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Biden: US and Germany working ‘in lockstep’ to address Russian aggression
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To this day, only footsoldiers have paid a price for the riot at the Capitol last January 6. Politicians who spurred them on, praised them afterwards, and now incite further hatred with hallucinatory talk of “political prisoners” have remained smugly immune.
This could change in one case: the Republican congressman Madison Cawthorn, who was on the mall that fateful day, implored Trumpists to “fight,” and is now seeking re-election in North Carolina. His candidacy is being challenged on the basis of the 14th amendment. Passed after the civil war, it disqualifies from holding office anyone who has sworn allegiance to the constitution and then engages in insurrection.
Other democracies are comfortable not just with restricting individual rights to run for office, but with banning entire parties suspected of undermining democracy. Americans, by contrast, have been inclined to leave things to sort themselves out in the political process.
But here drastic measures are justified: citizens in a democracy have to accept being governed by politicians they disagree with; they don’t have to put up with politicians who start insurrections when things don’t go their way. Disqualification could have a salutary effect on the Republican party as such; and it might provide a model for banning Trump from holding office again – something that was on the table during the 2021 impeachment and endorsed by seven Republican senators at the time.
In North Carolina, citizens can challenge a candidate to prove they meet qualifications for Congress. Unlike the House committee investigating the events of January 6th, the board on elections could force a sitting member of Congress to testify about the role he played before, during, and after the insurrection.
In the end, his fate could resemble that of many Confederates after the civil war: not necessarily criminal punishment, but exclusion from exercising power.
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Discussing with the Guardian attempts to ban his books from US school libraries, the Pulitzer prize-winning graphic novelist Art Spiegelman cited an unexpected exemplar for such politically motivated moves: Joe Manchin’s uncle.
“You know how Joe Manchin is a thorn in our side?” Spiegelman said. “His uncle, A Jamie Manchin, was the state treasurer of West Virginia in the 80s. He said that Garbage Pail Kids should be banned because they’re subverting children. It runs in his family.
“It reminds me that things keep changing, but we’re still dealing with permutations of the same struggles.”
Joe Manchin, a West Virginia senator, has frustrated progressives by standing in the way of attempts to pass Build Back Better, Joe Biden’s $1.75tn domestic spending plan, as well as voting rights protections and other policy priorities.
Here’s the full interview:
And here, for good measure, is Adam Gabbatt’s report from a Banned Book Club run by teens in Pennsylvania:
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