US Politics

Republican leaders rebuke Trump over dinner with white supremacistMitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy break silence over meeting and say no room in party for antisemitism or white supremacy The top two Republicans in Congress have broken their silence about Donald Trump’s dinner last week with the rightwing extremist Nick Fuentes, saying the Republican party has no place for antisemitism or white supremacy.Jewish conservatives condemn Trump for meeting antisemite Nick FuentesRead moreThe Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, and Kevin McCarthy, who may become House speaker in January, had not commented previously on the 22 November meeting.Trump began his 2024 bid for the White House on 15 November and is Republican voters’ top choice, according to polling.“There is no room in the Republican party for antisemitism or white supremacy and anyone meeting with people advocating that point of view, in my judgment, are highly unlikely to ever be elected president of the United States,” McConnell told reporters on Tuesday – without mentioning Trump by name.Asked if he would support Trump should he become the party’s 2024 nominee, McConnell said: “That would apply to all of the leaders in the party who will be seeking offices.”McCarthy was pressed by reporters after White House talks with Joe Biden.“I don’t think anybody should be spending any time with Nick Fuentes,” said the House minority leader. “His views are nowhere within the Republican party or within this country itself.“Trump has said the encounter at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida was inadvertent but the meeting has drawn rare criticism from Republicans, some of whom accused Trump of empowering extremism. Tuesday’s comments were the first about the meeting by McCarthy and McConnell.Fuentes has been described as a white supremacist by the US justice department. The Anti-Defamation League said Fuentes once “jokingly denied the Holocaust and compared Jews burnt in concentration camps to cookies in an oven”.While president, Trump was broadly criticized for not explicitly condemning white nationalists whose August 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was seen as having provoked violence with counter-protesters, one of whom was killed.“You also had people that were very fine people on both sides,” Trump said.Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, on Monday called for an apology for the meeting with Fuentes.“President Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist, an antisemite and a Holocaust denier a seat at the table, and I think he should apologize,” Pence told NewsNation.Fuentes attended the dinner with Ye, the musician formerly known as Kanye West, who has also drawn widespread criticism for antisemitic comments.TopicsRepublicansUS politicsDonald TrumpUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just emerged from the White House to talk about their meeting just now with Joe Biden to talk about legislation in the lame duck session and, most urgently, his request that Congress intervene to stop the looming rail strike.Schumer signaled the Senate would support the move.Pelosi said: “Tomorrow morning we will have a bill on the floor, it will come up as early as 9am.”Biden wants Congress to impose the agreement tentatively reached in September, but which four unions didn’t sign on to, forcing the president and the labor unions to be at loggerheads.Pelosi said the original elements of the agreement, on pay, etc, would be included in the bill and some “additional benefits” agreed to by Biden and labor secretary Marty Walsh.She said the agreement “is not everything I would like to see, I would like to see paid sick leave – every [leading democratic] country in the world has it. I don’t like going against the ability of a union to strike but, weighing the equities, we must avoid a strike.”Assuming the House votes for the bill, it will then move to the Senate for a vote there.Schumer said: “We will try to get it done … we are going to try to solve this ASAP.”Both leaders warned of job losses and further supply chain problems affecting ordinary goods and essential things such as chlorine for safe public water supplies.Schumer and Pelosi, speaking to reporters call it a “productive meeting,” Finding a solution to rail strike a top priority, they say. “We must avoid a strike,” Pelosi says. pic.twitter.com/cK0HwSCcXy— Myah Ward (@MyahWard) November 29, 2022
House minority leader Kevin McCarthy emerged from the West Wing a few minutes after Schumer and Pelosi spoke to gathered reporters and indicated that he expected a resolution on the rail strike.Schumer had earlier noted that he had minority leader Mitch McConnell’s support in the Senate.All 100 senators must agree to hold a quick vote like this and it’s unclear yet if all are on board, especially Bernie Sanders.Asked if he will allow a vote on legislation to avert the rail strike to happen by the Dec. 9 deadline, Bernie Sanders just told me:  “We will have more to say about that later.” He criticized the deal for lack of paid sick leave. “That is outrageous.”— Manu Raju (@mkraju) November 29, 2022
As we wrap up this US politics blog for the day, the US Senate is debating proposed amendments to the bipartisan Respect for Marriage Act that seeks to codify in legislation the right to same sex and interracial marriages. A final vote is expected soon and will be covered in a news story. The politics blog will be back tomorrow morning.Here’s where things stand:
US Senate to vote on legislation codifying federal rights to same-sex and interracial marriage in the US. The upper chamber is debating a bill right now.
A bill to avert the looming US passenger and freight rail strike will be brought to the floor of the House of Representatives early tomorrow, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said after a meeting at the White House with Joe Biden and the other congressional leaders.
Record early voting is happening in Georgia. The number of people casting their ballots during early voting in the run-off election for one of the state’s seats in the US Senate is already on its way to half a million since the process got under way at the weekend. Polls close 6 December.
Nato foreign ministers pledged to step up support to Ukraine and help repair its energy infrastructure amid a wave of Russian attacks that have repeatedly knocked out power supplies and heating for millions of Ukrainians.
Joe Biden has urged the US Congress to intervene to prevent the rail strike that is looming across America and could bring passenger and freight trains screeching to a halt as early as next week. This puts the pro-labor president at loggerheads with some of the key rail unions.
The US Senate is currently debating proposed amendments to the bipartisan Respect for Marriage Act that seeks to codify in legislation the right to same-sex and interracial marriages in the US.It’s expected to pass when it comes to a final vote a bit later this afternoon, from whence it will go back to the House, where it is also expected to pass, and speed its way to Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law in December.Earlier this month, 12 Republican senators voted with all Senate Democrats to advance the bill.The bill has Democratic and Republican sponsors and was spearheaded by Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, the first openly lesbian or gay senator in the US.The expected passage of the legislation with support from both parties is an extraordinary sign of the shifting politics on the issue and a measure of relief for the hundreds of thousands of same-sex couples who have married since the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v Hodges decision that legalized gay marriage nationwide, the Associated Press writes.The bill has gained steady momentum since the supreme court’s June decision that overturned the federal right to an abortion, and comments from Justice Clarence Thomas at the time that suggested same-sex marriage could also come under threat.Bipartisan Senate negotiations kick-started this summer after 47 Republicans unexpectedly voted for a House bill and gave supporters new optimism.The legislation would not codify the Obergefell decision or force any state to allow same-sex couples to marry. But it would require states to recognize all marriages that were legal where they were performed, and protect current same-sex unions, if Obergefell were to be overturned.It would also protect interracial marriages by requiring states to recognize legal marriages regardless of “sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin”.The US supreme court today wrestled with a partisan-tinged dispute over a Biden administration policy that would prioritize deportation of people in the country illegally who pose the greatest public safety risk, the Associated Press writes.It was not clear after arguments that stretched past two hours and turned highly contentious at times whether the justices would allow the policy to take effect, or side with Republican-led states that have so far succeeded in blocking it.At the center of the case is a September 2021 directive from the Department of Homeland Security that paused deportations unless individuals had committed acts of terrorism, espionage or “egregious threats to public safety”.The guidance, issued after Joe Biden became president, updated a Trump-era policy that removed people in the country illegally regardless of criminal history or community ties.Today, the administration’s top supreme court lawyer told the justices that federal law does “not create an unyielding mandate to apprehend and remove” every one of the more than 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally.Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said it would be “incredibly destabilizing on the ground” for the high court to require that.Congress has not given DHS enough money to vastly increase the number of people it holds and deports, the Biden administration has said.But Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone told the court that the administration violated federal law requiring the detention of people who are in the US illegally and who have been convicted of serious crimes.Chief Justice John Roberts was among the conservative justices who pushed back strongly on the Biden administration’s arguments..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}It’s our job to say what the law is, not whether or not it can be possibly implemented or whether there are difficulties there, and I don’t think we should change that responsibility just because Congress and the executive can’t agree on something … I don’t think we should let them off the hook,” he said.Yet Roberts, in questioning Stone, also called Prelogar’s argument compelling.Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, made clear they believed that Texas and Louisiana, which joined Texas in suing over the directive, weren’t even entitled to bring their case.As Joe Biden is dependent on Congress to avoid a government shutdown on December 16, the president wants a government funding bill passed to provide additional money for the Covid-19 response and to bolster US support for Ukraine’s economy and defense against Russia’s invasion, the Associated Press reports.Lawmakers are months behind on passing funding legislation for the current fiscal year, relying on stop-gap measures that largely maintain existing funding levels, that federal agencies have warned leaves them strapped for cash..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’re going to work together, I hope, to fund the government,” Biden told lawmakers, emphasizing the importance of Ukraine and pandemic funding as well.Meeting in the Roosevelt Room at the White House earlier, Biden sat at the head of the conference table, flanked on either side by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the two smiling brightly at the start of the meeting.Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy sat next to Schumer, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was next to Pelosi and appeared more reserved.The 2022 election, summed. https://t.co/4ZyxVUcigO— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) November 29, 2022
As the meeting began, Biden quipped, “I’m sure this is going to go very quickly” to reach agreement on everything.Lawmakers spent a bit more than an hour with the president, who was joined by Vice President Kamala Harris and senior aides.McCarthy is working to become speaker in January, though he must first overcome dissent within the GOP conference to win a floor vote on January 3.All the leaders said their preference was to pass a comprehensive spending bill for the fiscal year, rather than a continuing resolution (CR) that largely maintains existing funding levels.“If we don’t have an option we may have to have a yearlong” stop-gap bill, Pelosi added.McCarthy, who has promised to look more critically at the Biden administration’s requests for Ukraine aid, told reporters that, “I’m not for a blank check for anything.”He said he wasn’t necessarily opposed to more funding, but wanted to ensure “there’s accountability and audits.”Schumer and Pelosi popped out of the west wing after the meeting to take questions from reporters and were followed shortly afterwards by McCarthy who did the same.On a spending bill, Pelosi said: “We have to have a bipartisan agreement on what the top line is.”CNN reported that McConnell eschewed such an appearance and returned directly to Capitol Hill.SCHUMER calls the White House meeting among Hill leaders “a very productive discussion about funding the government — we all agreed that it should be done this year.”PELOSI says if they can’t reach a deal, “we may have to have a year-long CR.” She says they don’t want that. pic.twitter.com/fEFiBOiQgY— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) November 29, 2022
It’s been a lively morning in US politics and there’s more to come. Joe Biden is en route to Michigan to tour a factory and talk about the economy and the US Senate is poised to vote on a bill codifying same-sex and interracial marriage.Here’s where things stand:
A bill to avert the looming US passenger and freight rail strike will be brought to the floor of the House of Representatives early tomorrow, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said after a meeting at the White House with Joe Biden and the other congressional leaders.
Record early voting is happening in Georgia. The number of people casting their ballots during early voting in the run-off election for one of the state’s seats in the US Senate is already on its way to half a million since the process got under way at the weekend. Polls close 6 December.
Nato foreign ministers pledged to step up support to Ukraine and help repair its energy infrastructure amid a wave of Russian attacks that have repeatedly knocked out power supplies and heating for millions of Ukrainians.
Joe Biden has urged the US Congress to intervene to prevent the rail strike that is looming across America and could bring passenger and freight trains screeching to a halt as early as next week. This puts the pro-labor president at loggerheads with some of the key rail unions.
Joe Biden is on his way to Michigan, aboard Air Force One right now, to tour the SK Siltron CSS semiconductor facility in Bay City, on the shore of Lake Huron.It’s part of his agenda to promote progress in rebuilding the US manufacturing sector.A local ABC channel described how SK Siltron recently completed a $300m expansion. The firm makes semiconductor wafers “used in power system components for electric vehicles and 5G cellular technology,” the outlet reported ahead of the president’s visit this afternoon.The ABC report noted that “local, state and federal leaders hailed the project as an example of the US bringing semiconductor manufacturing back home during a crippling supply shortage of the devices.”He’s due to speak about the US economy a bit later. He’s being accompanied on the factory tour by newly-reelected Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, congresswoman Elissa Slotkin and others.When Mitt Romney compared Donald Trump to a gargoyle …Hats off to Politico for gathering this reporting. The outlet reports that senior Republicans Mike Pence, Bill Cassidy, Marco Rubio, Susan Collins and John Thune all directly or obliquely criticized Trump’s meeting with the far right’s Nick Fuentes last week, as senators returned to Capitol Hill after the Thanksgiving break.But it noted this choice comment, that Utah Republican Senator and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney was “particularly sharp” on Trump, in general, and noted that he was not a fan of the former president running for office again, as he intends to in 2024 and said: “I certainly don’t want him hanging over our party like a gargoyle.”Here’s NBC:Romney on Trump: “I voted to remove him from office twice… I don’t think he should be president of the United states. I don’t think he should be the nominee of our party in 2024. And I certainly don’t want him hanging over our party like a gargoyle.”“It’s a character issue.”— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) November 28, 2022
House Republican leader and would-be next speaker Kevin McCarthy has spoken out for the first time to condemn the meeting between Donald Trump and blatant white supremacist and antisemite Nick Fuentes last week.McCarthy spoke about several topics as he emerged from the west wing of the White House a little earlier, following a meeting called there by Joe Biden with Democratic and Republican congressional leaders to talk about urgent legislative business before the year end.“I don’t think anybody should be spending any time with Nick Fuentes. He has no place in this Republican Party,” McCarthy told reporters at the White House.McCarthy is the latest GOP figure to speak out, following a series of senior Republicans and pressure group leaders condemning the fact that Trump had dinner last week with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who is in deep controversy for antisemitic remarks, and Fuentes, who accompanied Ye.As the Guardian’s Edwin Rios noted it was just the latest in a long line of incidents involving the former US president and the far right.McCarthy did stumble though. He said that Trump had four times condemned Fuentes and did not know who he was.Reporters on the scene immediately pounced to note, accurately, that Trump has not condemned Fuentes and his racist views.McCarthy responded: “Well, I condemn.”On Sunday, Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson said the meeting between Trump, Ye and Fuentes “was not accidental.”Moments earlier, when asked if it was appropriate for Trump to meet with Ye, McCarthy said Trump could have meetings “with who he wants.” Then went onto criticize Fuentes.WATCH: Kevin Mccarthy Denounces Trump Meeting With Kanye Literally Two Seconds After Saying Kanye Fine, Fuentes Bad https://t.co/hnT6lpKWc1— Mediaite (@Mediaite) November 29, 2022
But also Ye, sort of?McCarthy: “The president can have meetings with who he wants. I don’t think anybody though should have meetings with Nick Fuentes. And his views are nowhere within the R Party or within this country itself.”And Kanye?”I don’t think he should have associated with him as well.”— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) November 29, 2022
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just emerged from the White House to talk about their meeting just now with Joe Biden to talk about legislation in the lame duck session and, most urgently, his request that Congress intervene to stop the looming rail strike.Schumer signaled the Senate would support the move.Pelosi said: “Tomorrow morning we will have a bill on the floor, it will come up as early as 9am.”Biden wants Congress to impose the agreement tentatively reached in September, but which four unions didn’t sign on to, forcing the president and the labor unions to be at loggerheads.Pelosi said the original elements of the agreement, on pay, etc, would be included in the bill and some “additional benefits” agreed to by Biden and labor secretary Marty Walsh.She said the agreement “is not everything I would like to see, I would like to see paid sick leave – every [leading democratic] country in the world has it. I don’t like going against the ability of a union to strike but, weighing the equities, we must avoid a strike.”Assuming the House votes for the bill, it will then move to the Senate for a vote there.Schumer said: “We will try to get it done … we are going to try to solve this ASAP.”Both leaders warned of job losses and further supply chain problems affecting ordinary goods and essential things such as chlorine for safe public water supplies.Schumer and Pelosi, speaking to reporters call it a “productive meeting,” Finding a solution to rail strike a top priority, they say. “We must avoid a strike,” Pelosi says. pic.twitter.com/cK0HwSCcXy— Myah Ward (@MyahWard) November 29, 2022
House minority leader Kevin McCarthy emerged from the West Wing a few minutes after Schumer and Pelosi spoke to gathered reporters and indicated that he expected a resolution on the rail strike.Schumer had earlier noted that he had minority leader Mitch McConnell’s support in the Senate.All 100 senators must agree to hold a quick vote like this and it’s unclear yet if all are on board, especially Bernie Sanders.Asked if he will allow a vote on legislation to avert the rail strike to happen by the Dec. 9 deadline, Bernie Sanders just told me:  “We will have more to say about that later.” He criticized the deal for lack of paid sick leave. “That is outrageous.”— Manu Raju (@mkraju) November 29, 2022
Despite the extensive efforts of progressive organizers in Georgia, the state’s early voting operation has run into some significant issues.Many voters reported long lines at polling places over the weekend, as they tried to cast ballots in Georgia’s Senate runoff election.One of the candidates in that race, Democrat Raphael Warnock, the incumbent, waited in line for about an hour on Sunday to cast his vote.A coalition of progressive groups has launched a massive canvassing operation to help ensure that voters know how and when they can cast their ballots.Hillary Holley, executive director of the progressive group Care in Action, said that canvassers have encountered a lot of misunderstanding among voters as they knock on doors.“Every time basically our canvassers reach a voter at their house, they’re saying, ‘Thank you so much because we are so confused about when we can go vote,’” Holley said on a Monday press call.Part of that confusion stems from a judge’s last-minute ruling that counties could allow early voting to occur on the Saturday after the Thanksgiving holiday.Georgia election officials had initially said that early voting could not take place on that day, but the Warnock campaign won a legal challenge to expand voting hours.Stephanie Jackson Ali, policy director of the progressive group New Georgia Project, said: “Our call is for counties to continue the fight to get more locations open, to continue the fight to keep your counties open late, and for our voters to stay in line.” More

Record early voting in runoff for Georgia Senate seatMonday the largest in-person early voting day as Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker neck and neck before 6 December election The number of people casting early ballots in the runoff election for one of Georgia’s seats in the US Senate has already broken records since the process began on the weekend, with some counties posting staggeringly long wait times at early voting sites during the first days of early voting.Reports on Monday’s turnout varied from more than 250,000 voters to more than 300,000 on the first day of statewide early operation of the polls. Some counties began earlier.Herschel Walker accuser comes forward with fresh relationship claimsRead moreAs of mid-afternoon Tuesday, 11 of 27 early voting locations in Fulton county, the state’s most populous, had a wait time of at least an hour. Several reported wait times of more than two hours.In Gwinnett county, in suburban Atlanta, eight of the 11 early voting sites reported wait times of at least 45 minutes, including three sites with wait times of more than an hour. Zach Manifold, the county’s election administrator, attributed the long waits to “heavy turnout and only seven days of advance voting”. Georgia Republicans passed a law last year that shortened the runoff period from nine weeks to four.Manifold said his county was operating at “maximum capacity on check-ins” and was equipped to handle about 20,000 voters a day. Nearly 18,000 people voted in person in the county on Monday, according to state data.The incumbent Democrat, Raphael Warnock, and his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, are neck and neck as the election on 6 December approaches. The deputy secretary of state, Gabriel Sterling, said it was the largest in-person early voting day in Georgia history.Just…WOW! GA voters, facilitated through the hard work of county election & poll workers, have shattered the old Early Vote turnout, with 300,438 Georgians casting their votes today. They blew up the old record of 233k votes in a day. Way to go voters & election workers. #gapol pic.twitter.com/rYbmpjAs43— Gabriel Sterling (@GabrielSterling) November 29, 2022
Neither candidate got above the 50% threshold in the midterm elections earlier this month, so under Georgia rules the fierce race went to a runoff.With just a week to go before polls close, progressives in Georgia are leaving nothing to chance. A coalition of progressive groups has launched a massive canvassing effort for the Democratic party.Leaders of the coalition, known as Georgia Organizers for Active Transformation, said on a Monday press call that they now have 2,500 canvassers knocking on 200,000 doors a day, and that canvassers have knocked on more than 2.5m doors in the three weeks since election day.The early voting numbers appear to indicate that the effort is paying dividends. According to the progressive group Progress Georgia, African Americans and women are currently outpacing their high turnout levels in the 2020 general election. Given that those constituencies lean toward Democrats, the early voting data could provide some reassurance to Warnock’s camp as he defends a seat he has only held since 2021.“Georgia voters know exactly what’s going on,” said Hillary Holley, a coalition leader and the executive director of Care in Action. “They know what the stakes are, and they want Warnock to remain representing them for six additional years.”Despite the extensive efforts of progressive organizers, the state’s early voting operation has run into some significant issues. Many voters reported long lines at polling places over the weekend, with Warnock himself waiting in line for about an hour on Sunday to cast his vote.Misunderstandings about voting rules appear to be widespread, according to Holley. “Every time basically our canvassers reach a voter at their house they’re saying, ‘Thank you so much because we are so confused about when we can go vote,’” she said.Part of that confusion stems from a judge’s last-minute ruling that counties could allow early voting to occur on the Saturday after the Thanksgiving holiday.Georgia election officials had initially said that early voting could not take place on that day, but the Warnock campaign won a legal challenge to expand voting hours.Stephanie Jackson Ali, policy director of the progressive group New Georgia Project, said: “Our call is for counties to continue the fight to get more locations open, to continue the fight to keep your counties open late, and for our voters to stay in line.”TopicsGeorgiaDemocratsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsnewsReuse this content More

Congress expected to impose contract on US railroad workers to avert strikeCiting ‘catastrophic’ risk to US economy, Nancy Pelosi announces impending vote to bind unions to September negotiations The US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has announced that her fellow members of Congress plan to vote this week on imposing a new contract for railroad workers to avert a looming labor strike.Pelosi made the announcement late on Monday afternoon just after Joe Biden called on Congress to intervene to prevent a strike, a possibility if an agreement between the freight rail industry and unions is not made by 9 December.How a potential US rail strike could affect the economyRead moreIn a statement referring to the president’s request, Pelosi said that Democrats were “reluctant to bypass” negotiations but “we must act to prevent a catastrophic nationwide rail strike, which would grind our economy to a halt”.The agreement that would be imposed if passed by both congressional chambers comes from negotiations that were made in September between the rail companies, several unions and the Biden administration. It would entail a 24% raise by 2024, $1,000 in annual bonuses and a cap on healthcare premiums.Four unions – including the largest rail union, the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (Smart), which represents more than 28,000 rail workers – rejected the agreement and had been negotiating with rail companies over the last several weeks. Smart turned down the tentative deal with rail management on 21 November, inching closer to a potential strike in December.The dozen rail unions, including those who voted in favor of the September deal, agreed to strike if just one union rejects any agreement and takes the dispute to the picket line. The rail industry has estimated a strike would cost the economy $2bn a day as key ground transportation for goods and passengers would be halted.Congress has the ability to impose an agreement on to the rail workers to avert a strike, something Democrats have been holding off on doing to give more room for unions to negotiate with management.The deadlock between management and the unions is mostly over paid sick leave. The union argues that workers should get at least six days of paid sick leave. They are currently expected to use vacation time if they call out sick and are penalized if they take time off without using vacation days. The agreement Congress is considering does not include a sick leave provision.On Monday, Biden said that he was “a proud pro-labor president” but that the effects of a strike would be too severe on the US economy.“Where the economic impact of a shutdown would hurt millions of other working people and families – I believe Congress must use its powers to adopt this deal,” the president said in his statement. “Some in Congress want to modify the deal to either improve it for labor or for management. However well-intentioned, any changes would risk delay and a debilitating shutdown.”The Railroad Workers Union on Tuesday issued a statement responding to Biden, saying that the president “blew it”.“He had the opportunity to prove his labor-friendly pedigree to millions of workers by simply asking Congress for legislation to end the threat of a national strike on terms more favorable to workers,” the statement said.In her statement, Pelosi said that the House will take up the agreement “with no poison pills or changes to the negotiated terms” and will soon send it to the Senate if passed.TopicsUS unionsUS CongressRail industryNancy PelosiJoe BidenUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Jewish conservatives condemn Trump for meeting antisemite Nick FuentesMike Pence, Chris Christie and several Republican senators were also critical, to varying degrees, of former president Several Republican lawmakers and prominent Jewish conservatives have condemned Donald Trump for meeting with white supremacist and antisemite Nick Fuentes, in a rare distancing from the ex-president.Trump’s former vice-president Mike Pence, the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, and several Republican senators were critical, to varying degrees, of Trump, who has come under fire after dining with Fuentes last week.Joe Biden on collision course with unions over effort to block rail strike – liveRead moreFuentes, described by the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League as “among the most prominent and unapologetic antisemites in the country”, met Trump with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who has repeatedly made racist comments about Jewish people.“President Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist, an antisemite and a Holocaust denier a seat at the table,” Pence said in an interview with News Nation on Monday. “I think he should apologize for it, and he should denounce those individuals and their hateful rhetoric without qualification.”Chris Christie, a sometime Trump ally who, like Pence, is said to be considering a presidential run, told the New York Times that Trump’s actions “make him an untenable general election candidate for the Republican party in 2024”.“This is just another example of an awful lack of judgment from Donald Trump,” Christie said.Jewish conservative figures also spoke out against Trump, including Jay Lefkowitz, a former adviser to George W Bush.“We have a long history in this country of separating the moral character of the man in the White House from his conduct in office, but with Trump, it’s gone beyond any of the reasonably acceptable and justifiable norms,” Lefkowitz told the newspaper.Trump has said Ye had been invited to dinner and “unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends”, “whom I knew nothing about”.Ben Shapiro, a Jewish rightwing personality who has been supportive of Trump in the past, rejected Trump’s explanation in a post on Twitter.“A good way not to accidentally dine with a vile racist and anti-Semite you don’t know is not to dine with a vile racist and anti-Semite you do know,” Shapiro wrote on Sunday.The meeting with Fuentes, a Holocaust denier who has repeated the racist “white genocide” theory, was not the first time Trump has engaged with racism.After deadly clashes at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump declared that there were “very fine people on both sides”, and he told the far-right Proud Boys group to “stand by” during a presidential debate.“President Trump hosting racist antisemites for dinner encourages other racist antisemites,” the Republican Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy tweeted on Monday. “These attitudes are immoral and should not be entertained. This is not the Republican party.”The Republican West Virginia senator Shelley Moore said: “It’s ridiculous you would do something with someone who espouses those views.”The condemnation was far from universal, however. PBS approached 57 Republican politicians for comment on Trump’s meeting with Fuentes, and a majority declined to comment.Others said it was wrong for Trump to hold the meeting, but stopped short of criticizing the former president, while the Florida senator Marco Rubio defended Trump.“I know (Trump) is not an antisemite. I can tell you that for a fact that Trump is not but this guy (Fuentes) is evil. And that guy is a nasty, disgusting person. (Fuentes) is an ass clown,” Rubio told a reporter.CNN reported that during the dinner Trump “was engaged with Fuentes and found him ‘very interesting’”.“At one point during the dinner, Trump declared that he ‘liked’ Fuentes,” CNN said.The twice-impeached former president, who has filed for corporate bankruptcy at least four times, said he had given Ye business advice during the dinner.“We got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson.’ Why wouldn’t I agree to meet? Also, I didn’t know Nick Fuentes,” Trump said on Truth Social, his rightwing social media platform.TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansAntisemitismThe far rightKanye WestnewsReuse this content More

US is failing to address ‘persistent and lethal threat’ of domestic terrorism, report findsFederal government has continued to focus ‘disproportionately’ on international terrorist threats despite spate of racist shootings The FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are failing to properly address the threat of domestic terrorism, predominantly from white supremacist and anti-government extremists, according to a Senate committee report released on Monday.The Senate homeland security and governmental affairs committee spent three years investigating domestic terrorism and the federal response.Biden vows to combat ‘venom and violence’ of white supremacy Read moreIt found that the FBI and the DHS have “failed to systematically track and report data on domestic terrorism” and have not allocated sufficient resources to countering the threat.The report comes after a spate of racist shootings in 2022. On Monday, a white man who shot 10 Black people to death in a Buffalo grocery store in May pleaded guilty to murder and hate-crime charges.Both the FBI and the DHS have identified domestic terrorism, in particular white supremacist violence, as the “most persistent and lethal terrorist threat” to the US, the committee said.But the federal government has continued to focus “disproportionately” on international terrorist threats, it found.“Despite this acknowledgement and multiple analyses, plans, and national strategies across multiple administrations, this investigation found that the federal government has continued to allocate resources disproportionately aligned to international terrorist threats over domestic terrorist threats,” the report said.The report added that the federal government “still fails to comprehensively track and report data on domestic terrorism despite a requirement from Congress to do so”.According to the Anti-Defamation League there have been 333 “right-wing extremist-related killings” in the last 10 years, with 73% of those at the hands of white supremacists.Black Americans have increasingly found themselves the target of hate crimes. Between 2019 and 2020, hate crimes against Black Americans rose by 46%, the New York Times reported. Earlier this year, 57 historically Black colleges and houses of worship were targeted by bomb threats.The Senate committee report cites a 2021 study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which found there were 110 domestic terrorist plots and attacks in 2020, compared with 65 such cases in 2019 and 70 in 2017 – the previous high.The report found that the FBI and DHS have “different definitions for ‘domestic terrorism’, which could lead to the two agencies categorizing the same event as different types of terrorism”.It said that in 2019 the FBI changed its reporting procedures to combine all forms of racially motivated extremism, including the pre-existing category of “white supremacist violence”, into one category called “racially motivated violent extremists”.“This change obscures the full scope of white supremacist terrorist attacks, and it has prevented the federal government from accurately measuring domestic terrorism threats,” the report said.TopicsUS newsUS politicsRaceUS crimeFBInewsReuse this content More

Hakeem Jeffries’ likely elevation set to please US pro-Israel groupsDemocrat set to succeed Nancy Pelosi maintains ties to Aipac and others but could be challenged by critics in his own caucus Hakeem Jeffries might be about to make history but some critics fear that on one issue, at least, he will be on the wrong side of it.The progressive New York congressman widely expected to lead the Democrats in the US House of Representatives will be the first person of color to head either party in the chamber. Jeffries’ election as House minority leader in the new Congress in January would also see the baton pass to a new generation of Democratic leaders as the speaker, Nancy Pelosi, 82, steps aside.US corporations gave more than $8m to election deniers’ midterm campaignsRead moreThe change will be a profound one but, for some, it will only go so far.The prospect of Jeffries heading the Democrats in the House has been greeted with delight by hardline pro-Israel groups increasingly alarmed at a growing dissent in Congress over Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, including large-scale forced removals of Arabs from their homes, which is only likely to intensify as the Israeli far-right gains power.The former Democratic congressman Robert Wexler told Jewish Insider that “the pro-Israel camp needs someone just like Hakeem to lead us into the future”.“In fact, I would say, if the pro-Israel community wanted to create a Democratic leader for the future, we would create Hakeem Jeffries,” he said.“Hakeem is not just interested in these issues. He’s devoted to them. He’s respectful of the American Jewish community. He identifies with it. And he’s just a really nice guy on top of it.”Others who defend Israeli policies have praised Jeffries in similarly lavish terms. The congressman has been just as effusive in speaking about Israel.In 2020, Jeffries told a conference of the US’s largest and most powerful pro-Israel lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), that “back home in New York City we consider Jerusalem to be the sixth borough”.“The relationship is anchored in values,” he told the meeting.But as Jeffries takes over the Democratic House leadership he is likely to find the claim of common values increasingly tested by far-right ministers in the new Israeli government and challenged by critics of its policies in his own caucus.Among those expected to be have a powerful influence over the next Israeli government is the leader of the Jewish Power party, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who was active in the anti-Arab Kach party until it was banned as a terrorist organisation after one of its followers, Baruch Goldstein, murdered 29 Palestinians in Hebron in 1994. Ben-Gvir used to hang a portrait of Goldstein in his living room.Ben-Gvir, like Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected to become prime minister again, is opposed to the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Jeffries supports “a self-governed and demilitarized Palestinian state”.With Ben-Gvir expected to be appointed public security minister in Netanyahu’s new government, while advocating the expulsion of Arabs deemed to be disloyal to the Jewish state, the pressure within the Democratic caucus to ensure that Israel lives up to the democratic values Jeffries praises is only likely to grow.Jeffries opposed a bill introduced last year by another party member, Betty McCollum, to ensure that the nearly $4bn in annual American military aid to Israel is not used to illegally annex Palestinian land, to demolish Arab homes and forcibly remove Palestinians, or to detain children in Israel’s labyrinthian military judicial system.Earlier this year, 15 Democratic members of Congress urged the Biden administration to intervene over the largest forcible removal of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank by the Israeli military in decades, in what has been called a war crime by Human Rights Watch.Jeffries told Aipac that aid should continue with “no conditions”. He signed a letter drawn up by Democratic Congressman Ted Deutch opposing “reducing funding or adding conditions on security assistance”. The letter was signed by more than 300 members of Congress, boosted by an Aipac lobbying campaign.Pressure has also grown in Congress for a proper accounting by Israel over the killing of the Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May.Dylan Williams, the senior vice-president of policy and strategy at the Washington-based campaign group J Street, which describes itself as “pro-Israel and pro-peace”, has said the demands for justice for Abu Akleh reflect broader concerns within Congress as Israeli killings of Palestinians have escalated while Jewish settlers in the West Bank appear to have been given free rein at times to attack Palestinians and take over their land.“Members of Congress seem increasingly frustrated that these types of disturbing actions from Israeli forces continue to take place, without facing meaningful pushback or accountability from our government,” he said.“There’s growing momentum to make clear that Israel must be held to the same important standards as all close US allies, and that our steadfast support for Israel’s security does not and should not preclude our government from also standing up in defense of human rights and international law in the occupied Palestinian territory.”Jeffries maintains close ties to Aipac and other hardline pro-Israel lobby groups. One of them, Pro-Israel America, was his largest single donor over the past year, giving his campaign more than $213,000. Pro-Israel groups gave him $460,000 in total, second only to donations from the financial industry.Critics have said that Jeffries’ statements on Israel often read like lobby talking points. Earlier this year, the congressman rejected reports by Israeli and international human rights groups that Israel practices a form of apartheid against the Palestinians. He said the claim is “designed to isolate Israel in one of the toughest neighborhoods in the world”.During a visit to Israel and the occupied territories earlier this year, Jeffries confronted the Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh for raising the apartheid parallel, in effect telling him how the Palestinians are permitted to describe their own oppression.However, Jeffries broke with the pro-Israel lobby and many of his Jewish constituents in supporting President Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. Aipac lobbied heavily against it after Israel opposed the agreement, which was intended to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.TopicsUS politicsDemocratsIsraelMiddle East and north AfricaPalestinian territoriesnewsReuse this content More

US courts ruling in favor of justice department turns legal tide on TrumpThe ex-president’s supporters will no longer be able to avoid testifying before grand juries in Washington DC and Georgia A spate of major court rulings rejecting claims of executive privilege and other arguments by Donald Trump and his top allies are boosting investigations by the US justice department (DoJ) and a special Georgia grand jury into whether the former US president broke laws as he sought to overturn the 2020 election results.Justice department asks Pence to testify in Trump investigationRead moreFormer prosecutors say the upshot of these court rulings is that key Trump backers and ex-administration lawyers – such as ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows and legal adviser John Eastman – can no longer stave off testifying before grand juries in DC and Georgia. They are wanted for questioning about their knowledge of – or active roles in – Trump’s crusade to stop Joe Biden from taking office by leveling false charges of fraud.Due to a number of court decisions, Meadows, Eastman, Senator Lindsey Graham and others must testify before a special Georgia grand jury working with the Fulton county district attorney focused on the intense drive by Trump and top loyalists to pressure the Georgia secretary of state and other officials to thwart Biden’s victory there.Similarly, court rulings have meant that top Trump lawyers such as former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who opposed Trump’s zealous drive to overturn the 2020 election, had to testify without invoking executive privilege before a DC grand jury investigating Trump’s efforts to block Congress from certifying Biden’s election victory.On another legal front, some high level courts have ruled adversely for Trump regarding the hundreds of classified documents he took to his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago when he left office, thus helping an inquiry into whether he broke laws by holding onto papers that should have been sent to the National Archives.“Trump’s multipronged efforts to keep former advisers from testifying or providing documents to federal and state grand juries, as well as the January 6 committee, has met with repeated failure as judge after judge has rejected his legal arguments,” ex-justice department prosecutor Michael Zeldin told the Guardian. “Obtaining this testimony is a critical step, perhaps the last step, before state and federal prosecutors determine whether the former president should be indicted … It allows prosecutors for the first time to question these witnesses about their direct conversations with the former president.”Other ex-justice lawyers agree that Trump’s legal plight has now grown due to the key court rulings.“Favorable rulings by judges on issues like executive privilege and the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege bode well for agencies investigating Trump,” said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for eastern Michigan. “Legal challenges may create delay, but on the merits, with rare exception, judges are consistently ruling against him.”Although Trump has been irked by the spate of court rulings against him and his allies, experts point out that they have included decisions from typically conservative courts, as well as ones with more liberal leanings.Former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut, for instance, said that: “Just last month, the 11th circuit court of appeals, one of the country’s most conservative federal courts, delivered key rulings in both the Fulton county and DoJ Trump investigations.”Specifically, the court in separate rulings gave a green light to “DoJ criminal lawyers to review the seized, classified documents that Trump took to Mar-a-Lago, reversing renegade district court judge Aileen Cannon’s freeze-in-place order”, Aftergut said.In the other ruling, the court held that Graham “couldn’t hide behind the constitution’s ‘speech and debate’ clause to avoid testifying before the Atlanta grand jury”, Aftergut noted.“The speech and debate clause,” he pointed out, “only affords immunities from testifying about matters relating to congressional speeches and duties. That dog didn’t hunt here.”Soon after these rulings, the supreme court left both orders in place. “It’s enough to make an old prosecutor with stubborn faith in the courts proud,” Aftergut said.Separately, federal court judge David Carter, who issued a scathing decision earlier this year that implicated Trump and Eastman in a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, last month ruled that Eastman had to turn over 33 documents to the House January 6 panel including a number that the judge ruled were exempt from attorney-client privilege because they involved a crime or an attempted crime.Ex-justice lawyers say that a number of the recent court rulings should prove helpful to the special counsel Jack Smith, who attorney general Merrick Garland recently tapped to oversee both DoJ’s investigation into Trump’s retention of sensitive documents post presidency and the inquiry into his efforts to stop Biden from taking office.True to form, Trump didn’t waste any time attacking the new special counsel.“I have been going through this for six years – for six years I have been going through this, and I am not going to go through it any more,” Trump told Fox News Digital in an interview the same day Smith was appointed. “And I hope the Republicans have the courage to fight this.” More