Democrats voice concerns over Biden’s Saudi trip: ‘Their values are not ours’ – as it happened

Congress was at the center of the action today, where the January 6 committee announced the surprise postponement of its Wednesday hearing. Meanwhile, the top Senate Republican said he would support the gun control compromise reached with Democrats, while the House voted to approve a bill to improve security around the supreme court, sending it to the president’s desk.

Other top stories today:

• President Joe Biden made official his plans to visit Saudi Arabia, which is widely seen as a bid to increase oil supply and lower gas prices at home. Several Democrats have expressed disapproval over the visit, citing the kingdom’s human rights record.
• The president meanwhile traveled to in Philadelphia to address a convention of the AFL-CIO trade union federation, in which he defended his economic record and attacked Republican policies.
• A top Biden ally in the Senate proposed levying a windfall tax on oil companies as Democrats try to convince voters corporate greed is fueling record-high gas prices.
• An investigation by the Capitol Police determined a Republican House representative did not give Trump supporters a tour of the building the day before the January 6 attack.
• It’s about to get really hot in America. The National Weather Service is advising more than 100 million people to stay indoors due to high humidity and temperatures.

The US politics live blog will return on Wednesday, with the supreme court set to announce more decisions at 10am ET.

The Republican Party is launching a nine-day “election integrity” tour throughout Wisconsin, less than two months before the battleground state’s primary elections.

The tour, which begins Wednesday, will start in La Crosse, Wisconsin and go through Wisconsin’s most liberal cities, including the state’s capital, Madison. Planned events will include an appearance from conservative former state Supreme Court judge Daniel Kelly.

The tour has already received pushback from those who say it is meant to spread lies that the 2020 election was fraudulent ahead of the primaries and November’s midterm election.

Republicans have argued that the roundtable events are meant to recruit poll workers, voting deputies, and other election day staff as well as connect campaign staff with volunteers.

The Capitol Police have determined that a Republican House representative did not give a tour to Trump supporters the day before the January 6 attack.

CNN reports that the investigation into Barry Loudermilk of Georgia was requested by the chair and vice chair of the House committee investigating the insurrection, over allegations he was seen hosting visitors on 5 January, 2021.

“There is no evidence that Representative Loudermilk entered the U.S. Capitol with this group on January 5, 2021,” Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger wrote to the top Republican on the House Administration Committee. “We train our officers on being alert for people conducting surveillance or reconnaissance, and we do not consider any of the activities we observed as suspicious.”

Following the attack on the Capitol, several Democrats accused their Republican colleagues of granting tours to people who went on to storm the building as Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden’s election win.

According to CNN:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Manger said the video shows Loudermilk with “a group of approximately 12 people which later grew to 15 people” walking through the Capitol office buildings on January 5. It also states that the group of visitors did not “appear in any tunnels that would lead them to the US Capitol.”

House Republicans suggested they may release video they believe exonerates Loudermilk of any insinuation that he led a so-called “reconnaissance” tour the night before the January 6 riot.

The House select committee declined to comment on Manger’s letter.

The letter the committee sent to Loudermilk last month indicated the panel has reviewed evidence that “directly contradicts” previous claims by Republican lawmakers who said security footage from the days before January 6 shows there were “no tours, no large groups, no one with MAGA hats on” at the US Capitol complex.

“Based on our review of evidence in the Select Committee’s possession, we believe you have information regarding a tour you led through parts of the Capitol complex on January 5, 2021,” Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, and Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming, wrote at the time.

The House has passed a measure to increase security for the supreme court, sending it to the president’s desk for his signature.

The Senate had unanimously approved the measure back in May, but the House delayed its passage. Republicans in the Senate began attacking Democrats over their failure to pass the measure following last week’s arrest of a man who is charged with planning to kill justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Vice-president Kamala Harris is meeting with attorneys and activists ahead of a widely expected supreme court decision that could weaken or overturn nationwide abortion rights.

CNN reports that Harris has been encouraged by people outside the Biden administration to lead the charge against any supreme court decision restricting abortion, as a way to better connect with voters. The network quoted an unnamed official as saying Harris’s “goals really have been around ensuring that people in this country have an understanding of what is at stake here.”

The supreme court will issue another batch of decisions on Wednesday beginning at 10 am eastern time, though it’s unknown if that will include the abortion case.

The Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell said he will support the compromise measure on gun control reached with Democrats over the weekend.

The two parties have seldom found agreement on gun control legislation, and McConnell’s endorsement sends a positive signal that the proposal will win enough votes from his party to pass the evenly divided Senate.

“If it leads to a piece of legislation, I intend to support it,” McConnell said at a press conference. “I think it’s progress for the country, and I think the bipartisan group has done the best they can to get total support.”

While the bill hasn’t been written yet, it doesn’t go as far as many Democrats would like, such as by raising the age to buy an assault weapon to 21 from 18. Many of its provisions focus on improving mental health, as well as offering states money to implement programs intended to stop mass shootings such as those in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York.

One of Biden’s Senate allies has an idea for lowering gas prices: levy new taxes on oil companies’ profits.

Bloomberg reports that Democratic senator Ron Wyden will propose putting a 21 percent tax on petroleum companies with profit margins above 10 percent. The idea comes after the average gas price crossed the $5 a gallon level, which the White House has increasingly looked to blame on forces beyond its control, particularly the disruptions to global markets caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Progressive Democrats have meanwhile sought to convince voters that profit-seeking corporations are to blame for the overall spike in inflation Americans are feeling, and last week, Biden took aim at Exxon Mobil, saying the oil giant “made more money than God this year.

Wyden’s proposal, which has yet to be released publicly, would however need the approval of all 50 Democrats to make it through the Senate, and tweaks to the tax code were among the contentious issues the party couldn’t reach an agreement on during last year’s unsuccessful attempt to pass Build Back better.

From the article:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Taxing excessive oil company profits is one of many policy ideas under consideration in the White House, two administration officials said. Yet internally, aides remain concerned such a tax could hurt ongoing efforts to boost the supply of oil.

If combined with a gasoline rebate, a windfall profits tax would both deter supply and encourage fuel demand, said Kevin Book, managing director of research firm ClearView Energy Partners LLC. “It is the opposite of balancing the market.”

An idea out of Treasury to place a cap on the price of Russian oil, alongside European allies, has gained far more traction inside the administration.

Wyden’s plan would also impose a 25% stock buyback tax for oil and gas companies that repurchase their own shares, Wyden spokeswoman Ashley Schapitl confirmed. Both levies apply to oil and gas companies with at least $1 billion in revenue and would expire at the end of 2025, according to the people briefed on the plan.

Wyden also proposes to eliminate an accounting benefit, known as last-in first-out, or LIFO, that can deliver tax breaks for oil and gas companies with at least $1 billion in revenue starting in 2023.

There’s been another sentence handed down over the January 6 attack, this time of a former city councilmember in West Virginia.

Eric Barber was sentenced to 45 days in jail for entering the Capitol during the insurrection, as well as a seven-day suspended sentence for stealing a charging station belonging to C-SPAN, West Virginia’s MetroNews reported.

The former city councilmember in Parkersburg, West Virginia, also received 24 months of federal probation.

“You’re too old and you’re too accomplished and you’re too smart to get involved in nonsense like this,” federal judge Christopher Cooper said during the Thursday sentencing.

“This is not about the First Amendment. You are free to express your views. You’re free to support any political candidate or positions or issues that you want. I encourage that. But enough of this nonsense, OK?”

According to MetroNews:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Barber, 43, was being sentenced today in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after pleading guilty to two misdemeanors.

One is a count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol Building. The other is theft, an accusation that Barber stole a charging station belonging to a C-SPAN employee.

He has to pay $500 restitution as his share of damage to the Capitol that day, and he has to pay back C-SPAN a little less than $60 for the charger that he took home.

Barber was not accused of violence that day, but prosecutors noted that he wore a Kevlar helmet and went to Washington, D.C. to “go punch a Antifa terrorist in the face,” referring to the loosely-knit antifascist activists sometimes accused of violence themselves.

Prosecutors underscored that Barber entered the Capitol as sirens blared and broken glass was apparent, entering not only the areas that are commonly open to the public but also entering a restricted hallway outside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. Prosecutors said Barber wound up in that hallway twice — the second time after being told to leave. Barber said he was lost.

But Barber and his public defense attorney emphasized that he had expressed remorse about what happened that day to local media, to investigators, to Congress’s January 6th Committee and to the judge.

Judge Cooper took note of all those factors.

“It’s troubling that you still seem to have a mindset of ‘There’s a bully out there. I need to prime for the fight.’ You did not go for self-defense, but you went with the helmet, ready to punch somebody or affirmatively engage in violence,” Cooper said.

Barber sentencing memo began with a particularly direct quote.

There is still a lot of buzz about the House panel investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection by extremist supporters of Donald Trump, as reports spill out about disagreements over whether to refer Trump for criminal prosecution or just lay out the evidence and let others deduce, etc, as well as today’s abrupt postponement of Hearing No. 3.

Most of these tweets speak for themselves.

Larry Tribe.

George Conway, cheeky.

Conway on Zimmer

Scuitto on Trump

Much of today’s action has occurred in Congress, where the January 6 committee announced the surprise postponement of its Wednesday hearing. The Senate still doesn’t have the bill text of its gun control compromise to vote on, but the House is moving forward with the vote on a a bill to increase security for the supreme court, which the upper chamber has already approved.

Here’s what else is going on:

• President Joe Biden has made official his plans to visit Saudi Arabia, which is widely seen as a bid to increase oil supply and lower gas prices at home. Several Democrats have expressed disapproval over the visit, citing the kingdom’s human rights record.
• The president was meanwhile in Philadelphia to address a convention of the AFL-CIO trade union federation, in which he defended his economic record and attacked Republican policies.
• The votes of Republicans in the Senate will be crucial to passing the gun control bill, and more of the party’s senators offered their thoughts on the legislation.
• It’s about to get really hot in America. The National Weather Service is advising more than 100 million people to stay indoors due to high humidity and temperatures.

Republicans will be crucial in determining whether the bipartisan gun control proposal makes it through the Senate, and more lawmakers are reacting to the deal reached over the weekend.

Democrats are expected to back the proposal even though it doesn’t do all of what they want, such as raising the age to purchase an assault rifle to 21 from 18. To avoid a filibuster, at least 10 Republicans in the Senate will need to vote for the bill, which also must clear the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.

Biden has used his speech at the AFL-CIO convention in Philadelphia to promote his handling of the economy make a pitch for keeping Democrats in office.

As CBS News’s Ed O’Keefe reports:

The president also took special notice of a Republican proposal to make all federal legislation expire after five years, asking, “How well are you going to sleep at night knowing that every five years, Ted Cruz and the other ultra-MAGA Republicans are going to vote on whether you have Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid?”

Democrats in the Senate are raising their eyebrows at Biden’s decision to travel to Saudi Arabia, objecting to the country’s human rights record and worrying the visit won’t meaningfully lower gas prices.

As Oregon’s Ron Wyden told Manu Raju of CNN:

Here’s Maryland’s Ben Cardin, who referenced the murder of Jamal Khashoggi:

Kaitlan Collins, also of CNN, heard this from Illinois’s Dick Durbin: