US Politics

TikTok tightens policies around political issues in run-up to US midtermsPoliticians will be banned from using social media platform for campaign fundraising Politicians on TikTok will no longer be able to use the app tipping tools, nor access advertising features on the social network, as the company tightens its policies around political issues in the run-up to the US midterm elections in six weeks’ time.Political advertising is already banned on the platform, alongside “harmful misinformation”, but as TikTok has grown over the past two years, new features such as gifting, tipping and ecommerce have been embraced by some politicians on the site.Now, new rules will again limit political players’ ability to use the app for anything other than organic activity, to “help ensure TikTok remains a fun, positive and joyful experience”, the company said.“TikTok has long prohibited political advertising, including both paid ads on the platform and creators being paid directly to make branded content,” it added. “We currently do that by prohibiting political content in an ad, and we’re also now applying restrictions at an account level. “This means accounts belonging to politicians and political parties will automatically have their access to advertising features turned off, which will help us more consistently enforce our existing policy.”Political accounts will be blocked from other monetisation features, and will also be removed from eligibility for the company’s “creator fund”, which distributes cash to some of the most successful video producers on the site. They will also be banned from using the platform for campaign fundraising, “such as a video from a politician asking for donations, or a political party directing people to a donation page on their website,” the service has said.“TikTok is first and foremost an entertainment platform, and we’re proud to be a place that brings people together over creative and entertaining content. By prohibiting campaign fundraising and limiting access to our monetisation features, we’re aiming to strike a balance between enabling people to discuss the issues that are relevant to their lives while also protecting the creative, entertaining platform that our community wants.”The rules are in contrast to those of Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, both of which have long allowed political advertising and encouraged politicians to use their services for campaigning purposes. In August, Meta announced its own set of policy updates for the US midterm elections, and promised to devote “hundreds of people across more than 40 teams” to ensuring the safety and security of the elections.Meta will ban all new political, electoral and social issue adverts on both its platforms for the final weeks of the campaign, its head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, said, and will remove adverts that encourage people not to vote, or call into question the legitimacy of the election. But the company won’t remove “organic” content that does the same.After years of being effectively unregulated, more and more countries are bringing online political advertising under the aegis of electoral authorities. On Monday, Google said it would begin a program that ensured that political emails never get sent to spam folders, after Republican congressional leaders accused it of partisan censorship and introduced legislation to try to ban the practice. “We expect to begin the pilot with a small number of campaigns from both parties and will test whether these changes improve the user experience, and provide more certainty for senders during this election period,” the company said in a statement.TopicsTikTokUS midterm elections 2022US politicsUS political financingnewsReuse this content More

Fox News anchor Bret Baier wanted Arizona ‘put back’ in Trump’s column, book saysNews of ‘stunning’ attempt to rescind dramatic election night call contained in The Divider, by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser Fox News anchor Bret Baier wanted the network to withdraw its famous call of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night in 2020, citing pressure from Donald Trump’s campaign and saying the swing state should be “put back in his column”, a new book says.The Divider review: riveting narrative of Trump’s plot against AmericaRead moreNews of Baier’s email is contained in The Divider: Trump in the White House 2017-2021, published in the US on Tuesday.The authors, Peter Baker of the New York Times and Susan Glasser of the New Yorker, call Baier’s request “stunning”, as Arizona “was never in Trump’s column. While the margin of his defeat in the state had narrowed since election night, he still trailed by more than 10,000 votes.”Trump did win Arizona in 2016. Its call for Biden four years later did not give the Democrat the White House but it did signal Trump was in deep trouble. Accounts of his fury at the surprisingly early call, which other networks did not follow, are legion.According to the author Michael Wolff, Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News, both personally approved the call and said of Trump: “Fuck him.”Fox News denied that but Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, wrote in his own book that on election night, Murdoch told him Arizona was “not even close”.The election was called for Biden on 7 November, four days later, when he was agreed to have won Pennsylvania.But Baker and Glasser report that “turmoil” reigned at Fox News over Arizona, amid worries that rightwing rivals including Newsmax, firmly in the van for Trump, might take viewers away.“Fox executives were freaking out,” the authors write, adding that Suzanne Scott, the chief executive, wanted Fox News to stop calling any more states until they were certified by election authorities – a process that takes weeks.Baker and Glasser say Bill Sammon, the Washington managing editor, rejected that plan, saying: “Our enemies – and there are many – will portray this as follows: For the first time in its history, Fox News refuses to project the next president, who just happens to be the Democrat who defeated Donald Trump.”Baker and Glasser report that though Baier had “long insisted that he was different than the Trump-cheerleading opinion hosts” at Fox News, he felt White House pressure to rescind the Arizona call.In an email on Thursday 5 November, they report, the anchor said “the Trump campaign was really pissed” and added: “This situation is getting uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable. I keep having to defend this on air.”Baier reportedly “accused the [Fox News] Decision Desk of ‘holding on for pride’ and added: ‘It’s hurting us. The sooner we pull it – even if it gives us a major egg – and we put it back in his column, the better we are in my opinion.’”They also say the Decision Desk was not allowed to call Nevada for Biden even after other networks did, because doing so would have made Biden Fox News’s projected winner, given the Arizona call.Broken News review: Ex-Fox News editor has broadsides for both sidesRead moreTrump continues to lie about mass voter fraud in Arizona, even after an “audit” by state Republicans did not find fraud – and instead slightly increased Biden’s margin of victory.In the aftermath of the Arizona call, Baker and Glasser write, Bill Sammon and Chris Stirewalt, senior members of the Fox News politics team, were “summarily fired”.Fox News insists Sammon retired while Stirewalt – who has written his own book – was let go because of “restructuring”.Baker and Glasser write: “Whatever they called it, Fox had decided that deference to Trump was more important than getting the story right.”Quoting another email, they say Jay Wallace, the Fox News president and executive editor, told Sammon: “I respect the hell out of you, but it’s turned into a war.”TopicsBooksFox NewsUS politicsUS elections 2020RepublicansPolitics booksUS television industrynewsReuse this content More

Biden declared victory over big pharma – but is it enough to sway senior voters?The Inflation Reduction Act aims to reduce the cost of drugs, but the law’s limitations may not help the Democrats in the midterms At a Labor Day speech in Milwaukee, Joe Biden declared nothing less than victory over the pharmaceutical industry.“We beat pharma!” Biden said, leaning into the microphone. “We beat pharma this year, and it mattered. We’re going to change people’s lives.”The president was referring to the August passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which, among widely touted provisions to fight the climate crisis and tax big corporations, also aims to reduce prescription drug costs for seniors. The law allows Medicare to begin negotiating with pharmaceutical companies on some expensive drugs – a long-sought goal for activists and the key “victory” that Biden believes he has scored over the powerful pharmaceutical lobby.What Biden did not mention in his speech, however, was that the law also includes limits on those negotiations – meaning analysts believe it may be some time before the scorekeepers decide whether to declare Biden the winner.It also means that the Democrats could have difficulty using the accomplishment in their next big test, the midterm elections, where they hope to win over seniors – at least those who have not decided how they will vote.Biden’s landmark climate and spending bill – what’s in it, and what got cut?Read more“The impact on the election will be if you can convince people over age 60 that they really will be seeing something to help them with their drug costs,” said Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard University. “But if somebody tells them they are not going to see that until 2026, that’s not as exciting as ‘I really expect this year I’m going to get relief with the bills I have.’”The pharmaceutical part of the IRA law requires the federal government to start negotiating for some expensive drugs covered under Medicare – but not until 2026, and only with 10 retail prescription drugs that year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Another 15 retail drugs will be eligible for negotiation starting the following year, then 35 more in 2028 and 2029, including drugs administered by physicians.The act also requires pharmaceutical companies to pay rebates to Medicare if they increase drug prices faster than inflation; and, beginning in 2025, a $2,000 annual cap that means nobody on Medicare would have to pay more than that amount out of their own pocket.“Despite their limitations, the drug pricing reform provisions of the [act] have the potential to transform the ways in which Medicare pays for drugs, and to provide financial benefits to millions of seniors who have difficulty affording their medications,” Rachel Sachs, a Washington University law professor and expert in health law, wrote in Health Affairs.Biden has tried to make political hay out of the deal to reduce drug costs. He has called out his opponents for not supporting the measures, reminding listeners that all Republicans voted against the Inflation Reduction Act.“For decades, big pharma won – year in, year out – because they own chunks of the Congress – because they had help, like your senior senator, Ron Johnson,” Biden told the crowd in Wisconsin, referring to the Republican lawmaker who is up for re-election this year. Johnson’s opponent, the lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, Mandela Barnes, has also criticized the incumbent’s ties to the pharmaceutical industry.But recent polling indicates that despite the drug price “win”, the race is a toss-up. Democrats are favored to retain control of the Senate, but Republicans are favored to take control of the House, according to the most recent modeling from the FiveThirtyEight.Democrats’ struggles could be because voters are less concerned with the pharmaceutical industry than they are other issues. A majority of voters told a recent survey from Politico and Harvard that inflation, the economy and jobs, gun policy, abortion and gas prices all rank ahead of healthcare (at least non-Covid-19 healthcare) in the list of what will affect their decisions in the midterms.The Covid-19 pandemic and surrounding upheaval in recent years “has made people unbelievably short-term in how they think about the issues,” Blendon added.The number of drugs affected by the new law is also very limited. And since the requirements won’t immediately take effect, they could be reversed or softened by a Republican administration, said Simon Haeder, professor of public health at Texas A&M University.“We will really see if it’s a big deal maybe five, 10 years down the line, and the only way this turns into a big deal is if this is a nose or the toes in the door kind of thing and spurs larger changes,” said Haeder.Also, since the healthcare provisions are part of a wider law on climate and corporation taxes, voters may not be aware of what it does about drug prices specifically, Blendon said.Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, argues the healthcare provisions will not make much difference in the midterms. The breakthrough on drug price negotiations will be “subsumed by other broader issues about inflation, crime, immigration, the future of democracy, education and broader healthcare issues that go well beyond the limited negotiation for a small number of drugs.”The key for Democrats in making sure that’s not the case, Blendon argues, is advertising.“If you were working in the White House, you want everything to try to highlight the drug price provisions, particularly in districts with older people,” he said. “If they are aware that something is being done for people over age 60, 65 for drug prices, it will help the Democrats.”AARP (formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons) is trying to increase awareness of how the law could benefit people over 65, who are eligible for Medicare. The organization has published articles, held town hall meetings and devoted its September monthly bulletin to explaining the law.Leigh Purvis, the director of AARP’s healthcare costs and access, thinks the law could help Democrats with the delays in drug price negotiation requirements, because some parts of it – notably the rebates for inflation, and the cap on insulin payments – take effect next year.“This law is effectively starting very soon, and it’s just a matter of helping people see those changes and recognize them for what they are and what caused them,” Purvis said.TopicsUS politicsPharmaceuticals industryUS MedicarefeaturesReuse this content More

National security adviser Jake Sullivan says the Biden administration will be “unequivocal” in rejecting the “sham referendums” in four Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.Speaking at a White House press briefing, Sullivan said the announcement of the votes in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which analysts say is a likely forerunner to the Kremlin formally annexing the provinces, is “an affront to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity that underpin the international system”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We know that these referenda will be manipulated. We know that Russia will use the sham referenda as a basis to purportedly annex these territories, either now or in the future.
Let me be clear, if this does transpire, the United States will never recognize Russia’s claims to any purportedly annexed parts of Ukraine. We will never recognize this territory as anything other than a part of Ukraine. We reject Russia’s actions unequivocally.Sullivan also addressed reports of new Russian mobilization measures, including the calling up of prisoners to shore up depleted troop numbers:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}This is reflective of Russia’s struggles in Ukraine. [Russian president Vladimir Putin] may be resorting to partial mobilization, forcing even more Russians to go fight his brutal war in Ukraine, in part because they simply need more personnel and manpower given the success that Ukraine has had on the battlefield, particularly in the north east but even pushing into other parts of previously occupied territory.
The bottom line is that Russia is throwing together sham referendums on three days’ notice as they continue to lose ground on the battlefield and as more world leaders distance themselves from Russia on the public stage.
Russia is scraping for personnel to throw into this fight. These are not the actions of the competent country. These are not acts of strength, quite the opposite.That’s a wrap on Tuesday’s US politics blog. Thanks for joining us.It was a brutal afternoon for Donald Trump, whose lawyers were excoriated by the “special master” in his document-hoarding case for having no proof to back up the former president’s vocal proclamations he declassified the papers before he left office.Judge Raymond Dearie, who was the Trump team’s nomination to act as independent arbiter in the justice department’s criminal investigation, told his attorneys at a hearing in New York: “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”Here’s what else we followed:
Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis refused to confirm reports he was behind another planeload of migrants reportedly sent on Tuesday to Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware. The White House decried as “a political stunt” DeSantis’s action to dump about 50 Venezuelan migrants in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, last week.
The flow of so-called “dark money” in politics is damaging democracy in the US and eroding public trust, Joe Biden said at an afternoon briefing in which he called on Congress to pass the Disclose Act requiring sizeable campaign donations to be declared.
The White House says the US will never accept Russia attempting to annex occupied areas of Ukraine through “sham” referendums, the Biden administration’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan told a press briefing at the White House.
Sullivan offered a preview of Joe Biden’s address to the United Nations general assembly on Wednesday, saying the president will offer a strong rebuke of Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, and make “significant new announcements” about his government’s investments to address global food insecurity.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden was “closely monitoring” the devastating impact of Hurricane Fiona on Puerto Rico, and says hundreds of federal emergency workers are already on the ground, including Fema administrator Deanne Criswell.
Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell says he is now “cautiously optimistic” about his party’s chances of winning back control of the chamber in November’s midterm elections, Axios reports. The former Senate leader had previously expressed doubt about a Republican majority.
Please join us again tomorrow.If Judge Raymond Dearie’s first meeting with Donald Trump’s lawyers on Tuesday is anything to go by, the former president’s insistence on a “special master” for his classified documents case is backfiring spectacularly.According to reports of their meeting in New York this afternoon, which was also attended by attorneys for the justice department, Dearie was brutal in his dismissal of the Trump legal team’s assertions that papers marked “top secret” found at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach last month were not classified.Trump has claimed, with no evidence whatsoever, that he declassified the documents before he left office. And now Dearie, who was proposed by Trump’s team to serve as the special master to independently vet the documents, is calling him on it, demanding to see proof from his lawyers that such an act took place.They had none.“You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” Dearie said, according to Politico.NEW: Special master in Trump Mar-a-Lago docs case chides Trump lawyers for declining to produce evidence of declassification. Judge Dearie: ‘You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.’ More from Brooklyn. w/@kyledcheneyhttps://t.co/urQaYOP1F7— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) September 20, 2022
Dearie was appointed last week to the role of independent arbiter by Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, in a surprise ruling that halted the justice department’s criminal investigation into thousands of documents found in the FBI search.Trump had claimed he had earlier returned to the National Archives all the boxes of documents he took from the White House to Florida when he left office in January 2021.Cannon denied a request from the justice department to be allowed to resume their investigation last week, prompting an immediate appeal, and an indication from department lawyers on Tuesday they were prepared to take their argument to the supreme court.Dearie indicated that he considered closed the issue of whether the documents were classified or not.“What business is it of the court?” he said.“As far as I’m concerned, that’s the end of the matter.”I’d like to report a murder. https://t.co/XQue0soT9l— George Conway🌻 (@gtconway3d) September 20, 2022
The “special master” appointed to look into top secret documents seized by the FBI last month in a search of Donald Trump’s Florida home has met with lawyers for the former president and the justice department this afternoon.According to early accounts, Judge Raymond Dearie did not appear sympathetic to Trump’s assertions, which haven’t been repeated by his legal team on the record, that he declassified the documents before leaving office.The justice department has argued the papers are in fact classified, and it needs to be allowed to continue its investigation into Trump’s improper handling of them.We’ll have more details of the meeting as we learn them.BREAKING: Judge Dearie makes clear he is taking government’s position that the classified Mar-a-Lago documents are in fact classified.“What business is it of the court? … As far as I’m concerned that’s the end of it.”Trump’s insistence on a special master is NOT going well.— Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) September 20, 2022
Ron DeSantis is refusing to confirm reports that he’s sent another planeload of migrants that reports suggest will imminently touch down in Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware.The White House on Tuesday decried as “a political stunt” the Republican Florida governor’s action to dump about 50 Venezuelan migrants in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, last week, and today’s reported flight from Texas of more to a small airport in Delaware.The Biden administration was “coordinating” with federal and local authorities in Delaware to aid those on the flight, the White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at her afternoon briefing.She said DeSantis had not attempted to contact the administration:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Alerting Fox News, and not city or state officials about a plan to abandon children fleeing communism on the side of the street is not burden sharing. It is a cruel, premeditated political stunt.DeSantis, speaking at a morning press conference in Bradenton, Florida, refused to say he was behind today’s reported flight of migrants to Delaware, WESH2 News said.“I cannot confirm that, I can’t,” DeSantis said when asked by reporters if he had arranged the flight.He also defended dropping off the Massachusetts migrants with no notice, blamed the government, and attempted to paint himself as their savior:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Those migrants were being treated horribly by Biden. They were hungry, homeless, had no opportunity at all.DeSantis’s asylum flights, meanwhile, are now the subject of a criminal inquiry in Texas:Criminal investigation launched into DeSantis asylum seeker flightsRead moreThe flow of so-called “dark money” in politics is damaging democracy in the US and eroding public trust, Joe Biden has said at an afternoon briefing in which he called on Congress to pass the Disclose Act requiring sizeable campaign donations to be declared.In the address from the White House, the president highlighted a recent example of an anonymous donor who secretly transferred $1.6bn to a Republican political group as one reason for needing to curb the “influence on our elections” of undeclared streams of cash.Biden called on Republicans to join congressional Democrats to sign the act, which would require the disclosure of individual donations of $10,000 and above during an election cycle, and ban foreign money outright:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}A conservative activist who spent decades working to put enough conservative justices on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade now has access to $1.6bn in dark money to do more damage and, from our perspective, restrict more freedoms.
Dark money erodes public trust. Republicans should join Democrats to pass the Disclose Act and to get it on my desk right away.
Dark money has become so common in our politics, I believe sunlight is the best disinfectant. Biden said Republicans had so far shown little interest in “more openness and accountability” other than “Republican governors and state legislatures in Tennessee and Wyoming that have passed disclosure laws”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Let’s remember, getting dark money out of our politics has been a bipartisan issue in the past. My deceased friend [Republican former Arizona senator] John McCain spent a lot of time fighting for campaign finance reform.
For him, it was a matter of fundamental fairness. And he was 100% right about that.Here’s where things stand midway through a busy day in US politics:
The White House says the US will never accept Russia attempting to annex occupied areas of Ukraine through “sham” referendums, the Biden administration’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan told a press briefing at the White House.
Sullivan offered a preview of Joe Biden’s address to the United Nations general assembly on Wednesday, saying the president will offer a strong rebuke of Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, and make “significant new announcements” about his government’s investments to address global food insecurity.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden was “closely monitoring” the devastating impact of Hurricane Fiona on Puerto Rico, and says hundreds of federal emergency workers are already on the ground, including Fema administrator Deanne Criswell.
Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell says he is now “cautiously optimistic” about his party’s chances of winning back control of the chamber in November’s midterm elections, Axios reports. The former Senate leader had previously expressed doubt about a Republican majority.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan says the Biden administration will be “unequivocal” in rejecting the “sham referendums” in four Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.Speaking at a White House press briefing, Sullivan said the announcement of the votes in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which analysts say is a likely forerunner to the Kremlin formally annexing the provinces, is “an affront to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity that underpin the international system”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We know that these referenda will be manipulated. We know that Russia will use the sham referenda as a basis to purportedly annex these territories, either now or in the future.
Let me be clear, if this does transpire, the United States will never recognize Russia’s claims to any purportedly annexed parts of Ukraine. We will never recognize this territory as anything other than a part of Ukraine. We reject Russia’s actions unequivocally.Sullivan also addressed reports of new Russian mobilization measures, including the calling up of prisoners to shore up depleted troop numbers:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}This is reflective of Russia’s struggles in Ukraine. [Russian president Vladimir Putin] may be resorting to partial mobilization, forcing even more Russians to go fight his brutal war in Ukraine, in part because they simply need more personnel and manpower given the success that Ukraine has had on the battlefield, particularly in the north east but even pushing into other parts of previously occupied territory.
The bottom line is that Russia is throwing together sham referendums on three days’ notice as they continue to lose ground on the battlefield and as more world leaders distance themselves from Russia on the public stage.
Russia is scraping for personnel to throw into this fight. These are not the actions of the competent country. These are not acts of strength, quite the opposite.Joe Biden is heading for the United Nations summit in New York “with the wind at his back”, and will deliver a firm rebuke of Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, national security adviser Jake Sullivan is telling reporters at the White House.He’s speaking at the daily press briefing and outlining what the president will be talking about in his address to the UN general assembly on Wednesday morning, as well as taking a dig at world leaders who won’t be there:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’re making historic investments at home; our alliances are stronger than they’ve been in modern memory; our robust, united support for Ukraine has helped the Ukrainians push back against Russian aggression; and we’re leading the world in response to the most significant transnational challenges that the world faces from global health to global food security to global supply chains to tackling the climate crisis.
Meanwhile, our competitors are facing increasingly strong headwinds, and neither President Xi [Jinping of China] nor [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin are even showing up to this global gathering.Sullivan says Biden will concentrate on foreign policy in his address on Wednesday morning:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}He’ll offer a firm rebuke of Russia’s unjust war in Ukraine and make a call to the world to continue to stand against the naked aggression that we’ve seen these past several months.
He will underscore the importance of strengthening the UN and reaffirm core tenets of its charter at a time when a permanent member of the security council has struck at the very heart of the charter by challenging the principle of territorial integrity and sovereignty.Sullivan adds Biden will also make “significant new announcements” about the US government’s investments to address global food insecurity, and hold a number of meetings with other world leaders, including his discussions with new UK prime minister Liz Truss.An afternoon “pledging session” hosted by Biden for the global fund to fight HIV, Aids, tuberculosis and malaria is expected to “produce a historic outcome in terms of the financial commitments made by our partners and by the US”, Sullivan adds.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre says the Biden administration is “closely monitoring” the impact of Hurricane Fiona on Puerto Rico, and says hundreds of federal emergency workers are already on the ground in the island.She opened up her daily press briefing at the White House with some words of comfort:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}As the president has said, we are keeping the people of Puerto Rico in our prayers. Before the hurricane made landfall, President Biden issued an emergency disaster declaration to ensure the federal government was ready to surge resources and emergency assistance to Puerto Rico.
The President called Governor [Pedro] Pierluisi from Air Force One to discuss Puerto Rico’s immediate needs as the storm made landfall. Today, Fema [Federal Emergency Management Agency] administrator Deanne Criswell will be on the ground to assess the emergency response.
Hundreds of Fema and federal responders are on the ground in Puerto Rico, including US army corps of engineer power restoration experts. And urban search and rescue teams. More federal responders are arriving in the coming days.
President Biden is receiving regular updates on the storm and these emergency efforts.Mary Peltota’s election as the first Native Alaskan to represent the state in Congress had even more historical significance.As NPR notes today, it means that for the first time, spanning back more than 230 years, Indigenous people are fully represented with a Native American, a Native Alaskan and a Native Hawaiian all in the House of Representatives.Congressman Kaiali’i Kahele of Hawaii tweeted a photo of himself with Peltota, and Sharice Davids of Kansas, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation.It has taken 233 years for the U.S. Congress to be fully represented by this country’s indigenous peoples. Tonight, a Native American, a Native Alaskan & a Native Hawaiian are sitting members of the people’s House. Welcome U.S. Representative Peltola to the 117th Congress! 🤙🏽 pic.twitter.com/AxJ8MH7aLQ— Congressman Kaiali‘i Kahele (@RepKahele) September 14, 2022
The House press gallery notes all six Indigenous Americans who are members here.Democrat Peltota, also the first woman elected to represent Alaska in the House, beat off a challenge from the state’s former governor and Republican former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin to capture the seat last month.Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar is seizing on the occasion of National Voter Registration Day to make a new, likely quixotic, bid to make it easier to go to the polls nationwide.The Minnesota lawmaker has introduced two bills containing ideas included in a major voting rights proposal that died earlier this year. First is the Same Day Voter Registration Act, which is intended to expand Americans’ ability to register to vote at the same time as they cast ballots. The second, the Save Voters Act, would clamp down on states’ ability to kick people off voting rolls, while offering new flexibility to Americans who have recently moved and are looking to cast ballots.Don’t expect either measure to pass the chamber. Not only are senators really busy, the bills would probably need at least 10 Republican votes in addition to all Democrats to overcome a filibuster, and the GOP has showed few signs of changing its mind about such laws.Democrats fail to advance voting rights law as Senate holdouts defend filibusterRead moreOn another note, the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe is now at the reigns of the blog, and will take you through the afternoon, including Joe Biden’s speech on a proposal to require more disclosure from the super PACs that have become influential in American politics.The gears of justice continue turning in the case of the alleged government secrets found at Mar-a-Lago, with lawyers for Donald Trump facing a deadline today to file their latest response in the case. Here’s the latest from Ramon Antonio Vargas on the saga:Donald Trump’s legal team has acknowledged the possibility that the former president could be indicted amid the investigation into his retention of government secrets at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.Despite claiming days earlier that Trump couldn’t imagine being charged, his lawyers made the stark admission in a court filing on Monday proposing how to conduct an outside review of documents that were seized by the FBI in August.A special court official appointed to help administer the review process, the federal judge Raymond Dearie, had previously asked Trump to detail any materials stored at Mar-a-Lago that he may have decided to declassify. In the court filing, Trump’s lawyers said that requiring him to do so could hurt any possible defense should he later be charged, and that he should not have to “fully and specifically disclose a defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment without such a requirement being evident” during the review.Trump legal team admits possibility that ex-president could be chargedRead more More

‘It’s not a banger’: response to Space Force official song is less than stellarThe new song, Semper Supra, is set to a jaunty tune, but critics say its lyrics are ‘verbal word salad’ Space Force, the sixth and newest branch of the US military, unveiled its official song on Tuesday amid a less than stellar critical response.As one website dedicated to covering America’s armed forces put it: “It’s not a banger.”Space Force was created in 2019, calved from the US air force at the behest of the Donald Trump White House.Critics wondered if the new force was needed. Announcements including the badge and uniform (suspiciously like badges and uniforms in Star Trek) and the name for service members (Guardians) attracted controversy, mockery and a satirical Netflix series starring Steve Carell.US and Australia to launch second joint spy satellite from site in New Zealand Read moreBut Trump seemed proud, for instance telling writers Peter Baker and Susan Glasser – who authored a new book on his presidency – that founding Space Force was among his greatest achievements in office.The US military has a tradition of official songs, from The Marine’s Hymn (adopted in 1929, beginning “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli / We fight our country’s battles / In the air, on land and sea”) to The Army Goes Rolling Along, from 1956.The moment you’ve all been waiting for: The Space Force has unveiled its official song pic.twitter.com/v6CG3I4sYD— Dave Brown (@dave_brown24) September 20, 2022
The new song, Semper Supra – taken from the Space Force motto: Always above – was unveiled by Gen John “Jay” Raymond, chief of space operations, at a conference in National Harbor, Maryland.Military.com, the site which said the new tune was “not a banger”, reported that Space Force used a 1901 march by John Philip Sousa, The Invincible Eagle, as a stopgap while the new song was written.Semper Supra is set to a jaunty tune reminiscent of The Liberty Bell, another Sousa march, from 1893 but now widely known as the theme to the British comedy series Monty Python’s Flying Circus.The chief musician of the US Coast Guard Band, Sean Nelson, worked on the music for the Space Force song. The lyrics were penned by Jamie Teachenor, a country music songwriter and member of the US Air Force Band.Nelson said: “I went for it and I did what I thought was going to be the most exciting kind of sounds.”Teachenor added: “I wanted to make sure that everything that was in the song would adequately represent all the capabilities that our Space Force is involved with and make sure I didn’t mess up on the mission.”Teachenor’s lyrics are as follows: “We’re the mighty watchful eye / Guardians beyond the blue / The invisible front line / Warfighters brave and true.“Boldly reaching into space / there’s no limit to our sky / Standing guard both night and day / We’re the Space Force from on high.”Critical response was at best mixed. The executive editor of Defense One, a military news site, Kevin Baron, wrote: “The tune is a fine march. The lyrics are awful.“Grammatically, I’m dying to edit: You’re not the ‘invisible’ front line. CIA is. We literally see you singing this song. ‘Warfighter’ is NOT A WORD. ‘Both’ is redundant. Strike it.“‘Boldly’ steals from Star Trek (again). And how is one boldly ‘reaching into space’ without going there? There is a ‘limit to our sky’. It’s called space. Sky ends. Space begins. These lyrics are the verbal word salad version of a bad air force painting.”TopicsUS militarySpaceUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

Criminal investigation launched into DeSantis asylum seeker flightsTexas county sheriff says it seems evident that asylum seekers had been ‘lured’ to travel to Martha’s Vineyard ‘under false pretenses’ A criminal investigation has been launched in Texas into whether dozens of asylum seekers were illegally flown from the state to Martha’s Vineyard, as new evidence continues to emerge suggesting they were misled.Attorneys for ‘duped’ migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard call for criminal investigationRead moreThe Bexar county sheriff, Javier Salazar, said on Monday that his office was investigating the flights, chartered on behalf of the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, which brought dozens of migrants to the island in Massachusetts.While Salazar did not name possible subjects in the inquiry, he said: “Everybody on this call knows who those names are already,” according to NBC News.Salazar did not discuss what specific laws might have been broken, but said it seemed evident that asylum seekers had been “lured under false pretenses”, with a recruiter given a “bird dog fee” to gather dozens of people who were outside a San Antonio migrant resource center.“They were promised work,” said Salazar. “They were promised the solution to several of their problems.”Many of the asylum seekers were given pamphlets advertising cash assistance, help with housing, job training and other resources if they came to Massachusetts.But the promised benefits are only available for refugees, a specific categorization under US immigration law that the asylum seekers do not currently fall under.Lawyers for Civil Rights, a Boston-based group representing 30 of the recent arrivals, shared links and images of the brochures on Twitter.“This is additional evidence that shows in writing that those false representations were made in order to induce our clients to travel,” said Oren Sellstrom, the group’s litigation director, to NBC News.The group has also called for a federal and state criminal investigation into the chartered flights.A spokesperson from DeSantis’s office defended the flights and the brochures, saying that migrants were sent to “greener pastures” and to places that had more resources than Bexar county.The flights are just one instance of a broader pattern of Republican officials sending thousands of asylum seekers to predominantly Democratic-voting areas, a stunt that Democrats have slammed as illegal and wrong.“There is a process that is in place. And what they are doing is an illegal stunt, is a political stunt,” said the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre.TopicsUS immigrationRon DeSantisFloridaMassachusettsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Trump legal team admits possibility that ex-president could be chargedLawyers tell special master reviewing Mar-a-Lago case he should not have to say which documents he may have declassified Donald Trump’s legal team has acknowledged the possibility that the former president could be indicted amid the investigation into his retention of government secrets at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.Despite Trump’s claiming days earlier that he couldn’t imagine being charged, his lawyers made the stark admission that he could be in a court filing on Monday proposing how to conduct an outside review of documents that were seized by the FBI in August.80s hits and nuclear secrets: security concerns plague Trump’s Mar-a-LagoRead moreA “special master” – a court official appointed to help administer the review process, the federal judge Raymond Dearie – had previously asked Trump to detail any materials stored at Mar-a-Lago that he may have decided to declassify.In the court filing, Trump’s lawyers – who had successfully pushed for the special master’s appointment – said that requiring him to do so could hurt any possible defense should he later be charged, and that he should not have to “fully and specifically disclose a defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment without such a requirement being evident” during the review.Dearie was set to have his first meeting with Trump’s lawyers and their opponents in the case, the US justice department’s prosecutors, on Tuesday in federal court in Brooklyn. He reportedly rejected the Trump side’s request to delay asserting what materials he may have classified.As of Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers had contended he could have declassified any of the documents if he wished, but they have stopped short of saying he actually did.The former president so far has been loth to publicly consider the possibility that he could be criminally charged following the FBI’s search of his resort. In a 15 September interview with the conservative radio host Hugo Hewitt, Trump said, “I can’t imagine being indicted, I’ve done nothing wrong” – in either the classified documents case or the investigation into his efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden.Trump also said, “I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it,” and that charges wouldn’t deter him from running for the White House again in 2024 if he wanted.Justice department prosecutors filed their own proposal for the outside review of the seized documents, with key differences: while Trump’s team wanted Dearie to make the seized documents reviewable within days, the justice department maintained that he should first check with the federal agency in charge of managing government records.Dearie was appointed to his role by the Florida-based federal judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the document-review process made necessary by the Mar-a-Lago search.Cannon gave Dearie a deadline of 30 November to review the documents.The FBI said its search of Trump’s resort came after agents developed compelling evidence that the former president was storing secret government materials there. According to officials, agents seized about 11,000 documents as well as nearly 50 empty folders emblazoned with classified markings.Trump and his associates have also been under congressional investigation for their actions before, during and after the deadly US Capitol attack that a mob of his supporters staged on 6 January 2021.The attack aimed to stop the US House and Congress from certifying Biden’s victory in the previous year’s race for the Oval Office. Among other things, Trump is accused of ignoring pleas to call off his supporters on the day of the siege.TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsMar-a-LagonewsReuse this content More

Did Trump really hide classified documents in his former wife’s grave? Or is the left now as bonkers as the right?Arwa MahdawiIt’s easy to believe anything when it comes to the ex-president, but #Casketgate shows how liberals are just as happy as their opponents to embrace far-fetched conspiracy theories Poor Ivana Trump: even in death she hasn’t been able to escape her ex-husband’s drama. After being found dead at the bottom of her stairs in July, Donald Trump’s first wife suffered the ignominy of being laid to rest near the first hole of Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey. Burying someone on a golf course is weird – even for a Trump – and theories immediately began to swirl. New Jersey exempts cemetery land from taxes, so was this a creepy form of tax avoidance? (Short answer: possibly, but it doesn’t make much business sense and seems unlikely.)The Ivana conspiracy theories did not go gentle into that good night. Instead, they grew stranger and stranger, stoked by the feverish imaginations of #ResistanceTwitter: a collection of liberal activists who have built large social media followings by tweeting obsessively about Donald Trump. When the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago home to recover classified documents, #ResistanceTwitter went into overdrive trying to find connections between Ivana’s death and Trump’s legal troubles. There is zero evidence that Ivana was cremated, but many high-profile #ResistanceTwitter accounts suddenly decided she definitely had been and, from there, concluded that Ivana’s casket must have been stuffed with classified documents. Jon Cooper, a Joe Biden superfan who has 1.1 million Twitter followers and whom Politico once described as “prone to outlandish statements that rack up retweets”, bears much responsibility for spreading this theory. “Seriously, is else anyone [sic) wondering – just a bit – what other stuff may be buried inside Ivana’s casket …?” Cooper tweeted on 9 August.Nancy Lee Grahn, an actor with 184,000 Twitter followers, had similar suspicions. “Dear @FBI,” she tweeted on 10 August. “I know u don’t need advice from a soap star, but having been in 10 or 10k implausible storylines in my 37 yrs, may I recommend digging up Ivana. Clearly it didn’t take 10 pall bearers to carry a liposuctioned 73 yr old who methinks was in her weight in classified docs [sic].” Rude, Nancy, rude.That was more than a month ago. Have the Ivana conspiracy theories now been laid to rest? No, they have not. Some #Resistance accounts are still demanding that the FBI dig up Ivana’s grave to check whether Trump hid documents in her casket. A few of those demands, I should note, may have started off as jokes. The problem with the internet, however, is that a gag can quickly take on a life of its own. In 2017, for example, the Guardian’s Marina Hyde joked on Twitter that Melania Trump had a body double: the impersonator did all the tedious work of being married to Donald while the real Melania flitted around having fun. This theory then got aired on Sky News and Good Morning Britain.Jokes are more likely to take on lives of their own when they are somewhat plausible. Perhaps the wildest thing about the bonkers theory that a former US president hid classified documents in a coffin supposedly containing his first wife whom he buried on his golf course, is that you can see how people could believe it. Trump, after all, had unorthodox ways of getting rid of documents. According to the New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman, he sometimes blocked the White House drains by flushing documents down the toilet. (Photographic evidence of this was recently published). “It was an extension of Trump’s term-long habit of ripping up documents that were supposed to be preserved under the Presidential Records Act,” Haberman wrote. A commode one day, a coffin the next? You can see how people might believe that is what happened.Let me be clear, though, that is obviously not what happened. #Casketgate should serve as a reminder that it’s not just the right that is responsible for spreading online misinformation; liberals are also to blame. I am as fond as the next person of speculating about the dysfunctional Trump family, but when you start demanding that graves be dug up, it’s a sign that things may have gone a little too far.TopicsDonald TrumpOpinionUS politicscommentReuse this content More