Good afternoon, US politics blog readers. In a few hours, the January 6 committee will hold its final scheduled hearing, in which House lawmakers will make the case that former president Donald Trump may have violated the law by not stopping the assault on the Capitol. As if that wasn’t a packed news agenda by itself, president Joe Biden announced earlier today he had tested positive for Covid-19 – joining his vice president Kamala Harris, much of Congress’s Democratic leadership and yes, Trump, in contracting the virus.
Here’s what else has happened today:
- The House of Representatives passed a bill to guarantee access to contraception after supreme court justice Clarence Thomas mulled revisiting a decades-old ruling concerning the right. All Democrats voted for it, along with eight Republicans.
- Much of America is facing extreme heat. Some Democrats have called on Biden to declare a climate emergency, but he has yet to do so.
- Biden’s Covid-19 diagnosis has delayed the announcement of a plan to fight crime.
- Democratic senators have introduced a bill to legalize cannabis nationwide.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
