US Politics

From 4h agoThe president’s son had been expected to formally agree with federal prosecutors on a resolution to two tax charges and one gun charge brought against him. Instead, he pleaded not guilty to the counts, after a judge raised issues with the deal.Here’s the New York Times with an explanation of the surprise turn of events:
Judge Maryellen Noreika has delayed a decision on whether to accept the plea agreement between federal prosecutors and Hunter Biden — demanding that the two sides make changes in the deal clarifying her role and insert language that limits the broad immunity from prosecution offered to Biden on his business dealings. Biden’s lawyers estimated it would take about two weeks.
After a grueling three-hour hearing, Hunter Biden entered a plea of not guilty on the tax charges, which he will reverse if the two sides redo their agreement to the judge’s satisfaction.
This blog has closed. Read more about the Hunter Biden story here:Hunter Biden went to a federal courthouse in Wilmington, Delaware to formally accept an agreement with prosecutors, which was expected to resolve the long-running investigations into his conduct. But in a surprise move, the presiding judge turned down the deal and ordered the two parties to make changes, delaying the resolution of the case. It was also revealed that federal investigators are continuing a separate inquiry into his business activities – a fact welcomed by the GOP, which has been looking to prove that Joe Biden and his son are corrupt. Back in Washington DC, Republican lawmakers aggressively questioned homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who may soon be the target of impeachment, while elsewhere, lawmakers tried to determine if the US government has found evidence of aliens.Here’s what else happened today:
Mayorkas defended his handling of the southern border from criticism by the GOP, saying his security strategy “is working”.
The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates to their highest level in 22 years in their ongoing campaign to stop inflation.
Rudy Giuliani admitted that statements he made about two Georgia election workers alleging they perpetrated fraud in the 2020 election were false.
At the last minute, a top House Republican tried to derail the plea agreement federal prosecutors reached with Hunter Biden.
Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, briefly appeared unable to speak at a press conference. He had suffered a concussion in April.
As chair of the House oversight committee, James Comer has led the campaign of investigations into Joe Biden’s administration, and particularly his son Hunter Biden.In a statement released after the surprise in today’s court hearing, which resulted in a federal judge rejecting, for now, a plea deal between Hunter and federal prosecutors, Comer said the agreement should be taken off the table for good:
Today District Judge Noreika did the right thing by refusing to rubberstamp Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal. But let’s be clear: Hunter’s sweetheart plea deal belongs in the trash. Last week we heard from two credible IRS whistleblowers about the Department of Justice’s politicization and misconduct in the Biden criminal investigation. Today, the Department of Justice revealed Hunter Biden is under investigation for being a foreign agent.
The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly has more on today’s developments in Hunter Biden’s long-running legal troubles:Reporters on the scene shared more details about the health scare involving Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican.CNN says an aide to the leader downplayed the difficulty he suddenly experienced in speaking to the press earlier today, nothing he later took their questions:Senate Republican conference chair John Barrasso later said he was “concerned” about McConnell, but did not think his health was deteriorating:We have just passed hour five of homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s appearance before the House judiciary committee, where, as the Guardian’s Mary Yang and Joan E Greve report, Republican lawmakers have repeatedly made clear they believe he is failing at his job and should be impeached. Here is their rundown of the hearing so far:Republican lawmakers grilled Alejandro Mayorkas, the embattled US secretary of homeland security, during a House judiciary committee oversight hearing on Wednesday.Mayorkas, who has been the target of a GOP-led congressional investigation over his handling of the US-Mexico border, faced a series of tough questions regarding his tenure as head of the department, which broadly oversees US immigration and border policies. The hearing came as some House Republicans have threatened to impeach Mayorkas, the first Latino and immigrant to head the Department of Homeland Security, over his alleged mismanagement of the border.Mayorkas offered a pre-emptive rebuttal to Republicans’ attacks in his opening statement, noting that unlawful crossings at the southern border have decreased by more than half compared with the peak before the end of the pandemic-era policy known as Title 42.The health of senate minority leader Mitch McConnell is back under scrutiny after an alarming moment during a Republican press conference this afternoon in which he abruptly stopped speaking and had to be led away.Video of the incident was posted to Twitter by NBC congressional reporter Frank Thorp, who said the Kentucky senator, 81, “appeared to be unable to restart talking”.McConnell was hospitalized in April after suffering concussion when he tripped and fell during a private dinner at a hotel in Washington DC. In 2019, he tripped and fell at his home in Kentucky, suffering a shoulder fracture.Thorp said that McConnell was led off by his friend and colleague John Barrasso, Republican senator for Wyoming, and later returned to watch the conclusion of the press conference.Asked what had happened, McConnell reportedly said: “I’m fine”.The US Federal Reserve raised interest rates to a 22-year high on Wednesday as it continued its fight against rising inflation, my colleague Dominic Rushe writes.The decision to increase rates by a quarter-percentage point to a range of 5.25% to 5.5% comes after the Fed paused its rate-rising cycle last month.US inflation has now declined for 12 straight months and is currently running at an annual rate of 3%, down from over 9% in June last year. The Fed has raised rates from near zero in an attempt to cool the economy and bring prices down.The US economy has remained robust despite the 11 rate rises the Fed has now implemented – its most aggressive rate-rising cycle in 40 years. Hiring has slowed but remains strong and the unemployment rate is still close to a record low.Read the full report here:Republicans are very pleased that a federal judge rejected Hunter Biden’s plea deal today.Here’s the view from an attorney for the GOP-controlled House committee that made a last-minute attempt to disrupt the deal:The Biden administration has generally avoided the topic of Hunter Biden, and at her ongoing briefing to reporters, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre preempted all questions about the president’s son:The president’s son had been expected to formally agree with federal prosecutors on a resolution to two tax charges and one gun charge brought against him. Instead, he pleaded not guilty to the counts, after a judge raised issues with the deal.Here’s the New York Times with an explanation of the surprise turn of events:
Judge Maryellen Noreika has delayed a decision on whether to accept the plea agreement between federal prosecutors and Hunter Biden — demanding that the two sides make changes in the deal clarifying her role and insert language that limits the broad immunity from prosecution offered to Biden on his business dealings. Biden’s lawyers estimated it would take about two weeks.
After a grueling three-hour hearing, Hunter Biden entered a plea of not guilty on the tax charges, which he will reverse if the two sides redo their agreement to the judge’s satisfaction.
Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty to federal tax and gun charges, after a plea deal that was intended to resolve the allegations fell apart in court, Reuters reports.The plea came after the federal judge presiding over the hearing in Wilmington, Delaware said she needed more time to evaluate the deal reached by the president’s son with prosecutors. Prior to the hearing, Biden had agreed to admit guilt to the tax charges, and avoid the gun charge as long as he satisfied certain conditions as part of the deal with the government. More

In scenes that felt reminiscent of a science-fiction movie, the US Congress held a public hearing on claims the government is covering up its knowledge of UFOs.Unsurprisingly, the hearing generated huge interest in the US and around the world as it heard from three key witnesses, including David Grusch, a whistleblower former intelligence official who in June claimed the US has possession of “intact and partially intact” alien vehicles.UFOs have become a high-profile news story in recent years. The US military says it is actively trying to investigate the small number of sightings for which there is no obvious explanation.As the hearing unfolded there were no new revelations about aliens, but there were startling allegations from witnesses, and a general sense that a cover-up exists somewhere in the US government – as well as skepticism that that has anything to do with “little green men”.Here are the key takeaways:Claims of a cover-upThe US government conducted a “multi-decade” program which collected, and attempted to reverse-engineer, crashed UFOs, David Grusch told the hearing. Grusch, who led analysis of unexplained anomalous phenomena (UAP) within a US Department of Defense agency until 2023, claimed he had been denied access to secret government UFO programs, said he has faced “very brutal” retaliation as a result of his allegations. He claimed he had knowledge of “people who have been harmed or injured” in the course of government efforts to conceal UFO information.Hints of violenceCongressman Tim Burchett asked Grusch if he has any personal knowledge of people who have been harmed or injured in efforts to cover up or conceal extraterrestrial technology. Grusch replied: “Yes.”Burchett asked Grusch if he has heard of anyone being murdered. The former intelligence official answered: “I directed people with that knowledge to the appropriate authorities.”Pentagon denialsBut the Pentagon has denied Grusch’s claims of a cover-up. In a statement, a defense department spokesperson said investigators had not discovered “any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently”.Other witnesses, other claimsOther witnesses at the hearing were David Fravor, a former navy commander who recalled seeing a strange object in the sky while on a training mission in 2004. Ryan Graves, a retired navy pilot who has since founded Americans for Safe Aerospace, a UAP non-profit, claimed that he saw UAP off the Atlantic coast “every day for at least a couple years”.The sightings were “not rare or isolated” and were being witnessed by military aircrews and commercial pilots “whose lives depend on accurate identification”, Graves said.Graves said UAP objects had been detected “essentially where all navy operations are being conducted across the world”. Asked if there were any common characteristics to the UAPs that have been cited by different pilots, Graves says sightings were primarily of “dark grey or black cubes inside of clear sphere” where “the apex or tips of the cube were touching the inside of the sphere”.Doubts lingerNot everyone was convinced by Grusch’s testimony. At times, he appeared less forthcoming under oath than he had been in media interviews.In the interview with NewsNation in June, Grusch claimed the government had “very large, like a football-field kind of size” alien craft, while he told Le Parisien, a French newspaper, that the US had possession of a “bell-like craft” which Benito Mussolini’s government had recovered in northern Italy in 1933.On Wednesday, he was reluctant to go into details on those claims, citing issues of security.Garrett Graff, a journalist and historian who is writing a book on the government’s hunt for UFOs, tweeted: “Very interesting to me that Dave Grusch is unwilling to state and repeat under oath at the #UFOHearings the most explosive – and outlandish – of his claims from his NewsNation interview. He seems to be very carefully dancing around repeating them.”Legislation to comeIn his closing remarks, Republican congressman Glenn Grothman described the hearing as “illuminating” and said he believed legislation would follow.Grothman, the chair of the House subcommittee on national security, the border and foreign affairs, said: “Obviously, I think several of us are going to look forward to getting some answers in a more confidential setting. I assume some legislation will come out of this.” More

Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, pleaded not guilty to tax charges on Wednesday, after a federal judge in Delaware said she needed more time to review a proposed deal with federal prosecutors to avoid a felony gun charge.Biden’s plea came after what was expected to be a routine hearing turned into a three-hour affair featuring hushed negotiations between lawyers and pointed questions from the US district court judge, Maryellen Noreika.“I cannot accept the plea agreement today,” the Trump appointee said, asking the parties to brief her on why she should accept it.Biden’s lawyers and prosecutors may yet persuade Noreika to approve the deal as it was first negotiated, or to alter it to a form she can accept.But the news also means the saga will drag on even as Joe Biden campaigns for re-election in 2024, in a possible rematch with Donald Trump, who faces his own extensive legal woes.Hunter Biden was accused of failing to pay taxes on more than $1.5m in income in 2017 and 2018 despite owing more than $100,000. He is charged in a separate case with unlawfully owning a firearm while addicted to and using a controlled substance.Biden has worked as a lobbyist, lawyer, banker, consultant and artist. He has long admitted struggling with addiction, particularly since the death in 2015 of his brother Beau Biden, a former attorney general of Delaware, the state Joe Biden represented as a senator for 35 years.Hunter Biden published a confessional memoir, Beautiful Things, in 2021. It was followed by a similar volume, If We Break, written by his ex-wife, Katherine Buhle Biden.On Wednesday, as reported by the New York Times, Hunter Biden told Judge Noreika he first sought treatment for alcohol addiction in 2003 and eventually sought treatment for drug addiction too. He had not been in treatment since late 2018, he said.Such struggles have been painful for the Biden family. At the White House on Wednesday, the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said the president supported his son, adding: “Hunter Biden is a private citizen and this was a personal matter for him.”Nonetheless, Hunter Biden’s personal struggles have added political fuel to Republican claims that he has leveraged his father’s political power for gain in dealings in Ukraine and China.Investigations led by David Weiss, the US attorney for Delaware, a Trump appointee, have not turned up any evidence to support such claims. Nonetheless, in June, news of Hunter Biden’s plea deal sparked accusations of favorable treatment.Republicans are seeking revenge for two impeachments of Trump; weapons to fire in response to what they claim to be political prosecutions of the former president; and material with which to paint Joe Biden as inherently corrupt as an election looms.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s first impeachment concerned attempts to gain from Ukraine political dirt on rivals including the Bidens. Hunter Biden’s relationship with a Ukrainian company, Burisma, and any links between that relationship and his father, remains at the heart of Republican speculation, allegations and invective.Earlier this week, Kevin McCarthy, the House speaker, told Fox News investigations centered on Hunter Biden were “rising to the level of impeachment inquiry” against his father.Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, McCarthy said: “All I’m saying is … where’s the truth? You’ve got to get to the bottom of the truth. And the only way Congress can do that is go to impeachment inquiry that gives Republicans and Democrats the ability to get all the information.”Last month, Christopher Clark, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, said: “I know Hunter believes it is important to take responsibility for these mistakes he made during a period of turmoil and addiction in his life. He looks forward to continuing his recovery and moving forward.”Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report More

The setting was inevitable, and the personalities predictable.On a Fox News interview (where else?) conducted by Sean Hannity (who else?), the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, floated the idea on Monday that House Republicans should move toward impeaching President Biden.Unhampered by the lack of evidence of presidential malfeasance, McCarthy took the leap that the Republican party’s right wing has long been craving.“This is rising to the level of impeachment inquiry,” he told his eager media helper, one of Donald Trump’s staunchest allies.So what are the purported reasons for an impeachment inquiry? Both involve Hunter Biden, the president’s undoubtedly troubled and troubling son.The first claim is that Joe Biden, while vice-president, participated in his son’s influence peddling. That Hunter did engage in influence peddling for personal profit is a fair claim. Did he suggest that his father, the veep, was willing to go to bat for foreign companies or governments? Not proven but not hard to believe. But that is a far cry from impeachable wrongdoing by Biden himself. (Hunter Biden never worked in the White House, let’s recall, unlike certain opportunistic Trump family members.)Trump’s more incendiary claims that Joe Biden “received millions of dollars” from foreign sources appears to be made up out of whole cloth; the House oversight committee has been investigating Biden for months with little to show for it.The second claim is that Hunter Biden got a sweetheart deal from the current justice department, resulting in his recent guilty pleas on misdemeanor charges of tax evasion. Although two former Internal Revenue Service representatives told the House committee that they thought a justice department investigation was hamstrung because of political interference, and that Hunter Biden committed felony-level offenses, no evidence of Joe Biden’s malfeasance has emerged. In fact, in an unusual move, the justice department is allowing David Weiss, the Trump-appointed US attorney who led the Hunter Biden investigation, to testify – presumably to counter the notion that the Biden administration hobbled his investigation.As for the Republicans’ excited touting of a potential witness who would somehow produce proof of the president’s corruption, that went up in flames when it was revealed that the would-be witness himself was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2022 (long before his present accusations surfaced) of brokering arms deals with China and Iran. Oh, yes, and he’s a fugitive from justice.In the wake of that mess, the Maryland Democrat and committee member Jamie Raskin was blunt: “This Inspector Clouseau-style quest for something that doesn’t exist has turned our committee into a theater of the absurd, an exercise in futility and embarrassment.”Even the former Trump insider, the Ukrainian-born American businessman Lev Parnas, once assigned to find wrongdoing by the Bidens in Ukraine, agreed. In a letter to the chairman of the House committee, Parnas wrote that “there has never been any factual evidence, only conspiracy theories” about such claims.Stop the charade, he urged. “The narrative you are seeking for this investigation has been proven false many times over by a wide array of respected sources. There is simply no merit to investigating this matter any further.”But McCarthy and company have no intention of taking that advice. They are, after all, playing to the Trump-controlled base of a Republican party that has gone off the rails – with the dedicated help of the rightwing media and the incessant normalization of the mainstream press.And they are playing to a powerful audience of one: the twice-impeached Trump himself, frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.Meanwhile, things are – from the perspective of their boss – going a little too well for incumbent Biden.Inflation is under control. Unemployment is extremely low. Real wages are up.“Doesn’t it seem like everything’s breaking Biden’s way lately?” Nate Cohn of the New York Times asked recently, even while noting that Biden’s approval numbers remain low. They have ticked up recently and they may rise more as the reality of an improved economy penetrates public opinion.Such good news for Trump’s biggest political adversary is unacceptable. Thus, the desperate measure.The “impeach Biden” movement should be seen for what it is: a maneuver to distract from Trump’s own legal troubles, as investigations mount over election meddling, misuse of classified documents and his role in fomenting the January 6 insurrection.It’s also an effort to confuse those Americans who have trouble sorting fact from fiction.“If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer,” the great social critic, Hannah Arendt, warned in the 1950s.“And with such a people,” she added ominously, “you can then do what you please.”That’s what is scary about McCarthy’s move this week. The Republican effort to impeach Biden is desperate and misguided – but that doesn’t mean it won’t be politically effective.
Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

Each year for the last 26 years – nearly his entire tenure in the US Congress – Earl Blumenauer has advocated for a law that would utterly transform US agriculture.Nearly every time, though, his proposals have been shut down. Even so, he persists.Blumenauer, a Democrat from Oregon, wants to see a version of US agriculture that centers people, animals and the environment, rather than the large-scale, energy-intensive commodity crop farms that currently receive billions of dollars in subsidies. In effect, he has a completely different vision for how 40% of the country’s land looks and works.“Every year is an uphill battle. We’re up against entrenched, wealthy, strong interests,” said Blumenauer, known for his signature bowtie, circular glasses and bicycle enamel pin. He’s the spitting image of a progressive environmentalist and doesn’t shy from discussing some of agriculture’s most divisive issues.But he remains optimistic and steadfast in his vision for the American food system. Now more than ever, he feels momentum and support surrounding the future of farming and food production. People care about where their food comes from and what kind of impact their food is having on the climate, he says.Blumenauer’s newest plan, the Food and Farm Act, was introduced earlier this year, as an alternative to the farm bill – the package of food and agricultural policies passed every five years that is up for renewal this fall. His proposal would redirect billions of dollars away from subsidies for commodity farms towards programs that support small farmers, climate-friendly agriculture and increasing healthy food access.The bill also prioritizes food waste management and animal welfare – areas that have been completely neglected by previous iterations of the farm bill.“We simply pay too much to the wrong people, to grow the wrong foods the wrong way, in the wrong places,” Blumenauer said.While unlikely to pass, Blumenauer’s bill, which has been introduced and referred to the agriculture committee, has won endorsements from prominent food writers such as Marion Nestle and Mark Bittman, as well as dozens of environmental, animal welfare and food justice organizations – representing the growing desire for change in US agriculture.At the heart of Blumenauer’s bill is farm subsidy reform. In the most recent iteration of the farm bill, approximately $63bn was dedicated to subsidies. These mostly benefited the largest farms and agribusinesses, with 70% of subsidy payments going to just 10% of farms, most of which produce commodity crops like soy, corn and wheat, which are often used to make animal feed, processed foods and even fuel for cars.This means that taxpayers are subsidizing processed food, but not the fruits and vegetables you buy in the grocery store – and that commodity farms have little incentive to switch to more sustainable modes of production or more nutritious foods that people will actually eat.“Most of us don’t even know that the public dollars initially designed to protect farmers and keep supply managed to feed a hungry nation in the Great Depression are now reinforcing wealthy agribusiness corporations to grow commodities that are not even meant for human consumption,” said Joshua Sewell, a policy analyst at the nonpartisan watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.Farmers that grow what are called “specialty crops”, which include fruits and vegetables, usually don’t qualify for subsidies. Most of the farms excluded from subsidy payments are those using sustainable growing methods that preserve soil and benefit the climate in the long term.“It’s just maddening to me that the men and women who are working hard producing food, and particularly those that are doing so in a sustainable fashion, or who want to be involved with organics, they’re shortchanged,” Blumenauer said.The Food and Farm Act also proposes limiting the total payment a farmer or agribusiness can receive to $125,000, and narrows eligibility, so that only farmers with annual incomes less than $400,000 would be eligible. (Previously farmers who made less than $900,000 were eligible, and could receive more than $1m in subsidies.)In developing the bill, Blumenauer spent the last five years interviewing and engaging with agricultural producers in Oregon, a state that mostly produces milk, grass seed and wheat. He asked about their needs and wants, what’s working for them and what’s not. He always asks the same question: “What would a farm bill look like if it was just for you?”He found that many farmers and ranchers want to see a redirection of resources from the largest producers to small-scale farmers.“There is a pretty strong consensus that we’re not meeting the needs of farmers and ranchers and we’re not meeting the needs of the American public,” Blumenauer said.Blumenauer’s bill also considers agriculture’s impact on the environment.“Agriculture is one of the most environmentally destructive activities,” Blumenauer said. “There is an increasing awareness of how much carbon is produced and how much carbon we could save and sequester by making relatively modest changes in agricultural practices.”Many of the 2018 farm bill’s conservation programs, including the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), pay money to the largest agricultural operations, even though their practices are often harmful to the environment, explains Sophie Ackoff, farm bill campaign director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Large producers are paid to make their operations more sustainable; however, much of that funding has been used for things like land clearing and road building, which provide little value to conservation.In 2019, 10% of the program’s funding went to Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), which have negative impacts on water quality, animal welfare and human health.Factory farming and animal agriculture contribute nearly 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and previous farm bills haven’t acknowledged the impact of factory farms on the climate, says Alexandra Bookis of Farm Sanctuary.“As a system, it has a direct impact on the climate crisis that we haven’t addressed head on,” she said.Blumenauer’s bill would instead end all payments to CAFOs and factory farms, as well as ensure more funding goes toward sustainable farming practices and operations that “demonstrably improve the quality of the environment”. It also mandates that any farm receiving a subsidy payment must comply with certain environmental standards.Nutrition assistance and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) is a point of political contention every farm bill cycle, as the title accounts for nearly 80% of the farm bill’s budget. In May, Republicans proposed expanding work requirements for recipients of Snap, which would make it more difficult for people experiencing food insecurity to qualify for the program.Blumenauer’s bill would not only expand Snap’s funding and eligibility, but it would also provide more funding for local food systems in urban and rural food deserts, as well as increase fresh fruit and vegetable consumption in schools.“It’s a win for people on food assistance, but also farmers selling locally. So many of the farmers I’ve worked with get into it because they want to feed their communities, they don’t want to just sell really expensive food,” Ackoff said.A significant portion of the bill is also dedicated to supporting new and beginning farmers – who often face barriers to entry, like lack of capital. It’s an area of untapped potential, and many young farmers are eager to grow food to feed their communities, they just need the resources to do so, Blumenauer says.“Frankly, these are appeals that really touch American citizens,” Blumenauer said. “The support for family farms, for resiliency, access for younger people – these are themes that are extraordinarily popular, and very important.” More

The extraordinary accusation that the US government is harboring alien space craft is set to be examined in a congressional public hearing in Washington on Wednesday, as a number of American elected officials appear more receptive than ever before to the idea that extraterrestrials are real.The House oversight committee will hear from David Grusch, a former intelligence official who claims the US has possession of “intact and partially intact” alien vehicles. Grusch, who led analysis of unexplained anomalous phenomena (UAP) within a US Department of Defense agency until 2023, has also suggested the US has collected “dead pilots”.Grusch’s allegation that the federal government was hiding this evidence of extraterrestrials from Congress sparked a firestorm in June, prompting the Republican-led oversight committee to launch an immediate investigation.Since then the intrigue around what evidence the government has, or doesn’t have, around UFOs has only intensified.Last week Tim Burchett, a Republican congressman from Tennessee who is co-leading the UFO investigation, said the US had evidence of technology that “defies all of our laws of physics”, and angrily railed against a “cover-up” by military officials. A bipartisan group of senators also waded into the discourse, when they proposed new legislation to collect and distribute documents on “unidentified anomalous phenomena”.Other witnesses at the hearing are David Fravor, a former navy commander who reported seeing a strange object in the sky while on a training mission in 2004, and Ryan Graves, a retired navy pilot who has claimed that he saw unidentified aerial phenomena – the term preferred to UFO by some experts – off the Atlantic coast “every day for at least a couple years”.It is Grusch, however, who will be the main draw.In June Grusch prompted headlines around the world when he alleged the US had operated a crash retrieval program which had recovered downed alien craft.He claimed in an interview with the Debrief that when he tried to investigate the program – as he had been charged to do in his role at the Department of Defense – he was prevented from doing so, and filed a whistleblower complaint.The oversight committee announced its investigation into Grusch’s claims a day later, and appears to have run into hurdles of its own.Last week Burchett said he and his co-investigator Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican congresswoman from Florida, had been “stonewalled” by federal officials when asking about UFOs, and prevented from accessing some “information to prove that they do exist”.“We’ve had a heck of a lot of pushback about this hearing. There are a lot of people who don’t want this to come to light,” Burchett said.It is unclear whether new information will be revealed during Wednesday’s hearing, but it seems Burchett, during the course of his investigation, has found enough evidence to be convinced that extraterrestrials exist.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn an appearance on the Event Horizon podcast in early July, Burchett claimed alien craft possess technology that could “turn us into a charcoal briquette”, and claimed that the US has been hiding evidence of UFOs since 1947.Asked if had seen “compelling evidence” that the US was seeing things in the sky “that might not be of this earth”, Burchett replied: “Oh, 100%. 100%. No question.”For all the excitement and inevitable media speculation, some have cautioned against reading too much into what we might hear.Grusch has not seen the alleged alien craft himself – he says his claims are based on “extensive interviews with high-level intelligence officials” – and skeptics have noted that accusations that the government is hiding information on UFOs are nothing new.“The story aligns with a lot of similar stories that have played out, going back to the 1980s and 1970s, that together allege that the US government has kept an incredible secret, the literal most extraordinary secret that mankind could have, for not just weeks or months, but years and decades, with no meaningful leak or documentary evidence to ever come forward,” Garrett Graff, a journalist and historian who is writing a book on the government’s hunt for UFOs, told the Guardian in June.“I think when you look at the government’s ability to keep secret other really important secrets, there’s a lot of reason to doubt the capability of the government to do that.” More

A House of Representatives committee is set to hold an eagerly-awaited hearing on UFOs on Wednesday, which is expected to see remarkable claims regarding extraterrestrial life repeated in the most high-profile setting yet.David Grusch, a whistleblower former intelligence official who in June claimed the US has possession of “intact and partially intact” alien vehicles, is among the witnesses slated to appear, and will repeat his allegations in front of a seemingly supportive line-up of congressmen and women.Both Tim Burchett and Anna Paulina Luna, the Republican representatives who are leading the oversight committee’s investigation into UFOs, appear receptive to Grusch’s claims. In early July, Burchett declared that alien craft possess technology that could “turn us into a charcoal briquette”, and added that the US was “100%” seeing things in the sky “that might not be of this earth”.How did we get here?In June, Grusch, a former intelligence official, shocked people in the US and beyond when he claimed the US government has possession of “intact and partially intact” alien vehicles.Grusch, who led analysis of unexplained anomalous phenomena (UAP) within a US Department of Defense agency until 2023, alleged in a series of interviews that the government and defense contractors had been recovering fragments of non-human craft, and in some cases entire craft, for decades.Some of those craft were “very large, like a football field kind of size”, Grusch told NewsNation. He added that there had been “malevolent events” connected to UFOs.Grusch has not seen the alien craft himself, but said in an interview with the Debrief that his claims are based on “extensive interviews with high-level intelligence officials”.Wednesday’s hearing was sparked by Grusch’s allegations that information on these alien vehicles is being illegally withheld from Congress. Grusch said the government had a crash retrieval program which had collected downed UFO craft, and that his investigation into that program was stymied.That prompted the House oversight committee to order an investigation and hearing into what the government knows, or doesn’t know, about UFOs.Which witnesses will appear at the hearing?The star turn will be Grusch himself, and he will be joined by David Fravor, a former navy commander who reported seeing a strange object in the sky while on a training mission in 2004.Ryan Graves, a retired navy pilot who in 2021 told the 60 Minutes news show he had seen unidentified aerial phenomena off the Atlantic coast “every day for at least a couple years”, will also appear.Has there been a smooth path to this hearing?Not really. In fact, Burchett gave a furious press briefing on Thursday, when he alleged that the investigation into Grusch’s claims had been “stonewalled” by federal officials.“We’ve had a heck of a lot of pushback about this hearing. There are a lot of people who don’t want this to come to light,” Burchett said. “We’re gonna get to the bottom of it, dadgummit. Whatever the truth may be. We’re done with the cover-up.”After Grusch initially aired his claims, the US defense department told NewsNation it has “not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of any extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently”.Will we get proof of UFOs?It seems unlikely, but the hearing is likely to raise questions. We can expect to hear Grusch give a detailed version of his allegations regarding what the government knows about UFOs, and potentially more claims of evidence of aliens.We might hear new information, too. Since the oversight committee began its investigation Burchett, without naming his sources, has not been shy in claiming that the US has proof of extraterrestrials.On the Event Horizon podcast, Burchett was asked if had seen “compelling evidence” that the US was seeing things in the sky “that might not be of this earth”.“Oh, 100%. 100%. No question,” he said.Burchett has also said the US has evidence of technology that “defies all of our laws of physics”, and speculated that the extraterrestrial craft could be dangerous.“If they’re out there, they’re out there, and if they have this kind of technology, then they could turn us into a charcoal briquette,” Burchett said. More

Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr has said that he should have been “more careful” in making his recent false remarks about the “ethnic targeting” of the Covid pandemic.At a campaign debate in New York on Tuesday night, Kennedy sought to put the accusation of antisemitism that has engulfed his campaign behind him. But he stopped short of retracting his false claim that coronavirus had been targeted to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people from the impact of the disease.“I should have been more careful about what I said because I know anything I say will be distorted and weaponised against me,” he said.Speaking at a presidential campaign event hosted by the celebrity rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Kennedy said the charge of antisemitism had hurt him personally. “I have a thick skin, but the charge of antisemitism is one that cuts me, it hurts me. I haven’t said an antisemitic word in my life.”Kennedy’s bid for the White House has been contentious from the outset, given his embrace of virulent conspiracy theories that promote vaccine hesitancy. A political watchdog, the Congressional Integrity Project, recently released a report that set the candidate’s disputed views on Covid against years of antisemitic, racist and xenophobic remarks which it called “horrific” and “beyond the pale”. The report said that his promotion of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories had “deadly real world consequences”.On Tuesday, Kennedy insisted that the barrage of criticism that he has faced in the past week was itself an attempt to silence his long-shot bid for the White House. He portrayed himself as the target of what he called an “infrastructure” that was set on destroying his campaign.“There’s a way to censor people through targeted character assassination – you use vile accusations to marginalise them, and that is the kind of censorship I’m now dealing with,” he said.Kennedy is the nephew of the assassinated president John F Kennedy, and son and namesake of Robert F Kennedy who was also assassinated, while he was running for the presidency in 1968. He is challenging Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination next year.Until the antisemitism furore erupted, Kennedy had been gaining more traction than many observers had expected. In some polls he was attracting up to 20% among Democratic voters.His campaign stumbled after Kennedy told reporters at a press dinner this month that Covid had been “ethnically targeted” at Caucasians and Black people, while Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people had greater immunity. The false claim was enthusiastically embraced by neo-Nazi groups, while being condemned by scientists and Jewish organizations.Critics pointed out that his remarks echoed antisemitic tropes that circulated widely during the pandemic which portrayed coronavirus as a global Jewish plot.Members of Kennedy’s own family denounced him for his “deplorable and untruthful” comments. Jack Schlossberg, a grandson of President Kennedy, posted an online video in which he called his cousin’s campaign “an embarrassment”, and Kennedy’s sister Kerry Kennedy and brother Joseph Kennedy II also unleashed harsh criticism.In trying to counter the charges of antisemitism on Tuesday night, Kennedy merely succeeded in doubling down on the false suggestion that China orchestrated the epidemic. He said there was no evidence the virus had been engineered, “and in any case it would not have been engineered by Jews – most of the experiments were in China, in Wuhan”.Hours before Kennedy appeared on stage with Boteach, the candidate was forced to find a new venue for the debate after the original host, the New York Society for Ethical Culture, cancelled the booking. Kennedy accused the society of bowing to pressure from Biden, which he said amounted to “political censorship”.The society responded with a tart statement that said Kennedy’s event had been “inconsistent” with its values, adding that no outside party had influenced the decision.Kennedy went on to make a lengthy speech in which he expressed his support for the state of Israel against claims that it was practising apartheid against the Palestinian people. “A major piece of my campaign will be explaining to Americans why that is wrong and making the case for Israel.”Since the antisemitism controversy exploded, Boteach has rallied to Kennedy’s side. The rabbi said he disagreed with the candidate’s views on vaccines – he has had four Covid vaccinations, he said – but dismissed the charge of antisemitism against him as a “disgusting, offensive lie”. More