot.” He added, “Your right to vote is on the ballot. Even the democracy. Are you ready to fight for these things now?”

How important is the climate bill — named, for Joe Manchin-related reasons, the “Inflation Reduction Act” — that just passed the US Congress? Huge.

To get the disclaimers out of the way: it doesn’t, by any means, solve the whole climate problem. We still need to do plenty more to get to zero carbon emissions. And we’re still in for more warming regardless. The heat waves, wildfires, floods and the rest of what we’re starting to see as routine will still get worse for decades more, at least. The bill also has some negatives from a climate perspective, like its new offshore oil leases, presumably added to appease Sen. Manchin, whose vote was crucial to the legislation’s passage.

But still: HUGE!

Consider the history here. For almost the entire 30-year history of international climate negotiations, the US has been more of a problem for the rest of the world than the leader we should have been.

Congress couldn’t find its way to ratify the Kyoto Protocol or any other agreement that mandated actual emissions reductions. The Waxman-Markey bill, the last major climate legislation to come before Congress during a time when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House, passed in the House and failed in the Senate in 2010, in the face of a challenging economic climate, intense fossil fuel industry lobbying and GOP opposition (sound familiar?).

Then, in 2015, when Obama reversed the trend and got the Paris Agreement through, it specified only voluntary contributions from participating nations, because that’s the only way he could skip Congressional approval, which would surely have killed it too. (Then-President Donald Trump’s statements of intent to pull us out of the agreement are hard to see as anything but climate- and treaty-hating spite, since one could in fact abide by the agreement while doing nothing to reduce emissions.)

It has always seemed possible, even likely — depending where one falls on the optimism/pessimism spectrum — that some nations would fail to meet their Paris commitments, or simply decide to reduce them by insignificant levels. The US has looked like one of the most likely candidates for such failure, given our dysfunctional political system and the deep allegiance of the Republican Party to the fossil fuel industry.

Then, starting in early 2021, it seemed like maybe we’d actually live up to the Paris Agreement after all… then, not. The last year and a half have been a painful roller-coaster ride for those of us who care about the future of human beings and other species on planet earth, and who accept the global scientific consensus about how climate change threatens us.

When the Democrats narrowly took both the Presidency and both houses of Congress in 2021, there was a period of hope that the “Build Back Better” bill might pass, representing a major triumph for the climate movement as well as addressing many other social justice goals. But after a long period of inscrutable dithering, Manchin pulled the rug out from under BBB, and seemingly any hope for meaningful climate legislation.

Why did Manchin finally change his mind and decide to support the Inflation Reduction Act? I don’t know, and I don’t care. The IRA may have lost much of the non-climate content of BBB, but it has most of the climate stuff. It is expected to deliver somewhere in the vicinity of a 40% reduction in the nation’s carbon emissions by 2030, compared to 2005 levels, most of the way towards President Biden’s pledge of 50-52% over the same time period.

This is the real thing.

There has never — never — been climate legislation anywhere near this substantial passed in the United States. Not only do these emissions reductions truly matter on their own, but they show that it’s politically possible — that enough people care about the climate problem that it can be addressed by our political system. And they allow us to look other nations in the eye as we ask them to do their parts too.

With regards to politics, the IRA does its work to fight climate change mostly through investment, rather than regulation or taxes. It gives people and businesses money — some directly and some through tax breaks — to spend on electric cars, heat pumps, wind and solar electricity generation, and many other emissions-reducing measures.

It will stimulate growth and good jobs in the private sector. They will make further emissions reductions possible, as technologies improve more quickly than they otherwise would. Maybe the industries that grow out of this will even gain political power comparable to that of the fossil fuel industry, creating a countervailing force. (One can dream.)

The US is currently responsible for about 11% of global emissions, according to a report by research and consulting firm Rhodium Group. Cutting 40% of that by 2030 is a meaningful contribution on its own. But to get to zero emissions globally, we will need the rest of the world, including countries like China and India, to agree to cuts as well. Until now, our credibility in climate negotiations has been weak, due to our own poor record (including our status as the nation responsible for the most emissions historically, when we add up all past years rather than just considering the most recent ones).

The IRA transforms the US from ineffective negotiators to leaders by example. And the technological development the IRA’s investments will induce will make the necessary global emissions cuts easier, in the same way that past investments in solar panels, for example, have driven down the costs of the necessary technologies and increased their effectiveness.

This investment approach reflects a change in thinking in recent years among some climate policy experts — not least those in the Biden administration — away from carbon taxes or cap-and-trade systems like the one that failed to become law in Waxman-Markey. This rethinking places increased emphasis on overcoming real-life political constraints, including the failure of Waxman-Markey itself and the increasing partisan polarization since then, with a decreased emphasis on doing what economists’ models (which don’t generally account for politics) say is optimal. The passage of the IRA seems to have proven this right.

There has been a huge focus on Manchin, for obvious reasons, but this should be said: every Republican who voted against the IRA — which is all of them — should be profoundly ashamed of themselves.

Their repeated claims about taxes and inflation can’t disguise where they really stand: somewhere between flat-out denial that the climate problem exists and grudging acknowledgment of it, coupled with delay tactics and a total lack of interest in doing anything about it. It may have moved a bit away from the denial in recent years, but the practical result is still inaction. Manchin wouldn’t have mattered nearly so much if any GOP senator had shown any inclination whatsoever to be constructively engaged.

No, the real change is that the Democratic Party, which has for many years been either unwilling or unable to do much about climate change, has finally placed it at the top of its agenda and mustered the will to pass the historic legislation against difficult odds.

This cannot be taken for granted for one microsecond. In my view, the youth climate movement — along with its older allies — should get the lion’s share of the credit for turning up the pressure and bringing the issue to the forefront of people’s minds. (And, perhaps, let’s acknowledge the contributions from my colleagues, the hard-working scientists, who have spent decades doing research, writing papers, and compiling them into IPCC reports and National Climate Assessments to spell out the ever-grimmer facts.)

But in a time when the twin, slow-moving catastrophes that are US politics and the global climate crisis make it so painful for so many of us to read the news every day, it’s important to take a moment and celebrate when something good happens. This is such a something. It really is. Well done, President Biden and team — even Joe Manchin, who was for many months reluctant to support such a bill — and everyone else who pushed it to this point

President Joe Biden has appointed more judges to the federal courts at this stage in his tenure than any president since John F. Kennedy, and his appointees include a record number of women and racial and ethnic minorities, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the Federal Judicial Center.

As of Aug. 8, the first day of the U.S. Senate’s August break, Biden has successfully appointed 75 judges to the three main tiers of the federal judicial system: the district courts, appeals courts and U.S. Supreme Court. That’s far more than the number appointed by Donald Trump (51) and Barack Obama (42) at the same stage in their presidencies, and slightly more than the number appointed by several other recent presidents – including George W. Bush (72), Bill Clinton (74) and Ronald Reagan (72) – by this point in their tenures.

Among all presidents going back to Dwight D. Eisenhower, only Kennedy had appointed more federal judges than Biden at the same stage of his tenure. Kennedy had appointed 102 judges by then, far outpacing the total of every other modern president in the same amount of time. (This analysis begins with Eisenhower because he was the first president to be inaugurated to a first term on Jan. 20.)

How we did this

Most of Biden’s appointed judges to date (57 out of 75, or 76%) have been district court judges, who preside over criminal and civil trials. A much smaller share (18 out of 75, or 24%) have been appeals court judges – the powerful jurists who are a level above district court judges, hear federal legal appeals and often have the last word on interpretations of federal law. Biden has also appointed one justice to the nation’s highest court: Ketanji Brown Jackson, who formally joined the Supreme Court in June. Biden had previously appointed Jackson to an appeals court position.

Trump, by comparison, had appointed a much smaller share of district court judges at this point in his presidency than Biden (26 of 51, or 51%), but a much larger share of appeals court judges (24 of 51, or 47%). Like Biden, Trump had also successfully appointed one Supreme Court justice by this point in his tenure: Neil Gorsuch. Over the full course of his presidency, Trump reshaped the federal judiciary – particularly the higher courts – by filling a large number of vacancies on the appeals courts and the Supreme Court.

Federal judicial appointments are consequential not only because of the important rulings that judges issue, but because federal judges have lifetime tenure and typically serve for many years after the presidents who appointed them have left office. The average Supreme Court justice, for example, has served on the court for nearly 17 years, according to a 2017 Center analysis of all former justices at the time.

Biden’s fast pace of judicial appointments to date partly reflects the fact that Democrats control the U.S. Senate, which considers and confirms presidential appointees. It also reflects the fact that judicial nominees can now be confirmed with a simple majority vote in the Senate – unlike in the past, when such nominees needed 60 votes to overcome the threat of a filibuster. The current Senate is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, but Democrats control the chamber due to the tiebreaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.

There are currently 72 vacancies for judgeships in the nation’s district and appeals courts (including some territorial courts), according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, suggesting that Biden still could fill dozens of seats in the months ahead. But the pace of his judicial appointments will depend on several factors, including whether Republicans take control of the Senate next year.

Most of Biden’s appointed judges have been women, racial and ethnic minorities

In addition to the large overall number of judges Biden has appointed so far, the 46th president stands out for the many women and racial and ethnic minorities he has appointed to the bench.

As of Aug. 8, around three-quarters of Biden’s confirmed federal judges (57 of 75, or 76%) have been women. Biden has appointed by far the highest number and share of women judges of any president at this point in his tenure.

Biden has also appointed the highest number and share of non-White federal judges of any president at this stage in his administration (49 of 75, or 65%). His confirmed judges so far include a record number who are Hispanic (13) and Asian (10), but he has appointed slightly fewer Black federal judges than Bill Clinton had at the same point in his tenure (18 vs. 20).

Most of the Black judges Biden has appointed to date (14 of 18) are women. That includes Jackson, who is the first-ever Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. So far, only four of Biden’s 75 judicial appointees (5%) have been White men, by far the lowest share among all presidents analyzed.

In addition to demographic diversity, Biden has emphasized professional diversity in his judicial appointments to date. An analysis by the Brookings Institution in January found that Biden had appointed a record number of former public defenders to federal judgeships in his first year in office.

Biden has appointed around one-in-ten currently active federal judges

Another way of looking at the effect that each president has had on the federal judiciary is to evaluate the share of currently active judges who were appointed by each chief executive.

As of Aug. 8, there are 790 active federal judges serving in the 91 district courts and 13 appeals courts governed by Article III of the U.S. Constitution, as well as the Supreme Court. Biden appointed 9% of those judges, a relatively small figure that reflects the fact that he has only been in office for about a year and a half.

Other recent presidents have appointed larger shares of currently active judges. Trump appointed 28% of active federal judges, while Obama appointed 35% and George W. Bush appointed 17%. Not surprisingly, relatively few judges who are still active today were appointed by presidents who served more than two decades ago – including Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Reagan.

The current federal judiciary is closely divided between appointees of Democratic presidents, who comprise 52% of all active judges, and of Republican presidents, who account for 48%. But that breakdown varies by type of court. More than half of currently active district court judges were appointed by Democratic presidents (53%), while a smaller share (47%) were appointed by GOP presidents. The reverse is true in the appeals courts, where 53% of active judges were appointed by Republican presidents and 47% were appointed by Democrats. The Supreme Court consists of six justices appointed by Republican presidents and three justices appointed by Democrats, a 67%-33% split in favor of GOP appointees.

The prime-time hearing revealed that the president resisted using the word ‘peaceful’ in a tweet even as Mike Pence’s Secret Service agents feared for their lives.

(AP) — Despite desperate pleas from aides, allies, a Republican congressional leader and even his family, Donald Trump refused to call off the Jan. 6 mob attack on the Capitol, instead “pouring gasoline on the fire” by aggressively tweeting his false claims of a stolen election and celebrating his crowd of supporters as “very special,” the House investigating committee showed Thursday night.

The next day, he declared anew, “I don’t want to say the election is over.” That was in a previously unaired outtake of an address to the nation he was to give, shown at the prime-time hearing of the committee.

The panel documented how for some 187 minutes, from the time Trump left a rally stage sending his supporters to the Capitol to the time he ultimately appeared in the Rose Garden video that day, nothing could compel the defeated president to act. Instead, he watched the violence unfold on TV.

“President Trump didn’t fail to act,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a fellow Republican but frequent Trump critic who flew combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. “He chose not to act.”

After months of work and weeks of hearings, the prime-time session started the way the committee began — laying blame for the deadly attack on Trump himself for summoning the mob to Washington and sending them to Capitol Hill.

The defeated president turned his supporters’ “love of country into a weapon,” said the panel’s Republican vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.

Far from finishing its work after Thursday’s hearing, probably the last of the summer, the panel will start up again in September as more witnesses and information emerge. Cheney said “the dam has begun to break” on revealing what happened that fateful day, at the White House as well as in the violence at the Capitol.

“Donald Trump made a purposeful choice to violate his oath of office,” Cheney declared.

“Every American must consider this: Can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of Jan. 6 ever be trusted in any position of authority in our great nation?” she asked.

Trump, who is considering another White House run, dismissed the committee as a “Kangaroo court,” and name-called the panel and witnesses for “many lies and misrepresentations.”

Plunging into its second prime-time hearing on the Capitol attack, the committee aimed to show a “minute by minute” accounting of Trump’s actions with new testimony, including from two White House aides, never-before-heard security radio transmissions of Secret Service officers fearing for their lives and behind-the-scenes discussions at the White House.

With the Capitol siege raging, Trump was “giving the green light” to his supporters by tweeting condemnation of Vice President Mike Pence’s refusal to go along with his plan to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, a former White House aide told the committee.

Two aides resigned on the spot.

“I thought that Jan. 6 2021, was one of the darkest days in our nation’s history,” Sarah Matthews told the panel. “And President Trump was treating it as a celebratory occasion. So it just further cemented my decision to resign.”

The committee played audio of Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reacting with surprise to the president’s inaction during the attack.

“You’re the commander-in-chief. You’ve got an assault going on on the Capitol of the United States of America. And there’s Nothing? No call? Nothing, Zero?” he said.

On Jan. 6, an irate Trump demanded to be taken to the Capitol after his supporters had stormed the building, well aware of the deadly attack, but his security team refused.

“Within 15 minutes of leaving the stage, President Trump knew that the Capitol was besieged and under attack,” said Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va.

At the Capitol, the mob was chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” testified Matt Pottinger, the former deputy national security adviser, as Trump tweeted his condemnation of his vice president.

Pottinger, testifying Thursday, said that when he saw Trump’s tweet he immediately decided to resign, as did Matthews, who said she was a lifelong Republican but could not go along with what was going on. She was the witness who called the tweet “a green light” and “pouring gasoline on the fire.”

Meanwhile, recordings of Secret Service radio transmissions revealed agents at the Capitol trying to whisk Pence to safety amid the mayhem and asking for messages to be relayed telling their own families goodbye.

The panel showed previously unseen testimony from the president’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., with a text message to his father’s chief of staff Mark Meadows urging the president to call off the mob.