Evelyn Reynolds

Swaths of the US are baking under record-breaking heat, yet some lawmakers are still attempting to block any spending to fight the climate crisis, advocates say.Nearly 90 million Americans are facing heat alerts this week, including in Las Vegas, Nevada, which may break its all-time hottest temperature record; Phoenix, Arizona, which will probably break its streak of consecutive days of temperatures over 110F; and parts of Florida, where a marine heatwave has pushed up water temperatures off the coast to levels normally found in hot tubs.Stifling heat is also blanketing parts of Texas, which for weeks earlier this summer sweltered under a record-shattering heat dome which one analysis found was made five times more likely by the climate crisis. Despite this, the state’s Republican senator Ted Cruz is rallying his fellow GOP members of the Senate commerce committee to circulate a memo attacking climate measures in Biden’s proposed 2024 budget, Fox News reported on Wednesday.The memo specifically calls on Republican members of the Senate appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee to reject spending provisions focused on climate resilience and environmental justice efforts for scientific agencies. In one example, the memo objects to a Nasa request to fund its Sustainable Flight National Partnership, which seeks to help zero out planet-warming pollution from aviation.“If the goal is to make imperceptible changes in CO2 emissions as part of the administration’s zealous effort to micromanage global temperatures, then Nasa should abandon such wasted mental energy. Nasa should not become a plaything for anti-fossil fuel environmentalists,” the memo says.It should come as no surprise that Cruz, who has accepted massive donations from oil and gas companies, is defending the fossil fuel industry’s interests, said Allie Rosenbluth, US program co-manager at the environmental advocacy and research non-profit Oil Change International.“What is really devastating for communities who are experiencing extreme heat, wildfires, flooding and drought across the US is that because of these bought-out politicians, they are not getting the support that they need to be resilient in the face of climate impacts at the federal level,” she said.House Republicans are fighting climate spending, too. To avoid a government shutdown, lawmakers must pass a slew of spending bills before current funding expires on 30 September. But Republican members of the GOP-controlled House appropriations committee are slipping in anti-climate provisions, which aim to block renewable energy funding and imperil federal efforts to tackle the climate crisis, into their spending bill drafts.Last week, the Clean Budget Coalition – a group of non-profits such as the League of Conservation Voters, Environmental Defense Fund and Public Citizen – identified at least 17 of these “climate poison pills” in appropriation bill drafts. Among them are amendments that would prevent the federal government from purchasing electric vehicles or building EV charging stations; block funding for the Green Climate Fund, which helps developing countries meet their climate goals under the Paris agreement; and prohibit funding for a Department of Energy initiative aiming to send 40% of the overall benefits of certain federal investments to flow to disadvantaged communities.Elizabeth Gore, senior vice-president for political affairs at Environmental Defense Fund, said these proposals will impede lawmakers’ chance to reach a budget deal before their fall deadline.“This is not a starting point for any reasonable negotiations,” she said in a release.Early last month, President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling. David Shadburn, senior government affairs advocate at the League of Conservation Voters, said that from his perspective, that agreement didn’t include nearly enough government funding, but now, Republicans are trying to cut funding even more.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We wanted to see more spending. We thought the deal was insufficient,” he said. “But a deal is a deal and yet what Republicans immediately did was go back on it.”All Republican representatives can submit proposals to the House appropriations committee and no member is required to sign off on specific proposals. So it’s not clear who is responsible for each “poison pill”. But Shadburn noted that not a single Republican member of the House voted for the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which included the most climate spending of any bill in US history and that Republican representatives have also repeatedly attempted to overturn the bill’s climate provisions.“The entire House Republican conference is on the record here … [including] those representing places that are seeing extreme weather,” he said.House Republicans also recently proposed an array of amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act aiming to limit the Pentagon’s deployment of electric vehicles, Shadburn said.One of them, which would force the defense department to terminate contracts for electric non-combat vehicles, came from Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, whose state is preparing for triple-digit heat this week. Another, which would authorize soldiers and civilians at the US army Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona to use fossil fuel-powered vehicles, came from Representative Paul Gosar from Arizona, where heat last Friday was comparable to “some of the worst heatwaves this area has ever seen”, according to the National Weather Service.“In addition to the extreme heat in the south-west and elsewhere, there’s massive flooding in Vermont and New York … yet the House this week is spending their time debating just how many climate attacks they should include in the defense authorization,” said Shadburn. “It just shows how unserious they are about doing anything significant to tackle the climate crisis.” More

Russia’s foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin has said that he and his CIA counterpart discussed the shortlived mutiny a week earlier by Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and “what to do with Ukraine” in a phone call late last month.Sergei Naryshkin, head of the SVR foreign intelligence service, told Russia’s TASS new agency on Wednesday that Bill Burns had raised “the events of June 24” – when fighters from the Wagner mercenary group took control of a southern Russian city and advanced towards Moscow before reaching a deal with the Kremlin to end the revolt.But he said that for most of the call, lasting about an hour, “we considered and discussed what to do with Ukraine”.The CIA declined to comment on his remarks.The New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported on 30 June that William Burns had called Naryshkin to assure the Kremlin that the United States had no role in the Wagner revolt.Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia in February 2022, says other countries should not negotiate its future on its behalf, and the United States has repeatedly backed this principle, described as “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine”.Burns and Naryshkin have maintained a line of communication since the start of the Ukraine war at a time when other direct contacts between Moscow and Washington are at a minimum, with relations at their lowest point since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.Last November, the two spy chiefs held a rare face-to-face meeting in Ankara, after which US officials insisted that Burns was “not conducting negotiations of any kind” and “not discussing settlement of the war in Ukraine” – after a leak from the Kremlin in the aftermath of Ukraine’s recapture of Kherson.On Wednesday Naryshkin told TASS that negotiations on the war would become possible at some point. The agency did not specify whether this was part of his conversation with Burns.“It’s natural that negotiations will be possible sooner or later, because any conflict, including armed conflict, ends by negotiations, but the conditions for these still need to ripen,” TASS quoted him as saying.Asked about the report, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters: “Today, someone like Naryshkin has no leverage over how this war will end.”Podolyak said Russia was losing the war and there could be no negotiations with people like Naryshkin.“This Russian elite perceives events completely inadequately, so there is nothing to talk about with them.”Ukraine, which launched a long-expected counteroffensive last month, has said it will not enter talks at this point as this could effectively freeze the situation on the battlefield, where Russia has seized more than a sixth of its territory. More

From 5h agoIn his testimony to the House judiciary committee, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, decried conspiracy theories promoted by rightwing figures such as former Fox News host Tucker Carlson as well as some Republican lawmakers that the bureau’s agents were involved in the January 6 insurrection.Wray’s comments came in an exchange with Democratic congressman Steve Cohen, who asked Wray whether Ray Epps, a man Carlson and others have claimed was a government agent and provoked the storming of the US Capitol, worked for the FBI.“No,” Wray replied. “I will say this notion that somehow the violence at the Capitol on January 6 was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources and agents is ludicrous and is a disservice to our brave, hardworking, dedicated men and women.”Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that Epps was considering suing Fox News for Carlson’s comments about him. The conservative network earlier this year agreed to pay $787.5m to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by voting equipment manufacturer Dominion over misinformation Fox personalities spread about its business’s involvement in the 2020 election.FBI director Christopher Wray wrapped up a lengthy day of testimony before the House judiciary committee, which was as riven by partisanship as ever. Democrats defended the Donald Trump-appointed FBI chief, while Republicans tried to get him to admit misconduct or weigh in on various conspiracy theories. In the course of the six-hour hearing, Wray denied any involvement by the bureau in the January 6 attack, jousted with two rightwing lawmakers over allegations of corruption against Joe Biden and his family, and a memo warning about “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology”, and at one point tried to remind a GOP lawmaker of his own ties to the party.Here’s what else has happened today:
Ray Epps, who was repeatedly accused by Tucker Carlson of being a federal agent and instigating the January 6 attack, sued the former Fox News host and the network. In his testimony, Wray denied that Epps worked for the bureau.
A top aide to conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas took money from several lawyers with business before the court, apparently in connection to a Christmas party, a Guardian investigation has found.
Inflation continued to cool in the United States last month, good news both for Biden and the Federal Reserve’s quest to halt the price increases without driving the economy into a recession.
House speaker Kevin McCarthy made it clear he was onboard with his fellow Republicans’ efforts to hold the FBI and justice department to account.
House Republicans may release more January 6 surveillance footage in the weeks to come.
Politico reports that House Republicans plan to turn over security camera footage recorded on January 6 to media outlets sometime before Congress takes its annual recess in August:Earlier this year, GOP House speaker Kevin McCarthy handed over some of the footage to Tucker Carlson, then a primetime Fox News host who had repeatedly downplayed the severity of the insurrection. McCarthy later vowed to allow other media outlets to see the footage:Christopher Wray was appointed FBI leader in the wake of one of the biggest upheavals of the early part of Donald Trump’s presidency: his firing of then-director James Comey.Wray seemed like a solid GOP-aligned choice to take the reins of the bureau. He was a former assistant attorney general under Republican president George W Bush, and at the time of his nomination in 2017 was working for a law firm that advised Trump’s family trust and donated to Republican candidates.Six years later, Wray couldn’t help but seem a little aghast in his hearing before the judiciary committee at being accused by Republican lawmakers – many of whom were endorsees of Trump, the president who gave him his job – of being biased against the right.He let his dismay show, albeit briefly, in the clip below:The FBI is making extra efforts to ensure director Christopher Wray’s answers in the ongoing House judiciary committee hearing are not lost in the partisan fray.Its official Twitter account is sending out snippets of his responses to some of the questions. Here is what he had to say about allegations that the FBI was investigating parents at school board meetings:And here is Wray’s response to calls from some Republicans to reduce the bureau’s funding:Ray Epps, an Arizona man who twice voted for Donald Trump, has sued the conservative Fox News network over statements made by host Tucker Carlson on his now-canceled show accusing him of playing a role in the January 6 insurrection, the New York Times report.The suit, in which Carlson is also named, is the latest legal trouble facing Fox, whose personalities acted as major conduits for conspiracy theories about Joe Biden’s 2020 election win and the attack on the Capitol. Earlier this year, it agreed to pay voting equipment firm Dominion $787.5m to settle a suit over statements made about its business by Fox’s hosts and anchors.In his ongoing testimony before the House judiciary committee, FBI director Christopher Wray was asked about Epps, and denied that he was working for the bureau.Here’s more on the lawsuit, from the Times:
Ray Epps, the man at the center of a widespread conspiracy theory about the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday accusing Fox News and its former host Tucker Carlson of defamation for promoting a “fantastical story” that Mr. Epps was an undercover government agent who instigated the violence at the Capitol as a way to disparage then-President Trump and his supporters.
The complaint was filed in Superior Court in Delaware, where Fox recently agreed to a $787.5 million settlement in a separate defamation case brought against the network by Dominion Voting Systems to combat claims that the company had helped to rig the 2020 election against Mr. Trump.
“Just as Fox had focused on voting machine companies when falsely claiming a rigged election, Fox knew it needed a scapegoat for January 6th,” the complaint says. “It settled on Ray Epps and began promoting the lie that Epps was a federal agent who incited the attack on the Capitol.”
Fox News did not immediately respond when asked for comment. But the network moved quickly to have the venue changed to Federal District Court in Wilmington, Del.
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who is now running to be the 2024 Republican presidential candidate, has come out in support of Christopher Wray, saying he had “done a very good job”.Speaking to Fox News, Christie criticised attacks on the FBI director during the judiciary committee hearing and dismissed them as “theater and people trying to raise money for campaigns”.You can watch his remarks here:All-expenses-paid trips, book promotions and property selling.Some of the US supreme court’s conservative judges are mired in ethical controversies that have prompted members of Congress to call for not only testimony from Chief Justice John Roberts, but also for formal accountability, for what they say is democracy’s sake.Senate Democrats this week have called for a vote on a bill to establish a code of conduct for the supreme court justices similar to those that other government agencies must follow. The bill, unlikely to pass in a divided Congress, would demand the court create a code within 180 days and establish rules on recusals related to potential conflicts of interest and disclosure of gifts and travel.The ethical concerns involving court justices have continued to mount. Most recently, the Guardian reported that lawyers who have conducted business before the US supreme court have paid an aide to Clarence Thomas money via Venmo.Here’s a rundown of the ethical controversies supreme court justices have been involved in.FBI director Christopher Wray’s testimony before the House judiciary committee is ongoing. It’s been a generally partisan hearing, with Democrats defending the Donald Trump-appointed FBI chief, and Republicans trying to get him to admit misconduct or weigh in on various conspiracy theories. So far, Wray has denied any involvement by the bureau in the January 6 attack, and had heated back and forths with two rightwing lawmakers over allegations of corruption against Joe Biden and his family, and a memo warning about “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology”. It’s not over yet, so we’ll let you know what more may come out of the encounter.Here’s what else has happened so far today:
A top aide to conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas took money from several lawyers with business before the court, apparently in connection to a Christmas party, a Guardian investigation has found.
Inflation continued to cool in the United States last month, good news both for Biden and the Federal Reserve’s quest to halt the price increases without driving the economy into a recession.
House speaker Kevin McCarthy made it clear he was onboard with his fellow Republicans’ efforts to hold the FBI and justice department to account.
Donald Trump’s legal entanglements were raised once again in the House judiciary committee hearing, this time by Democratic congresswoman Madeleine Dean.She wanted to know if the FBI director, Christopher Wray, thought it was a good idea to store classified documents in a bathroom or ballroom – which is where federal investigators determined Trump kept secret material at his Mar-a-Lago resort (as pictured above).“I want to use and examine the case of the Mar-a-Lago documents because it’s been used by the former president as a pitying moment, as though he has somehow been victimized,” Dean said. “Director Wray, a ballroom, a bathroom, a bedroom, are those appropriate places to store classified, confidential information?”Wray replied: “I don’t want to be commenting on the pending case, but I will say that there are specific rules about where to store classified information and that those need to be stored in a SCIF, a secure compartmentalized information facility, and in my experience, ballrooms, bathrooms and bedrooms are not SCIFs.”See the exchange here:Let’s step away from the House judiciary committee hearing with FBI director Christopher Wray for a moment to focus on another corner of the America justice system: the supreme court. The Guardian’s Stephanie Kirchgaessner has uncovered new details about the relationship between conservative justice Clarence Thomas and lawyers with interests before the court:Several lawyers who have had business before the supreme court, including one who successfully argued to end race-conscious admissions at universities, paid money to a top aide to Justice Clarence Thomas, according to the aide’s Venmo transactions. The payments appear to have been made in connection to Thomas’s 2019 Christmas party.The payments to Rajan Vasisht, who served as Thomas’s aide from July 2019 to July 2021, seem to underscore the close ties between Thomas, who is embroiled in ethics scandals following a series of revelations about his relationship with a wealthy billionaire donor, and certain senior Washington lawyers who argue cases and have other business in front of the justice.Vasisht’s Venmo account – which was public prior to requesting comment for this article and is no longer – show that he received seven payments in November and December 2019 from lawyers who previously served as Thomas legal clerks. The amount of the payments is not disclosed, but the purpose of each payment is listed as either “Christmas party”, “Thomas Christmas Party”, “CT Christmas Party” or “CT Xmas party”, in an apparent reference to the justice’s initials.Republicans have been particularly interested in getting answers from Christopher Wray about a memo from the FBI’s field office in Richmond, Virginia warning about “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology”.That’s an antisemitic set of ideas adhered to only by a minority of American Catholics, the Southern Poverty Law Center says, but the GOP has decried the memo as an overreach by the bureau that amounts to religious oppression.The judiciary committee’s chair, Jim Jordan, had a heated exchange with Wray about the memo, which you can watch below:After taking control of the House earlier this year, Republicans convened a subcommittee tasked with uncovering the “weaponization of the federal government”. Chaired by Jim Jordan, an acolyte of Donald Trump and promoter of many of his conspiracy theories, the committee has so far this year held hearings examining whether the Biden administration has stifled free speech and taking testimony from FBI whistleblowers, among other subjects.Democratic congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee asked the FBI director, Christopher Wray, about the allegation at the heart of the subcommittee.“Republican members of this committee have spent much time of this Congress claiming that various aspects of the US government have been weaponized against the American people. Director Ray, are you or your staff or auxiliaries weaponizing the FBI against the American people?” Lee asked.“Absolutely not,” he replied. More

House Republicans grilled the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Christopher Wray, at a frequently contentious committee hearing on Wednesday. While Republicans accused the FBI of political bias in its handling of investigations into Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, Democrats derided the attacks on the bureau as a smokescreen driven by conspiracy theories.The Republican chair of the House judiciary committee, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, kicked off the hearing with a litany of complaints about the FBI’s alleged targeting of rightwing leaders and activists, lamenting the supposed “double standard that exists now in our justice system”. Jordan suggested that the allegedly misguided leadership of Wray, a Trump appointee, could jeopardize government funding for the FBI’s planned new headquarters.“I hope [Democrats] will work with us in the appropriations process to stop the weaponization of the government against the American people,” Jordan said in his opening statement.The top Democrat on the committee, Representative Jerry Nadler of New York, countered Jordan’s allegations by accusing Republicans of acting as Trump’s attack dog at the expense of Americans’ safety. Last month, Trump was indicted on 37 federal counts, including 31 violations of the Espionage Act, over allegations that he intentionally withheld classified documents from federal authorities.“Republicans may want to downplay Trump’s behavior and blame the FBI for his downfall. But no matter what they say, Trump risked the safety and security of the United States to remove those documents from the White House, then lied to the government instead of returning them,” Nadler said. “Donald Trump must be held accountable, and attempts to shield him from the consequences of his own actions are both transparent and despicable.”A White House spokesperson, Ian Sams, echoed that sentiment. “Extreme House Republicans have decided that the only law enforcement they like is law enforcement that suits their own partisan political agenda,” he said. “Instead of backing the blue, they’re attacking the blue – going after the FBI, federal prosecutors and other law enforcement professionals with political stunts to try to get themselves attention on the far right.”Several progressives on the committee noted their own concerns about the FBI’s methods of surveillance and data collection, particularly of Black Lives Matter protesters, and they assailed Republicans for focusing so much of their energy on defending Trump rather than on fortifying Americans’ civil liberties.“These are the real oversight issues. They matter to my district, where there is real and justified skepticism of whether the civil rights of Black and brown people are adequately protected,” said Representative Cori Bush, a Democrat of Missouri. “What my district is not concerned about is the Republican conspiracy theories and selective targeting of law enforcement agencies who try to hold their twice-impeached, twice-indicted cult leader Donald Trump accountable.”As House Democrats emphasized the need to hold Trump accountable, Republicans’ questioning of Wray repeatedly turned to Hunter Biden. The president’s son reached a deal with federal prosecutors last month to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges while entering a pre-trial diversion agreement on a separate felony gun charge. The deal, which will result in the dismissal of the gun charge if Hunter Biden meets certain conditions, will allow the president’s son to avoid jail time.Representative Matt Gaetz, a Republican of Florida, asked Wray whether he was “protecting the Bidens” from criminal liability. “Absolutely not,” Wray replied. “The FBI does not, has no interest in protecting anyone politically.”Representative Chip Roy, a Republican of Texas, later derided the FBI as “tyrannical” over the 2020 arrest of anti-abortion activist Mark Houck, claiming the bureau’s agents “stormed” Houck’s house.“I could not disagree more with your description of the FBI as tyrannical,” Wray said. “They did not storm his house. They came to his door. They knocked on his door and identified themselves. They asked him to exit. He did without incident.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWray’s status as a registered Republican who was appointed by Trump and served in the George W Bush administration did not prevent committee members from painting the FBI as an unjust agency on a crusade against rightwing priorities.“The idea that I’m biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me, given my own personal background,” Wray told the committee.Although much of the hearing focused on the investigations into Trump and Hunter Biden, Wray made a point to remind lawmakers of the FBI’s extensive efforts to combat violent crime and drug trafficking. Those efforts could be curtailed by the FBI funding cuts threatened by some House Republicans, Democrats warned.“The work the men and women of the FBI do to protect the American people goes way beyond the one or two investigations that seem to capture all the headlines,” Wray said.Wray himself has been the subject of many headlines in recent months. In May, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia, introduced articles of impeachment against Wray because of his handling of the Hunter Biden investigation, among other matters.Wray has also recently found himself in the crosshairs of Representative James Comer, the Republican chair of the House oversight committee. Last month, Comer threatened to hold Wray in contempt of Congress over his refusal to allow the committee to review a document outlining unsubstantiated bribery allegations against Joe Biden and his son. The contempt vote was ultimately called off after Wray agreed to allow committee members to review a redacted version of the document.The Wednesday hearing underscored that Wray’s troubles are not going away anytime soon. More

All-expenses-paid trips, book promotions and property selling.Some of the US supreme court’s conservative judges are mired in ethical controversies that have prompted members of Congress to call for not only testimony from Chief Justice John Roberts, but also for formal accountability, for what they say is democracy’s sake.Senate Democrats this week have called for a vote on a bill to establish a code of conduct for the supreme court justices similar to those that other government agencies must follow. The bill, unlikely to pass in a divided Congress, would demand the court create a code within 180 days and establish rules on recusals related to potential conflicts of interest and disclosure of gifts and travel.The ethical concerns involving court justices have continued to mount. Most recently, the Guardian reported that lawyers who have conducted business before the US supreme court have paid an aide to Clarence Thomas money via Venmo.Here’s a rundown of the ethical controversies supreme court justices have been involved in.Real estate transactionsClarence Thomas’s friend Harlan Crow, the Texas Republican billionaire mega-donor, bought three properties that the conservative justice and his family owned, including Thomas’s childhood home in Savannah, Georgia, where Thomas’s mother still lives. Crow made significant renovations, cleared blight and let Thomas’s mother live there rent-free. The cost was more than $100,000 but was not disclosed. Crow has said the purchase was made to eventually turn the home into a museum for Thomas.Justice Neil Gorsuch sold a 40-acre property he co-owned in rural Colorado after he became a justice, Politico reported. Brian Duffy, the chief executive of Greenberg Traurig, which has had more than 20 cases before the supreme court, bought the property in 2017. Gorsuch disclosed the sale and reportedly made between $250,000 and $500,000, but he left blank the buyer’s identity.School supportCrow paid thousands of dollars in private school tuition for two boarding schools that Thomas’s great-nephew attended, ProPublica reported. The transaction was not disclosed.An investigation by the Associated Press revealed how colleges and universities attract supreme court justices to campuses as a way to generate donations for institutions, raising ethical concerns around a court that, unlike other government agencies, does not have a formal code of conduct. The visits have resulted in all-expenses-paid teaching opportunities and book sales. Government aides from other branches such as Congress and the presidency are barred from using government resources for personal gain.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMoney to partnersThe Republican activist Leonard Leo paid Thomas’s wife, Ginni, $25,000 for polling services in January 2012, telling the Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway to make “no mention of Ginni”, the Washington Post reported. It’s unclear whether that is a direct ethical concern for Clarence Thomas but it may constitute a conflict of interest.Ginni, who also attended the January 6 attack at the Capitol, reportedly exchanged text messages with the then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, encouraging him to support then president Donald Trump’s false election fraud claims aimed at subverting the results of his 2020 electoral defeat. The Judicial Education Project, a law firm tied to Leo, filed a brief to the supreme court in the landmark case that eventually gutted the Voting Rights Act not long after the payment was made.Roberts’ wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, ran a legal recruiting firm that raised ethical concerns since she made millions of dollars in commissions from placing lawyers at firms, some of which appeared before the court. The New York Times obtained a letter from a former colleague of Roberts to the US justice department and Congress inquiring about the connection.Luxury tripsFor more than two decades, Thomas accepted millions of dollars’ worth of luxury trips on private planes and “superyachts”, and vacations from his friend Crow without reporting them on financial disclosure forms, ProPublica reported. Crow has said that he did not attempt to influence Thomas politically or legally nor did he discuss pending supreme court cases. Thomas said he was told he was not required to disclose the trips. Notably, a company linked to Crow was involved in at least one case before the US supreme court, Bloomberg reported. Thomas did not recuse himself from the case.Justice Samuel Alito reportedly took a private jet to an all-expenses-covered fishing trip to Alaska, paid for by the hedge fund billionaire and conservative mega-donor Paul Singer. NPR reports that Singer has been involved in 10 appeals to the supreme court. In an unprecedented move, Alito defended himself in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, declaring he did not have to recuse himself and followed what he “understood to be standard practice”. More

Farmers Insurance became the latest property insurer to pull out of Florida on Tuesday despite repeated efforts by the state’s legislature and its Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, to try to calm the volatile market that is making home ownership less affordable.Farmers said in a statement that the decision was based on risk exposure in the hurricane-prone state.We’d like to hear from people living in Florida who have been struggling to get insurance for their properties, and how this has been affecting their finances and plans for the future. More

The governor of Michigan signed legislation Tuesday that aims to eventually end child marriage in that state, raising the minimum age at which one can get married to 18 years old under all circumstances.The state previously allowed 16- and 17-year-olds to wed with written permission from a parent or legal guardian. Minors under 16 were able to get married with judicial approval.But several laws signed by Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer effectively stop the practice, the Detroit Free Press reports.“Keeping Michiganders – especially young women – safe and healthy is a top priority, and these bills will take long overdue steps to protect individuals from abuse,” Whitmer, a Democrat, said in a statement to the Free Press.Whitmer signed legislation banning marriage with minors even with parental permission. Children who are married are also no longer considered emancipated, and parents and guardians can now apply for the annulment of a marriage involving a child, the Free Press added.But it was unclear when the legislation setting the minimum age to marry at 18 would take effect. That is the case after Whitmer did not sign three related bills that would have allowed the new minimum age to marry to go into effect.The bills passed Michigan’s legislature with large bipartisan support, though they drew some opposition, according to the Detroit News. Five Michigan Republicans opposed the bills in Michigan’s House. One Republican senator attempted to amend the bill to include a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, the Michigan Advance.Michigan is only the 10th state to ban child marriages, the 19th reports, citing data from Unchained At Last, a nonprofit seeking to end forced and child marriages. The practice remains legal in almost 80% of the US.Nevada has the most child marriages per capita, followed by Idaho and Arkansas, Unchained at Last data show.Almost 300,000 minors in the US were married between 2000 and 2018, with 5,259 child marriages in Michigan. The majority of child marriages are between minor girls, aged 16 and 17, and a man who is at least four years older.Fraidy Reiss, founder and executive director of Unchained at Last, has worked to pass similar bans in other states. Reiss called the ban in Michigan a “victory”.“On the one hand, it’s shocking that in the year 2023, ‘only’ 10 states have banned child marriages, but when you consider that just a few years ago child marriage was legal in all 50 states, it’s pretty significant,” Reiss said.Reiss noted that advocates have difficulty getting bans passed due to legislators not prioritizing issues involving girls.“Almost all of the children who marry in the United States are girls married to adult men,” said Reiss, adding that 95% of child marriages in Michigan were girls wed to adult men.“They’re girls. They’re not even old enough to vote. They’re not a constituency that legislators prioritize.”Reiss said that legislators are “romanticizing this human rights abuse”, given a “lack of understanding” on the issue. Some opposing the bill in Michigan described child marriage as “17-year-old high school sweethearts getting married”, he said.“We’re talking about a legal set up that allows a single parent to enter a child of any age, as young as a toddler or infant, into any marriage, without any input required from the child, and without any legal recourse for a child who doesn’t want to marry,” Reiss added.Married minors also aren’t able to enter domestic violence shelters, initiate divorce, or gain legal representation given the limited rights of children, according to Reiss.“This is a huge victory for girls in Michigan and for anyone who cares about them,” Reiss said. “This is something that was almost exclusively [affecting] girls and destroying almost every aspect of their lives.” More

The US Senate campaign of Montana Republican Tim Sheehy has been forced on to the defensive following the publication of misogynistic and racist social media posts he is alleged to have written.Sheehy is one of his party’s leading hopes to help it take control of the Senate in next year’s elections, and he is running for the Republican nomination to challenge Jon Tester, seen as one of the most vulnerable Democrats seeking re-election.The surfacing of the old Facebook posts threatens to damage the reputation of the former US Navy Seal, an ally of Donald Trump who describes himself on a campaign fundraising website as a “businessman, a husband, a father, and a humble servant of God”.The revelations and screenshots of the posts were published on Tuesday night by Insider, which said Sheehy’s old Facebook profile – since taken down – was “full of questionable photos”, including “lewd photos of women, a caricature of Middle Eastern people, and homoerotic jokes”.One post features a photo allegedly uploaded by Sheehy of a friend drinking from a bottle lodged between a woman’s breasts, and a comment from him which reads in part: “I don’t think her boobs are that big.”In another, Sheehy appears dressed in a white robe and keffiyeh, alongside friends dressed as Iraq’s former president Saddam Hussein, who was executed in 2006 for crimes against humanity.A third features a woman identified as Sheehy’s now-wife Carmen in a stars-and-stripes bikini, firing what appears to be an automatic weapon. “She’s not a skank … she’s a very fit defender of Americas [sic] freedom obviously,” he wrote in an accompanying comment.The posts, the outlet said, were made between 2006 and 2008, when Sheehy was a student at separate army and navy military training academies, and were “much of what one might expect from an adolescent posting on a burgeoning social media network in the 2000s”.The Guardian has reached out to Sheehy’s campaign for comment.In a statement to Insider, Sheehy spokesperson Katie Martin did not deny he had made the posts but called the story “harassment of a war hero over some goofing around as a kid”.Sheehy, who founded his own aerospace company when he became “medically separated” from the military after being wounded during a tour of duty in Afghanistan, was twice decorated for “valor in combat”.Martin also blamed “Democrats” for circulating the screenshots and accused them of hypocrisy over an episode reported last month by Fox News in which Tester is alleged to have urinated in a field in front of a journalist.“Neither he nor his staff have yet to explain why a grown man at 66 years old would find that behavior appropriate,” Martin told the Insider.Sheehy launched his campaign last month and faces a “competitive primary” for his party’s Senate nomination, according to the Montana Free Press.Among his likely opponents, Politico said, is conservative state lawmaker Matt Rosendale, a “rabble rouser” who lost to Tester in 2018 by almost 4% in a state Trump won handily in the 2016 and 2020 presidential races.Democrats have accused Sheehy, a millionaire businessman with roots in Minnesota, as an “out of state transplant” recruited by Republican leadership specifically to challenge Tester.“Jon Tester has farm equipment that’s been in Montana longer than Tim Sheehy,” Monica Robinson, a spokesperson for the state Democratic party, told the Free Press. More