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Amid Partisan Rancor, US Looks to 2022 Midterm Elections

As of Wednesday, there were 300 days until the next federal election in the U.S., when voters will cast ballots for all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and one-third of the members of the Senate, with enormous consequences for the second half of President Joe Biden’s four-year term in office. 

While it may seem to people outside Washington that it’s too soon to begin thinking about an election that far away, there is little question that key figures in Washington are already weighing their every move with an eye on how it might affect voters’ feelings in November. 

That applies particularly to Biden, who is struggling with an approval rating that has been hovering between 40% and 45% for several weeks as the coronavirus pandemic rages and inflation drives up the cost of living for everyday Americans at a pace not seen in nearly four decades.

Called a “midterm election” because it takes place at the midpoint of the president’s four-year term, the results are usually affected heavily by public perceptions of the president.

“There’s no reason to think that the midterm elections in November of this year will be anything other than what they usually are, and that is a referendum on the performance of the president and the president’s party,” William A. Galston, a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies program, told VOA.

Control of Congress at stake

Control of both the House and Senate is very much in play. Democrats have nominal control of both chambers but are severely constrained in enacting their proposals because of a 50-50 split in the Senate. Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris is able to cast tie-breaking votes, but the body’s filibuster rule allows Republicans to block most legislation from coming to a vote in the first place.

In the House, Democrats hold a slim 222-212 majority, with one seat vacant. Republicans are favored to win enough seats to take over the House in November.

In the Senate, the likely result is unclear. Of the 34 seats that are up for election this cycle, 20 are held by Republicans and 14 by Democrats. The overwhelming majority are considered “safe,” meaning that the incumbent is likely to be reelected. The six races generally considered competitive are split evenly, with three held by Republicans and three by Democrats.

As difficult as it presently is for Biden to force his agenda through Congress, the loss of control of either the House or the Senate to Republicans would all but guarantee a shutdown of his legislative agenda in the second half of his term.

Referendum on the president

Historically, midterm elections are tough on the party of the president. In all but three of the midterm elections since the 1861-65 Civil War, the party of the incumbent president has lost seats in the House.

“The best predictor of how a party is going to do is the incumbent president’s job approval rating,” Charlie Cook, the founder of the Cook Political Report, told VOA. “And the more under 50% it is, the tougher it is. So if you’ve got a president that’s at 42%, or 43%, as President Biden is, that’s not a good thing [for Democrats].”

“Sometimes you can oversimplify things in politics, but I think midterms benefit from oversimplification,” said Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

“Historically speaking, unless there’s some sort of big outside circumstance or extraordinary circumstance, you would not expect an unpopular president’s party to do well in a midterm,” Kondik told VOA. “And so I think what we could say from the vantage point of January is that Biden’s numbers need to get better or Democrats are in real danger of losing particularly the House and also the Senate.”

Controversy possible

Absent some grand unifying event that inspires Americans to cross political boundaries, the 2022 election will take place in an atmosphere of extreme partisan rancor. After the 2020 election, in which former President Donald Trump falsely claimed that the presidency had been stolen from him, many states passed controversial new election laws that could make contested outcomes more likely and more challenging to resolve.

“If there’s a close election in a major race — let’s say it’s a Senate race that could determine control of the Senate — will the losing side be willing to accept the legitimacy of the outcome or be convinced that the process was rigged in some way against it?” asked Rick Pildes, an election law expert and the Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law at the New York University School of Law. “We’re in a culture of tremendous distrust in advance [of the election] on both sides of the spectrum.”

Pildes pointed out that the situation is exacerbated by one aspect of the U.S. election system that is notably different from most other democracies.

“In the U.S., we do not have independent institutions to oversee and administer our elections, unlike in a lot of democracies,” he told VOA. “We have partisan elected officials … administering most of the election process and there is great concern now that the losers will convince themselves — in a close election, particularly if the other party’s elected figures are in control of the process — that something about the process was corrupt.”

If there is controversy, it will most likely be in a small handful of races, said Galston of the Brookings Institution.

“At this point, so many of the elections occur in jurisdictions that are dominated by one party or the other that we may not see that many close elections, either at the congressional district level or at the state level,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to reach anything like the intensity that we saw after the presidential election of 2020.”

Abortion ruling as wild card

One event that could have a significant impact on the election is an anticipated ruling on a controversial state abortion law, expected from the Supreme Court in the early summer, according to Kondik of the University of Virginia. The ruling will decide if states are free to enact far more restrictive abortion laws than Supreme Court precedent has allowed.

“I think one big issue to watch is abortion — if, in fact, the Supreme Court allows states to heavily restrict abortion or restrict abortion more than they’re able to do now,” he said. “So, if you’re looking for an issue to come to the forefront in the 2022 election, that would be one to watch. Abortion is a very polarizing and important issue in American politics.”

With support for limiting or even abolishing abortion rights concentrated among Republicans, and most Democrats supporting expansive access to abortion services, a decisive ruling that moves the needle either way could galvanize voters, driving more voters from one or both parties to the polls in greater numbers.
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Former Senate Leader Harry Reid to Lie in State at Capitol

Former Sen. Harry Reid will lie in state at the U.S. Capitol as colleagues and friends pay tribute to a hardscrabble Democrat who rose from poverty in a dusty Nevada mining town to the most powerful position in the U.S. Senate. 

Reid will be honored Wednesday in the Capitol Rotunda during a ceremony closed to the public under COVID-19 protocols. He died last month at 82 after a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer. 

The longest-serving Nevadan in Congress and the Senate majority leader alongside two presidents, Reid helmed the chamber during one of its more consequential legislative sessions — securing the economic recovery bill during the Great Recession and President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law.

President Joe Biden called Reid a “great American,” one who “looked at the challenges of the world and believed it was within our capacity to do good, to do right.” 

During a funeral service last weekend in Las Vegas, Biden, Obama and others recalled one of Reid’s best-known traits — abruptly hanging up on people, even presidents, rather than close with lengthy goodbyes. 

The few words Reid did say were often flinty and fiery, the senator unafraid to take on presidents (he called George W. Bush a “loser”), criticize the fossil fuel industry (“coal makes us sick”) or declare the war in Iraq “lost.” He titled his 2008 autobiography “The Good Fight.” 

Influential in retirement, Reid said Biden should give his new presidency just three weeks to try to work with Republicans. If not, Biden should force changes in the Senate’s filibuster rules to allow simple majority passage of elections and voting rights legislation and other priorities, Reid said. 

“The time’s going to come when he’s going to have to move in and get rid of the filibuster,” Reid told The Associated Press. 

Reid was born in the desolate mining town of Searchlight, Nevada, his father a hard-rock miner who later committed suicide, his mother doing laundry at home for bordellos. (He and other kids would swim in a brothel’s pool.) Searchlight was a place, he said, that “had seen its better days.” 

The town had no churches, his family no religion. But a picture of President Franklin D. Roosevelt hanging in the Reid home would influence his political career. 

Reid hitchhiked some 40 miles to attend high school and joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as he made his way through college and law school. An amateur boxer, he once leveled a punch at his future father-in-law after being denied a date with Landra Gould, who would become his wife. They were married for 62 years. 

First elected to the House in 1982 and reelected in 1984, Reid then served 30 years in the Senate, including a decade as the Senate Democratic leader. 

Along the way, Reid rewrote the map of Nevada by expanding public lands, halting the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste outside of Las Vegas; and securing national monument status around artist Michael Heizer’s “City” installation in the desert. He quietly ensured federal funding to research UFOs. 

A man of few words, Reid often wrote notes instead — to family, colleagues and a Nevada student advocate who had reached out on immigration law changes. He championed the Dream Act and Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals to protect young immigrants in the U.S. without legal status from deportation. 

As his power rose, Reid engineered a Democratic legacy for his state with Nevada’s early presidential caucus. He left behind a state party apparatus that was sometimes referred to as the “Reid Machine” for its enduring political power seeking to elect the next generation of Democratic leaders. 

After suffering an exercise accident at home, and with Democrats back in the Senate minority, Reid announced he would not seek reelection in 2016. 

In his farewell address to the Senate, he acknowledged he had done things that “probably a lot of people wouldn’t do.” But he passed on his advice to those wondering how he made it from Searchlight to Washington. 

“I didn’t make it because of my good looks. I didn’t make it because I am a genius. I made it because I worked hard,” Reid said. “Whatever you want to try to do, make sure you work as hard as you can to try to do what you want to do.”
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January 6 Committee Subpoenas Trump Aide, 2 Republican Strategists 

The House panel investigating the U.S. Capitol insurrection is demanding records and testimony from a former White House aide they say helped draft former President Donald Trump’s January 6 speech, along with two others it says were in communication with people close to Trump.

Mississippi Representative Bennie Thompson, Democratic chairman of the panel, issued subpoenas on Tuesday to Andy Surabian and Arthur Schwartz, strategists who advised Donald Trump Jr., and Ross Worthington, a former White House official who the committee says helped draft the speech Trump gave at the rally directly preceding last year’s attack.

“We have reason to believe the individuals we’ve subpoenaed today have relevant information, and we expect them to join the more than 340 individuals who have spoken with the Select Committee as we push ahead to investigate this attack on our democracy and ensure nothing like this ever happens again,” Thompson said in a letter Tuesday.

Worthington is a former Trump White House and campaign aide who served as a speechwriter and policy adviser. He had previously worked for former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally.

Surabian is a GOP strategist who has worked with Trump’s eldest son, Trump Jr., former Trump strategist Steve Bannon and others within the Trump orbit. The committee alleges he and Schwartz, another strategist who has worked with Trump Jr. and Bannon, communicated with people, including Trump Jr. and his fiancée and Trump fundraiser, Kimberly Guilfoyle, regarding the January 6 rally on The Ellipse.

An attorney representing Surabian said his client will cooperate with the committee “within reason,” but does not understand why the subpoena was issued in the first place. 

“He had nothing at all to do with the events that took place at the Capitol that day, zero involvement in organizing the rally that preceded it, and was off the payroll of the Trump campaign as of November 15, 2020,” Daniel Bean said in a statement.

Schwartz had no comment when reached by The Associated Press on Tuesday, and Worthington did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Trump at the time was pushing false claims of widespread voter fraud and lobbying Vice President Mike Pence and Republican members of Congress to try to overturn the count at the January 6 congressional certification. Election officials across the country, along with the courts, had repeatedly dismissed Trump’s claims. 
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Biden Pushes Voting Rights Legislation Ahead of Vote

President Joe Biden is pushing legislation to prevent states from imposing laws that limit access to the vote, arguing that voting rights are a bedrock American value and need to be better protected. His Republican opponents want states to support more rigorous voter identification and ballot security measures to prevent voter fraud. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.

Produced: Bakhtiyar Zamanov 
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Biden Supports Changing Senate Rules to Pass Voting Rights Bills

U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were in the southern state of Georgia on Tuesday to promote voting rights legislation that would greatly expand federal influence over elections. 

The two bills are a top priority for many Democrats but have stalled in the Senate because of Republican opposition. 

“Today, we come to Atlanta, the cradle of civil rights, to make clear what must come after that dreadful day when a dagger was literally held at the throat of American democracy,” Biden said, invoking the Jan. 6, 2021, siege of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump attempting to overturn Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. 

With only 50 Democratic votes in the 100-seat Senate and no Republican ones, Biden threw his support behind the so-called filibuster carve-out: a one-time change in filibuster rules to pass the two voting rights bills. 

The filibuster is a Senate tradition that allows the minority party to prolong debate and delay or prevent a vote. A filibuster carve-out would allow Senate Democrats to pass legislation with a simple majority with Harris as the tiebreaker.

“Today I’m making it clear. To protect our democracy, I support changing the Senate rules whichever way they need to be changed to prevent a minority of senators from blocking action on voting rights,” Biden said.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he will force a vote on changing those Senate rules no later than January 17, the day Americans commemorate the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a civil rights activist. 

Senator Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, lambasted the move.

“The Senate Democratic leader is trying to bully his own members into breaking their word, breaking the Senate, and silencing the voices of millions of citizens. So that one political party can take over our nation’s elections from the top down,” he said in a statement Tuesday. 

McConnell also blasted Biden’s rhetoric on voting rights. 

“A sitting president of the United States who pledged to lower the temperature and unite America now invokes the brutal racial hatred of Jim Crow segregation to smear states whose new voting laws are more accessible than in his home state of Delaware,” McConnell said. 

Republicans vs. Democrats on voting rights 

In the American federal system, rules on who can vote, how, when and where they can vote and how the votes are counted are determined at the state level. In general, Democrats want to make it easier for everyone to vote because a larger pool of voters tends to yield more Democratic votes. Republicans tend to support higher barriers to voting, focusing on voter identification to protect against fraud.

Data from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School show that in the last year at least 19 Republican-controlled states have passed 34 laws restricting access to voting.

The two bills Biden is advocating include the Freedom to Vote Act, which would, among other provisions, reduce the impact of Republican controlled state-led efforts to restrict voting and stop gerrymandering, the process in which state legislators redraw districts in a way that advocates say favors one party or class. The second is the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore certain anti-discrimination provisions of the Voting Rights Act that were weakened in a 2013 Supreme Court ruling. 

The prospects of passing the bills are dim. 

“It is hard to pass something, to say we’re going to standardize things across the country in a way that really only one party is for,” said John Fortier, a senior fellow focusing on elections at the American Enterprise Institute. 

Republicans in Congress have uniformly opposed the measures, contending that each of the 50 U.S. states should continue to set its own rules, including voting hours, how many days of early voting should be allowed before the traditional election day and the extent to which mail-in balloting is allowed.

Along with Biden’s Build Back Better, the $2 trillion social spending and climate change bill still stuck at the Senate, Democrats and the White House say passing voting rights legislation is a top priority.

“Right now, Democrats are so worried about the prospects of what could happen without essentially nationalizing voting rights issues, that I think they’re viewing this as, ‘We have to do this, otherwise we’ve lost everything else,'” said David Schultz, a professor at Hamline University specializing in election law. 

That may explain why Biden’s speech referred heavily to January 6 and “the Big Lie” — the baseless claim that Trump won the 2020 election — as a powerful argument to change the filibuster rules and pass voting rights measures.

Think of the scenes at the Capitol that day as the equivalent of Martin Luther King Jr. and his supporters being beaten as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, images that were crucial to passing voting rights legislation in the 1960s, Schultz said. 

“Biden needs an image to win over the public and Congress to support his legislation,” he added.

‘The Big Lie’ 

While Democrats routinely criticize Trump and his Republican allies for what they characterize as “the Big Lie,” McConnell has attacked Democrats over what he called “the left’s Big Lie” — the belief that “there is some evil anti-voting conspiracy sweeping America.”

In the 2020 election, Biden won some states where voting days were added, voting hours were extended and mail-in balloting was expanded to reduce the need for voters to go to polling places amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The legislation pushed by Democrats aims to codify many of those changes for future elections, including the 2022 elections in November, when all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and about a third of the Senate seats are up for grabs. Numerous Republican-controlled state legislatures in the past year have curtailed many of the changes enacted for the 2020 election, fearing that Democrats would gain a permanent electoral advantage if the rules were left in place.

At least two Democrats, Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, remain opposed to changing the legislative filibuster rule, even for voting rights measures. 

“Unless they’ve changed their minds, unless the speech and other things going around change their minds, then it’s going to be almost impossible to pass this set of legislation at the federal level,” Fortier said. 

Biden, in his close to 40 years in the Senate, has resisted changes to the filibuster but now believes change is necessary.

“The president is coming to the realization right now that this is not the same Senate that he was in 20, 30 years ago where compromise was possible,” Schultz said. 

VOA’s Anita Powell contributed to this report.

 
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Biden to Push for Voting Rights Measures

U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are headed Tuesday to the southern state of Georgia to promote voting rights legislation that would greatly expand federal purview over elections but has stalled in the Senate. 

A White House official said Biden would use an address to advocate for the right to vote in free, fair and secure elections untainted by partisan manipulation, and say that the way to guarantee those rights is by enacting two pieces of voting legislation introduced by Democrats. 

“The next few days, when these bills come to a vote, will mark a turning point in this nation,” Biden says, according to a White House excerpt of his remarks.  “Will we choose democracy over autocracy, light over shadow, justice over injustice? I know where I stand. I will not yield. I will not flinch. I will defend your right to vote and our democracy against all enemies foreign and domestic. And so, the question is where will the institution of United States Senate stand?” 

He later said on Twitter, “History has never been kind to those who have sided with voter suppression over voting rights. And it will not be kind to those who fail to defend the right to vote.”

But Republicans in Congress have uniformly opposed the measures, contending that each of the individual 50 U.S. states should continue to set their own rules, including on voting hours, how many days of early voting should be allowed ahead of the traditional early November election days and the extent to which mail-in balloting is allowed.

In the 2020 presidential election, Biden ousted former President Donald Trump after a single White House term. Biden won some states where voting days were added, voting hours extended and mail-in balloting expanded to limit the need for voters to go to traditional, crowded voting places on Election Day in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Now, Democrats, in the legislation Biden supports, want to codify many of those changes for future elections, including the 2022 elections next November, when all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and about a third of the Senate seats are up for grabs. Numerous Republican-controlled state legislatures in the last year have curtailed many of the changes enacted for the 2020 election, fearing that Democrats would gain a permanent electoral advantage if the rules were left in place.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is expected to force votes this week on both the Freedom to Vote Act, which would overhaul federal election rules, and separate voting legislation that would strengthen the 1965 Voting Rights Act requiring federal approval of newly enacted state voting regulations.

But Senate Republicans are set to use the 60-vote legislative filibuster to block those bills from advancing. The 100-member Senate is evenly divided 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans and the entire Republican caucus opposes the Democratic election legislation, meaning Democrats can likely only pass their proposals if they carve out an exception to the filibuster rule for voting rights legislation and win approval on a 51-50 vote, with Harris casting the tie-breaking vote.

Schumer has vowed to hold a vote by next Monday to change the legislative filibuster rules, but at least two Democrats, Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, remain opposed to changing the legislative filibuster rule, even for voting rights measures. 

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has adamantly opposed the Democratic election law legislation and changing the filibuster rule.

“No party that would trash the Senate’s legislation traditions can be trusted to seize control over election laws all across America,” McConnell told the Senate recently. “Nobody who is this desperate to take over our democracy on a one-party basis can be allowed to do it.”

Democrats routinely criticize Trump and his Republican allies for what they characterize as his “Big Lie” that he was cheated out of re-election. McConnell, in turn, attacked Democrats over “the left’s Big Lie,” what he said is the belief that “there is some evil anti-voting conspiracy sweeping America.”

In supporting greater federal control of elections, Schumer cited data from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School showing that in the last year at least 19 states have passed 34 laws restricting access to voting. One of the states enacting more restrictions is Georgia, where Biden and Harris won in 2020 and are visiting on Tuesday.

But Senate Democrats have no path forward unless they change filibuster rules that prevent contentious legislation from advancing without the support of at least 60 of the 100 senators.

The White House official said Biden would voice support for changing the rule in order to protect voting rights and make the drawing of geographical lines for congressional districts less partisan.
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Prospects Dim as US, Russia Prepare to Meet Over Ukraine

With the fate of Ukraine and potentially broader post-Cold War European stability at stake, the United States and Russia are holding critical strategic talks that could shape the future of not only their relationship but the relationship between the U.S. and its NATO allies. Prospects are bleak.

Though the immediacy of the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine will top the agenda in a series of high-level meetings that get underway on Monday, there is a litany of festering but largely unrelated disputes, ranging from arms control to cybercrime and diplomatic issues, for Washington and Moscow to overcome if tensions are to ease. And the recent deployment of Russian troops to Kazakhstan may cast a shadow over the entire exercise.

With much at risk and both warning of dire consequences of failure, the two sides have been positioning themselves for what will be a nearly unprecedented flurry of activity in Europe this week. Yet the wide divergence in their opening positions bodes ill for any type of speedy resolution, and levels of distrust appear higher than at any point since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

U.S. officials on Saturday unveiled some details of the administration’s stance, which seem to fall well short of Russian demands. The officials said the U.S. is open to discussions on curtailing possible future deployments of offensive missiles in Ukraine and putting limits on American and NATO military exercises in Eastern Europe if Russia is willing to back off on Ukraine.

But they also said Russia will be hit hard with economic sanctions should it intervene in Ukraine. In addition to direct sanctions on Russian entities, those penalties could include significant restrictions on products exported from the U.S. to Russia and potentially foreign-made products subject to U.S. jurisdiction.

Russia wants the talks initially to produce formally binding security guarantees for itself with a pledge that NATO will not further expand eastward and the removal of U.S. troops and weapons from parts of Europe. But the U.S. and its allies say those are non-starters intentionally designed by Moscow to distract and divide. They insist that any Russian military intervention in Ukraine will prompt “massive consequences” that will dramatically disrupt Russia’s economy even if they have global ripple effects.

In a bid to forestall efforts by Russia to sow discord in the West, the Biden administration has gone out of its way to stress that neither Ukraine nor Europe more broadly will be excluded from any discussion of Ukraine’s or Europe’s security.

Biden administration officials allow that neither topic can be entirely ignored when senior American and Russian diplomats sit down in Geneva in Monday ahead of larger, more inclusive meetings in Brussels and Vienna on Wednesday and Thursday that will explore those issues in perhaps more depth.

Still, the mantras “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” and “nothing about Europe without Europe” have become almost cliche in Washington in recent weeks, and senior U.S. officials have gone so far as to say they expect Russia to lie about the content of Monday’s meeting to try to stoke divisions.

“We fully expect that the Russian side will make public comments following the meeting on Monday that will not reflect the true nature of the discussions that took place,” said one senior U.S. official who will participate in the talks. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

That official and others have urged allies to view with “extreme skepticism” anything Moscow says about the so-called Strategic Stability Talks and wait until they are briefed by the American participants to form opinions.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia of “gaslighting” and mounting a full-scale disinformation campaign designed to blame Ukraine, NATO and particularly the United States for the current tensions and undercut Western unity. He said Russian President Vladimir Putin is engaged in an all-out war on the truth that ignores Russia’s own provocative and destabilizing actions over the course of the past decade.

“Russia seeks to challenge the international system itself and to unravel our trans-Atlantic alliance, erode our unity, pressure democracies into failure,” Blnken said Friday, going through a list of offending Russian activity ranging from military intervention in Ukraine and Georgia to chemical weapons attacks on Putin critics to election interference in the U.S. and elsewhere, cybercrime and support for dictators.

Despite several conversations between President Joe Biden and Putin, including an in-person meeting last summer, Blinken said such behavior continues, at increasing risk to the post-World War II global order.

Thus, the intensified U.S. and allied effort to forge common positions on both the warnings and the “severe costs” to Russia if it moves against Ukraine. While expressions of unity have been forthcoming, Blinken was not optimistic about prospects for success in the talks.

“To the extent that there is progress to be made — and we hope that there is — actual progress is going to be very difficult to make, if not impossible, in an environment of escalation by Russia,” he said.

Russia, meanwhile, has spun a narrative that it is a threatened victim of Western aggression and wants quick results from the meetings despite what appear insurmountable differences.

Putin has repeatedly warned that Moscow will have to take unspecified “military-technical measures” if the West stonewalls Russia’s demands, and affirmed that NATO membership for Ukraine or the deployment of alliance weapons there is a red line for Moscow that it wouldn’t allow the West to cross.

“We have nowhere to retreat,” Putin said last month, adding that NATO could deploy missiles in Ukraine that would take just four or five minutes to reach Moscow. “They have pushed us to a line that we can’t cross. They have taken it to the point where we simply must tell them, ‘Stop!'”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who will lead Russia’s delegation at the Geneva talks across from U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, said last week that it will quickly become clear whether the talks could be productive.

“It will become clear after the next week’s events whether it’s possible to achieve quick progress, to quickly advance on issues that are of interest to us,” he said in an interview with the daily Izvestia.

“So far, we have heard some pretty abstract comment from the U.S., NATO and others about some things being acceptable and some not and an emphasis on dialogue and the importance for Russia to deescalate. There are very few rational elements in that approach due to the unstoppable and quite intensive military and geopolitical developments of the territories near Russian borders by NATO, the emergence of weapons systems there, activization of drills.”

On Sunday evening, Ryabkov and Shermana will meet over a working dinner to discuss topics for the next day’s talks, a U.S. official said. 

 
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Harry Reid Memorial in Vegas Drawing Nation’s Top Democrats

The life of former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who rose from childhood poverty and deprivation in Nevada to become one of the nation’s most powerful elected officials, will be celebrated by two American presidents and other Democratic leaders on Saturday, a testament to his impact on some of the most consequential legislation of the 21st century.

President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are scheduled to speak Saturday during an invitation-only memorial for the longtime Senate leader who died Dec. 28 at home in Henderson, Nevada, at age 82 of complications from pancreatic cancer. Former President Barack Obama, who credits Reid for his rise to the White House, is scheduled to deliver the eulogy.

“The president believes that Harry Reid is one of the greatest leaders in Senate history,” Deputy White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday. “So he is traveling to pay his respects to a man who had a profound impact on this nation.”

Biden served with Reid in the Senate for two decades and worked with him for eight years when Biden was vice president.

Along with Obama, Elder M. Russell Ballard, a senior apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, will speak at the 2,000-seat concert hall about Reid’s 60 years in the Mormon faith. Vice President Kamala Harris also will attend.

“These are not only some of the most consequential leaders of our time — they are also some of Harry’s best friends,” Reid’s wife of 62 years, Landra Reid, said in a statement announcing plans for the Smith Center for the Performing Arts event. “Harry loved every minute of his decades working with these leaders and the incredible things they accomplished together.”

Reid’s daughter and four sons also are scheduled to speak.

Obama, in a letter to Reid before his death, recalled their close relationship, their different backgrounds and Reid’s climb from an impoverished former gold mining town of Searchlight in the Mojave Desert to leadership in Congress.

“Not bad for a skinny, poor kid from Searchlight,” Obama wrote. “I wouldn’t have been president had it not been for your encouragement and support, and I wouldn’t have got most of what I got done without your skill and determination.”

Reid served for 34 years in Washington and led the Senate through a crippling recession and the Republican takeover of the House after the 2010 elections.

He muscled Obama’s signature health care act through the Senate; blocked plans for a national nuclear waste repository in the Nevada desert; authored a 1986 bill that created Great Basin National Park; and was credited with helping casino company MGM Mirage get financial backing to complete a multibillion-dollar project on the Strip during the Great Recession.

Harry Mason Reid hitchhiked 64 kilometers to high school and was an amateur boxer before he was elected to the Nevada state Assembly at age 28. He had graduated from Utah State University and worked nights as a U.S. Capitol police officer while attending George Washington University Law School in Washington.

In 1970, at age 30, he was elected state lieutenant governor with Democratic Gov. Mike O’Callaghan. Reid was elected to the House in 1982 and the Senate in 1986.

He built a political machine in Nevada that for years helped Democrats win key elections. When he retired in 2016 after an exercise accident at home left him blind in one eye, he picked former Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto to replace him.

Cortez Masto became the first woman from Nevada and the first Latina ever elected to the U.S. Senate.

“Most of all, you’ve been a good friend,” Obama told Reid in his letter. “As different as we are, I think we both saw something of ourselves in each other — a couple of outsiders who had defied the odds and knew how to take a punch and cared about the little guy.”

Singer-songwriter and environmentalist Carole King, and Brandon Flowers, lead singer of the Las Vegas-based rock band The Killers, are scheduled to perform during the memorial.

“The thought of having Carole King performing in Harry’s honor is a tribute truly beyond words,” Landra Reid said in her statement.

Flowers, a longtime friend, shares the Reids’ Latter-day Saints faith and has been a headliner at events including a Lake Tahoe Summit that Harry Reid founded in 1997 to draw attention to the ecology of the lake, and the National Clean Energy Summit that Reid helped launch in 2008 in Las Vegas.

Among other songs, Flowers was scheduled to sing the Nevada state anthem, Home Means Nevada.

Stephen J. Cloobeck, a close family friend and founder and former chief executive of a Las Vegas-based timeshare company, said he was sponsoring a gathering Friday for several hundred former Reid congressional staffers at the Bellagio resort on the Las Vegas Strip.

Those flying to Las Vegas will arrive at the newly renamed Harry Reid International Airport. It was formerly named for Pat McCarran, a former Democratic U.S. senator from Nevada who once owned the airfield and whose legacy is clouded by racism and antisemitism. 

 
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Silence Marks First Anniversary of January 6 Capitol Riot 

The one-year anniversary of the first attack on the U.S. Capitol in two centuries passed in silence Thursday as differences between congressional Democrats and Republicans about the deadly riot were on stark display.

Over the past year, the events of January 6 have furthered the divide between Democrats who see the day as an attempted coup and Republicans who have largely chosen not to discuss what happened beyond addressing security failures at the Capitol.

In an event from which Republicans were markedly absent, Democrats convened in the chamber of the U.S. House for a somber moment of remembrance honoring the five people who died after supporters of former President Donald Trump overwhelmed law enforcement and swarmed inside one of the world’s most secure buildings in their attempt to prevent the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

There were few public remarks from Republican lawmakers, many of whom still struggle with how they remember the legacy of that day. Many have argued that the rioters believed they were allowed inside the building to exercise their right to protest, and that the events of the day were primarily peaceful, denying graphic footage of rioters beating police and desecrating the Capitol.

In a statement Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged the gravity of January 6, calling it “a dark day for Congress and our country. The United States Capitol, the seat of the first branch of our federal government, was stormed by criminals who brutalized police officers and used force to try to stop Congress from doing its job.”

He did not address the role Trump may have played in the riot, and he criticized Democrats for trying “to exploit this anniversary to advance partisan policy goals that long predated this event.”

After the moment of silence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “When the violent assault was made on the Capitol, its purpose was to thwart Congress’ constitutional duty to validate the electoral count and to ensure the peaceful transfer of power. But the assault did not deter us from our duty.”

Pelosi, the third-highest official in the U.S. government, held several commemorative events Thursday along with other congressional Democrats. During the riot, she was rushed to an undisclosed secure location as members of her staff barricaded themselves in offices to hide from rioters. Members of both chambers eventually returned early the next morning to certify the election results.

McConnell was one of many Republicans to condemn Trump’s actions in the immediate aftermath of the riot. But rhetoric from the former president’s own party shifted as he faced an impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate in February. Ultimately, most of the senators who condemned Trump’s actions on January 6 voted to acquit him of the charge of inciting an insurrection.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of the former president, voted to acquit. In a statement Thursday, he said, “Those who defiled the Capitol on January 6 are being prosecuted, as they should be. I have consistently condemned the attack and have urged that those involved be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I hold the same views of those who attacked the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, and committed other acts of violence throughout our nation.”

He also did not address Trump’s role in the events of that day.

Ten House Republicans voted to impeach Trump on charges of inciting the insurrection, including Representative Liz Cheney, vice chair of the House select committee currently investigating the Capitol attack. She tweeted Thursday, “Even in the aftermath of January 6th, the former President continues to make the same false claims that he knows caused violence. The Republican Party must reject his lies.”

Republicans stripped Cheney of her committee assignments for criticizing Trump’s actions in the aftermath of the riot, and her views are not largely accepted by most members of her party. Representatives Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene called for the rioters’ release as so-called political prisoners. Gaetz said Thursday on the Steve Bannon podcast, “We’re ashamed of nothing. We’re proud of the work we did on January 6 to make legitimate arguments about election integrity.”

For Democrats, January 6 remains a day of trauma that now marks their workplace and has altered their relationships with many of their Republican colleagues.

“For me personally, the path forward after January 6 has not been easy. It’s been made more painful, however, by the fact that most of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle continue to accommodate that big lie. That was the predicate for the attack on our country,” Democratic Representative Dan Kildee said Thursday at a forum for lawmakers to share their memories of the day of the riot.

He continued, “I know we can stop this ongoing effort to bend our democracy. Truly, truly protect our democracy. We need truth.”
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On Anniversary of Capitol Siege, Biden Lays Blame on Trump

On the first anniversary of the deadly January 6 Capitol riot, U.S. President Joe Biden delivered a forceful speech in defense of American democracy. He laid blame for the insurrection squarely on former President Donald Trump and Republicans who continue to spread the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports.
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Biden Appeals to US, World on Anniversary of Capitol Attack

U.S. President Joe Biden, joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, made an impassioned appeal to Americans and defended the values of democracy on the first anniversary of the stunning insurrection attempt that Biden said tested the nation’s identity.

“Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm?” Biden asked. “Are we going to be a nation where we allow partisan election officials to overturn the legally expressed will of the people?”

During the violent Capitol riot of Jan 6, 2021, a mob overpowered police, breached the Capitol and attempted to stop lawmakers from formalizing Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. Biden urged Americans to choose how they define themselves.

“Are we going to be a nation that lives not by the light of the truth but in the shadow of lies? We cannot allow ourselves to be that kind of nation. The way forward is to recognize the truth and to live by it,” he said.

And, he said, the events of that day reverberate well beyond the shores of the United States.

“From China, to Russia and beyond, they’re betting that democracy’s days are numbered,” he said. “They actually told me, democracy’s too slow, too bogged down by division, to succeed in today’s rapidly changing, complicated world. And they’re betting, they’re betting America will become more like them and less like us. They’re betting that America is a place for the autocrat, the dictator, the strongman. I do not believe that. That is not who we are. That is not who we have ever been. And that is not who we should ever, ever be.”

President Biden never mentioned former President Donald Trump by name, although he repeatedly said Trump’s failed quest to overturn his election loss is damaging American democracy. “You can’t love your country only when you win,” he said.

Shortly after Biden spoke, Trump released a statement accusing Biden of trying to divide the country with his remarks.

“Biden, who is destroying our Nation with insane policies of open borders, corrupt elections, disastrous energy policies, unconstitutional mandates, and devastating school closures, used my name today to try to further divide America,” Trump wrote.  “This political theater is all just a distraction for the fact Biden has completely and totally failed.”

Vice President Harris, speaking ahead of Biden, used her platform to push for voting rights legislation. In the past year, Trump has leaned on sympathetic lawmakers to pass legislation that some critics say restricts voting rights.

“The American spirit is being tested,” she said. “Here in this very building, a decision will be made about whether we uphold the right to vote and ensure free and fair elections. Let’s be clear: We must pass the voting rights bills that are now before the Senate and the American people must also do something more.”

The attack on the Capitol led to at least five deaths and more than 130 injuries and saw more than 725 participants charged with crimes. Protesters loyal to Trump agreed with the former president’s claim that the November 2020 presidential poll was marred by fraud, though there is no evidence to support that. A year later, public opinion polls have shown about 70% of Republicans do not consider Biden’s election win legitimate.

Some rioters on the scene said they were seeking out specific individuals — in particular, then-Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who both played a pivotal role in leading legislators through the election certification process. Members of the mob erected a gallows on site.

Four Trump supporters died on the day of the assault, and a Capitol Police officer died the next day. The mob injured dozens of officers, and in the months since the attack four officers have died by suicide.   

Biden said Trump continues to sow political divisions in the year since the attack because he is unable to accept his election loss.  

“The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election,” he said. “He’s done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interest is more important than his country’s interest and America’s interest. And because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution. He can’t accept he lost.” 

Overseas, the U.S. president’s strong words are unlikely to move America’s adversaries, said history professor Jeremi Suri of the University of Texas at Austin.

“Biden’s words will not convince his detractors, but they will encourage millions of Americans who want their country to be better, and their democracy to be more secure, in the next few years,” he told VOA. “I think these words are likely to resonate among America’s traditional democratic allies — especially Germany, Britain, Japan, Canada, and Australia — all of whom want to see the US move on from the Trump years and return to its role as a leading world democracy. America’s critics — Russia and China especially — will dismiss Biden’s words as naive and empty.”

The Biden administration has faced criticism for not doing enough or moving quickly enough to get justice for those affected by the insurrection attempt, with critics noting that so far, only low-level offenders have faced charges.

On Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that Justice Department prosecutors will pursue perpetrators “at any level” responsible for the riot. He added that in complex cases, it is normal for lesser charges to be processed first, as prosecutors build their case against bigger targets.

He did not name any individuals who may face prosecution, but said: “There can be no different rules for the powerful and the powerless.”

Late Tuesday, Trump canceled a press conference scheduled for Thursday evening at his Florida estate. Trump said he would instead discuss “important topics” at a January 15 rally in Arizona.

Trump, in a statement, accused the congressional committee investigating the January 6 event of showing “total bias and dishonesty.”  
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The Global Legacy of January 6

Thirty years ago, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote in his essay “The End of History?” that the U.S. liberal democracy epitomized the endpoint of humanity’s sociocultural evolution, the superior and final form of government.

But one year after the deadly siege of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump, Fukuyama — now a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies — says that the example of America as a global beacon of democracy is deeply tarnished.

“The U.S. could not effect a peaceful transfer of power after an election, and that is a precedent that has already reverberated around the world,” he said.

On the anniversary of the Capitol siege, VOA spoke with other observers who are also giving ominous warnings about the global legacy of Jan. 6 and the decline of American democracy.

Authoritarianism as an alternative

The events of Jan. 6, Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, and the persistent unwillingness of the Republican Party to repudiate them serve as “useful talking points for autocrats — both actual and aspiring — who claim that democracy as an ideal is at once fanciful and misguided,” said William Howell, the Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.

They create setbacks for democracy reformers abroad who have looked to the U.S. for guidance and inspiration, Howell added.

Jonathan Stevenson, senior fellow for U.S. defense at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a global think tank, agreed.

“Although liberally inclined countries by default may still look to America for political support, authoritarianism is increasingly seen as a viable alternative,” Stevenson said, adding that the degradation of American democracy is not the only cause.

The rise of China, the “performance legitimacy” of illiberal leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, and the broadening appeal of populism prompted by disappointment in democratic governments are also major factors, he added.

“But January 6 has certainly increased American democracy’s burden of ideological persuasion,” Stevenson said.​

Meanwhile, Republicans’ embrace of 2020 election lies has made allies deeply nervous about America’s dependability, said Max Bergmann, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

“They now have to ask: If America moves in an autocratic direction, will it be there to stand up to other autocrats?” he said.

Still, America remains a country without peer in the key realms of geopolitics and, despite countries’ increased hedging and forming ties with other powers such as China, most are still looking to maintain strong working ties with the United States.

“The insurrection has left a mark on America’s standing in the world, but it hasn’t yet fundamentally undermined America’s overall position,” said Brian Katulis, Middle East Institute’s vice president of policy. “The fact that America still has the largest and strongest economy and military in the world — and much of its soft power in technology and education — is held in high regard.”

Salvaging American democracy

As president, Joe Biden has sought to salvage U.S. standing and framed his foreign policy in the context of democracies versus autocracies. In December, he brought together more than 100 countries in a virtual Summit for Democracy to “set forth an affirmative agenda for democratic renewal and to tackle the greatest threats faced by democracies today through collective action.”

To commemorate Jan. 6, Biden is scheduled to deliver remarks with a focus on sustaining democracy and countering threats to democratic processes. His aides say that Biden believes the most effective way to combat Trumpism and election denialism is to prove to the country and the world that democratic governments can work.

“Political cohesion, political stability, a common commitment across party lines to the basic institutions of American and values of American democracy. Those are the kinds of things that would actually provide the kind of national-security propulsion that we really need to be able to serve our interests abroad effectively,” said national security adviser Jake Sullivan in a recent Council on Foreign Relations event.

With deepening polarization and continuing attacks on America’s democratic institutions, that may be a tall order. In rallies across the country, Trump continues to push what critics call the “Big Lie” — the narrative that the 2020 presidential election was stolen — and most Republicans believe him.

According to a new USA Today/Suffolk University poll, 58% of Republicans say Biden was not legitimately elected to the White House — this despite numerous audits and investigations debunking Trump’s claims of voter fraud.

Fueled by “Stop the Steal” and other election fraud conspiracies, Republican lawmakers in states across the country have passed or tried to pass legislation that would assert more control over election systems and results, locking out Democrats in the process.

Advantage for adversaries

Adversaries, including Russia, China and Iran, have used the siege to their advantage, a fact acknowledged by Sullivan.

“January 6 has had a material impact on the view of the United States from the rest of the world,” said Biden’s top adviser. “Allies look at it with concern and worry about the future of American democracy. Adversaries look at it, you know, more sort of rubbing their hands together and thinking, ‘How do we take advantage of this in one way or another?'”

Chinese officials often questioned how American Democratic lawmakers could condemn the protesters who stormed the U.S. Capitol while championing those who broke into the legislature in Hong Kong. Iranian leaders have pointed to the siege and ongoing American political divisions in their own propaganda to bash the U.S.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has drawn moral equivalence between the prosecution of the Jan. 6 rioters and the suppression of his political opponent Alexey Navalny.

“These arguments may be simplistic and tortured, but they are not ineffective,” said Stevenson of IISS.

Moscow has also lobbed “whataboutisms” about American democratic backsliding in response to U.S. statements on Russian democracy. The goal, said author of How to Lose the Information War and global fellow at the Wilson Center Nina Jankowicz, is to undermine the legitimacy of criticisms that the U.S. has had of Russia in recent years regarding human rights and the right to free expression.

It should come as no surprise that adversaries have used U.S. democratic backsliding as an excuse to defend their own undemocratic systems. “When the U.S. undercuts its own liberal values at home, it creates a sense of entitlement, or even permission, for leaders with autocratic instincts to trample all over freedoms of free and fair elections or the right to protest,” said Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the U.S. and the Americas program at the London-based Chatham House.

Vinjamuri added that there is currently a pervasive sense in Europe, rightly or wrongly, that “America may still have the power to lead but that it no longer has the interest in reaching beyond its borders to provide for the kind of liberal or moral order that it once did.”

What’s next?

A lot is riding on the 2022 midterm elections and the 2024 presidential elections and whether Americans can deliver relatively stable elections without the drama and violence of 2020.

“It seems to me that the next two years will determine whether the U.S. remains a credible world power,” said Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy, an assistant lecturer at CY Cergy Paris Université. “If January 6 remains a one-off, then there is hope. But if it’s only the beginning of something, well, then, all hell might break loose.”

Other observers offer an even bleaker point of view.

“By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence,” said Thomas Homer-Dixon, executive director of the Cascade Institute at Canada’s Royal Roads University, in a recent opinion piece. “By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.”

The scholar of violent conflict urged his fellow citizens to prepare for the unfolding crisis in the United States, which he characterized as a “political and social landscape flashing with warning signals.” 

 
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Remorse, Indignation From Those Sentenced in Capitol Attack

More than 725 people have been arrested since last year’s January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that was aimed at overturning Joe Biden’s presidential election victory. One year later, some of the rioters who have been sentenced for a variety of crimes are speaking out about that day and their actions. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti has our story.

Camera: Mike Burke. Contributors: Lynn Davis, Bojan Klima.
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A Year After January 6, Trump Still Pushes Election Fraud Claims

A year after the January 6 Capitol riot, former President Donald Trump continues to insist that the 2020 vote was rigged. In recent months, the former president has pushed Republicans in state legislatures to change election laws. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Washington.
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One Year After the Capitol Riot, Many Americans See US Democracy in Peril 

For just a moment, immediately following the January 6 assault on the United States Capitol last year, it was possible to imagine that the events of that day would shock the country back to political normalcy. 

In the hours after the mob of insurrectionists, spurred on by false assertions from former President Donald Trump about a stolen election, was driven from the Capitol, it was possible to imagine that the shocking scenes of violence in the seat of the American government would force the country to reassess what counts as acceptable political discourse.  

It was possible to imagine that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, was correct when he came to the Senate floor later that night and declared, “Our democratic republic is strong.” 

In the weeks and months that followed the attack, however, optimism about the state of democracy in the U.S. has become increasingly difficult to maintain. 

Public polling indicates that nearly two-thirds of Americans believe U.S. democracy is “in crisis and at risk of failing.” And even more alarming is that nearly one-third of Americans now say that political violence is sometimes a justifiable response. 

Political pressure 

In the face of Trump’s repeated false claims about the election being stolen from him, senior officials in the Republican Party who had criticized the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol went silent, and those who excused or even justified the actions of the rioters were amplified. 

Today, public opinion polling indicates the overwhelming majority of self-identified Republican voters in the U.S. now believe, despite copious evidence to the contrary, that the results of the 2020 presidential election were fraudulent, and that President Joe Biden was illegitimately elected. 

The most recent poll by the University of Massachusetts put the percentage of Republicans who believe the election was fraudulent at 71%, accounting for about 33% of the population overall. 

The reaction from Republican state legislatures was predictable, according to Susan Stokes, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and the director of the Chicago Center on Democracy. 

“Once you get your election base believing that the presidential election was stolen from their side, you have a very strong constituency in favor of changing election laws,” she told VOA.

Restrictive voting laws 

At the state level last year, Republican-led legislatures began passing a raft of new election laws. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a Washington-based think tank, 19 states have passed 33 laws that restrict access to the ballot. 

Other Republican-controlled states passed laws designed to take authority over election administration away from secretaries of state or local elections officials and place it in the hands of lawmakers themselves. This happened particularly in places like Georgia and Arizona, Republican-leaning states that voted for Biden in 2020. 

In both states, Republican election officials vouched for the integrity of the 2020 election results in the face of Trump’s false claims of fraud. 

The actions by Republican state legislatures may assuage the concerns of some portion of their political base about the integrity of election results, but that will come at the cost of creating increased doubt among Democrats. 

This will be especially acute in states like Georgia, Arizona, and Texas, where Democrats have been improving their election performance in recent years, but Republicans still control the state legislature. Those states have passed laws that Republicans claim are “common sense” fixes to the election process but Democrats say are aimed at restricting ballot access and weakening them politically. 

Other state-level changes 

Not all changes to state laws this year restricted voting. In many states, mostly controlled by Democrats, new laws were passed expanding access to the ballot.

These changes included increasing the opportunities voters have to cast a ballot ahead of election day, greater access to mail-in voting, simplified voter registration rules, wider use of drop boxes for absentee voting, and improved assistance for voters whose primary language is not English. 

While the changes will be broadly supported by Democratic voters, virtually all of these measures are criticized by prominent Republicans — Trump chief among them — as making election fraud easier to perpetrate. While there is no evidence that fraud has played a significant role in any national election in recent history, the changes are likely to cement the belief among many in the GOP that election results in states run by Democrats cannot be trusted. 

‘A dangerous area’ 

“We’re getting to a point where there’s a lot of reasons for both sides to be discounting election results at the national level,” said Seth Masket, director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver.

“That’s a very dangerous area, a fragile area, for democracy to find itself,” Masket told VOA. “It’s caused other countries, other democracies, to collapse.” 

Stokes, of the University of Chicago, agreed that the “nightmare scenario” for the U.S. is an outcome where, whatever the result of a presidential election, large segments of the population view the outcome as not just disappointing, but illegitimate. 

Pointing to polling data that demonstrates an increased belief that political violence might be acceptable, Stokes said, “We have a lot of people out there in the public who think that violence is justified, and a smaller number, certainly, who would actually act on that. But it doesn’t take that many people to lead to a very violent situation, and possibly a situation of armed civil conflict.” 

A voice of optimism 

“I think we should be concerned whenever there are attacks on the internal operations of our republic,” said Mary Frances Berry, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, an attorney, and the former chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. “So, we’re right to be concerned, but we shouldn’t get frightened, or overly concerned.” 

Berry told VOA the U.S. has faced democratic crises in the past and survived. As recently as 2000, she pointed out, it was Democrats who were insisting that former President George W. Bush was illegitimately elected.

Democratic lawmakers, some still in Congress, demanded that then-Vice President Al Gore refuse to certify the election results in the Senate. That’s the same demand that the crowd of rioters at the Capitol on January 6 were making of then-Vice President Mike Pence.

In both cases, the vice presidents performed their constitutional duties and oversaw the certification of election results in which they had suffered defeat. 

“We have short memories,” Berry said. “But if we remember things, it will make us less frightened.” 
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Biden Pushed to Speak Out More as US Democracy Concerns Grow

President Joe Biden has gotten the same troubling questions from worried world leaders, ones that he never thought he would hear. 

“Is America going to be all right?” they ask. “What about democracy in America?”

While Biden has tried to offer America’s allies assurances, he has only occasionally emphasized the gravity of the threat to democracy from the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and the repeated lie from the man he defeated, Donald Trump, that the 2020 election was stolen. And he’s not discussed the very real concerns about a growing collection of insurrection sympathizers installed in local election posts and changes by Republicans to election laws in several states. 

Now, as the anniversary of that deadly day nears, the Democratic president is being urged to reorder priorities and use the powers of his office to push voting rights legislation that its adherents say could be the only effective way to counter the rapidly emerging threats to the democratic process. 

The tension in Biden’s approach reflects his balancing of the urgent needs of Americans to make progress on the highly visible issues of the coronavirus pandemic and the economy and the less visible, but equally vital, issue of preserving trust in elections and government. 

The president plans to deliver a speech on January 6 focused on sustaining democracy — voting rights won’t be part of the remarks but will be the topic of another speech soon, White House aides said. 

In his recent commencement address at South Carolina State University, Biden’s tone on the need for voting rights legislation took on added urgency. 

“I’ve never seen anything like the unrelenting assault on the right to vote. Never,” Biden said, adding, “This new sinister combination of voter suppression and election subversion, it’s un-American, it’s undemocratic, and sadly, it is unprecedented since Reconstruction.” 

And the world is taking notice. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, also has said that the riot at the Capitol has altered the view many countries have of the United States. 

“January 6 has had a material impact on the view of the United States from the rest of the world, I believe from allies and adversaries alike,” Sullivan said recently at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Allies look at it with concern and worry about the future of American democracy. Adversaries look at it, you know, more sort of rubbing their hands together and thinking, ‘How do we take advantage of this in one way or another?'” 

In contrast, Republicans in numerous states are promoting efforts to influence future elections by installing sympathetic leaders in local election posts and backing for elective office some of those who participated in the insurrection. 

White House officials insist Biden’s relative reticence should not be interpreted as complacency with the growing movement to rewrite history surrounding the January 6 riot. Rather, they say, the president believes the most effective way to combat Trump, election denialism and domestic extremism is to prove to the rest of the country — and to the world — that government can work. 

“I know progress does not come fast enough. It never has,” Biden said last fall. “The process of governing is frustrating and sometimes dispiriting. But I also know what’s possible if we keep the pressure up, if we never give up, we keep the faith.” 

In Biden’s view, many of Trump’s voters didn’t wholly embrace Trumpism. Instead, Trump exploited long-standing dissatisfaction with the nation’s political, economic and social systems to build his coalition.

So Biden tailored his first-year domestic agenda to combating what he believed to be the root causes of the unease — the shaky economy and the pandemic’s drag on it — essentially to prove that government can work effectively. 

He has directed federal law enforcement to shore up security at national institutions and improve communication systems and procedures that were in part to blame for U.S. Capitol Police being left overwhelmed for hours during the mob assault. 

The Justice Department has undertaken the largest prosecution in its history, charging more than 700 defendants and still looking for more. 

But it is voting rights that many Democrats and activists concerned about what may happen in 2022 and beyond are urging the president to make a key priority.

“The insurrection was part of a larger movement to suppress elections and overthrow our democracy,” said Christina Baal-Owens, a longtime organizer and the executive director of Public Wise, a group that researches and publishes information on candidates running for office who support the election lies.

Baal-Owens said efforts to discredit election integrity not only galvanize Trump supporters, they also make other voters less likely to vote.

“We know — we’ve done some research on trust in the system — if voters don’t trust elections, they may not vote,” she said. “This is part of a larger movement of voter suppression and why it’s so necessary for Biden to speak out.”

The House has approved far-reaching voting rights legislation, but Democratic Senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia have been impediments, saying they oppose changing Senate rules to get around a GOP filibuster of the bill. 

That legislation would restore the Justice Department’s ability to review changes to election laws in states with a history of discrimination, a provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013. According to the Brennan Center, 19 states have recently passed laws making it harder to vote.

Manchin and Sinema have helped draft separate voting rights legislation, but it lacks enough Republican support to overcome the filibuster. 

“People are taking sides as opposed to looking at what the institutional threats are to maintaining our democracy,” said Democratic Representative Peter Welch of Vermont, a candidate to replace Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, who announced his retirement. 

Welch was at the Capitol on January 6, and the violence that day is etched in his memory. 

“The norms that have been the bedrock of our democracy, the free and peaceful transition of power and the renunciation of violence, they’ve been shattered,” he said. 

After Biden’s speech in South Carolina, Senate Democrats renewed their push to pass voting rights legislation early in 2022. And the president said in an interview with ABC that he supported creating an exception to the Senate filibuster if that’s what it takes to pass voting rights legislation. 

For Biden, who served four decades in the Senate, it was a remarkable concession and underscored the gravity of the threat. And, he acknowledged, he knows the world is watching to see how the nation responds — and wondering if the country’s democracy will survive. 

“Did you ever think you’d be asked that question by another leader?” Biden said. 

 
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Biden to Speak on Anniversary of Capitol Attack

U.S. President Joe Biden is set to speak Thursday about the historical significance of last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump. 

The address, on the one-year anniversary of the assault, will feature Biden speaking from the Capitol’s Statuary Hall along with Vice President Kamala Harris. 

“The president is going to speak to the truth of what happened, not the lies that some have spread since and the peril it has posed to the rule of law and our system of democratic governance,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at a Tuesday briefing. “He will also mark that day, commemorate the heroes of January 6th, especially the brave men and women of law enforcement who fought to uphold the Constitution and protect the Capitol and the lives of the people who were there. Because of their efforts, our democracy withstood an attack from a mob, and the will of the more than 150 million people who voted in the presidential election was ultimately registered by Congress.”

The pro-Trump mob stormed the seat of Congress as lawmakers inside were meeting to certify the results of the November 2020 election, overpowering the massively outnumbered Capitol Police officers on duty, smashing windows and vandalizing the historic building, and sending the lawmakers fleeing for safety. 

Only hours later, after federal law enforcement agencies and the military arrived to reestablish control of the Capitol, were the members of Congress able to complete their work and certify Biden’s election win and set the stage for his inauguration weeks later. 

Four people died on the day of the assault, including a Capitol police officer who died the next day. The mob injured dozens of officers, and in the months since the attack four officers have died by suicide. 

Trump had planned to hold a news conference Thursday in Florida, but said Tuesday he was cancelling the event. In a statement that stated his often repeated but false claim that he actually won the 2020 election, Trump said he would instead discuss “important topics” at a January 15 rally in Arizona. 

Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, told Agence France-Press that Trump’s campaign is “unprecedented in U.S. history.” 

“No former president has attempted to do so much to discredit his successor and the democratic process,” Tobias said. 

Public opinion polls have shown about 70% of Republicans do not consider Biden’s election win legitimate. 

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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January 6 Panel Seeks Interview with Fox News Host Sean Hannity

The House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection on Tuesday requested an interview with Fox News personality Sean Hannity, one of former President Donald Trump’s closest allies in the media, as the committee continues to widen its scope.

In a letter to Hannity, Mississippi Representative Bennie Thompson, Democratic chairman of the panel, said the panel wants to question him regarding his communications with former President Donald Trump, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and others in Trump’s orbit in the days surrounding the insurrection.

A Fox News spokesperson declined to comment on the request. Jay Sekulow, Hannity’s lawyer, told The Associated Press Tuesday night that they are reviewing the committee’s letter and “will respond as appropriate.” 

In his letter, Thompson said, “The Select Committee has immense respect for the First Amendment to our Constitution, freedom of the press, and the rights of Americans to express their political opinions freely. For that reason, we do not intend to seek information from you regarding your broadcasts on radio or television, your public reporting or commentary, or your political views regarding any candidate for office.” 

However, the chairman said, the committee also has a responsibility to investigate the dozens of text messages it has in its possession, from Dec. 31, 2020, to Jan. 20, 2021, between Hannity, Trump and Meadows regarding the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and Trump’s failed efforts to contest it.

One specific December 2020 text from Hannity to Meadows highlighted in the letter reads, “I do NOT see January 6 happening the way he is being told. After the 6 th. (sic) He should announce will lead the nationwide effort to reform voting integrity. Go to Fl and watch Joe mess up daily. Stay engaged. When he speaks people will listen.” 

The letter to Hannity also highlights texts from the night before the insurrection, including one in which Hannity said he was “very worried about the next 48 hours” and another to Meadows in which he wrote, “Pence pressure. WH counsel will leave.” The letter says it appears from other text messages that Hannity may have spoken directly with Trump on January 5 regarding planning for the following day. 

Hannity had previously criticized the violence that took place last January 6. But he’s also been sharply critical of the committee and its work, saying on the air December 13 after his texts were revealed, “We’ve been telling you that this is a waste of your time and money. They have a predetermined outcome.” 

He also complained about Republican committee member Liz Cheney publicizing his texts. “Do we believe in privacy in this country? Apparently not.” 

The request is the first by the nine-member panel to a member of the media and opens a new door for the investigation as it widens its scope to any and all people who were in contact with the former president and his inner circle in the time surrounding the attack.

The committee says the extraordinary trove of material it has collected — 35,000 pages of records so far, including texts, emails and phone records from people close to Trump — is fleshing out critical details of the worst attack on the Capitol in two centuries, which played out on live television.

As the House prepares to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the attack Thursday, the panel, which commenced its work last summer, has already interviewed around 300 people and issued subpoenas to more than 40 as it seeks to create a comprehensive record of the January 6 attack and the events leading up to it. 

Thompson said about 90% of the witnesses called by the committee have cooperated, despite the defiance of high-profile Trump allies like Meadows and Steve Bannon. Lawmakers said they have been effective at gathering information from other sources in part because they share a unity of purpose rarely seen in a congressional investigation.

 
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Hundreds Await Trial for Role in Capitol Insurrection

One a year after supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol in a bid to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, hundreds of people are still awaiting trial for their alleged role in the riot, while 155 others have pleaded guilty. As VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, the pending cases are just one part of the effort to hold responsible parties accountable for the attack.

Produced by: Katherine Gypson
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Trump Cancels Florida Press Conference Scheduled for January 6 

Former President Donald Trump has canceled the press conference he planned to hold in Florida on Thursday, the anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters. 

Trump said in a statement Tuesday evening that he would instead discuss his grievances at a rally he had planned for Arizona later this month. 

Trump had been expected to use the press conference to repeat his false statements about the 2020 election and rail against the congressional committee investigating the events of January 6, when a mob of his supporters violently stormed the Capitol to halt the peaceful transfer of power. 

Trump continues to insist the election was “stolen” and the “real” insurrection was on November 3, 2020, the day Democrat Joe Biden won a 306-232 Electoral College victory. Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general have said repeatedly the election was fair. 

The event would have been Trump’s second press conference since leaving office. 

 
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Schumer: Senate to Vote on Filibuster Change on Voting Bill

Days before the anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced the Senate will vote soon on easing filibuster rules in an effort to advance stalled voting legislation that Democrats say is needed to protect America’s democracy. 

In a letter Monday to colleagues, Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said the Senate “must evolve” and will “debate and consider” the rule changes by January 17, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as the Democrats seek to overcome Republican opposition to their elections law package. 

“Let me be clear: January 6th was a symptom of a broader illness — an effort to delegitimize our election process,” Schumer wrote, “and the Senate must advance systemic democracy reforms to repair our republic or else the events of that day will not be an aberration — they will be the new norm.” 

The election and voting rights package has been stalled in the evenly split 50-50 Senate, blocked by a Republican-led filibuster with Democrats unable to mount the 60 votes needed to advance it toward passage. 

So far Democrats have been unable to agree among themselves over potential changes to the Senate rules to reduce the 60-vote hurdle, despite months of private negotiations. 

Two holdout Democrats, Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have tried to warn their party off changes to the Senate rules, arguing that if and when Republicans take majority control of the chamber, they could then use the lower voting threshold to advance bills Democrats strongly oppose. 

President Joe Biden has waded only cautiously into the debate — a former longtime senator who largely stands by existing rules but is also under enormous political pressure to break the logjam on the voting legislation. 

Voting rights advocates warn that Republican-led states are passing restrictive legislation and trying to install election officials loyal to the former president, Donald Trump, in ways that could subvert future elections. 

Trump urged his followers last January 6 to “fight like hell” for his presidency, and a mob stormed the Capitol trying to stop Congress from certifying the state election tallies for Biden. It was the worst domestic attack on a seat of government in U.S. history. 

How the Senate filibuster rules would be changed remains under discussion. 

It seems certain that a full-scale end of the filibuster is out of reach for Democrats. Changing the rules would need all 50 votes, and Manchin and Sinema have made it clear they are unwilling to go that far.

Senators are wary of a sweeping overhaul after seeing the fallout that came from Democrats ending the filibuster for some judicial and executive branch nominees. Once Republicans took power, Senator Mitch McConnell, the GOP leader, did away with the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations — ushering three Trump-picked conservative justices to the high court. 

But despite their reluctance on major filibuster changes, Manchin and Sinema both support the election legislation. In fact, Manchin helped craft the latest package in an unsuccessful effort to win Republican support. Now the two Democrats’ colleagues are working on ways to change the filibuster so at least this legislation could pass. 

Private talks with senators have been under way for weeks and continued during the holiday break.

Ideas include forcing senators to hold the floor, old-fashioned style, rather than simply raise their filibuster objections — a scene that would have echoes of the 1950s and 1960s when Southern segregationists filibustered civil rights legislation. 

Other ideas are also being considered, and some Democrats have noted that Sinema has mentioned she is open to hearing the arguments as part of a full debate. 

Republicans are so worried Democrats will end the filibuster that McConnell has taken other actions to try to keep Manchin and Sinema close so they don’t join the rest of their party in making any drastic changes. 

One Republican, Senator Mike Lee of Utah, argued on Monday that ending the filibuster would turn the Senate into a “Lord of the Flies”-style institution where majority rules, no matter what. 

“It is absurd and dangerous to the institution itself,” Lee said in a statement. He said Schumer and his “disastrous plan” must be stopped. 

 
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A Year After Capitol Riot, Americans Fear for Their Democracy: Polls

One year after the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol, Americans remain deeply concerned about the health of their democracy and about a third say violence against the government can sometimes be justified, according to two polls published Sunday.  

The January 6 attack on the seat of Congress, led by supporters of Donald Trump, was “a harbinger of increasing political violence,” and American democracy “is threatened,” according to two-thirds of those surveyed for a CBS News poll.   

Meantime, Americans’ “pride” in their democracy has dropped sharply, from 90% in 2002 to 54% now, a Washington Post/University of Maryland survey found.   

With the January 6 anniversary nearing, the polls offer specific causes for concern: CBS found that 28% of respondents believe force can be used to defend the result of an election, while 34% told The Washington Post that a violent action against government can sometimes be justified — the largest percentage in decades. 

The results underscore the seemingly almost irreconcilable views dividing American society, which President Joe Biden — who took office 14 days after the Capitol rioting — has promised to overcome. 

On Thursday, he and Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver remarks to mark the one-year anniversary of the assault by Trump’s supporters.   

Two-thirds of his supporters continue to believe Trump’s baseless charge that Biden is not the legitimately elected president. 

Trump had addressed thousands of supporters shortly before the Capitol assault, telling them the election had been “rigged” and that they should “fight like hell.” 

Some 60% of those polled say Trump bears heavy responsibility for the invasion of the Capitol just as lawmakers were set to certify Biden’s victory. 

There again, opinion follows partisan lines: 83% of Trump voters placed his level of responsibility at only “some” or “none,” the Post survey found.   

And 26% of Americans want him to run again in 2024, according to CBS.   

A select committee of the House of Representatives has spent months working to establish the roles and responsibility of those who incited or may have organized the protest.    

Despite limited cooperation from Trump’s inner circle, the panel has conducted more than 300 interviews and collected thousands of documents.    

“We have uncovered some things that cause us real concern, things like people trying to… undermine the integrity of our democracy,” the panel’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, said Sunday on ABC. 

“It appeared to be a coordinated effort on the part of a number of people to undermine the election,” he said. “It could be people in the executive branch. It could be people in the Department of Defense… and some very wealthy individuals.” 

He said he would not hesitate to refer any evidence of illegality to the Justice Department.  

Liz Cheney, one of only two Republicans on the panel, on Sunday strongly condemned Trump for waiting hours before urging the Capitol rioters to stand down. 

He could easily have issued such a call, she told ABC. “He failed to do so. It’s hard to imagine a more significant and more serious dereliction of duty.” 
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January 6 Riot Probe Wants to Know Why Trump Failed to Call It Off

The congressional investigation into the riot at the U.S. Capitol last January is zeroing in on why then-President Donald Trump did nothing for more than three hours to stop his supporters from ransacking the building and clashing with police as lawmakers sought to certify that he had lost the 2020 election, the panel’s chairman said Sunday.

Congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that the nine-member investigative panel wants to know what Trump was doing during “187 minutes of inaction,” as he watched the riot unfold on television from a dining room off the Oval Office at the White House.

“We came perilously close to losing our democracy,” Thompson contended.

One of the committee’s two Republicans, Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a vocal critic of Trump, told ABC’s “This Week” show, “He could have told [the rioters] to stand down. He didn’t do it.”

Thompson said, “The president has been in court trying to prevent us from seeing the record” of his phone calls, other messages and documents as his daughter Ivanka Trump, Republican lawmakers and Trump administration officials urged him to make a statement urging more than 800 of his supporters inside the Capitol to leave the building.

“What he’s doing is typical Donald Trump modus operandi,” Thompson said. “He sues, goes to court, tries to delay. But we’re convinced we’ll have access to those 187 minutes.”

A U.S. appellate court in Washington has ruled that the investigative committee has a “uniquely vital interest” in seeing any documents related to the riot and its planning, but Trump has appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn the lower court’s ruling, saying his White House documents should be shielded from public release.

At a rally near the White House before the January 6, 2021, rioting unfolded, Trump urged supporters to “fight like hell” at the Capitol to keep lawmakers from certifying that Democrat Joe Biden had defeated him in the November 2020 election. More than 725 of the rioters have been arrested and charged with an array of offenses, from minor ones like trespassing to more serious crimes, including attacks on police.

While ignoring initial entreaties to call off the protesters, Trump eventually released a short video calling for the rioters to leave, but telling them, “We love you; you’re very special.”

As he does to this day, Trump mentioned in the video the false conspiracy theory that he actually won the election, saying, “I know your pain; I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it. Especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace.”

After the Capitol was eventually cleared of protesters, Congress certified Biden’s election victory in the early hours of January 7.

Thompson said his panel, which includes seven Democratic lawmakers, Cheney and another vocal Republican critic of Trump, Congressman Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, is looking closely at the planning behind the attack on the Capitol as some Trump Republican stalwarts attempted to keep him in office and thwart Biden’s inauguration last January 20.

Thompson said, “We know [Trump] wanted people” to come to Washington, telling them it was “going to be wild.”

Of particular interest, Thompson said, were conversations involving the White House and Trump officials at the nearby Willard Hotel in the lead-up to the rally and during the riot at the Capitol.

“It was not a comedy of errors, I can assure you of that,” Thompson said. “We’ll get to what we believe was the truth.”

“It appeared to be a coordinated effort among a number of people to undermine the election,” Thompson said in an interview on ABC, not a spontaneous protest that got out of hand as protesters stormed past barriers into the Capitol, smashed windows and doors and scuffled with police.

He said the panel is seeking to interview two Trump-supporting Republican lawmakers, Congressmen Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Jim Jordan of Ohio, who played roles in trying to overturn Biden’s victory.

“I would hope they’d come in voluntarily” to testify to the committee, Thompson said, but did not rule out subpoenaing them.

He declined to speculate on whether the committee could refer evidence of wrongdoing in the planning of the January 6 demonstration and Trump’s inaction during it to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. But he said the panel will not shy away from doing so if it decides such a referral is warranted.

Trump did not attend Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021, and has continued to contend the election was stolen from him.

Trump has increasingly made political appearances, hinting at a possible 2024 campaign to retake the White House. Trump has announced plans for a Thursday news conference at his Florida retreat along the Atlantic Ocean on the one-year anniversary of the Capitol riot.
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Twitter Bans US Lawmaker’s Personal Account for COVID-19 Misinformation 

Twitter on Sunday banned the personal account of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for multiple violations of its COVID-19 misinformation policy, according to a statement from the company. 

The Georgia Republican’s account was permanently suspended under the “strike” system Twitter launched in March, which uses artificial intelligence to identify posts about the coronavirus that are misleading enough to cause harm to people. Two or three strikes earn a 12-hour account lock; four strikes prompt a weeklong suspension, and five or more strikes can get someone permanently removed from Twitter. 

In a statement on the messaging app Telegram, Greene blasted Twitter’s move as un-American. She wrote that her account was suspended after tweeting statistics from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a government database which includes unverified raw data. 

“Twitter is an enemy to America and can’t handle the truth,” Greene said. “That’s fine, I’ll show America we don’t need them and it’s time to defeat our enemies.” 

Twitter had previously suspended the account for periods ranging from 12 hours to a full week. 

The ban applies to Greene’s personal account, @mtgreenee, but does not affect her official Twitter account, @RepMTG. 

A Greene tweet posted shortly before her weeklong suspension in July claimed that the virus “is not dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65.” According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people under 65 account for nearly 250,000 of the U.S. deaths involving COVID-19. 

Greene previously blasted a weeklong suspension as a “Communist-style attack on free speech.” 
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New Year, New Laws for US States

A new year brings a new mayor for New York City and new laws in many of the 50 U.S. states. 

Democrat Eric Adams was elected in November to be the next leader of the largest city in the United States. He succeeds Bill de Blasio, who served two terms as mayor, beginning in 2014. 

An inauguration ceremony planned for Saturday was postponed because of the rise in cases of the omicron variant of COVID-19. 

On the other side of the country, the city of Seattle is getting a new mayor as well, with Bruce Harrell assuming the post Saturday. 

Among the many new laws going into effect at the state level are increases in the minimum wage in a number of states, including California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New Mexico. 

Such laws are the result of legislation approved by state legislatures and governors, and in some cases, the minimum wage increases will go into effect in stages over the course of several years. 

Animal rights, voting rights 

Virginia has a new law preventing cosmetics companies from testing their products on animals. 

In Washington state, people who have served prison time for felony crimes now regain their right to vote as soon as they leave prison. 

Nevada is making it easier for people to cast their votes by mail with a new law requiring that all registered voters receive a ballot by mail for each election.

Helping others 

A new Texas law provides property tax exemptions for certain charity groups that provide housing or other aid to people experiencing homelessness. 

In Illinois, people who work at restaurants and truck stops will receive required training to help them identify potential instances of human trafficking and report suspected cases to authorities. 

A New Hampshire law strengthens penalties against people convicted of multiple offenses of drunken driving in cases where they harm or kill someone. 

A new law in Colorado will make it easier for people who were victims of sexual assault as children to report their assaults, removing the existing statute of limitations for prosecuting such lawsuits. 

Health, wellness 

The state of Connecticut is enacting caps on how much people pay for insulin and other diabetes management supplies. 

Montana is joining the states that allow recreational sales of marijuana. It will be legal in parts of the state where a majority of voters approved it. 

In Pennsylvania, the city of Philadelphia is banning employers from conducting pre-employment testing for marijuana. 

And in Missouri, health insurance providers must make coverage available for certain mental health conditions as part of their plans. 

 
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Black Voters Mull Biden’s Record in Office

African American voters helped propel President Joe Biden to the White House and were instrumental in securing Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. A year later, some of Biden’s most loyal supporters are increasingly frustrated about 2020 campaign promises not realized.

“I voted for Biden but feel disappointed his administration hasn’t delivered more for the Black community,” said Joseph Mitchell, 36, of Silver Spring, Maryland. “There are many places where Black people are hurting, impacted by COVID-19 and the economic downturn from the pandemic.”

Mitchell told VOA he wanted more action on economic empowerment and health care.

“Our community needs a helping hand, especially now,” he said.

It’s a familiar message aimed at Biden, who campaigned on delivering on a broad range of economic, health and social policy reforms to improve the lives of African Americans.

Those promises helped him win 92% of the Black vote in last year’s election, according to a Pew Research Center study.

Biden, a former vice president and longtime senator, can point to key economic initiatives enacted during his time in the Oval Office, including pandemic-related federal stimulus and a bipartisan infrastructure bill. But ambitious social initiatives that would address long-standing complaints by African Americans have stalled in Congress, including protecting voting rights, enacting police reform and winning passage of a massive social safety net and environmental spending plan known as Build Back Better.

Biden’s pledge

“You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours,” said then-President-elect Biden as he thanked Black voters in a victory speech last year.

After taking office in January, Biden took executive action on several fronts, issuing orders to spur investment in minority-owned businesses, boost minority home ownership and solidify funding for historically Black institutions of higher learning.

But getting more substantial initiatives through Congress, even though Democrats hold narrow majorities, has proved difficult. Congressional negotiations have failed to yield a bipartisan police reform bill. Senate Republicans have blocked voting rights legislation. Senate Democrats have yet to achieve unified support for Build Back Better.

Some observers fault Biden’s approach and see him as too passive in the face of congressional inaction.

“I think President Biden may appear tone deaf in the way he’s approaching trying to implement these social policies,” said Jatia Wrighten, a political science professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.

“Democrats have a majority in both the House and the Senate, but Mr. Biden is so busy trying to ensure that everyone is on the same page to compromise and negotiate,” Wrighten told VOA, adding that impatience and building frustration in Black communities pose a political danger for Biden and Democrats more broadly heading into the 2022 midterm elections. “I think the president is losing the voters who got him there because he doesn’t come off as taking a stronger stance on issues of race.”

Role of Congress

At the same time, some Black voters say they understand Biden can’t enact transformative legislation on his own.

“I feel the frustration, but he needs the help of Congress,” Leighton Newlin, an African American councilman-elect in Princeton, New Jersey, told VOA. “Biden promised these things because he thought he was going to get better reaction and cooperation from members of his own party. Biden has failed to deliver on some things important to Blacks, but I don’t put all the blame on the president.

“I think the president’s policy approaches may have been a little more effective in a different time,” said Wrighten. “But in this political climate, they’re just not resonating with the Black community as being serious, effective and strong.”

Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, have cheered the stymieing of major planks of Biden’s agenda, arguing that the federal government should not dictate to individual U.S. states how to run elections and that supercharging social spending would further kindle inflation in the United States.

Legislative battles ahead

The coming year is expected to see renewed efforts by Biden to win congressional approval of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. The bills, which would counteract state-led efforts to limit or scrutinize voting in ways seen by critics as making it harder for minority voters to cast ballots, passed the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives but have been held up in a politically divided Senate.

Republican lawmakers call the measures a “power grab” that would benefit Democrats at the ballot box.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, has pledged to bring the bills to the floor for votes in January. Biden continues to signal strong support for both.

“There’s nothing domestically more important than voting rights. It’s the single biggest thing,” Biden said on December 16 while touring tornado damage in Kentucky.

The administration’s push for voting rights comes after a year in which several Republican-controlled state legislatures enacted restrictive voting laws.

“I think when he took office the president should have started his agenda with voting rights because it’s the foundation of our democracy,” Newlin said. “Without that, we have no democracy.”

Despite the holdups, Biden told students at South Carolina State University, a historically Black college, earlier this month that he was not giving up on strengthening voting protections.

“We must pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. We must,” Biden said. “And we are going to keep up the fight until we get it done.”

Civil rights activists want more than words.

“Don’t forget that Black voters landed a victory for this president and this Congress, so don’t fail us again,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson, head of the nation’s largest civil rights organization, in a prepared statement responding to the Senate’s late-October failure to pass federal voting rights legislation.

For its part, the White House insists the fight is not over.

“Our agenda for the Black community is not about one or two bills,” said White House principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre at a briefing with reporters last month. “Clearly, the voting rights and police reform bills are critical and important, and we’re going to continue to work very hard towards them, but it is weaved throughout numerous policy initiatives, executive orders, legislation.”

Jean-Pierre added, “Equity is at the center of everything Biden does as president.”

Ratings fall

Biden’s approval ratings have dipped in recent months and now stand at just 43% nationwide, according to an average of polling data compiled by fivethirtyeight.com. Polling data reported last month also showed a decline in Biden’s approval ratings among African Americans.

Such data has Democrats fretting and Republicans salivating as the nation heads into an election year. Political observers note that bipartisan cooperation typically becomes even more difficult as an election season heats up.

“With the midterms coming, these sorts of initiatives [important to Black voters] will face major obstacles, and overcoming them is going to be a difficult job for President Biden,” Wrighten said.
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