US Politics

Onslaught of new abortion restrictions looms in reddest of statesNew state legislative sessions likely to bring fresh efforts to restrict, penalize or altogether ban the procedure In Nebraska, a total abortion ban could be on the horizon. In Florida, the gestational limit for abortions could drop from 15 weeks to 12. Elsewhere, lawmakers have abortion pills in their sights.When Roe v Wade fell, most states were no longer in legislative session, meaning the term during which they usually write and pass bills had ended. In January, state legislatures will reconvene in an entirely new reality, one where conservative lawmakers are no longer constrained by the constitutional right to abortion once assured by Roe.Googling abortion? Your details aren’t as private as you thinkRead moreThe midterm elections brought victories for abortion rights in a number of states. But in others, politics are on the side of anti-abortion advocates. In those reddest of states, the new state legislative sessions are likely to bring a fresh onslaught of efforts to restrict, penalize or altogether ban abortion.Katie Glenn, the state policy director at Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, confirms the group’s top priority in 2023 will be reducing the gestational age for legal abortion, alongside bringing new outright bans. Abortion is currently banned in 13 states.Exactly how restrictive those bans will be remains to be seen, with conservatives across the country embroiled in conflicts over which exceptions – if any – should be allowed for abortion. “Exceptions in the case of rape and incest, we realise, are sometimes a necessary political reality. And we would not block a bill or oppose a bill that would prevent 95% of abortions,” explains Glenn.In some states, anti-abortion advocates previously stymied by Democrats now have room to maneuver since the midterms, which brought some conservative wins. In 2022, progressive members of Nebraska’s legislature filibustered a ban proposed by Republicans, effectively killing it. But lawmakers say that the party no longer has the votes to block an abortion ban. Meanwhile, in states where abortion bans have been mired in lengthy court proceedings, Republican majorities could pass more stringent laws when the session starts.In Iowa, for example, a six-week ban has been held up in court since 2019. With the legislature reconvening on 9 January, it could choose to pass a new ban rather than waiting for the courts. That would be helped by the fact that, just before Roe fell, Iowa’s state supreme court ruled there is no constitutionalright to abortion in the state. With the midterms solidifying conservative majorities in both chambers, that clears the path toward a tougher ban (though Republicans in the state have said they will discuss next steps only after the court resolves the lawsuit over the six-week ban). Similarly, a six-week ban in Georgia that was recently reinstated by the state supreme court could pave the way for new restrictions when the legislature convenes, considering that Georgia’s governor, state house and state senate are all under Republican control. And in Florida, where the GOP clinched supermajorities in both chambers, legislators have indicated an interest in further limiting abortion, lowering the gestational limit from 15 to 12 weeks.Any legislation in Florida ultimately depends on its Republican governor, Ron DeSantis. DeSantis has grown quiet on the issue as bans have increasingly proven unpopular, and since he is weighing up a 2024 presidential bid, he may hold off.Nor does Republican control over state governments elsewhere necessarily guarantee new restrictions. In some states, consensus has been hard to come by in a GOP increasingly mired by internal divisions.In South Carolina, for example, several attempts to pass an abortion ban in special session in 2022 failed despite a strong Republican majority.Lawmakers were at odds over how far a ban should go, with some supporting an exception for young rape victims, or in cases where there would be no chance of the fetus surviving outside the womb. Ultimately, those differences proved insurmountable: neither side budged, and none of the proposed bans moved forward. A separate six-week ban is making its way through state courts, and abortion in the state remains legal up until 22 weeks.Targeting medication abortionSince Roe fell, requests for medication that can induce a miscarriage have shot up, and medication abortion now accounts for more than half of all abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute.Conservatives are increasingly concerned with how to enforce abortion bans in a climate where people can access pills online and manage their own abortions. Medication abortion is approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and considered very safe in the first trimester. In Oklahoma, lawmakers have asked the state attorney general to clarify whether self-managed abortion through pills violates the law. Introducing in-person screening requirements is another way to make abortion medication harder to access, especially in states without bans. For example, a Kansas law tried to ban providers from prescribing for medication abortion throughtelehealth. That law was shot down by a judge last month.Restricting telemedicine is one route anti-abortion advocates will take to target medication abortion this year, says Glenn, of SBA Pro-Life America.Students for Life America, another anti-abortion group, intends to go after medication abortion through environmental laws, through bills that would require fetal tissue to be treated as medical waste, curtailing the ability for people to manage their abortions at home. A petition to that effect has already been filed at the federal level with the Food and Drug Administration. Criminalizing abortionStates that ban abortion typically impose criminal penalties on providers who violate bans, but exempt – at least formally – the person actually seeking the abortion. Far-right groups have advocated for an end to that exemption, but their efforts have so far proved politically untenable: in Louisiana, a bill looking to bring murder charges against people who end their own pregnancies failed to pass over the summer, with most Republicans finding it too extreme.Abortion rights advocates are bracing themselves for further such efforts, including bills to criminalize out-of-state travel for abortion – an effort attempted in 2022 by Missouri, without success. “Over a dozen states that put abortion bans in effect in 2022 are states with trifectas that are hostile to abortion rights. In those states that have been the most rabidly anti-abortion, we expect to see a next generation of measures that either remove the exemptions in the current law, or increase the penalties or the enforcement mechanisms” to ban abortions, says Jessica Arons, senior policy counsel for the ACLU.They are also watching efforts to widen the net to penalize those providing assistance to people seeking abortions, including employers. Other legislation already filed in Texas ahead of the new legislative sessionincludes a bill that would count a fetus as a person in the HOV lane; another that would limit tax subsidies for businesses providing support for employees seeking abortions; and legislation that would make it harder for prosecutors to refuse to enforce abortion bans. Bolstered protections in blue statesAmid the barrage of restrictions, other states have made moves to bolster protections for abortion rights. In the midterms, Michigan, Vermont and California protected abortion in their state constitutions. And throughout the country, there are moves to pass and strengthen so-called “shield laws” to protect providers caring for patients from states with bans. “People are looking at those shield laws to see if there are any protections for abortion funds, for example,” explains the Guttmacher Institutes’ policy expert Elizabeth Nash. “If you’re an abortion fund in California, and you give money to somebody from Texas to come to California for an abortion, what kind of protections do we need [to make sure they’re not legally liable]?”Since Roe fell, states like California, Maryland and Delaware have expanded access, including to those from out of state, by passing laws enabling nurses to perform abortions. Meanwhile, in New York, the governor, Kathy Hochul, has allocated millions of dollars to abortion providers and the state is also pursuing efforts to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution. These types of efforts are what states hoping to bolster protections will be looking to. “People are seeing where there are gaps are in these laws, and trying to fill them basically,” Nash says.TopicsAbortionRoe v WadeReproductive rightsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

Interview‘It’s been very dark for all of us’: film-maker Alexandra Pelosi on a family on America’s political frontlineDavid Smith in Washington With her father recovering from a brutal hammer attack, the director’s latest film shows her mother Nancy Pelosi resisting the January 6 insurrectionAlexandra Pelosi is at home in New York, preparing a birthday party for her 15-year-old son, and pops up on Zoom beside a sign that says: “Don’t work for assholes. Don’t work with assholes.” When our interview begins with the most unimaginative of queries – “How are you?” – she is in no mood for casual conversation.Pelosi in the House: documentary captures speaker’s January 6 struggleRead more“How am I supposed to answer that question?” the fast-talking film-maker bats back. “Look, I don’t know how you do polite small talk because I’ve just been through basically like both of my parents’ funerals.”To be clear, neither of Alexandra’s parents is dead. Her father Paul Pelosi, 82, is undergoing a slow and painful recovery from a hammer attack in late October by a home intruder. Her mother Nancy Pelosi, also 82, last month announced her retirement as Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, assured of a place in history as the first female speaker.Alexandra, 52, recalls that, when her father emerged from intensive care, his house looked like a funeral home because so many well-wishers sent flowers. “I was reading the notes from his friends and I was like, this is great, ’cos you get to go to your own funeral, ’cos you get to see what people say about you when you die. I’m putting a good spin on it, trying to cheer him up.”Then she went to Washington for her mother’s long goodbye. “If you’re in politics and you step down, it’s like going to your own funeral because you get to read your own obituary. Essentially it’s like I’ve read both of my parents’ obituaries and now I have to keep living with two living people. That’s surreal.”The pitiless assault on Paul Pelosi was one of the most disturbing examples yet of America’s increasingly coarse, polarised and violent political culture. He has told how he was sleeping when a man he had never seen before entered his bedroom looking for Nancy, who was in Washington at the time.Officers responding to Paul’s 911 call found him and David DePape, 42, fighting over a hammer, according to a federal indictment. An officer ordered DePape to drop the hammer but he responded, “ummm nope,” before forcefully swinging it at Paul, who was treated at a hospital for a fractured skull.DePape last month pleaded not guilty to federal charges of attempting to kidnap a federal official and assaulting a federal official’s family member. Paul, wearing a hat and glove on one hand, made his first public appearance since the assault at the recent Kennedy Center Honors in Washington.“Wasn’t that amazing?” asks Alexandra, who has been struggling to sleep and has had nightmares about the incident. “Come on, you can’t be a bitter old journalist! I think every member of our family cried when they saw that because that’s the first time he left the house. That was a nice 10 seconds of his life but he has to live with traumatic brain injury for the rest of his life and he’s 82. If it could’ve been me, I would have loved to have been in his place.”She reflects: “It’s been very dark for all of us. We all process it differently. I’ve been very dark because the minute it happened I got on a plane with my mom and went to San Francisco. We sat in the ICU for a week and I was very upset because my mother loves to tell the story that, when I was 16, she came to me and said, ‘Mommy has the chance to run for Congress and I will only do it if you give me your permission but I’d have to be gone three nights a week.’ I was like, ‘Mom, get a life!’“She loves that story and so then we were sitting in the ICU 35 years later and I was like, ‘If I had known that this is where it was going to end, I never would have given you my blessing that day 35 years ago.’ But my dad was like, you can’t say that because it’s not fair to erase her career just because of this; you have to say, if you came to me today, I would not give you my permission because of how toxic the social media environment is.”Alexandra’s son, Paul, is named after her father and worships him. He was with her at the US Capitol when it came under attack from a mob of Donald Trump supporters on 6 January 2021. “He was asking me that day, ‘Mom, why do all these people want to kill MiMi?’ I couldn’t come up with an answer. Because of the Affordable Care Act? I don’t know.“I know that if you watch Fox News, you hate Nancy Pelosi because they’ve programmed you to hate Nancy Pelosi and, if I watched Fox News, I would hate Nancy Pelosi too. But I don’t know how it gets from that to, ‘I want to break into her house and try and kill someone in her family.’ That’s a leap and so it’s been a lot for my teenagers to try and process that.”The Virginia governor, Glenn Youngkin, and Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake made fun of it while Trump’s son, Don Jr. retweeted a “Paul Pelosi Halloween costume” featuring a hammer.Alexandra, who had to clean up the mess and has photos of her father’s bloody pyjamas on her phone, comments: “I can’t see how the governor of Virginia can make jokes about it or the wannabe governor of Arizona can make jokes about it and then how elected members of Congress can tweet these insane Pizzagate-style conspiracies. That’s unforgivable. That’s who I’ll never forgive. I’m trying to make peace with that.”Both her parents feature in her latest film, her 14th documentary for HBO, broadcast on Tuesday. Pelosi in the House is shot in a cinéma vérité style across three decades with plenty of shots of Nancy’s back as she strides through the corridors of power. At one point she is seen putting Vice-President Mike Pence on speakerphone while doing household chores.Alexandra admits: “She never gave me permission. She has not signed a release. She has not seen the film. She does not know what this is. I don’t know if she’s ever going to watch it.” Indeed, Alexandra could never get her mother to sit down for an in-depth interview. “This is watching her work because Nancy Pelosi is her job. The only way to understand her is to watch her work so the only way I could explain her is watching her work. But if I tried to talk to her or ask a question, it just wouldn’t work. She just didn’t play ball with me. That’s not what she does. ”The documentary sometimes revels in the quotidian but, when it arrives at January 6, moves to a different plane. Watching on TV as Trump delivers an incendiary speech urging his supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat, Nancy vows to “punch him out” if he sets foot in the US Capitol, her sacred ground.Alexandra recalls: “She was protecting her turf. It was the House of Pelosi and they broke into her house and tried to kill all of her family members because the caucus is her family. Nancy Pelosi has two families. She has us, her children and grandchildren, then she has her political family, the members, the caucus.”Whipped up into a frenzy, the mob marched on the Capitol. Alexandra’s husband, the Dutch TV journalist Michiel Vos, was outside reporting the drama; she and her teenage son were inside, watching with alarm. “I was looking out the window: ‘Oh, look at those protesters out there.’ I’m trying to get her [Nancy’s] attention because she’s very laser-focused. Then my son kept saying like, ‘What if they stormed the Capitol?’“At some point the security came over and said we’re leaving. They [the mob] had already broken the window to come in. The security camera shows that the protesters were two minutes from us but we found out that after. At the time we did not know how close they came so it wasn’t as scary as it seemed.”Nor did the threat come as a complete surprise. “The Republicans have spent hundreds of millions of dollars demonising her and turning her into a target. The Capitol police have protected her for decades. There was a pig’s head on her doorstep in San Francisco a few days before that attack. It’s not as if this all came completely out of the blue.”Alexandra accompanied her mother into the back of SUV that sped them away to safety. The speaker, full of cold fury, and other congressional leaders gathered at a military base, working the phones to demand that order be restored so they could certify Joe Biden’s election victory.Alexandra melted into the background and filmed for posterity. Some of the footage made its way into the House’s January 6 committee hearings. “It’s like a soccer player. What do you do when you put a ball in front of me? I’m going to kick it. I knew my job was to kick the ball.”The rioters, meanwhile, had overrun the Capitol and were ransacking the speaker’s office. Among the most haunting footage from that day is the sound of one demanding, “Where’s Nancy?” Subsequently Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right Oath Keepers, reportedly said he wanted to hang Nancy “from the lamp-post”.Jokes about Paul Pelosi aren’t just in bad taste. They normalize political violence | Arwa MahdawiRead moreAlexandra reflects: “Stewart Rhodes was prosecuted so my son comes down for breakfast the other day and he’s like, ‘Hey, did you see that this guy was found guilty? He said he wanted to hang Nancy Pelosi from a lamp-post. Why did he want to hang Nancy Pelosi from a lamp-post?’ I don’t know. I still haven’t been able to come up with a good answer for Nancy Pelosi’s grandchildren about why people want to hang her from a lamp-post.”Such unanswerables underline that it has been a bruising couple of months. But a trip to Washington boosted Alexandra’s spirits. First, she was reunited with her “old friend” former president George W Bush – a relationship that bemuses her liberal friends. “It’s renewing my faith in humanity because I know there’s hope that the Republican party does have a life after Donald Trump and then I can live in America and we can all live happily ever after.”Then she attended a state dinner at the White House, sitting across from Biden and next to the guest of honour, the French president, Emmanuel Macron. “Let’s face it, I’m the least interesting person at the table so it’s my job to entertain them.” She began with a mother-in-law joke for Macron’s benefit: “When I met my husband’s mom, the first thing she said to me was, ‘Why can’t you be French?’”Now, in another welcome diversion from her parents’ “funerals”, she has to get ready for her younger son’s birthday party and so ends the interview with a final plea. “Be nice,” she says mischievously. “Haven’t the Pelosis suffered enough? I don’t want to retraumatise my family when they read the Guardian. That’s all.”TopicsDocumentary filmsNancy PelosiUS politicsinterviewsReuse this content More

Los Angeles official involved in racism scandal caught fighting activist on videoKevin de León, who has resisted resigning after the debacle, was involved in an altercation in which he appears to push an organizer00:52Kevin de León, the embattled Los Angeles city council member involved in a racism scandal that threw city hall into upheaval, is facing criticism again after video footage captured him in a physical fight with an activist.De León, who has resisted calls to resign, made his first in-person appearance at a council meeting in nearly two months on Friday. Hours later he was involved in an altercation at a holiday toy giveaway in which video appeared to show him shoving a local organizer.Biden calls for resignation of LA city council members over racist remarksRead moreIn a short clip, organizer Jason Reedy and other activists can be seen following the official, demanding his resignation, and crowding around him when De León appears to push Reedy into a table, the councilman’s Santa hat falling off amid the chaos. De León claims the activist headbutted him and that he was acting in self-defense while Reedy’s attorney told media his client was assaulted.The incident comes as the councilman tries to rehabilitate his reputation after widespread outrage and protest over a leaked recording that revealed De León and other Latino Democrats making racist comments as they plotted to expand their political power at the expense of Black voters during a realignment of district boundaries.De León, a former state legislator, is the only council member still resisting calls from top Democrats, including Joe Biden, to step down. Meanwhile, he has continued to collect his annual salary of nearly $229,000.Gil Cedillo, another councilman involved in the scandal over the leaked recording of racist insults, had refused to resign, but vanished from public view within days of its disclosure in October. His term expired Monday at 12.01am, after he lost a re-election bid earlier this year.De León, who has been stripped of his ability to participate in council meetings and faced widespread pressure to resign, has been maneuvering in private to emerge from political purgatory despite being reviled by colleagues who say they cannot work with him.In a statement issued after the Friday night altercation, Paul Krekorian, the council president who has called on De León to step down, said the councilman, one of his staff members and a volunteer were attacked, calling the incident intolerable. The Los Angeles Times reported that activists said De León was the aggressor.“This city has endured horrendous division and toxicity in recent months,“ Krekorian said. “We need to reject hatred in all of its forms and we need to reject the atmosphere of intimidation, bullying and threats.”De León has said he acted in self-defense: “Once we were able to push open a door and try to get out, Reedy launched a pelvic thrust, followed by a headbutt to my forehead,” he said to media. “My response, in defense of myself, was to push him off of me.”The attorney for Reedy, Shakeer Rahman, told CNN that the councilman initiated the assault.“Video footage clearly shows him and his supporters initiating this assault while Mr Reedy stands with his hands up. Not only has Kevin de León lost all political legitimacy, his claims that he was the one attacked here simply underscores how he’s lost touch with reality,” Rahman said in a statement.De León appeared on Friday at his first council meeting since mid-October, setting off a chaotic protest between competing factions in the audience. About a dozen protesters bellowed at De León to leave the ornate chamber, while his supporters chanted: “Kevin, Kevin.”Some council members walked out and police ejected two people, fearing they might fight.“Leave, Kevin!” one protester shouted at de León. “This is why these meetings need to be shut down.”De León has apologized but said he will not resign, arguing that he wants to continue working on homelessness, fallout from the pandemic and the threat of evictions for renters in his district.There is no legal avenue for his colleagues to remove him – the council can only suspend a member when criminal charges are pending.Krekorian, the council president, has said: “The only way we can begin to heal as a city is for Mr de León to take responsibility for his actions, accept the consequences and step down.”While De León has largely stayed away from city hall, he has continued to quietly conduct business, including attending holiday events and meeting officials on pending homeless projects and illegal dumping problems.With his appearance at the council meeting on Friday, it is clear he is trying to gradually step back into the public sphere. Meanwhile, organizers behind an effort to recall him from office have been cleared to collect petition signatures needed to qualify the proposal for the ballot.TopicsCaliforniaLos AngelesUS politicsDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

Jack Smith, the special prosecutor handling the criminal probes of Donald Trump, has sent a subpoena to the secretary of state in Georgia, one of the states the former president targeted in his effort to overturn the result of the 2020 election, the Associated Press reports.Smith has sent a number of subpoenas to officials nationwide since attorney general Merrick Garland last month appointed him to oversee the justice department’s investigations into the January 6 insurrection and Trump’s attempts to remain in power, as well as the discovery of government secrets at his Mar-a-Lago resort.The latest subpoena was sent to Brad Raffensperger, the Republican official tasked with overseeing Georgia’s elections who defied Trump’s demand to “find” him the votes necessary to win the state in the 2020 election, even after it had been held.Here’s more on what Smith wants, from the AP:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The special counsel is seeking “any and all communications in any form” between June 1, 2020, and Jan. 20, 2021, “to, from or involving” Trump, his campaign, lawyers and aides, including former campaign officials such as Bill Stepien and Justin Clark and lawyers John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, L. Lin Wood, Sidney Powell and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, according to the subpoena, which was obtained by The Associated Press.
Efforts by Trump and his associates to reverse his loss in Georgia are currently the subject of a separate investigation led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Atlanta. A special grand jury seated to aid that investigation has heard from dozens of witnesses, including a number of high-profile Trump allies, over the past six months and is expected to wrap up its work soon.
Among other things, Willis is investigating the Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Raffensperger.
It was not immediately clear whether any counties in Georgia had also received subpoenas from the special counsel.
In the weeks following the 2020 election, Trump focused in part on Fulton County, which includes most of the city of Atlanta, making unsupported allegations of election fraud. But the county had not received a subpoena by Monday morning, a spokesperson said.Special prosecutor Jack Smith has continued his subpoena salvo as he investigates Donald Trump, this time with a summons to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who famously defied Trump’s attempts to meddle in the state’s 2020 election result. Elsewhere, the supreme court agreed to hear another case against Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, which remains on hold, while we’ll find out tomorrow about a reported breakthrough in fusion energy.Here’s more about what happened today:
A federal judge has officially nixed the special master’s review of documents taken from Mar-a-Lago, which slowed down the investigation into whether Donald Trump unlawfully retained government secrets.
The January 6 committee is continuing to mull how many criminal referrals to send to the justice department as a result of its investigation.
The White House condemned rightwing lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene after she made comments asserting her prowess at organizing insurrections. The congresswoman said she was just being sarcastic.
Legislation to stop another January 6 may end up being attached to a big funding bill Congress is trying to reach an agreement on.
Black Lives Matter has set up its own student loan relief fund to make up for the Biden administration’s hamstrung program.
With the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness plan stalled in court, the Associated Press reports that the Black Lives Matter foundation has started its own debt relief effort. The $500,000 program administered by the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is aimed at current and former Black students, and will award more than 500 recipients with payments of between $750 and $4,500. The application for the relief can be found here.Here’s more on the program from the AP:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The BLM foundation’s Student Solidarity Fund is an expansion of a previous initiative it started last year as millions of Americans struggled to make ends meet amid economic uncertainty in the coronavirus pandemic. This time the foundation said it intends to use philanthropic dollars to draw attention to issues of economic injustice, especially while a proposed federal student debt forgiveness plan is held up by litigation from opponents.
“The fact of the matter is that Black people who work to get an education are struggling right now,” BLM foundation board chair Cicley Gay said. “We recognize that we can’t build a world of true liberation without the brilliance of Black people who are committed to furthering their education.”
The relief is meant for bachelor’s degree recipients, as well as those who did not complete their degree but still carry student loan debt. Applicants must have attended a college or university in the U.S. The foundation is asking applicants to submit loan documents to prove their eligibility.
If selected, applicants with $75,000 or less in debt will receive $1,500. Applicants with debt between $75,001 and $150,000 will receive $3,000. And applicants with $150,001 or more in debt will receive $4,500.
The money is not restricted for use only on student loan payments, but the foundation said its relief funds are meant to lower recipients’ overall debt burden.
In a second phase of the fund, the BLM foundation said it will give microgrants of $750 to relief fund applicants who are currently attending historically Black colleges and universities, to help with housing, food, technology, books and transportation costs.There are many, many pieces of unfinished business lawmakers in Congress would like to get done before the year ends. One of them is a bill to stop the type of legal plot Donald Trump attempted on January 6. Its fate now appears tied to a long-term government funding bill Democrats are hoping to pass, NBC News reports.The measure clarifying parts of the 1887 Electoral Count Act appears to have the support needed to pass both the House and Senate. Democrats support the proposal and Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, said he’d vote for it, a good sign that it’ll get the GOP support necessary to overcome a filibuster in that chamber.But amid fevered negotiations in the House and Senate on passing a long-term government funding bill, it’s unclear when the electoral count reform proposal will come up for a vote. According to NBC, Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic senator who played a major role in forging the compromise legislation, says attaching the electoral count act reforms to the omnibus funding bill under negotiation is “the most obvious” way of getting it passed.“We will get this done by the end of the year if I have to slow everything else down,” Klobuchar told NBC, adding, “It’s going to happen.”Jack Smith, the special prosecutor handling the criminal probes of Donald Trump, has sent a subpoena to the secretary of state in Georgia, one of the states the former president targeted in his effort to overturn the result of the 2020 election, the Associated Press reports.Smith has sent a number of subpoenas to officials nationwide since attorney general Merrick Garland last month appointed him to oversee the justice department’s investigations into the January 6 insurrection and Trump’s attempts to remain in power, as well as the discovery of government secrets at his Mar-a-Lago resort.The latest subpoena was sent to Brad Raffensperger, the Republican official tasked with overseeing Georgia’s elections who defied Trump’s demand to “find” him the votes necessary to win the state in the 2020 election, even after it had been held.Here’s more on what Smith wants, from the AP:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The special counsel is seeking “any and all communications in any form” between June 1, 2020, and Jan. 20, 2021, “to, from or involving” Trump, his campaign, lawyers and aides, including former campaign officials such as Bill Stepien and Justin Clark and lawyers John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, L. Lin Wood, Sidney Powell and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, according to the subpoena, which was obtained by The Associated Press.
Efforts by Trump and his associates to reverse his loss in Georgia are currently the subject of a separate investigation led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Atlanta. A special grand jury seated to aid that investigation has heard from dozens of witnesses, including a number of high-profile Trump allies, over the past six months and is expected to wrap up its work soon.
Among other things, Willis is investigating the Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Raffensperger.
It was not immediately clear whether any counties in Georgia had also received subpoenas from the special counsel.
In the weeks following the 2020 election, Trump focused in part on Fulton County, which includes most of the city of Atlanta, making unsupported allegations of election fraud. But the county had not received a subpoena by Monday morning, a spokesperson said.Last publicly owned Confederate monument comes down in RichmondThe Hill reports that the last publicly owned Confederate monument in Richmond, Virginia, has come down on Monday.The move completes a process initiated in 2020 in the state’s capital city to take down statues glorifying the slave states of the Confederacy.It adds: “Workers operating cranes lifted up a statue of A.P. Hill — a Confederate general in the Northern Virginia army who was a trusted associate of Gen. Robert E. Lee — and placed it on a flatbed truck.The statue will now head to the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia. Hill’s memorial had towered over a busy intersection in the city near a school for more than 130 years.The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia applauded the statue’s removal.“Let’s not forget: Removing symbols of racism is only one of the first steps to dismantling racist systems,” the organization tweeted.”Rightwing lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene has released a statement defending her comments on the January 6 insurrection as a “sarcastic joke” and saying Democrats and the White House “continue to accuse me of something I had nothing to do with”.“The White House needs to learn how sarcasm works. My comments were making fun of Joe Biden and the Democrats, who have continuously made me a political target since January 6th,” Greene said.The Republican House representative from Georgia sparked fury over the weekend by saying that if she and former Donald Trump White House adviser Steven Bannon had been in charge of the attack on the Capitol, the crowd would have won, and attendees “would’ve been armed”. Greene said the condemnation that followed, including from a spokesman for the Biden administration, put her at risk.“Every day, I receive violent threats against my life simply because Democrats and the media have lied and smeared my character for the past two years. This includes threats resulting in actual arrests with criminal charges and threats against my home in an attempt to have me killed,” Greene said.She went on to reiterate a number of the far-right conspiracies theories that have been her hallmark ever since arriving in Congress last year. Here’s the rest of Greene’s statement:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The only time Democrats “support” the 2A is when armed Antifa larpers want to defend perverts at drag queen story time or when leftist Hollywood celebs and politicians are protected by armed bodyguards.
Rather than trying to weaponize a sarcastic joke I made, they should be going after people like Yoel Roth who silenced a sitting President and allowed child pornography to run rampant on Twitter.
I will never back down from my support of the Second Amendment. And I will never allow the White House, Democrats, or the media to continue to accuse me of something I had nothing to do with.Tim Scott to run for Republican nomination in 2024?With Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign firmly on the ropes just a month after his announcement, a whole host of other Republican names are now being mentioned as contenders for the party nomination.Perhaps none are as fascinating as Tim Scott, a Black Republican senator from South Carolina. Scott is a firm conservative, close to Trump but also admired by many other sections of the party, especially as it digests its woeful underperformance in the recent midterm elections.Politico takes an in-depth look here.But here is a key taster: “His Republican colleagues are buzzing about his massive reelection victory this year, rising national profile, substantial fundraising hauls and cross-country travels for other candidates. And they’re happy to talk him up.The South Carolinian carved out a unique lane in the GOP, well-liked by mainstream leaders like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell but never publicly at odds with Trump world, even when he’s offered halted criticism of the former president. And as the only Black Republican senator, he’d offer his party a compelling chance to build on its long-running effort to boost diverse candidate recruitment by further appealing to Democratic-leaning constituencies.”New polling released by CNN in the wake of the midterms shows Americans remain as divided as ever when it comes to their views of the country’s leadership.The poll conducted by SSRS finds 51% of respondents say they have more confidence in the new Republican majority in the House, against the 49% that are more faithful to Joe Biden. However, they expect the new GOP majority to improve the federal budget situation by an 11-point margin, according to the poll. Splits are deeper when it comes to other issues, the survey indicates:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Americans are more closely divided on the effect the GOP majority will have on inflation (37% positive, 33% negative), gun policies (39% positive, 41% negative) and tax policies (34% positive, 38% negative). And they tend to expect a harmful impact on immigration laws (32% positive, 41% negative) and the level of cooperation within the federal government (23% positive, 43% negative).Americans are generally downbeat when it come to both parties’ leaders, although they do tend to support members of their own team:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}While 53% of US adults hold an unfavorable opinion of outgoing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and just 33% have a favorable one, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents express positive views by a roughly 3 to 1 margin (63% favorable, 20% unfavorable). Far fewer Americans have formed an opinion of incoming House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (64% have either not heard of him or have yet to form an opinion), but Democratic-aligned views are generally positive (33% favorable, 5% unfavorable among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents). Views of House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who is vying to become speaker, tilt negative among the full public, 36% unfavorable to 19% favorable, with nearly half unsure how they feel about him. Among Republicans and Republican leaners, there’s been a shift toward the positive since this summer: 39% now have a favorable view and 16% unfavorable, compared with 19% favorable and 28% unfavorable in CNN’s polling this summer.Both parties like to accuse the other of being extreme, and the survey indicates the sentiment is widespread among the public – though the GOP is viewed as more extreme overall:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Half of Americans currently say the GOP’s views and policies are too extreme, rather than generally mainstream, while 44% call the Democratic Party too extreme – both numbers are little changed since last summer.The supreme court has agreed to hear a second challenge to Joe Biden’s plan to relieve some federal student loan debt, which remains on hold. Meanwhile, the science world is preparing for tomorrow’s big announcement from the energy department, which is reportedly the success of an experiment that produced more energy from a fusion reaction than was put in.Here’s what else has happened so far today:
A federal judge has officially nixed the special master’s review of documents taken from Mar-a-Lago, which slowed down the investigation into whether Donald Trump unlawfully retained government secrets.
The January 6 committee is continuing to mull how many criminal referrals to send to the justice department as a result of its investigation.
The White House condemned rightwing lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene after she made comments asserting her prowess at organizing insurrections.
The US government’s trade regulator is weighing whether to OK the merger of two of the country’s largest supermarket chains, even as workers fret it could lead to mass layoffs, Michael Sainato reports:Thousands of workers at two of America’s biggest supermarkets are warning of potential mass layoffs as the giant firms push for a merger.Kroger, the second largest grocery chain in the US, and Albertsons, the fourth largest, are pushing for a merger through the Federal Trade Commission, which is reviewing the proposal.Local unions representing over 100,000 Albertsons and Kroger workers strongly oppose the merger because of its likely impact on competition, prices for consumers, and job cuts that will result as scores of stores are divested.During US Senate panel hearings, Kroger’s chief executive, Rodney McMullen, claimed no employees would be laid off, but said the company planned to place 100 to 350 stores into a spin-off company. Albertsons announced it would pay shareholders about $4bn in special dividends as part of the merger agreement, and spend $24.6bn to acquire Kroger, with expectations to close the deal by early 2024 if approved by federal regulators.“A win for our customers, a win for our associates, and a win for the communities,” McMullen has said in support of the merger. McMullen’s salary of $18m in total compensation is 679 times that of the median worker at Kroger.But many grocery workers who witnessed the 2014 and 2015 merger between Albertsons and Safeway saw similar promises made and then broken by corporate executives.‘We’re really worried’: US supermarket mega-merger raises mass layoff fearsRead moreJoe Biden is under pressure from media organizations and others to drop the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Eric Lichtblau reports:The Biden administration has been saying all the right things lately about respecting a free and vigorous press, after four years of relentless media-bashing and legal assaults under Donald Trump.The attorney general, Merrick Garland, has even put in place expanded protections for journalists this fall, saying that “a free and independent press is vital to the functioning of our democracy”.But the biggest test of Biden’s commitment remains imprisoned in a jail cell in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been held since 2019 while facing prosecution in the United States under the Espionage Act, a century-old statute that has never been used before for publishing classified information.Biden faces growing pressure to drop charges against Julian AssangeRead more More

Karen Bass starts as Los Angeles mayor with plan to address homelessness crisisKamala Harris gave Bass, the first female mayor of Los Angeles, the oath of office and Stevie Wonder gave a surprise performance Karen Ruth Bass, a former physician assistant who shattered glass ceilings with her rise to a leadership post in the California legislature and later a prominent spot in Congress, took a ceremonial oath of office on Sunday as mayor of Los Angeles.A progressive Democrat, Bass becomes the first woman and second Black person to hold the city’s top job and will formally assume her duties on Monday amid multiple crises in the nation’s second most populous city.She was sworn in ceremonially by Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, former California attorney general and a longtime friend. The formal oath was administered privately by the city clerk.Bass will be tasked with easing rising crime rates, restoring trust in a City Hall shaken by racism and corruption scandals and addressing the issue of more than 40,000 people living in trash-strewn encampments or rusty RVs that have spread into virtually every neighborhood.Striking a tone of unity, Bass said the many, disparate arms of government must come together to confront homelessness.To move in a new direction “we must have a single strategy” that brings together government, the private sector and other stakeholders, Bass said, speaking in a downtown theater near City Hall.She said if people link arms rather than point fingers, lives will be saved. She called that “my mission” as mayor.She also urged residents to become involved in city government, echoing John F Kennedy’s presidential inaugural address in which he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”“I call on the people of our city to not just dream of the LA we want, but to participate in making the dream come true,” Bass said.Bass, who was on Joe Biden’s shortlist for vice-president,claimed the post last month after overcoming more than $100m in spending by rival Rick Caruso, a billionaire developer and Republican-turned-Democrat who campaigned as a centrist and promised a strong emphasis on public safety.Caruso would have represented a turn to the political right for the heavily Democratic city. Bass swayed voters by arguing she would be a coalition builder to help heal a troubled city of nearly 4 million.“We are going to build a new Los Angeles,” Bass had promised at an election night rally.A marquee outside the theater featured a photo of a beaming Bass with the slogan “A new day for Los Angeles”. The backdrop for the stage, topped by US flags, was an oversized shot of the steps and columns of City Hall.In a surprise appearance, Stevie Wonder got the crowd dancing, playing Living for the City. He and Bass shared a hug.Bass, 69, ran as the consensus pick of the Democratic establishment and was endorsed by Biden, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.Despite her close ties with the Democratic political community, she has described herself as a change agent who plans to declare a state of emergency on her first day in office to deal with homelessness. She has signaled she will seek to marshal “all of the resources, all of the skills, the knowledge, the talent of the city” to get homeless people into housing.Details on the emergency order have yet to emerge, though she has said she intends to get over 17,000 homeless people into housing in her first year through a mix of interim and permanent facilities.She also will contend with entrenched urban problems that include a housing shortage, crumbling streets and some of the nation’s worst traffic.“The mayor’s first priority and likely the main one for some time to come is homelessness,” said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles.“The voters don’t expect a miracle but will be looking for a clear and credible path toward measurable and visible improvement,” Sonenshein said. “It’s an opportunity for an energetic reset on a crisis that has seemed stuck, and also a chance to restore confidence in local government in Los Angeles.”TopicsCaliforniaUS politicsDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

Sanders says Sinema ‘helped sabotage’ some of Congress’s key legislationsSenator adds to chorus of detractors against Arizona lawmaker who left Democratic party and declared herself an independent The popular progressive US senator Bernie Sanders would consider supporting any Democrat who might mount a challenge against his chamber colleague Kyrsten Sinema after she recently left the party and declared herself an independent like him, arguing that she has “helped sabotage” some of Congress’s most important legislation.Sanders’s comments on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union added to the chorus of detractors against the Arizona lawmaker who has undermined the agenda of the Joe Biden White House and other progressives, including by voting down raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and reforming the Senate filibuster so that voting rights legislation can pass.The independent from Vermont who votes in line with Democratic interests told the show host, Dana Bash, that the leftwing party’s members in Arizona were “not all that enthusiastic about somebody who helped sabotage some of the most important legislation that protects the interests of working families and voting rights and so forth”.And, Sanders added, if Arizona Democrats eventually ran someone to challenge the newly-declared independent, “I will take a hard look at” supporting that candidate, though some are concerned that hopeful could unwittingly give Republicans an opening.“I support progressive candidates all over this country – people who have the guts to take on special interests,” said Sanders, adding that he wasn’t interested in speaking much more on Sinema. “I don’t know what’s going to be happening in Arizona – we will see who they nominate.”In a separate pre-recorded interview which also aired Sunday on State of the Union, Sinema continued defending her defection from the Democrats as a stand against being beholden to party interests.“I know this is really hard for lots of folks, especially [on Capitol Hill], but what’s important to me is … to not be tethered by the partisanship that dominates politics today,” Sinema said in that interview. “I want to remove some of that … poison from our politics. I want to get back to actually just working on the issues, working together to try and solve these challenges.”Sinema’s departure from the Democrats came after their party had just succeeded in getting every one of their senators re-elected for the first time since 1934 after Raphael Warnock retained his seat in Georgia on 6 December.Warnock’s victory over Republican challenger Herschel Walker, combined with a Pennsylvania seat flipping to the Democrats, left his party thinking it had a clear one-seat majority in the upper congressional chamber. It had spent the past two years with a 50-50 split in the Senate in which Vice-President Kamala Harris broke ties in the Democrats’ favor.Sinema, who entered politics as a Green Party member and antiwar activist, has said she doesn’t intend to caucus with Republicans. But she’s been vague about whether she would cooperate with the Democrats in the way that Sanders and fellow independent senator Angus King do.Sinema has supported key Biden administration agenda items, including bills aimed at reducing inflation, protecting the right to gay marriage and increasing restrictions to high-powered guns. But her votes against a minimum wage raise and Senate filibuster reform – issues that were dear to the Democrats – have earned her scorn from many progressives.She and the centrist West Virginia Democratic senator Joe Manchin, who has taken similar stands, are often mentioned in the same breath.Sinema announced her switch after a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from Arizona, Ruben Gallego, had started interviewing paid media firms for 2024, which observers interpreted as a meaningful step toward launching an intra-party primary challenge.Pundits believe the Democrats could risk splitting votes with Sinema if they run someone against her, giving Republicans an opportunity to flip that seat during an election that would unfold at the same time as the next presidential race.TopicsUS SenateBernie SandersDemocratsUS CongressUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Massachusetts recount flips state house election to Democrat by one voteKristin Kassner won against Republican opponent Lenny Mirra after a recount shrunk candidates’ narrow vote deficit to one A recount in a political race in Massachusetts has flipped a state house of representatives election from Republican to Democrat by a single vote.Democrat Kristin Kassner won against her Republican opponent and five-term incumbent Lenny Mirra earlier this week after a recount that shrunk the candidates’ narrow vote deficit to one. The candidates were all vying for a seat based in the North Shore area, which is a coastal region between Boston and New Hampshire.Prior to the recount, Mirra led Kassner by 10 votes out of over 23,000 ballots that were cast in that region during the 8 November midterm election.The 10-vote deficit was within the legal threshold of a recount. On 30 November, Massachusetts secretary of state Bill Galvin ordered hand recounts in a general area where Mirra held a slim advantage.After officials recounted the votes in question Thursday, the results emerged as 11,763 to 11,762.Kassner was ahead by the slightest of margins.In response to that outcome, Mirra said that he will “absolutely” challenge the result, the Boston Globe reports.“Some [ballots] were filled out in pencil, some were filled out with different colored ink, some had stray marks. Some had a name written in the write-in and then an oval filled out,” the outlet reported him saying.Meanwhile, Kassner believes that there was no foul-play in the voting process, saying, “I feel the process unfolded like it should. We’ll see what comes when it comes,” the Boston Globe reports.“We are not suspicious of anything that ever happened. [The recount] was just really just to ensure that, between humans and machines, we really caught every vote that was counted,” Kassner told CBS.“We thank the tremendous outpouring of people that really got involved and mobilized to go through this process this weekend. It’s really a true test of democracy.”The new results will now go to governor Charlie Baker and a gubernatorial council for review.Should the recount go unchanged, Democrats will hold 133 of the 160 house districts come next January – a gain in four more seats compared to what they started the last session with at the beginning of 2021.In 2020, Massachusetts offered temporary mail-in voting for the first time as a result of pandemic precautions. Earlier this year, lawmakers voted to make permanent mail-in voting and expanded early voting, two measures which Mirra and the rest of the Republican house caucus voted against.The measures were nevertheless signed into law by Baker this summer.TopicsMassachusettsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Brittney Griner in Texas medical facility as political fallout over swap continuesBasketball star is being debriefed at San Antonio army facility as plight of other Americans held in Russia continues Brittney Griner, the American basketball star who has been released from almost 10 months of detention in Russia in a prisoner swap with the notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, is undergoing physical and mental evaluation at a Texas army facility as part of her rehabilitation to the US.The two-time Olympic gold medalist is being debriefed at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. She arrived back in the US on Friday morning and was immediately taken for what was being described as “extensive health evaluations”.The national security council’s strategic communications coordinator, John Kirby, told This Week on ABC News on Sunday that early indications were that Griner was doing well. “She’s in very good spirits and in good health,” he said.As the WNBA and Olympic champion gradually re-enters US society, the political fallout over her high-profile prisoner exchange with Bout continued. So too did the ongoing plight of other Americans held by Russia not included in the Kremlin deal, notably the discharged marine Paul Whelan who has served almost four years of a 16-year sentence for alleged spying.Joe Biden’s special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, Roger Carstens, said that negotiations over Whelan were continuing. He told CNN’s State of the Union: “We have an ongoing open dialogue with the Russians and we have the commitment of the president, and my office certainly, to bring Paul Whelan home.”Carstens described speaking with Whelan in a Russian prison a day after the swap securing Griner’s release was announced and assured him that the US government was committed to bringing him home. He said he urged Whelan to “keep the faith – we’re coming to get you”.The White House has responded to criticism that they should have secured the release of both Griner and Whelan in exchange for such a prominent arms dealer by insisting that a two-for-one deal was never on the cards. Carstens said a specific proposal to get both individuals out had been made to the Russians but “it didn’t land anywhere”.He added: “It was clear that they were treating Paul very separately because of these sham espionage charges they levied against him.”The Biden administration also continues to come under fire from Republican critics and others for letting an infamous arms dealer go free. Bout, nicknamed the “merchant of death”, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for conspiracy to kill Americans and for selling weapons to FARC insurgents in Colombia.The Democratic senator from New Jersey and chair of the foreign relations committee, Bob Menendez, has denounced Bout’s release as “deeply disturbing”. He said it would embolden dictators to take hostages.“We must stop inviting dictatorial and rogue regimes to use Americans overseas as bargaining chips,” he said.Top Republicans have been using similar arguments to attack Biden. The former secretary of state under Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo, told Fox News Sunday that Vladimir Putin and other hostile regimes including Iran would be encouraged.“Trade bad guys for celebrities creates the wrong incentives for the bad guys,” he said.In his CNN interview, Carstens acknowledged that the decision to cut a deal with Russia had been difficult. “It’s hard to keep these dictators and dictatorial governments from taking Americans and trying to use them as bargaining chips,” he said, adding that Biden had introduced new sanctions against people taking hostages abroad that he promised would be rolled out soon.Carstens also gave new details of how he had met Griner as part of the prisoner swap in Abu Dhabi and then escorted her back to the US. On the 18-hour flight, she had spent about 12 hours just talking, including about her Russian ordeal.“I was left with the impression this is an intelligent, passionate, compassionate, humble, interesting person – a patriotic person,” the envoy said.Griner was sentenced to 9.5 years in prison after she was arrested at an airport in Russia and accused of carrying vape canisters with cannabis oil in them. The basketball star said she had made a mistake in packing the canisters and presented evidence that she had been prescribed the cannabis as a pain treatment.Bout told RT television, the Russian state-run network, that he had exchanged words with Griner on the tarmac in Abu Dhabi. “I wished her good luck, she even extended her hand,” he said, according to a report in the Washington Post.Bout was asked by RT whether Griner had engaged with him. “Yes she did, and I felt she was very positive towards me,” he said.The claim cannot be independently verified. Griner has not commented, and edited video footage released by Russian state media appears to have been cut at precisely the moment that any direct encounter between the two individuals would have taken place.TopicsBrittney GrinerUS politicsRussiaEuropenewsReuse this content More