Biden hails ‘biggest step forward on climate ever’ as he signs Inflation Reduction Act – as it happened

Joe Biden signed into law his landmark spending plan to fight the climate crisis and lower healthcare costs, in what his administration hopes will turn around the president’s fortunes after months of worrying unpopularity. Elsewhere, more details about the many investigations surrounding Donald Trump were revealed.

Here’s a look back at today’s news:

• Two Democratic committee chairs accused the homeland security inspector general of not complying with their investigations into the January 6 attack. Meanwhile, the New York Times reported two of Trump’s former lawyers were interviewed by the FBI regarding classified documents that made their way to Florida.

• Jill Biden has tested positive for Covid-19, and will isolate in South Carolina, where she was on vacation with her husband. Joe Biden remains negative, but will wear a mask indoors and around others for the next 10 days.

• The White House is making plans for a campaign to convince men and women alike of the harm of abortion bans, and to sue states that restrict the procedure.

• Democrats consider the Inflation Reduction Act to be a major win, but in an interview with the Guardian, independent senator Bernie Sanders outlined the many ways in which he feels it falls short.

Joe Biden has signed into law a plan to spend hundreds of billions of dollars fighting the climate crisis and lowering healthcare costs for Americans, capping more than a year of negotiations ahead of elections in which voters may oust his Democrats from control of Congress.

Passage of the Inflation Reduction Act was a major accomplishment for the Biden administration, and marks the first time the United States has passed legislation specifically geared towards lowering its carbon emissions.

“With this law, the American people won, and the special interests lost,” the president said as he signed the legislation in a White House ceremony. He called it proof for “the American people that democracy still works in America, notwithstanding … all the talk of its demise, not just for the privileged few, but for all of us”.

The act will invest $386bn into programs to speed the transition into energy and climate programs, most of which are meant to speed the transition towards renewable sources. It will also extend health insurance subsidies, and expand coverage under government health care programs.

“This bill is the biggest step forward on climate ever,” Biden said.

In a few minutes, Joe Biden will sign the Democrats’ marquee spending plan into law, channeling hundreds of billions of dollars towards fighting climate change and lowering health care costs.

Biden and other Democrats have been trying to hype up the legislation – dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act – as much as they can. Here’s how he cast it on Twitter:

Congress is in recess and many lawmakers are visiting their districts across the United States. In a letter to Democrats sent this afternoon, House speaker Nancy Pelosi offered advice on how to sell constituents on the legislation:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}It is crucial that, during this District Work Period, we communicate to our constituents how America’s families will benefit from this new law:

• Health: reducing pollution to secure clean air and clean water in every community across the country.

• Economy: securing an estimated nine million new good-paying jobs, saving families around $1000 per year on their energy bills and offering more stability from the volatile oil market that inflames inflation.

• National Security: declaring our energy independence so that foreign dictators cannot hold families and our economy hostage by manipulating the price of oil.

• Justice: delivering $60 billion in environmental justice initiatives so that we repair the mistakes of the past and ensure all communities feel the benefits of a cleaner, greener economy.

• Future: taking a giant step to honor our sacred responsibility to build a healthier, more sustainable future for our children.

It took more than a year of negotiations to reach an agreement on the Inflation Reduction Act, which garnered no Republican votes in either chamber. Its name is a nod to the ongoing wave of high inflation in the United States, though the legislation itself may not make much difference. According to the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model, it will lower the US’ budget deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars, but “the impact on inflation is statistically indistinguishable from zero.”

At the same time as voters in Wyoming head to the polls, the top House Republican is in the state for a fundraiser that Bloomberg reports will feature a special guest: Elon Musk.

The Tesla boss is considered the world’s richest man, but has kept his politics murky, often announcing that he had voted for Democrats but lately expressing sympathy with some Republican positions. McCarthy, meanwhile, is likely to become speaker of the House of Representatives should Republicans win a majority following the November midterm elections. He also also been vocal in support of Harriet Hageman, the Trump-backed candidate expected to triumph over Liz Cheney in today’s GOP primary.

Despite the investigations swirling around him, Donald Trump’s influence within the GOP will likely be confirmed again today in Wyoming, where Republicans are expected to oust Liz Cheney from her seat in the House of Representatives in favor of a challenger backed by the former president. The Guardian’s David Smith reports:

Widely praised for her defence of democracy during the January 6 committee hearings, Liz Cheney looks set to lose her seat in Congress on Tuesday to a rival backed by former US president Donald Trump.

Opinion polls show Cheney trailing far behind conservative lawyer Harriet Hageman – who has echoed Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud – in a Republican primary election to decide Wyoming’s lone member in the House of Representatives.

Victory for Hageman would continue a recent winning streak for Trump-backed candidates in congressional primaries and deal a blow to remnants of the Republican party establishment.

The New York Times reports that the FBI has interviewed Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel under Donald Trump, and his deputy Patrick Philbin regarding classified documents the former president may have taken with him to Florida after he left office.

The lawyers are the most senior Trump White House officials the FBI has contacted as it investigated the documents, according to the report, which cites people familiar with the matter. The two men were appointed by Trump to deal with the National Archives, which usually takes possession of an outgoing president’s documents. Philbin spoke to investigators in the spring, while it was unclear when Cipollone was interviewed, the Times reports.

The FBI last week searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida as part of their investigation into the documents, and turned up papers that were deemed “top secret” and other classifications that require special handling. Cipollone and Philbin have also been subpoenaed by a grand jury investigating the January 6 attack.

Two House Democratic committee chairs have today sent a letter to Joseph V. Cuffari, the department of homeland security’s inspector general, accusing him of blocking their probe into the January 6 insurrection.

Cuffari has been at the center over the scandal caused by the Secret Service’s deletion of texts from around the time of the attack on the US Capitol, which the agency has said was caused by a change in their phone technology, but which lawmakers investigating the attack worried may be an attempt to cover up details of what happened that day.

“In response to the committees’ requests, you have refused to produce responsive documents and blocked employees in your office from appearing for transcribed interviews. Your obstruction of the committees’ investigations is unacceptable, and your justifications for this noncompliance appear to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of Congress’s authority and your duties as an inspector general,” Carolyn B. Maloney, chairwoman of the oversight and reform committee, and Bennie G. Thompson, chairman of the homeland security committee, wrote to Cuffari.

“If you continue to refuse to comply with our requests, we will have no choice but to consider alternate measures to ensure your compliance.”

Last week, it was revealed that Cuffari apparently failed to act on a memo from top career officials in his office to Congress informing lawmakers that the texts had been erased.

Indeed, the federal government has followed through on its plans to ration water as the west faces a “megadrought”, with the interior department announcing it will again cut water releases from the Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams.

The two embankments create lakes Powell and Mead, which together provide water to 40 million people in the southwestern United States.

Here’s more from deputy interior secretary Tommy Beaudreau:

The federal government may today announce water cuts in western states in an attempt to conserve resources amid the region’s “megadrought”, Richard Luscombe reports:

Water cuts are expected to be announced on Tuesday to western states in the grip of a severe “megadrought” that has dropped levels in the country’s largest two reservoirs to record lows.

The flow of the Colorado river, which provides water to more than 40 million people across seven states and Mexico, will be stemmed to reduce supply to Arizona and Nevada initially, if the federal government confirms the proposal.

The crisis, which has dropped levels in Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the US to an 80-year low of barely one-quarter its 28.9m acre-feet capacity, is threatening the future of the crucial river basin.

It has also led to potential disruption of water delivery and hydropower production, forcing the US Bureau of Reclamation to consider drastic action.

Joe Biden will this afternoon sign into law his marquee spending plan to fight climate change and lower healthcare costs, as his administration looks to make the most of hopeful political developments ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Here’s a look back at what has happened today so far:

• First lady Jill Biden has tested positive for Covid-19, and will isolate in South Carolina, where she was on vacation with her husband. Joe Biden remains negative, and is heading back to the White House for the 3.30pm eastern time signing of the Inflation Reduction Act spending plan.

• The White House is making plans for a campaign to convince men and women alike of the harm of abortion bans, and to sue states that restrict the procedure.

• Democrats consider the Inflation Reduction Act to be a major win, but in an interview with the Guardian, independent senator Bernie Sanders outlined the many ways in which he feels it falls short.

The Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas spoke with the mother of a man who shot himself after driving into a barricade at the US Capitol. She attributed his actions not to politics, but rather brain trauma from playing football:

The mother of a Delaware man who shot himself to death after driving into a US Capitol barricade over the weekend says she believes he was struggling with brain trauma from growing up playing football.

Richard Aaron York III’s mother, Tamara Cunningham, said she suspects his past as a high school football player left him with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain condition colloquially known as CTE. Some football players develop CTE because of repeated head blows that are common to the sport.

“Something was going on for a while,” Cunningham told the Guardian in an interview Tuesday. “And it was progressively getting worse.”

The Biden White House has plans for capitalizing on both the defeat of the anti-abortion ballot initiative in Kansas this month and the supreme court’s June decision overturning Roe v Wade, Reuters reports.

The campaign is targeted at both women and men, and among its goals is getting Americans to better understand the economic and mental health effects abortion bans can have. The justice department also plans to use two laws to sue states that try to crack down on access to the procedure, as well as on abortion pills.

“The idea is to be much more disciplined and consistent in messaging to break through to the everyday American,” a source with direct knowledge of the plans told Reuters.