Closing summary
The supreme court issued two consequential orders in cases concerning Donald Trump today, first by temporarily blocking a House committee from receiving his tax returns until it could consider an emergency petition from the ex-president. However, it turned down an attempt by Republican senator Lindsey Graham to quash a subpoena from a special grand jury in Georgia – meaning the Trump loyalist will soon have to answer questions about efforts to meddle in the state’s 2020 election results. Vice-chair of the January 6 committee Liz Cheney meanwhile revealed the committee was still negotiating with the ex-president’s lawyers over whether he would testify as part of their inquiry into the attack on the Capitol.
Here’s what else happened today:
A historian warned the attack against Paul Pelosi last week could be the latest sign of an increase in political violence in the United States. Another likened it to the 1850s, a period when tensions that led to the civil war hit a boiling point.
Trump promoted conspiracy theories about the attack on Pelosi in a podcast interview today.
California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom blamed Fox News for creating the atmosphere that fueled the violence against Pelosi.
Meanwhile in Arizona, the GOP nominee for governor has decided to turn the attack on Paul Pelosi into a punchline, Martin Pengelly reports:
The Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, Kari Lake, drew laughter at a campaign event in Scottsdale on Monday with a remark about the attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of the Democratic US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.
“Nancy Pelosi, well, she’s got protection when she’s in DC,” Lake said. “Apparently her house doesn’t have a lot of protection.”
Paul Pelosi, 82, was attacked with a hammer at his home in San Francisco on Friday. He remained in intensive care on Monday but was expected to recover.
His attacker, David DePape, 42, reportedly shouted “Where is Nancy?” On Monday, he was charged with attempted murder, assault and other crimes. Authorities said he told police he wanted to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage and “break her kneecaps”. DePape is also reported to have posted conspiracy-laced screeds online.
Republican and rightwing responses to the attack – many seeking to advance the GOP’s law-and-order midterm elections message – have drawn controversy. Democrats and media observers have warned of the danger of stoking politically inspired violence.
David DePape, who is accused of breaking into Nancy Pelosi’s home and assaulting her husband, Paul, is expected to make his first court appearance today, KTVU reports:
JUST IN: Just confirmed David Depape is now being held in County Jail and is no longer in the hospital, as of yesterday. @SheriffSF confirms he was booked in absentia while under Sheriff's Office protection in the hospital. He's expected in court at 1:30p @KTVU
— James Torrez (@JamesTorrezNews) November 1, 2022
Federal prosecutors yesterday announced charges of attempted kidnapping and assault against DePape over the Friday attack. San Francisco police said after his arrest DePape was held on suspicion of attempted murder and elder abuse, among other charges.
Liz Cheney has endorsed another Democrat facing a tight race in next Tuesday’s midterm elections: Ohio Senate candidate Tim Ryan.
During an appearance in the state today, Cheney, a Republican congresswoman who is in her last weeks in office after losing her primary earlier this year, said she would not vote for JD Vance, the GOP’s nominee for Ohio’s soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat.
Appearing in Ohio, outgoing Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) endorses a second Democratic candidate, Rep. Tim Ryan, who is locked in a tight Senate race with GOP nominee J.D. Vance.
— The Recount (@therecount) November 1, 2022
Judy Woodruff: “So if you were a Buckeye State voter, you’d be voting for Tim Ryan?”
Cheney: “I would.” pic.twitter.com/BPoRlTqcdh
Last month, she endorsed Democratic congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, who is up for re-election in Michigan. The daughter of former Republican vice-president Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney was among the most conservative members of the House, but fell out with the GOP over her opposition to Donald Trump.
Supreme court allows Georgia grand jury to seek testimony from Lindsey Graham in election meddling case
The supreme court has turned down a challenge from Republican senator Lindsey Graham to a subpoena from a special grand jury in Georgia that is investigating attempts by Donald Trump’s allies to meddle in the state’s 2020 election results.
The court’s order clears the way for Graham to appear before the jurors empaneled by Fulton county district attorney Fanni Willis, which issued the subpoena to the South Carolina lawmaker earlier this year. Graham challenged the summons in federal court, but was unsuccessful.
Willis has summoned a number of allies of the former president to a courthouse in Atlanta to answer questions about attempts to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the state. These include Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who has also been told he was a target in the investigation.
Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has said Graham suggested throwing out legally cast ballots in the state.
January 6 committee 'in discussions' with Trump over testifying: Cheney
The January 6 committee is “in discussions” with lawyers for Donald Trump about whether the former president will comply with the lawmakers’ subpoena for his testimony about the attack on the Capitol, CNN reports vice-chair Liz Cheney said today.
At what was expected to be its last public hearing, the January 6 committee last month voted to issue a subpoena to Trump for documents related to the attack and for him to testify under oath. He has not yet said whether he would comply with their summons, but in the past has cheered instances where his allies have defied the committee, and fought aggressively against other investigations into his conduct.
According to CNN, Cheney said Trump “has an obligation to comply” with the panel. She said the format of his testimony has not yet been decided but, “It’ll be done under oath. It’ll be done, potentially, over multiple days,” and the committee is not at the “mercy of Donald Trump.” She was speaking in Cleveland, Ohio at an event about the threat of political violence.
Trump faces a Friday deadline to turn over documents requested in the subpoena, and a 14 November deadline for his testimony.
Federal prosecutors have asked for a three-month prison sentence for a US army veteran from Tennessee who pleaded guilty to invading the US Capitol on the day of the January 6 attack.
According to documents filed by the US justice department, James Brooks admitted he spent more than two hours in the Capitol during the insurrection while equipped with tear gas, body armor and a two-way radio. He also acknowledged yelling at officers trying to defend the building: “You took an oath like I did… every one of you!”
Brooks’s sentencing is tentatively set for Thursday.
He is among more than 900 Capitol rioters who have been charged in connection with an attack to which officials have linked nine deaths, including suicides among law enforcement officers left traumatized by that day. Supporters of Donald Trump staged the attack as an unsuccessful attempt to keep the former president in the Oval Office after his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
Democrats are banking that outrage over the supreme court’s upending of abortion rights will help their candidates in the midterms. The Guardian’s Poppy Noor reports from one district in Michigan, where the dynamic appears to be real for an embattled Democrat:
Elissa Slotkin is a straight shooter. She doesn’t miss a beat when asked a tough question. She speaks up often, and forcefully, against things she perceives as unjust – whether perpetrated by her opponents or her own Democratic party. But when asked what she’ll think if the proposal to enshrine abortion rights in Michigan’s state constitution doesn’t pass this November, she clams up.
Slotkin fidgets, stroking one thumb over the other, in a repetitive, soothing motion.
Is she discombobulated?
“Yes,” she answers, back to her usual, rapid-fire pace.
Why?
“I’ll tell you this,” Slotkin begins. “If it fails to pass, I won’t be re-elected. Because it means I’m fundamentally out of touch.”
She pauses, cautiously, and adds: “But I don’t believe that to be the case. I think I’m going to win.”
That’s a big statement. Slotkin is running in one of the country’s most tightly contested seats, as a Democrat who won Trump voters back from the Republican party in both 2018 and 2020.
She is also running in a midterm election full of twists and turns – one that has seen Democrats’ hopes to avoid the typically poor showing of the party in power begin to rise, only to plummet again. But even with a mixed economy, rising inflation and unfavourable polling for the president, people are putting their money on Slotkin in huge numbers: the race for Michigan’s seventh, a newly drawn district pitting Slotkin against state senator Tom Barrett, has become the most expensive race in the country in terms of outside spending. Outside spending, generally, is a good barometer for how important a race is, with the largest amounts coming from the national parties – and in the case of the seventh, $27m has been poured into the race.
Concerns about political violence across the US as the 8 November midterm elections loom won’t subside after a candidate for a seat in the Pennsylvania state house of representatives was reportedly attacked at his home Monday.
Richard Ringer, a 69-year-old Democrat, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that an attacker blooded him and knocked him unconscious in his backyard about 5am.
“A guy was standing with his back to me – I went and bear-hugged him, wrestled, ended up on the ground,” Ringer said of the violent encounter. “He was larger than I am and he pinned me down on my left side.”
Ringer also said: “He hit me 10 to 12 times in the head, in the face and by the eye and he knocked me out” and fled.
The description of the attack to the Post-Gazette doesn’t suggest an overtly political motive. But the newspaper noted that the confrontation marked the third time in two weeks he has had to call 911 as his run for an open state House seat against a Republican, Charity Grimm Krupa, comes to a close.
Meanwhile, though police investigators haven’t publicly identified any potential suspects, Ringer said he couldn’t help but wonder if the attack on him at this stage of his campaign pertained to his candidacy.
Ringer’s attack Monday happened hours before federal authorities charged the man accused of breaking into the home of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and battering her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer last week was charged with attempted kidnapping and assault.
Authorities allege that the intruder, 42-year-old David DePape, wanted to break Nancy Pelosi’s kneecaps so that she would have to be brought into Congress in a wheelchair as a warning to lawmakers that actions have consequences.
It was the second time in less than two years that the House Speaker was targeted by a violent attack. Her office was vandalized on the day that far-right extremists supporting former president Donald Trump staged the US Capitol attack on January 6 2021.
DePape’s arrest prompted Pelosi’s fellow Democrats to ramp up their warnings of escalating political violence in America.
Updated
Joe Biden is on his way to Florida today to campaign for the Democratic candidates for governor and senator, both of whom are seen as trailing their Republican opponents. Part of the reason for that is discontent with Democrats’ handling of the economy, and in a speech Monday afternoon, the president tried to regain the initiative from Republicans, according to the Associated Press:
Joe Biden has accused oil companies of “war profiteering” as the president raised the possibility of imposing a windfall tax if companies don’t boost domestic production.
In remarks on Monday, just over a week away from the 8 November midterm elections, Biden criticized major oil companies for making record profits while refusing to help lower prices at the pump for American people. The president said he would look to Congress to levy tax penalties on oil companies if they don’t begin to invest some of their profits in lowering costs for American consumers.
“My team will work with Congress to look at these options that are available to us and others,” Biden said. “It’s time for these companies to stop war profiteering, meet their responsibilities in this country and give the American people a break and still do very well.”
The day so far
The release of Donald Trump’s tax returns to a House committee has been delayed by the supreme court’s chief justice John Roberts, who ordered the Democratic-led panel to respond in a lawsuit from the former president by Thursday of next week. The temporary stay is a reprieve for Trump, who has refused to make his filings public since his first campaign for office in 2016.
Here’s what else happened today so far:
A historian warned the attack against Paul Pelosi last week could be the latest sign of an increase in political violence in the United States. Another likened it to the 1850s, a period when tensions that led to the civil war hit a boiling point.
Trump promoted conspiracy theories about the attack on Pelosi in a podcast interview today.
California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom blamed Fox News for creating the atmosphere that fueled the violence against Pelosi.
This post has been corrected to say the House committee’s deadline to respond to the supreme court’s stay is Thursday of next week, not this week.
Updated
The list of Republican candidates beyond the reach of conspiracy theories grows shorter. Martin Pengelly reports that a New Hampshire school rebuked the state’s GOP Senate candidate Don Bolduc for making bizarre claims about what happens on its premises:
A New Hampshire school has rebuked the Republican US Senate candidate Don Bolduc for claiming schoolchildren were identifying as “furries and fuzzies” in classrooms, using litter trays and licking themselves and each other.
“I wish I was making it up,” Bolduc, a retired special forces general, said last week.
In response, Pinkerton Academy, in Derry, said Bolduc was indeed making it up.
On social media on Monday, the school said: “It has come to our attention that at a recent event in Claremont Don Bolduc named Pinkerton in false claims suggesting that unhygienic, disturbing practices are taking place in our classrooms and spaces on campus.
“We want to assure our community that Mr Bolduc’s statements are entirely untrue. We invite all political candidates to speak with members of our administration or visit our campus so they can inform themselves about our school before making claims about what occurs here.”
California governor Gavin Newsom blamed Fox News for the attack on Paul Pelosi, saying the husband of Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi had become a fixation for one of the network’s commentators in the run-up to the attack:
“I don’t think anyone’s been dehumanized like she has consistently,” Newsom, a Democrat, said of Nancy Pelosi in an interview with CBS. “Now I watched this one guy, Jesse Watters or something on Fox News. What he’s been saying about Paul Pelosi the last five, six months, mocking him consistently. Don’t tell me that’s not aiding and abetting all this. Of course it is.”
“They’re sowing the seeds, creating a culture and a climate like this,” the governor continued. “I mean, look online. Look at the sewage that is online that they amplify on these networks and in social media to dehumanize people like Nancy Pelosi and other political leaders.”
On Monday afternoon, Watters attempted to blame Newsom’s policies for allowing the accused attacker David DePape to be free – though it’s unclear if DePape had any criminal history prior to the attack. “If anything, Gavin Newsom has done more to aid and abet this attack on Paul Pelosi than anybody,” Watters said on Fox News.
Prior to the attack, Paul Pelosi had been in the news for pleading guilty to driving under the influence:
Republican senator Tom Cotton used the attack on Paul Pelosi as an opportunity to push the GOP’s tough-on-crime message.
“The answer to all of these crimes is to get tough on crime and throw the book at these criminals,” including David DePape, who is accused of assaulting Pelosi, Cotton said in an interview with CBS.
“The simplest way to stop crime like this is to get tough on crime. It’s not to try to stop campaigning in the middle of a campaign, seven days before an election, on legitimate issue of public concern,” Cotton continued. He also described the attack as a “terrible crime” and wished Pelosi “the very best and a full recovery.”
Republicans have accused Democrats of being soft on crime in this year’s midterm election campaigning, and polls show voters believe the GOP is better able to handle the issue.
The former president is not alone in spreading conspiracy theories over the attack on Paul Pelosi.
Here are a few comments about the incident from fellow conservatives, as reported in the New York Times:
“Bail him out and then go ask him some questions,” conservative radio and YouTube host Charlie Kirk said of Pelosi’s alleged assailant David DePape. He added that whatever “amazing patriot” did so would become a “midterm hero.”
In a Sunday appearance on the network, Fox News contributor David Webb implied unknown motives behind the attack, but cited no evidence. “Look for what’s missing and what doesn’t add up,” he said.
Then there’s Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and, as of Thursday, the owner of Twitter. After Hillary Clinton condemned the attack in a tweet, Musk replied to her, saying “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye.”
He later deleted the comment.
Trump has turned up on conservative personality Chris Stigall’s podcast today to spread conspiracy theories about the attack on Paul Pelosi:
Trump calls Pelosi attack a "sad situation," shares conspiracy theory on Chris Stigall show: "Wow, it's -- weird things going on in that household in the last couple of weeks...The glass it seems was broken from the inside to the out so it wasn’t a break in, it was a break out."
— Meridith McGraw (@meridithmcgraw) November 1, 2022
The full interview can be accessed here.
Just because the supreme court issued a temporary stay on the IRS releasing Donald Trump’s tax returns doesn’t mean the justices plan to block the effort entirely, a law professor and CNN analyst says.
Here’s more from Steve Vladeck of the University of Texas school of law:
Given the impending deadline for Trump to turn over his tax returns, this administrative stay to give #SCOTUS more time is not at all surprising — or in any way predictive of how the full Court will eventually rule. https://t.co/xvRtpM6gOM
— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) November 1, 2022
To elaborate, yes, this is the third administrative stay from a Justice in the last three weeks. But it’s not clear yet IMHO whether this is a new trend, or just a coincidence that all three applications involve subpoenas — where a temporary pause might be *especially* justified. https://t.co/Jh0bvQj74X
— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) November 1, 2022
And, of course, we are not aided in any way by the absence of any explanation from any of the Justices.
— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) November 1, 2022
One of the many problematic features of the shadow docket is how the absence of justifications enables everyone to see each potentially modest step as confirming their priors.
In conservative politics these days, roads often lead to Trump, and the trend is no different for disgraced evangelist Jerry Falwell Jr. The Guardian’s David Smith reports on a new documentary that explores Falwell’s downfall, and his role in creating evangelicals’ thus far unyielding support for the former president, despite his, um, colorful personal life:
Jerry Falwell Jr once said there was nothing that then president Donald Trump could do that would endanger support from him or other Christian evangelical leaders. “When Jesus said we’re all sinners, he really meant all of us, everybody,” he told the Washington Post in January 2019.
Falwell knew whereof he spoke. A year and a half later, he would resign in disgrace from Liberty University, the evangelical college his father founded in Lynchburg, Virginia, after a series of personal scandals that would have made even Trump blush.
Among them was the allegation that Giancarlo Granda, a Miami pool boy, had a seven-year affair with Falwell’s wife, Becki, sometimes with Falwell looking on and masturbating during their sexual encounters. Granda also became entangled with the couple’s business affairs in a web that ultimately led them all to Trump.
The sorry and tawdry saga is told in God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down a Dynasty, streaming on Hulu starting Tuesday. It is a “dynasty” because Falwell’s father, Jerry Falwell Sr, was a homophobic televangelist whose endorsement helped Ronald Reagan (a divorced former Hollywood actor) beat Jimmy Carter (a Baptist Sunday school teacher) in the 1980 presidential contest and launch a conservative project that culminated in the demise of the constitutional right to abortion.
“This documentary at its core is the story of a 50-year multigenerational evangelical dynasty and their outsized power in presidential politics and policy,” director Billy Corben says by phone from New York. “You have the man who is now the black sheep of the Falwell family – and excommunicated – who was able to deliver on the core political promise of his father and Reagan when the evangelicals first got involved in politics.”
It’s a busy week for Donald Trump’s lawyers. As Edward Helmore reports, the trial of his Trump Organization on fraud charges kicked off on Monday in New York, where prosecutors are trying to prove the business avoided taxes:
For years, as Donald Trump was soaring from reality TV star to the White House, his real estate empire was bankrolling big luxury perks for some of his top executives.
Now Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, is on trial for criminal tax fraud – on the hook for what prosecutors say was a 15-year scheme by his most trusted lieutenant to avoid paying taxes on those fringe benefits.
The seminal trial in New York got truly under way on Monday with prosecutors arguing that the company fraudulently evaded tax by paying a key executive $1.76m through such perks as a free apartment, a leased Mercedes and tuition fees for his grandchildren.
The case could land the Trump Organization’s sprawl of 500 business entities with a criminal conviction that will make it harder for the former president’s company to do business. It could also be hit with $1m in fines.
“This case is about greed and cheating – cheating on taxes,” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger said during an opening statement, as the Manhattan district attorney’s office began to build its case. The court will hear from key former executive and prosecution witness Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer at the Trump Organization, who has separately already pleaded guilty to 15 counts of tax fraud.
Supreme court temporarily blocks House committee from obtaining Trump's tax returns
Supreme court chief justice John Roberts has temporarily stopped the Internal Revenue Service from turning over Donald Trump’s tax returns to a House committee, Reuters reports.
The decision comes after Trump yesterday petitioned the court to review lower court rulings that allowed the Democratic-led House ways and means committee to receive six years of the former president’s filings. Roberts, who handles petitions filed in Washington, wants the House committee to respond by next Thursday, according to his order.
Trump refused to release his tax returns as American presidents typically do, saying they were under audit. The IRS was previously expected to turn over the returns on Thursday.
This post was corrected to say that the House committee’s deadline to respond to the supreme court’s stay is Thursday of next week, not this week. An unclear tweet has also been deleted.
Updated
Historian Joshua Zeitz published a similar warning about the trajectory of American political violence over the weekend, comparing our current period to the 1850s – when tensions over slavery began boiling over into armed confrontation.
Much of his piece is a history lesson on the lesser-known bloodshed that occurred in the years before the American civil war. But he also brings up the period around 1970, when the United States faced a wave of bombings and threats from far-left extremists. Here’s how he compares that period with today, from Politico:
In 1970, liberal members of the Senate didn’t march alongside members of the Weather Underground, pump their fists in the air and egg them on. They didn’t align themselves with violent extremists — court their votes, grant interviews to their underground newspapers, appear at their conferences. That’s the stuff of the 1850s, when mainstream Democrats turned away from democracy and openly embraced violence, vigilantism and treason to protect a world they saw at risk of disappearing.
The decision of so many American conservatives to embrace political violence, or the language and symbolism of political violence, is a troubling reality. We can’t have a functioning democracy if one side refuses to accept its norms and rules.
But history suggests we might have more to worry about.
Democratic violence in the 1850s ultimately led a majority of Republicans, who represented the political majority, to draw a line in the sand and enforce it by violence when necessary. If history is a guidepost, we are on the precipice of dangerous future in which politics devolves into a contest of force rather than ideas. That’s a future everyone should want to avoid.
In a New York Times column, historian Matthew Dallek of George Washington University considers the attack on Paul Pelosi in the context of Republicans’ continued embrace of extreme ideologies.
The biggest change the party has made is that it is now tolerating and integrating conspiracy theories and extremism into its governing coalition, Dallek finds, reversing the stance of previous leaders who may have courted voters that held those views, but saw no space for them on their platform.
Here’s what Dallek believes are the consequences of that embrace:
“Until the acceptance of fringe ideas and extremist language and individuals becomes politically costly, and until a set of cultural democratic norms – including the peaceful transfer of power and a healthy tolerance for ideological differences – are restored, we can expect those inspiring political warfare to gain rhetorical strength,” Dallek warns.
“We may be entering an even uglier phase in which assaults on lawmakers and their families become routine, and the ‘apostles’ of violence and bigotry gain power.”
Updated
Pelosi attack may be sign of worse to come, historian warns
Good morning, US politics blog readers. The attack last Friday on Democratic speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband may have been shocking, but it wasn’t an aberration, a George Washington University historian warns. In a column published in the New York Times yesterday, Matthew Dallek traces the assault on Paul Pelosi to the wider erosion of democratic norms in the country, such as the acceptance of extremism by conservatives and the Republican party. He warns that until political leaders seek to purge these voices from their parties, such violence may repeat itself.
Here’s what is on the agenda for today:
Joe Biden is heading to Florida to prop up the flagging prospects of Democratic candidate for governor Charlie Crist and Senate candidate Val Demings.
This time next week polls will have opened in the midterm elections, and we will soon find out whether Americans want to give Democrats more time controlling Congress.
For all the hubbub, Americans are less fired up about these midterm elections than in 2018, a Gallup poll finds, though enthusiasm is about average for such races in general.
Updated
