Eliana Willis

US women’s national team forward Megan Rapinoe described the supreme court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade as “sad and cruel”. The Supreme Court has ruled there is no constitutional right to abortion in the United States, upending the landmark Roe v Wade case from nearly 50 years ago. 
‘It will completely exacerbate so many of the existing inequalities that we have in our country. It doesn’t keep not one single person safer,’ she said

US supreme court overturns abortion rights, upending Roe v Wade
‘It’s important to fight’: US cities erupt in protest as Roe v Wade falls
The supreme court just overturned Roe v Wade – what happens next? More

Kamala Harris decried the supreme court’s decision to overturn the right to an abortion. She said: ‘Millions of women in America will go to bed tonight without access to the healthcare and reproductive care that they had this morning.’ The decision by the court’s conservative majority overturned the landmark Roe v Wade ruling and is expected to lead to abortion bans in roughly half of all US states

US supreme court overturns abortion rights, upending Roe v Wade More

Group aims to strip Fox News of ad revenue over ‘fueling next insurrection’Check My Ads targeting news channel website at a time when its prominent hosts are downplaying January 6 insurrection After two years which have seen Fox News lunge even further towards the right wing of US politics, the news channel may now start to suffer the consequences, with the launch of a campaign to strip the news channel’s Foxnews.com website of advertising revenue.Check My Ads, an organization run by two former marketing executives, launched its campaign to target Fox News in early June, accusing the news channel and its website of “working overtime to fuel the next insurrection”.More than 40,000 people signed up in the first five days, forming an increasingly powerful lobbying group which aims to get ad exchanges to drop Foxnews.com.The campaign comes at a time when prominent Fox News hosts are downplaying the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol in Washington DC as “a forgettably minor outbreak” of “mob violence”, continuing to dabble in election conspiracy theories, and have most recently begun to brand school teachers and drag performers as “groomers”.Check My Ads was founded by two marketing executives who have a deep understanding of how advertising appears on websites. Despite its record of dabbling in misinformation, adverts for companies like Walgreens and Optimum can still be found on Foxnews.com. The adverts are largely placed there, Atkin said, by ad exchanges, which handle the distribution of adverts for advertising agencies.“Foxnews.com benefits enormously from being a part of the global advertising society. Foxnews.com receives ads from blue chip brands, which gives incredible legitimacy to the lies that they are publishing. That brand equity is intrinsically valuable,” Atkin said.A number of large companies have already stopped advertising on the Fox News after various misdeeds by its TV hosts over the years. But ads for Walgreens and the like still pop up on the Fox News website, despite the obvious link between the two entities. Whereas viewers of the TV channel might see adverts for relatively little known companies, like Nutrisystem and Balance of Nature, visitors to the website see the names of big companies, which can suggest to the reader that this is a respected website.“When Fox is plugged into that ads supply chain, it gives them the legitimacy of a real news outlet, when in fact they are publishing disinformation regularly that leads to real-world violence.”In the two weeks following the 2020 election, Fox News cast doubt on, or pushed conspiracy theories about the result 774 times, according to Media Matters for America, a watchdog group. That helped to fuel anger among Donald Trump’s supporters – rage which came to the surface on 6 January, when hundreds of Trump’s adherents stormed the US Capitol.Since the Capitol attack, Fox News hosts have rubbished the idea that the storming of the building – done in an attempt to stop Joe Biden being declared president – was an insurrection. Fox News viewers have instead heard that it was a minor skirmish, one which may even have been orchestrated by the government.That’s why, Atkin said, Check My Ads is determined to trim the network’s wings.“Advertisers have been crystal clear that they do not want to sponsor violence. And we all saw what happened on January 6. It’s not just violence, this was the attempted overthrow of the government. This is world-scale political violence,” Atkin said.Ad exchanges vet certain websites before placing adverts on behalf of their clients. If a website meets their criteria – and the criteria often include statements that the website does not endorse or encourage harassment or bullying – then ads are placed on them.But the exchanges, Atkin said, are “not checking their inventory” thoroughly enough, and websites like Fox News are slipping through the cracks.Check My Ads’ campaign works by finding which ad exchanges are active on a given website, which is easy enough to do: typing https://www.foxnews.com/ads.txt brings up the list.The innovative part of Check My Ads is how the organization has set up a way for people to send swift, concise complaints to those ad exchanges. The organization sends out email templates to those who sign up, which they can send on to ad exchanges, flagging sites where the exchange has placed ads on sites which are incompatible with the exchanges’ stated policy.“The ad exchanges promise in their legal documentation in these policies that are available online to anyone: ‘We only work with premium publishers and we will never work with websites that publish election disinformation, the promotion of real world violence, all of these other things,” Atkin said.“That is providing a sense of false confidence to advertisers. Because as we know, these ad exchanges are still sending ads and money and data to the propaganda outlets that are doing our society the most harm, and who are the most brand unsafe.”In a statement, Fox News said: “Fox News Media strongly supports the first amendment and is proud to lead the industry in featuring more dissenting viewpoints on the major issues facing the country than our cable news competitors, which is why we attract the most politically diverse audience in television news.”The campaign isn’t going to financially cripple Fox News. Some 95% of Fox’s revenue comes from cable contracts, as opposed to advertising, NPR reported this year. But Atkin believes the campaign, as well as removing ads which lend legitimacy to Fox News, could also prevent Foxnews.com from collecting data on its users so that they can be later targeted with specific content – potentially anti-democratic content.Fox News is the most-watched cable news channel in the US, and is a huge opponent. But Check My Ads are hopeful that they have found a foolproof way to at least take away some of its power.“The fact is that the advertising industry, in general, has said one thing and it has done another,” she said.“We are opening the conversation up for everyone who wants to say enough is enough.”TopicsFox NewsAdvertisingTV newsTelevision industryUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

In the fifth round of hearings probing the ways in which US president Trump abused his powers to cajole the justice department into endorsing his false election claims, White House staffers give testimony identifying several Republican members of Congress who sought pardons. Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger said ‘the only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you’ve committed a crime’

Republicans who aided coup attempt sought blanket presidential pardons
‘More to come’: what the January 6 panel has revealed of Trump’s efforts to retain power More

Donald Trump relentlessly pressured top officials at the justice department to pursue groundless claims of voter fraud in an unsuccessful effort to cling to power, according to testimony the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection heard on Thursday. The testimony by former acting US deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue included a claim Trump urged him ‘to tell people that this was an illegal, corrupt election’.

January 6 panel calls Trump’s scheme a ‘power play’ that nearly succeeded More

Republicans who aided coup attempt sought blanket presidential pardonsMatt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ted Cruz among those who requested to be let off after attempting to overturn election results The Republicans Matt Gaetz and Mo Brooks sought a blanket pardon of members of Congress involved in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden through lies about electoral fraud, the House January 6 committee revealed on Thursday.A witness said Andy Biggs of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania also contacted the White House about securing pardons. The same witness, former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, said she heard Marjorie Taylor Greene, an extremist from Georgia, wanted a pardon too.Capitol attack panel details Trump’s pressure on DoJ to support fraud claimsRead moreThe committee displayed an email written by Brooks, of Alabama, on 11 January 2021, five days after the deadly attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters.Brooks, who delivered a fire-breathing speech at a rally before the Capitol riot, sought pre-emptive pardons for “every congressman and senator who voted to reject the electoral college vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania”.A total of 147 Republicans lodged such votes, even after the Capitol was stormed, an attack that endangered the life of the vice-president, Mike Pence, and to which a bipartisan Senate committee linked seven deaths.Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, potential rivals to Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, were among them.For the January 6 committee, the Illinois Republican Adam Kinzinger said Brooks “emailed the White House, quote, ‘pursuant to a request from Matt Gaetz [of Florida]’, requesting a pardon for Representative Gaetz, himself and unnamed others.“Witnesses told the select committee that the president considered offering pardons to a wide range of individuals connected to the president,” Kinzinger added.Jan 6 Committee reveals Mo Brooks emailed the White House requesting a pardon for Rep Matt Gaetz and “every Congressman and Senator who voted to reject the electoral college vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania” pic.twitter.com/try0PCsiIV— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) June 23, 2022
It has been widely reported that Trump allies sought January 6-related pardons before Trump left office, and that Trump considered offering pre-emptive pardons to himself and family members. He has repeatedly floated the idea of pardoning Capitol rioters should he return to power.The January 6 committee previously revealed that John Eastman, the law professor who pushed Pence to overturn election results, contacted Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, to ask if a pardon was possible.In testimony played on Thursday, Eric Herschmann, a Trump White House lawyer, said of Gaetz: “The general tone was, ‘We may get prosecuted because we were defensive of the president’s positions on these things.’“The pardon that he was discussing, requesting was as broad you could describe, from the beginning of time up until today, for any and all things.“He mentioned Nixon and I said Nixon’s pardon was never nearly that broad.”Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 over the Watergate scandal, involving political dirty tricks and their cover-up. He was pardoned by Gerald Ford, his successor in office.Barr feared Trump might not have left office had DoJ not debunked fraud claimsRead moreIn other testimony played on Thursday, Hutchinson, a former assistant to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said: “Mr Gaetz, Mr Brooks, I know both advocated for there to be a blanket pardon … pre-emptive pardons.“Mr Gaetz was personally pushing for a pardon … since early December. I’m not sure why. He reached out to me to ask if he could have a meeting with Mr Meadows about receiving a presidential pardon.”Hutchinson listed the other Republicans who requested pardons.On Twitter, Gaetz said: “The last Republican president to be sworn in without congressional Democrats objecting to electors was George HW Bush.” He did not immediately comment about the pardon revelations.Kinzinger said: “The only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you’ve committed a crime.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsTed CruzRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

Donald Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, thought Trump might have refused to leave office at all had the Department of Justice not immediately investigated and disproved his lies about electoral fraud in his defeat by Joe Biden.
‘I am not sure we would’ve had a transition at all,’ Barr said in startling video testimony played by the January 6 committee on Thursday.
The hearing, the fifth in a series set to extend into July, focused on Trump’s attempts to pressure the justice department to aid his attempt to overturn the election result – an attempt that culminated in the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021

Barr feared Trump might not have left office had DoJ not debunked fraud claims More

January 6 panel calls Trump’s scheme a ‘power play’ that nearly succeededEx-president launched a weeks-long campaign to strong arm the justice department into declaring the election corrupt02:02The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection said on Thursday that Donald Trump heaped immense pressure on top leaders at the justice department, engaging in a “power play to win at all costs” that nearly succeeded in overturning the will of the American people.Testifying at the committee’s fifth and final hearing of the month, three former justice department officials, recounted a dramatic Oval Office confrontation three days before the assault on the Capitol in which Trump contemplated replacing the agency’s acting head with an “completely incompetent” lower-level official who embraced his stolen election myth. Trump only relented, they said, when he was warned that there would be mass resignations at the department if he followed through with the plan.Barr feared Trump might not have left office had DoJ not debunked fraud claimsRead more“For the department to insert itself into the political process this way, I think, would have had grave consequences for the country,” said Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, to the committee on Capitol Hill. “It may very well have spiraled us into a constitutional crisis and I wanted to make sure that he understood the gravity of the situation.”That 3 January meeting was the culmination of a weeks-long pressure campaign by the president in which he attempted to strong arm the justice department into declaring the election corrupt.In a breach of longstanding guidelines meant to guard the agency’s independence, Jeffrey Rosen, the former acting attorney general told the committee Trump contacted him “virtually every day” to complain that he had not done enough to investigate voter fraud in the election.Opening the hearing, the panel’s chair, congressman Bennie Thompson, said Trump knew that the allegations of voter fraud were false, but nevertheless pressured the department to declare the election results tainted. After exhausting his legal options and being rebuffed by state and local elections officials, the panel said a desperate Trump turned to the justice department to falsely declare the election corrupt.“Donald Trump didn’t just want the justice department to investigate,” Thompson said. “He wanted the justice department to help legitimize his lies, to basically call the election corrupt.”In one of the near-daily conversations Trump had with the agency’s leader, Rosen told the president that the Department of Justice “can’t and won’t snap his fingers and change the outcome of an election”.“I don’t expect you to do that,” Trump snapped back, according to Donoghue, whose handwritten notes of the exchange were displayed on a large screen during the hearing. “Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the [Republican] Congressmen.”At the center of Thursday’s hearing was Jeff Clark, a department official who embraced Trump’s myth of a stolen election. At the urging of Republican congressman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Trump contemplated replacing Rosen with Clark, an environmental lawyer by trade.“What was his only qualification?” congressman Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican and member of the committee who led the questioning, asked rhetorically. “He would do whatever the president wanted him to do, including overthrowing a free and fair democratic election.”Clark’s audacious effort to bend the department to Trump’s will included a draft letter addressed to state officials in Georgia falsely asserting that the department had evidence of voter fraud and suggesting the state withdraw its certification of Biden’s victory in the state. He sent the letter to Rosen and Donoghue for their signature.Donoghue said the letter was so “extreme” and baseless he had to read it twice to grasp the gravity of what was being suggested. Both he and Rosen refused to sign it.In a videotaped deposition, Eric Herschmann, a lawyer in the White House counsel’s office, said Clark’s plan to subvert the 2020 election was “asinine”. Using expletives, he said he told Clark: “Congratulations, you just admitted your first step or act you’d take as attorney general would be committing a felony.”Tensions erupted on 3 January, when Clark told Rosen that Trump intended to replace him as the head of the department. White House call logs from that afternoon showed that the White House staff was already referring to Clark as the “acting attorney general”, the committee showed.Rosen, refusing to be fired by a subordinate, demanded a White House meeting. That night, Rosen, Donoghue, and Steven Engel, the former assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel, who also testified on Thursday, gathered in the Oval Office with Trump and top White House lawyers for a tense, hours-long meeting.Donoghue said Trump appeared ready to follow through with the plan to replace Rosen with someone who promised fealty. “What have I got to lose?” Donoghue recalled Trump saying. “A lot,” he replied. He and Engel walked Trump through the implications of such a dramatic shift, warning him that there would be mass resignations among senior officials. Donoghue said Engel told the president Clark would be “leading a graveyard”.“It was very strongly worded to the president that that would happen,” Donoghue said.Their warnings were ultimately persuasive and Trump relented. Before they left, Donoghue said Trump asked him what would happen to Clark. He explained that only Trump could fire him. Trump replied that he wouldn’t.The panel also revealed that several of Trump’s allies in Congress had requested pardons from the president in the days after the deadly assault on the Capitol. It displayed an email from congressman Mo Brooks in which the Alabama Republican asked the White House to consider a presidential pardon for himself and other congressional allies.In testimony, Trump aides said Republican congressmen Scott Perry of Pennsylvania; Matt Gaetz of Florida; Louie Gohmert of Texas and Andy Biggs of Arizona all requested “pre-emptive” pardons. All voted against certifying the results of the election in the hours after the riot.“The only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you’ve committed a crime,” Kinzinger said.The panel voted unanimously to hold Clark in contempt of Congress after he failed to cooperate with its investigation. He later appeared before the committee but Kinzinger said he asserted his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination more than 125 times.Just before the hearing began, it was revealed that federal investigators searched Clark’s home earlier this week, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly.In new testimony from the committee’s taped deposition with Bill Barr, the former attorney general, said he thought it was important for the department to investigate – and ultimately disprove – Trump’s false claims of voter fraud. Had it not, Barr said he shuddered to think what might have happened. “I’m not sure we would have had a transition at all.”The officials’ testimony on Thursday all bolstered Barr’s conclusion that the president’s claims of election fraud were “bullshit”. Among the outlandish claims Trump latched onto was a purported plot involving an Italian defense contractor who purportedly conspired with US intelligence to manipulate the vote count. In an email to Rosen, Donoghue called the conspiracy “pure insanity”.The committee is building the case that Trump was at the heart of the sprawling conspiracy that led to the violence on January 6 – a lie that has only metastasized in the months since a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol with pipes, bear spray and Confederate flags. Nine people died in the assault and its aftermath.Republicans who aided coup attempt sought blanket presidential pardonsRead moreThe committee said it would resume public hearings in July as part of its efforts to reveal in serial fashion what Thompson described as the “inner workings of what essentially was a political coup”.Future sessions are expected to detail how extremist groups like the Proud Boys planned the attack on Congress and how Trump failed to act to stop the violence once it erupted on 6 January.Concluding Thursday’s hearing, Kinzinger, one of Trump’s few Republican critics who is retiring at the end of his term, said Trump “was willing to sacrifice our republic to prolong his presidency”. He came close, Kinzinger said, but ultimately failed thanks to the “good people” who put their oath of office first.But, he warned: “I’m still worried that not enough has changed to prevent this from happening again.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More