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    US senators to start debate on breakthrough bipartisan gun violence bill – live

    The Senate doesn’t pass gun control legislation very often, and if approved, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act would be the most significant such bill since 1993.It’s also only a small step compared to what gun control advocates would like to see happen. But Republicans have little political inclination to crack down on firearm access, and thus, this bill represents the best offer Democrats are likely to get — a fact Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer is aware of.The proposal would increase background checks on gun buyers under the age of 21, give money to states to implement red-flag laws, tighten gun ownership restrictions on people who abuse previous romantic partners and fund mental health services, among other provisions. It does not raise the minimum age to buy an assault weapon to 21, as some Democrats hoped it would, nor does it come anywhere near restoring the assault weapons ban or outlawing high-capacity magazines, as President Joe Biden has called for.A reminder of what finally spurred lawmakers to act on the contentious subject: the massacre of 21 students and teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and the racist killings of 10 Black people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.The Biden administration is stepping up its efforts to stop Americans from smoking by moving to cut down on nicotine content in cigarettes and banning Juul’s e-cigarettes.The Wall Street Journal reports that the Food and Drug Administration could as soon as today announce its decision against Juul following a two-year review of data provided by the company:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Uncertainty has clouded Juul since it landed in the FDA’s sights four years ago, when its fruity flavors and hip marketing were blamed for fueling a surge of underage vaping. The company since then has been trying to regain the trust of regulators and the public. It limited its marketing and in 2019 stopped selling sweet and fruity flavors. Juul’s sales have tumbled in recent years.
    The FDA has barred the sale of all sweet and fruity e-cigarette cartridges. The agency has cleared the way for Juul’s biggest rivals, Reynolds American Inc. and NJOY Holdings Inc., to keep tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes on the market. Industry observers had expected Juul to receive similar clearance.
    Juul had no immediate comment. The company could pursue an appeal through the FDA, challenge the decision in court or file a revised application for its products.Meanwhile, Reuters yesterday reported that the Biden administration would like to put a maximum cap on nicotine content in a bid to help Americans quit tobacco use and stop getting hooked in the first place:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} The proposal comes as the Biden administration doubles down on fighting cancer-related deaths.
    Earlier this year, the government announced plans to reduce the death rate from cancer by at least 50% over the next 25 years.
    Nicotine is the addictive substance in tobacco. Tobacco products also contain several harmful chemicals, many of which could cause cancer.
    Tobacco use costs nearly $300bn a year in direct healthcare and lost productivity, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).US to propose limiting nicotine levels in cigarettesRead moreThe city of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota has agreed to pay $3.2 million and change its police training and traffic stop policies in a settlement stemming from the shooting death of Duante Wright last year, the Associated Press reports.The payment will go to the family of Wright, a Black man who was shot by Kim Potter, a white police officer who pulled him over for expired registration tags in April 2021. She was earlier this year sentenced to two years in prison after being convicted of first- and second-degree manslaughter.According to the AP:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Wright’s family members “hope and believe the measures of change to policing, policies and training will create important improvements to the community in Daunte’s name,” said co-counsel Antonio M. Romanucci. “Nothing can bring him back, but the family hopes his legacy is a positive one and prevents any other family from enduring the type of grief they will live with for the rest of their lives.”
    The Associated Press left a message Wednesday seeking comment from the mayor’s office.
    The shooting happened at a time of high tension in the area, with former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, standing trial just miles away for the killing of George Floyd, who was Black. Floyd’s May 2020 death prompted a reckoning over police brutality and discrimination involving people of color.
    The fallout from Wright’s death led the Brooklyn Center City Council to pass a series of reforms, including the use of social workers and other trained professionals to respond to medical, mental health and social-needs calls that don’t require police.
    The changes also prohibit police from making arrests for low-level offenses and require the city to use unarmed civilians to handle minor traffic violations.Brooklyn Center approves policing changes after Daunte Wright shootingRead moreThe supreme court has added a second upcoming decision release day to its calendar: Friday. The justices had already to issue their latest opinions on Thursday, and the additional day will give them more time to work through the backlog of cases they have yet to publicly announce rulings on.The court is expected to continue its rightward streak in its upcoming decisions, which could deal with some of the must contentious issues in American society, including abortion, gun access and environmental regulation. Indeed, an unprecedented leak of their draft opinion on an abortion access case before them shows the conservative majority ready to overturn Roe v Wade entirely. They are also viewed as leaning towards rolling back restrictions on carrying concealed weapons and weakening the government’s ability to enforce regulations. For an idea of how a gas tax holiday might work at the federal level, The Wall Street Journal went to Connecticut to see if the state legislature’s decision to suspend part of its gas tax made consumers any happier.It did not:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Connecticut was one of the first states in the U.S. to suspend part of its gasoline tax, but Ana Rodriguez, after refueling her 2017 Toyota Highlander here, said she barely noticed.
    The 35-year-old social worker spent $67 and didn’t leave with a full tank as she usually does.
    “It affects the trust that I have in them,” Ms. Rodriguez said of state lawmakers. “It makes me not want to vote.”
    President Biden is planning to call for a temporary suspension of the federal gasoline tax of 18.4 cents a gallon, according to people familiar with the matter. If Connecticut’s experience with suspending its own 25-cent-a-gallon tax is any guide, a federal hiatus might not get noticed by consumers or relieve much political heat.
    “Consumers are a very poor gauge because they don’t understand that the wholesale price of fuel may be rising just as the tax holiday was implemented, so it offsets it,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for price tracker GasBuddy.The federal gas tax holiday the Biden administration is set to propose is billed as an attempt to lower prices at the pump, but as Nina Lakhani reports, it may not work:Joe Biden will call on Congress today to temporarily suspend federal gasoline and diesel taxes in an attempt to quell voter anger at the surging cost of fuel.In a speech on Wednesday afternoon, Biden is expected to ask the House to pause the federal taxes – about 18¢ per gallon for gas and 24¢ per gallon for diesel – until the end of September.Biden will also call on states to suspend local fuel taxes and urge oil refining companies to increase capacity – just days after accusing executives of profiteering and “worsening the pain” for consumers.If all the measures Biden will call for are adopted, prices could drop by about $1 per gallon at the pumps, according to senior officials who briefed CNN, although energy experts have questioned the effectiveness of gas tax holidays.Biden to urge Congress to suspend gas tax for three monthsRead moreYesterday’s January 6 hearing gave further details of the fake electors plot Trump pursued to try to throw the 2020 election his way, and The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that the justice department has taken notice of what the committee found:The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack made the case at its fourth hearing on Tuesday that the Trump 2020 campaign tried to obstruct Joe Biden’s election win through a potentially illegal scheme to send fake slates of electors to Congress.The panel presented a text message sent on 4 January 2021 that appeared to indicate the Trump campaign was seeking to use fraudulent election certificates they would have known were not state-certified to obstruct the congressional certification of Biden’s win.“Freaking Trump idiots want someone to fly original elector papers to the Senate president,” Mark Jefferson, the executive director of the Republican party in Wisconsin said in the text, seemingly referring to the Trump campaign and then vice-president Mike Pence.Panel makes case that Trump campaign knew fake electors scheme was fraudulentRead moreThe Senate doesn’t pass gun control legislation very often, and if approved, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act would be the most significant such bill since 1993.It’s also only a small step compared to what gun control advocates would like to see happen. But Republicans have little political inclination to crack down on firearm access, and thus, this bill represents the best offer Democrats are likely to get — a fact Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer is aware of.The proposal would increase background checks on gun buyers under the age of 21, give money to states to implement red-flag laws, tighten gun ownership restrictions on people who abuse previous romantic partners and fund mental health services, among other provisions. It does not raise the minimum age to buy an assault weapon to 21, as some Democrats hoped it would, nor does it come anywhere near restoring the assault weapons ban or outlawing high-capacity magazines, as President Joe Biden has called for.A reminder of what finally spurred lawmakers to act on the contentious subject: the massacre of 21 students and teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and the racist killings of 10 Black people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.Good morning, US politics blog readers. After days of negotiations, a bipartisan bill to address gun violence has finally been released, and all Democratic senators as well as a handful of Republicans last night approved the start of debate on the proposal. Meanwhile, another set of primary elections gave a mixed verdict on Donald Trump’s ability to influence voters.Here’s what else is happening today:
    Joe Biden is set to propose a three-month holiday in the federal gas tax in a bid to lower pump prices, which have soared in recent months.
    The Uvalde, Texas school where last month’s mass shooting occurred will be demolished, the city’s mayor announced.
    Bill Cosby sexually abused a 16-year-old girl at the Playboy mansion nearly 50 years ago, a civil court found, and awarded her $500,000.
    Yesterday’s January 6 committee hearing dived deeper into the fake electors scheme Trump hoped would allow him to subvert the will of the voters in the 2020 election, and the justice department is investigating whether those involved in the plot should face charges. More

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    Panel makes case that Trump campaign knew alternate electors scheme was fraudulent

    Panel makes case that Trump campaign knew alternate electors scheme was fraudulentText appears to indicate campaign sought to use certificates it knew were not state-certified to obstruct Biden’s victory The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack made the case at its fourth hearing on Tuesday that the Trump 2020 campaign tried to obstruct Joe Biden’s election win through a potentially illegal scheme to send fake slates of electors to Congress.The panel presented a text message sent on 4 January 2021 that appeared to indicate the Trump campaign was seeking to use fraudulent election certificates they would have known were not state-certified to obstruct the congressional certification of Biden’s win.‘There’s nowhere I feel safe’: Georgia elections workers describe how Trump upended their livesRead more“Freaking Trump idiots want someone to fly original elector papers to the Senate president,” Mark Jefferson, the executive director of the Republican party in Wisconsin said in the text, seemingly referring to the Trump campaign and then vice-president Mike Pence.The fake electors scheme – so-called because Republican electors in seven battleground states signed certificates falsely declaring themselves “duly elected and qualified” to affirm Donald Trump won the 2020 election – was part of Trump’s strategy to reverse his defeat.The select committee believes, according to sources close to the inquiry, that the scheme was conceived in an effort to create “dueling” slates of electors that Pence could use to pretend the outcome of the election was in doubt and refuse to announce Biden as president.All of this is important because the scheme could be a crime. The justice department is investigating whether the Republicans who signed as electors for Trump could be charged with falsifying voting documents, mail fraud or conspiracy to defraud the United States.It is also a crime to knowingly submit false statements to a federal agency or a federal agent for an undue end. The fraudulent certificates were filed with a handful of government bodies, including the National Archives, the panel has previously said.The select committee appeared to make the case that the Trump campaign violated the law: the panel suggested the Trump campaign must have known the certificates were false and suggested the Trump campaign at least intended to submit them to government bodies.After all, the panel suggested, the Trump campaign must have known they were false since no state legislature had voted to approve a Trump slate of electors, while the text message showed the Trump campaign intended to send them to Congress in time for the certification.The evidence to connect Trump to the fake electors scheme was less clear.Congressman Adam Schiff, the select committee member who led the fourth hearing, introduced a text message from the RNC chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, that was obtained by House investigators, which he suggested showed Trump was directly implicated in the fake electors scheme.Referring to Trump, the text read: “He turned the call over to Mr Eastman, who then proceeded to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing change the result.”The text indicated that Trump initiated the call to McDaniel and tried to use the power of his office to pressure the RNC, which could create an inferential case against Trump if viewed in conjunction with other evidence, according to two former assistant US attorneys.But while Trump’s conduct might warrant him becoming the subject of a criminal investigation, it was not clear how prosecutors might move forward with charges against Trump based on what the panel unveiled about the fake electors alone, the former assistant US attorneys said.Congressional connectionsThe other major revelation that came from the select committee’s fourth hearing was the fact that at least one Republican senator, Ron Johnson, the senior senator from Wisconsin, tried on the morning of 6 January 2021 to transmit fake certificates to Pence.According to a text exchange obtained by the select committee, Johnson’s chief of staff, Sean Riley, messaged Pence’s legislative affairs director, Chris Hodgson, seeking advice on how to give the fraudulent certificates to Pence.“Johnson needs to hand something to VPOTUS please advise,” Riley said. When Hodgson asked what for, Riley gave details, referring to fake Trump slates from Michigan and Wisconsin: “Alternate slate of electors for MI and WI because archivist didn’t receive them.”The text exchange appeared to show that Johnson intended to transmit false documents to a federal agency or agent. It was not clear whether Johnson knew that they might be used as cover for Pence to reject Biden’s win, but it did suggest he knew what the package was.Proving that last element would be crucial in pursuing charges in the fake electors scheme, the former assistant US attorneys said. It would probably not be enough to just show that Johnson wanted to submit fraudulent certificates to Congress.A spokesperson for Johnson said on Tuesday the senator – then the chairman of the Senate homeland security committee and ardent defender of Trump on Capitol Hill – had “no involvement in the creation of an alternate slates of electors and had no foreknowledge”.The statement addressed accusations never leveled at Johnson. The key question remained whether Johnson knew the certificates were fake – since neither Wisconsin nor any other states certified Trump electors – and whether he tried to give them to Pence for an undue end.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsMike PenceRepublicansMichigannewsReuse this content More

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    ‘A dangerous cancer’: fourth hearing reveals how Trump’s big lie destroyed people’s lives

    ‘A dangerous cancer’: fourth hearing reveals how Trump’s big lie destroyed people’s lives Former president’s attacks on state officials to overturn Biden’s election victory resulted in harassment and threats Donald Trump was the most powerful man in the world. But he was also a paranoid fantasist who did not care how his lies destroyed people’s lives.That was the picture of the former US president that came into focus with startling clarity at Tuesday’s hearing of the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.January 6 hearings: state officials testify on Trump pressure to discredit electionRead moreDead people, shredded ballots and a USB drive that was in fact a ginger mint were all part of the delusional narrative of election fraud peddled by Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani. They would have been as comical as flat-earthers but for the way they posed a danger to both individual citizens and American democracy.“The president’s lie was and is a dangerous cancer on the body politic,” committee member Adam Schiff said at the hearing into how Trump pressured state officials to overturn overturn results.It was worth remembering that Trump once boasted that he had passed a cognitive test by reciting the words, “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV,” in the right order. And that, according to the Washington Post, he made 30,573 false or misleading claims during his four-year presidency.Even on Tuesday, he was repeating the biggest lie of all. Just before the hearing he issued a statement claiming that witness Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, told him “the election was rigged and I won Arizona”.Bowers, a Republican who had wanted Trump to win the election, told the committee that this was false: “Anyone, anywhere, anytime I said the election was rigged, that would not be true.”Bowers also recalled a conversation with Giuliani and lawyer Jenna Ellis about allegations of voter fraud in Arizona. In a phrase that captured the president’s own mindset, Giuliani allegedly said: “We’ve got lots of theories but we just don’t have the evidence.”But the centerpiece of the big lie is Georgia, which Trump narrowly lost and which became his all-consuming obsession for wild conspiracy theories.The committee heard testimony from its secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and his deputy Gabe Sterling, who observed that competing against Trump’s false statements was like a “shovel trying to empty the ocean. I even had family members I had to argue with about some of these things.”The Cannon Caucus Room resounded with Trump’s own voice from a 67-minute phone call with Raffensperger in which the president claimed the people of Georgia “know” he won the state by hundreds of thousands of voters.Not true, Raffensperger told the committee definitively, explaining that Trump had “come up short”.One by one, Trump could be heard making ludicrous assertions without foundation. One by one, Raffensperger and Sterling calmly demolished them.The president was heard claiming that votes were “in what looked to be suitcases or trunks, suitcases but they weren’t in voter boxes”. Schiff asked: “Were they just the ordinary containers that are used by election workers?” Sterling testified: “They’re standard ballot carriers that allow for seals to be put on them so they’re tamper proof.”Trump went on during the call: “But they dropped a lot of votes in there late at night. You know that, Brad.” Raffensperger told the committee: “There were no additional ballots accepted after 7pm.”The president insisted: “The other thing, dead people. So dead people voted and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters.”Raffensperger observed: “No, it’s not accurate … We found two dead people when I wrote my letter to Congress that’s dated January 6 and subsequent to that we found two more. That’s one, two, three, four people, not 4,000.”More sinister yet, Trump claimed that election workers had been shredding ballots, “a criminal offense” that could put Raffensperger at risk. “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”Raffensperger told the hearing: “What I knew is we didn’t have any votes to find.”Tuesday’s hearing spelled out how the big lie has caused hurt way beyond Washington on 6 January 2021. Trump told Raffensperger on the call: “When you talk about no criminality, I think it’s very dangerous for you to say that.”The Georgia secretary of state took this as a threat. And sure enough, his family was targeted by Trump supporters.“My email, my cell phone was doxxed and I was getting texts all over the country and then eventually my wife started getting texts. Hers typically came in as sexualized texts which were disgusting … They started going after her I think just to probably put pressure on me: ‘Why don’t you quit and walk away.’”He was far from alone.In a deposition, Michigan secretary of state Jocelyn Benson talked about how her “stomach sunk” when she heard the sounds of protesters outside her home one night when she was putting her child to bed. She wondered if they had guns or were going to attack her house. “That was the scariest moment,” Benson said.But no story better illustrated the callousness of Trump’s assault than Georgia election workers Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman, two African American women described by committee chairman Bennie Thompson as “unsung heroes” of democracy.Giuliani accused the pair of passing a USB drive to each other; Moss told the committee that her mother had actually been handing her a ginger mint. With astonishing cruelty, Trump was heard in a phone call describing Freeman as “a professional vote scammer and hustler”.It was false but it was the cue for an onslaught of racist hatred from Trump supporters. Moss, nervous and at times shaking, recalled: “A lot of threats wishing death upon me. Telling me that, you know, I’ll be in jail with my mother and saying things like, ‘Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.”Moss, who left her position, added in wrenching testimony: “It’s turned my life upside down. I no longer give out my business card. I don’t transfer calls. I don’t want anyone knowing my name. I’ve gained about 60 pounds. I just don’t do nothing anymore. I don’t want to go anywhere. I second-guess everything that I do.”Her mother Ruby Freeman said in a deposition: “I’ve lost my name, and I’ve lost my reputation. I’ve lost my sense of security – all because a group of people … scapegoat[ed] me and my daughter, Shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen.”At the end of his call to Raffensperger, Trump could be heard saying: “It takes a little while but let the truth comes out.”Now, finally, the truth is coming out, but not the one that occupies his fantasies.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpArizonaGeorgiaUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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    'The numbers don't lie': Georgia officials debunk Donald Trump's election fraud claim – video

    Two Georgia officials debunked Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen election in their state when the January 6 committee resumed its hearing on Tuesday.
    Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, defended his office’s conduct, explaining that all claims of fraud had been investigated and found to be baseless.
    Gabriel Sterling, Raffensperger’s deputy, who went viral for his speech after the election in which he strongly denounced Trump’s baseless insistence that the 2020 election was stolen in Georgia, added that despite the evidence it was hard to get people to believe him.

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    ‘There’s nowhere I feel safe’: Georgia elections workers describe how Trump upended their lives

    ‘There’s nowhere I feel safe’: Georgia elections workers describe how Trump upended their livesShaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, testified how Trump and his allies fueled harassment and racist threats In powerful and emotional testimony about the sinister results of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, a mother and daughter who were Georgia elections workers described how Trump and his allies upended their lives, fueling harassment and racist threats by claiming they were involved in voter fraud.Giuliani told Arizona official ‘We just don’t have the evidence’ of voter fraudRead moreTestifying to the January 6 committee in Washington, Shaye Moss said she received “a lot of threats. Wishing death upon me. Telling me that I’ll be in jail with my mother and saying things like, ‘Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.’”That was a reference to lynching, the violent extra-judicial fate of thousands of Black men in the American south.Moss also said her grandmother’s home had been threatened by Trump supporters seeking to make “citizen’s arrests” of the two poll workers.No Democratic presidential candidate had won Georgia since 1992 but Joe Biden beat Trump by just under 12,000 votes, a result confirmed by recounts.Tuesday’s hearing detailed Trump’s attempts to overturn that result via pressure on Republican state officials and vilification of Moss and her mother over video supposedly showing them engaged in voter fraud, a claim swiftly debunked.Moss’s mother attended the hearing. In taped testimony, she said: “My name is Ruby Freeman. I’ve always believed it when God says that he’ll make your name great. But this is not the way it was supposed to be.”“For my entire professional life, I was Lady Ruby. My community in Georgia, where I was born and lived my whole life, knew me as Lady Ruby. I built my own business around that name: Ruby’s Unique Treasures. A pop-up shop catering to ladies with unique fashions.”“I wore a shirt that proudly proclaimed that I was and I am Lady Ruby. I had that shirt in every color. I wore that shirt on election day 2020. I haven’t worn it since and I’ll never wear it again.“I won’t even introduce myself by my name anymore. I get nervous when I bump into someone I know in the grocery store who says my name. I’m worried about people listening. I get nervous when I have to give my name for food orders. I’m always concerned of who’s around me.“I’ve lost my name and I’ve lost my reputation. I’ve lost my sense of security, all because a group of people starting with [Trump] and his ally Rudy Giuliani decided to scapegoat me and my daughter Shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen.”Freeman also said: “There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?“The president of the United States is supposed to represent every American. Not to target one. And he targeted me, Lady Ruby, a small business owner, a mother, a proud American citizen who stood up to help Fulton county run an election in the middle of the pandemic.”Freeman said she had been forced to leave home for two months.Moss described threats also made to her grandmother.“That woman is my everything,” she said. “I’ve never even heard or seen her cry, ever in my life. And she called me screaming at the top of her lungs, like ‘Shaye, Shaye, oh my gosh, Shaye’, freaking me out, saying that people were at her home.”“And they knocked on the door and of course she opened it, seeing who was there, who it was, and they just started pushing their way through, claiming they were coming in to make a citizen’s arrest. They needed to find me and my mom, they knew we were there.“And [my grandmother] was just screaming and didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t there so I just felt so helpless and so horrible for her. And she just screamed and I called her to close the door. Don’t open the door for anyone.”Moss was asked how her own life had been affected.She said: “My life was turned upside down. I no longer give out my business card. Don’t want anyone knowing my name. Don’t want to go anywhere with my mom because she might yell my name out over the grocery aisle or something. I don’t go to the grocery store anymore.“I haven’t been anywhere. I’ve gained about 60lb. I don’t want to go anywhere, I second-guess everything that I do. It’s affected my life in a major way, every way.“All because of lies.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS elections 2020US politicsGeorgiaRepublicansDonald TrumpRudy GiulianinewsReuse this content More

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    January 6 committee to investigate Trump’s pressure campaign on election officials – live

    In its hearings thus far, the January 6 committee has focused on the circumstances leading up to the attack in Washington, particularly Trump’s baseless claims that the election was stolen.Viewers will be taken farther afield in today’s hearing, which will feature testimony from state officials about how Trump pushed them to interfere with their election results for his benefit.Among its guests will be Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who last month fended off a Trump-backed attempt to oust him from office. He will be joined by Arizona House speaker Rusty Bowers and Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office.The hearing will also feature an appearance by Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a Georgia poll worker who, along with her mother, was accused of rigging the vote in a number of conspiracies promoted by Trump supporters. She is now suing Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, rightwing One America News Network and several of its senior executives for defamation, saying the claims put them in physical danger.Expect to hear more about just what she endured at the hearing today.There’s been another alarming revelation about the botched police response to the Uvalde school shooting last month.The director of Texas’s Department of Public Safety told a state Senate committee that police officers could have stopped the shooting three minutes after it began, and called their response an “abject failure,” according to the Associated Press:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Police officers with rifles instead stood and waited in a school hallway for nearly an hour while the gunman carried out the May 24 attack that left 19 children and two teachers dead.
    Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, testified at a state Senate hearing on the police handling of the tragedy.
    Delays in the law enforcement response have been the focus of federal, state and local investigations of the mass shooting.
    McCraw told the Senate committee that Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district police chief, decided to put the lives of officers ahead of the lives of children.
    The public safety chief began outlining for the committee a series of missed opportunities.Breaking along ideological lines, the supreme court has struck down a state-funded program in Maine that covers the costs of some private schools — but only those that are nonsectarian.The decision will allow people in the state to use public money to pay for religious schooling, as Reuter’s Lawrence Hurley explains:BREAKING: Supreme Court backs public money for religious schools in Maine case— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) June 21, 2022
    Chief Justice Roberts: “… a neutral benefit program in which public funds flow to religious organizationsthrough the independent choices of private benefit recipients does not offend the Establishment Clause”— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) June 21, 2022
    Case is on whether people can use public money for religious schools from funding that Maine provides for people to pay for tuition at private high school in some parts of the state that lack public high schools. Court says “yes” on 6-3 vote— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) June 21, 2022
    The court’s conservative justices all supported the ruling, while its three liberals Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer dissented.The supreme court has ended its release of decisions today with a ruling on a 233-year old statute regarding federal court orders:In its final opinion of the day, SCOTUS rules on the scope of the All Writs Act, a 233-year-old statute that gives federal courts broad power to issue orders. The case involved an Ohio death-row prisoner trying to develop new evidence to challenge his conviction and sentence.— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 21, 2022
    The supreme court has thus far announced three decisions, none of which deal with abortion, gun rights, environmental regulation or the other contentious topics they are expected to rule on before the current term ends.Here’s a rundown of what they’ve done so far, from SCOTUSblog:In a technical dispute about health insurance reimbursements for kidney dialysis, the Supreme Court sides with a health insurer, rejecting a claim from DaVita Inc. (one of the nation’s largest providers of dialysis) that the insurer’s low reimbursement rates violated federal law.— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 21, 2022
    In the second (but not final) opinion of the day, the Supreme Court narrows the definition of “crime of violence” in a federal criminal statute. The court agrees with a criminal defendant that the definition excludes attempted robbery under the Hobbs Act.— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 21, 2022
    The Supreme Court strikes down a Washington law that made it easier for certain workers to get workers’ comp from the federal government if they became sick while cleaning up a decommissioned nuclear site. SCOTUS says the law violates the doctrine of intergovernmental immunity.— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 21, 2022
    Attorney General Merrick Garland has made a surprise visit to Ukraine, expressing support for the country’s effort to prosecute the perpetrators of war crimes following Russia’s invasion.Here he is along with Ukraine’s prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova:In unannounced trip, Attorney General Merrick Garland Visits Ukraine, Reaffirms U.S. Commitment to Help Identify, Apprehend, and Prosecute Individuals Involved in War Crimes and Atrocities pic.twitter.com/GzHPGqOUYV— Anthony Coley (@AnthonyColeyDOJ) June 21, 2022
    The United States has already formally accused Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine, and the country has started trying Russian soldiers for alleged abuses.Russian soldier pleads guilty in first Ukraine war crimes trial since invasionRead moreWhen it begins announcing decisions in a few minutes, the supreme court could release an opinion that sharply curtails abortion rights nationwide, and Democratic leaders are trying to make the most of what they hope many of their voters would see as a bad situation.As Politico reports, the party is making plans to focus voters’ attention on the ruling’s implications, and away from the issues that have swamped Biden’s approval ratings in recent months, such as gas prices and inflation overall.From their article:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s preparations, previewed by a committee official, are a window into the Democratic Party’s broader efforts to capitalize — in the middle of a brutal-looking midterm election climate — on the Supreme Court’s likely reversal of Roe v. Wade, which would change a half-century of precedent and let states decide the legality of abortion.
    Support for Roe is at an all-time high with voters, and the Democrats’ strategy is aimed at firing up a flagging Democratic base, while also trying to compete for some of the college-educated, female, suburban swing voters who backed them during the Trump era. The question, though, is how to make abortion a top issue for voters in November while facing a range of challenges, especially gas prices averaging $5 a gallon and inflation ticking up.
    “We’re not going to be able to keep it in the national news, but we’re going to put a lot of money on paid advertising — on TV, on digital ads, on mail, on radio — and in key places across the country, and that’s how this issue will matter,” said Stephanie Schriock, former president of EMILY’s List, a Democratic pro-abortion-rights group. “And in some states, it will be in the news every day, because state legislatures are going to push this issue further and further to the right with outright bans.”What else can you expect from the January 6 committee? The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has taken a closer look at how the House lawmakers will present their witnesses and evidence at today’s hearing:The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is expected to show at its fourth hearing on Tuesday that Donald Trump and top advisers coordinated the scheme to send fake slates of electors as part of an effort to return him to the White House.The panel is expected to also examine Trump’s campaign to pressure top officials in seven crucial battleground states to corruptly reverse his defeat to Joe Biden in the weeks and months after the 2020 election.At the afternoon hearing, the select committee is expected to focus heavily on the fake electors scheme, which has played a large part in its nearly year-long investigation into Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the election at the state level.Donald Trump plotted fake electors scheme, January 6 panel set to showRead moreIn its hearings thus far, the January 6 committee has focused on the circumstances leading up to the attack in Washington, particularly Trump’s baseless claims that the election was stolen.Viewers will be taken farther afield in today’s hearing, which will feature testimony from state officials about how Trump pushed them to interfere with their election results for his benefit.Among its guests will be Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who last month fended off a Trump-backed attempt to oust him from office. He will be joined by Arizona House speaker Rusty Bowers and Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office.The hearing will also feature an appearance by Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a Georgia poll worker who, along with her mother, was accused of rigging the vote in a number of conspiracies promoted by Trump supporters. She is now suing Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, rightwing One America News Network and several of its senior executives for defamation, saying the claims put them in physical danger.Expect to hear more about just what she endured at the hearing today.Good morning, US politics live blog readers. At 1pm eastern time, the January 6 committee will be holding its fourth hearing into last year’s attack on the Capitol, with this session focusing on former president Donald Trump’s pressure campaign on state officials to throw the 2020 election in his direction. The committee is meanwhile continuing its search for evidence. Politico reports that it has subpoenaed a documentary film-maker who had access to Trump’s inner circle around the time of the insurrection.Here’s what else to expect today:
    Democrats and Republicans in Congress are scrambling to find agreement on gun control legislation and an innovation bill as time runs out to pass the legislation before an upcoming two-week recess.
    The supreme court will release another batch of opinions at 10 am eastern time. Among these could be their opinions on closely watched cases dealing with abortion, gun rights, environmental regulation and other controversial issues.
    Voters will head to the polls (or cast mail-in ballots) in Virginia and Washington DC, while run-off elections are being held in Alabama and Georgia.
    President Joe Biden announced he will appoint Marilynn Malerba as treasurer of the United States. She is the chief of the Mohegan Tribe and would be the first Native American in the position that oversees the US Mint, among other responsibilities. More

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    Donald Trump plotted fake electors scheme, January 6 panel set to show

    Donald Trump plotted fake electors scheme, January 6 panel set to showCommittee also expected to probe Trump’s pressure on officials in crucial states to corruptly reverse his election defeat The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is expected to show at its fourth hearing on Tuesday that Donald Trump and top advisers coordinated the scheme to send fake slates of electors as part of an effort to return him to the White House.The panel is expected to also examine Trump’s campaign to pressure top officials in seven crucial battleground states to corruptly reverse his defeat to Joe Biden in the weeks and months after the 2020 election.At the afternoon hearing, the select committee is expected to focus heavily on the fake electors scheme, which has played a large part in its nearly year-long investigation into Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the election at the state level.Liz Cheney’s condemnation of Trump’s lies wins over DemocratsRead moreThe panel will show how the fake electors scheme – which may have been illegal – was the underlying basis for Trump’s unlawful strategy to have his vice-president, Mike Pence, refuse to certify Biden’s win in certain states and grant him a second term.If the 2020 election cycle had been like any other when the electoral college convened on 14 December 2020 and Democratic electors attested to Biden’s victory over Trump, that would have marked the end of any post-election period conflict.But that year, after the authorized Democratic electors met at statehouses to formally name Biden as president, in seven battleground states, illegitimate Republican electors arrived too, saying they had come to instead name Trump as president.The Trump electors were turned away. However, they nonetheless proceeded to sign fake election certificates that declared they were the “duly elected and qualified” electors certifying Trump as the winner of the presidential election in their state.The fake electors scheme was conceived in an effort to create “dueling” slates of electors that Pence could use to pretend the election was in doubt and refuse to formalize Biden’s win at the congressional certification on 6 January.Kinzinger: Trump’s actions surrounding January 6 amount to ‘seditious conspiracy’Read moreAnd, the select committee will show, the fake election certificates were in part manufactured by the Trump White House, and that the entire fake electors scheme was coordinated by Trump and his top advisers, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows.“We will show evidence of the president’s involvement in this scheme,” congressman Adam Schiff, the select committee member leading the hearing alongside the panel’s chairman, Bennie Thompson, and vice-chair, Liz Cheney, said on CNN on Sunday.Members of Trump’s legal team insist this is a distorted characterization of the scheme, saying the so-called alternate slates were put together and signed in case that states did re-certify their election results for Trump and they needed to be sent right away to Congress.But that explanation is difficult to reconcile given Trump lawyer John Eastman admitted in a 19 December 2020 the Trump slates were “dead on arrival” if they were not certified, and yet still pushed Pence to reject Biden’s slates even though Trump slates were still not certified.The fake electors scheme is important because it could be a crime. The justice department is investigating whether the Republicans who signed as electors for Trump could be charged with falsifying voting documents, mail fraud or conspiracy to defraud the United States.If Trump was involved in the scheme, and the justice department pursues a case, then the former US president may also have criminal exposure. At least one federal grand jury in Washington is investigating the scheme and the involvement of top Trump election lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani.The select committee is also set to closely focus on Trump’s pressure campaign on leading Republican state officials in the weeks and months after the election, according to a committee aide who previewed the hearing on a briefing call with reporters.‘A one-sided witch-hunt’: angry Trump lashes out at January 6 hearingsRead moreAmong other key flash points that the panel intends to examine include Trump’s now-infamous 2 January 2021 call with Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger – who will testify live at the hearing – when Trump asked him to “find” votes to make him win the election.“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said during the conversation, a tape of which was obtained by the Washington Post and House investigators working for the select committee.The select committee will describe Trump pressuring other state officials to investigate election fraud claims his own White House and campaign lawyers knew were false, relying on testimony from Arizona House speaker Rusty Bowers.And the panel will additionally hear testimony from Shaye Moss, a Georgia election worker in Fulton County, who was falsely accused by Giuliani and others of sneaking in “suitcases” of ballots for Biden – a conspiracy debunked by election officials.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackMike PenceUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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    Kinzinger: Trump’s actions surrounding January 6 amount to ‘seditious conspiracy’

    Kinzinger: Trump’s actions surrounding January 6 amount to ‘seditious conspiracy’Republican member of the Capitol attack panel also says Trump’s actions surrounding the deadly riot had ‘criminal involvement’ A Republican member of the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol said on Sunday that he believes Donald Trump’s actions surrounding the deadly riots amount to “seditious conspiracy” and “criminal involvement by a president”.Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger’s remarks on ABC’s This Week came after three hearings held by the House January 6 committee presented searing testimony and mounting evidence about Trump’s central role in a complex plot to overturn his defeat at the hands of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.While he was only one of at least four committee members scheduled to appear on the national news network’s Sunday talkshows, Kinzinger’s comments stood out for their candor and because they came from within the ex-president’s own political party.Searing testimony increases odds of charges against Trump, experts sayRead more“I certainly think the president is guilty of knowing what he did, seditious conspiracy, being involved in … pressuring the [justice department], vice-president [Mike Pence], et cetera,” Kinzinger said. “Obviously, you know, we’re not a criminal charges committee, so I want to be careful in specifically using that language, but I think what we’re presenting before the American people certainly would rise to a level of criminal involvement by a president.”Kinzinger also said that Trump’s actions, as portrayed by the committee, show he “definitely” failed to maintain his oath to uphold the US constitution.“The oath has to matter here,” Kinzinger said. “Your personal demand to stand for the constitution has to matter.”Just three days earlier, the third of six scheduled hearings by the committee examining the Capitol attack saw a former attorney to Pence recount how Trump unsuccessfully helped pressure Pence into unlawfully blocking the congressional certification of Biden’s win on the day of the riots.January 6 hearings make for gripping TV, but are voters paying attention? Read moreOne of the prongs of that plan involved sending fake pro-Trump electors from states that Biden to substitute electors pledged to Biden, which the justice department has been investigating for months now. Another prong, broadly, centered on Trump’s relentless but baseless claims that electoral fraudsters had stolen the race from him, even as his attorney general, William Barr, dismissed that argument as complete “bullshit”.Kinzinger said the only logical outcome to claims of a rigged presidential election was the mob of hundreds storming the Capitol – shortly after Trump urged his supports to “fight like hell” – in the attack to which a bipartisan Senate report connected seven deaths.The congressman added that there is more where that came from unless the country can “get a grip on telling people the truth” about things like valid election results, even when their preferred candidate lost.“There is violence in the future – I’m going to tell you,” said Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the nine-member select committee.As Kinzinger told This Week’s host George Stephanopoulos, the January 6 committee can’t file criminal charges against Trump. And the panel chairman, Mississippi congressman Bennie Thompson, said he doesn’t expect he and his colleagues to make a referral for charges to the justice department, which is the sole entity with the power to prosecute Trump.Nonetheless, Kinzinger’s comments on Sunday made clear what he and others on the committee think federal prosecutors should do even without a formal recommendation for charges.Pence himself, as of Sunday, hadn’t appeared at the January 6 hearings. But one of the Democrats on the select committee, Adam Schiff, said the panel hadn’t ruled out subpoenaing him to testify. Trump, for his part, has condemned the work of the January 6 committee as a “one-sided witch-hunt”.At a speech in Tennessee on Friday, he singled out Kinzinger for crying during another hearing last year about the Capitol attack.“This guy’s got a mental disorder,” Trump said of Kinzinger. “He cries. Every time this guy gets up to speak, he starts crying.”Kinzinger’s decision to go on the offensive against Trump – whom many Republicans still support vehemently – are not without peril. On Sunday, he recounted how someone had recently mailed to the congressman’s home a note threatening to execute him, his wife and their five-month-old son.“This should be a position where you can tell the hard truth, and unfortunately, my party has utterly failed the American people at truth,” Kinzinger said. “It makes me sad. But it’s a fact.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More