US Politics

Joe Biden tests positive for Covid and has ‘mild symptoms’, White House saysPress chief says Biden, 79, who has had two boosters, is taking antiviral Paxlovid, while first lady Jill Biden has tested negative Joe Biden tested positive for Covid on Thursday, underscoring the persistence of the highly contagious virus as new variants challenge the nation’s efforts to resume normalcy after two and a half years of pandemic disruptions.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that Biden was experiencing “mild symptoms” and has begun taking Paxlovid, an antiviral drug designed to reduce the severity of the disease.Biden to unveil $37bn proposal to tackle crime, including 100,000 more policeRead moreShe said Biden “will isolate at the White House and will continue to carry out all of his duties fully during that time.“He has been in contact with members of the White House staff by phone this morning, and will participate in his planned meetings at the White House this morning via phone and Zoom from the residence.”Biden, 79, is fully vaccinated, after getting two doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine shortly before taking office, a first booster shot in September and an additional dose March 30.In a letter released by the White House, Kevin O’Connor, the president’s physician, described Biden’s symptoms as mild.“Mostly rhinorrhea (or runny nose) and fatigue, with an occasional dry cough, which started yesterday evening,” O’Connor wrote. He noted that he anticipates that “he will respond favorably” to Paxlovid, as “most maximally protected patients do”.First lady Jill Biden has tested negative, according to her office. The first lady is in Detroit for an event at a local school. Before the event started, Biden briefly addressed news of her husband testing positive for Covid.“My husband tested positive for Covid. I talked to him just a few minutes ago. He’s doing fine, he’s feeling good,” she said. “I tested negative this morning. I am going to keep my schedule.”The president was scheduled to deliver a speech on gun violence in Pennsylvania on Thursday. That trip has been cancelled, and he is expected to stay at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, for the weekend.While this is Biden’s first bout of coronavirus, multiple members of his administration have contracted the virus. Vice-president Kamala Harris had Covid in April, and Xavier Becerra, the secretary of health and human services, and Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, both tested positive in May.Coronavirus cases in the United States have been on the rise once again as the contagious BA.5 variant has become the dominant strain. The US has been recording as many as 150,000 new Covid cases a day, according to Johns Hopkins University.In her statement, Jean-Pierre said that the White House will provide a daily update on Biden’s status “as he continues to [work] in isolation”.TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsCoronavirusnewsReuse this content More

The January 6 hearings are a brilliant spectacle. That’s also their dangerStephen MarcheIf the hearings end without consequences for Trump, the main takeaway will be: this is how much you can get away with in 2020s America You have to say this for America in 2022. They know how to put on a show. The January 6 hearings in Washington have made for riveting viewing. Someday the last days of Trump will be turned into a movie, and it will make a worthy successor to films about political collapse like Downfall or The Damned. The testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, a surprise witness – just like in the movies! – offered one hit scene after another: the president of the United States saying he didn’t much care whether his own vice-president was hanged; Trump lunging for the steering wheel; the ketchup dripping down the wall after he threw his lunch. The last planned public hearing is scheduled for Thursday. CNN describes the event as having “all the makings of a potential blockbuster”. But the hearings already have been a massively successful work of political spectacle; and that’s where their danger lies.The organizers of the January 6 hearings had no choice but to resort to showmanship. They clearly learned the lesson of the Mueller report. When Mueller gathered the findings of his investigation into the Trump campaign’s expectation to “benefit electorally” from Russian disinformation campaigns, he released them as a book. He may as well have put his findings in a bottle and thrown them into the sea. Americans don’t go to books to understand the world any more. They go to their screens. That’s one of the most prominent truths revealed by the Trump years: spectacle wins. The sheer capacity to gather attention is, by far, the most important force in US politics.On that level, the January 6 hearings have been a resounding success. The ratings have been superb. Nearly 20 million people watched the first prime time hearing, which puts it roughly on the level of Sunday Night Football. Not only have the hearings managed a large audience, but the narrative they are telling has registered. Republican megadonors no longer find Trump as appealing as they once did, at least this week, and several conservative legal scholars have declared that the hearings have changed their minds on his culpability, whether that matters or not.But as the hearings come to a close, the very success of their presentation presents a very real danger to the republic they purport to be saving. With every display of some new idiocy or corruption, whether it’s the random presence of the former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne in the events leading up to the near-fall of the United States, or Jason Van Tatenhove’s description of “armed revolution”, the same question rears its threatening head: So what?If the January 6 hearings turn out to be mere spectacle, they will have been a complete disaster. The Trump years revealed something other than that spectacle wins. They also revealed that the American system of government is basically a collection of habits and expectations. The actual structure of American government is crumbling plaster and cobwebs. Anyone who wants to can shred it with a gesture. American democracy is hanging on by the skin of its norms. And the hearings are, quite by accident, shifting those norms.American tolerance for political illegitimacy grows by way of exposure. Weekly, sometimes daily, the American public is shown some new completely unacceptable abuse of power. The revelations don’t make any difference or have any consequences. And as the American tolerance for political illegitimacy grows, the size of the monstrosity the country will accept swells. The January 6 committee has gathered the attention of the American people admirably. But now the country and the world are learning from what they’re watching. It’s not just liberals eagerly anticipating the exposure of the grifters and buffoons surrounding the president in his final days in office. Republican officials and white power movements are watching, too. And both sides are asking themselves one principal question: What can you get away with in America in the 2020s?Every time the January 6 committee reveals a new crime and the committee members spread their arms to the American public as if to say “Are you willing to have this done in your name?” they are not asking a rhetorical question. Every crime the committee shows that goes unpunished moves the line of acceptable political behavior in the United States a little lower.They have now put themselves in a situation where action is required: Arrest Donald Trump or accept a political future without standards or guardrails. But you can’t arrest Donald Trump with a camera.In our screen-addled culture, political spectacle is a requirement; no one can attain or wield power without it. In the end, if the spectacle doesn’t result in change, it only adds to the despair and futility dragging the American political system down. Trump was the reality television president. His term in office turned the United States into a four-year-long episode of The Real Housewives of Washington. The January 6 Committee has used the master’s tools against him; they have shown that spectacle can be used against misinformation. But a show is not a system of government. And when the show comes to an end, what will be left behind? This article was amended on 21 July 2022. An earlier version incorrectly described Patrick Byrne as the CEO of Overstock; he resigned and sold his ownership in 2019.
Stephen Marche is the author, most recently, of The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future
TopicsUS politicsOpinionJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpRepublicansUS CongresscommentReuse this content More

Republicans keep gerrymandered maps – after they were struck down by courtOhio Republicans have maneuvered to keep districts in place for this fall’s election despite the state supreme court striking them down seven times this year Hello, and Happy Thursday,When I called up Catherine Turcer on Tuesday, she mentioned that her daughter had just sent her a text message saying it must feel like she’s living the same day over and over again.Turcer is the executive director of the Ohio chapter of Common Cause, a government watchdog group, and one of the most knowledgeable people about redistricting in her state. Earlier that morning, the Ohio supreme court struck down the map for the state’s 15 congressional districts, saying they were so distorted in favor of Republicans that they violated the state constitution. It was the seventh time this year the court has struck down either a congressional or state legislative map (it has struck down the congressional map twice and state legislative districts five times).Despite those rulings, Republicans have maneuvered to keep both the congressional and state legislative maps in place for this fall’s election. It has set up an extraordinary circumstance in Ohio: voters will cast ballots for federal and state representation this fall in districts that are unconstitutional.Turcer and I have spoken several times over the last few months as the saga in Ohio has unfolded, and she is not someone who sugar-coats things. I’ve been interested in her perspective as someone who was initially optimistic about the reforms – she fought to pass them – but has seen the reality of how Republicans have brazenly ignored them this year.“It’s incredibly painful to participate in elections that you know are rigged,” she told me. “I’ve been encouraging folks to look at the upcoming elections as important to participate because if we do just opt out, we would have even worse representation.”This wasn’t the way things were supposed to happen.After egregiously aggressive GOP gerrymandering in 2011, Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment in 2015 that set new guardrails on the practice when it came to drawing state legislative lines. It left a bipartisan commission of lawmakers in control of the process, but said it had to follow certain rules, including a requirement that said districts can’t “primarily” favor a political party. In 2018, voters approved a measure that set similar constraints on congressional redistricting.It was a huge win for reformers. Before 2015, there had been several statewide referendums to limit partisan gerrymandering and all of them failed. And even though lawmakers still had control over the redistricting process, Turcer believed that it could weed out the most severe gerrymandering. I covered the 2018 amendment, and I remember there was some criticism at the time about whether it went far enough to limit lawmakers.Now, Ohio Republicans have validated that criticism. In both their congressional and state legislative maps, they’ve sought district lines that would give them a huge advantage, and have passed their plans on partisan lines. Each time the supreme court has rejected their efforts, they’ve only made marginal tweaks and submitted the plan again. Eventually, they ran out the clock, forcing courts to allow their maps to go into effect this year.“This could have worked if the elected officials had approached this in good will,” she told me, making it clear lawmakers were to blame for the failure. “I am no longer assuming good will on anyone’s part… I no longer have faith that elected leaders will do the right thing when it comes time to draw voting districts.”Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, tweeted on Wednesday what I thought was an insightful analysis of why the maps failed.The failure of the Ohio reforms ultimately comes down to three things: Politicians were left in control; maps can still be passed on a party line basis; and, most importantly, courts can strike down but not draw a replacement map.— Michael Li 李之樸 (@mcpli) July 19, 2022
The one big safeguard in the Ohio reforms was supposed to be that maps passed on a party-line basis have to be redrawn after 4 years-when maybe the other party would be in control. But Ohio is less swingy today & having to do a redraw seems like less of a risk to today’s Rs.— Michael Li 李之樸 (@mcpli) July 19, 2022
Most significantly, there was no meaningful “stick” to force Ohio Republicans to draw constitutional maps. Under the constitutional amendment, the Ohio supreme court can only send lawmakers back to the drawing board, not draw a map for it. And the only “punishment” lawmakers face for passing a map along partisan lines is that it won’t be in effect for an entire decade, a consequence Republican lawmakers were clearly unfazed by.“We should have fought harder over leaving the Ohio redistricting in charge of mapmaking,” Turcer told me. “It seems really clear that giving the Ohio supreme court the stick, shall we say, not just the carrot, could have made an enormous difference.”After seeing the reforms fail, Turcer said she expects a push to create an independent redistricting commission in Ohio, something that the chief justice of the Ohio supreme court, the critical swing vote in all the redistricting cases, has encouraged.“It certainly hasn’t worked the way it should. The mapmakers are just drunk on power. And you take away the keys from drunks,” she said. “Clearly, the next step is an independent, insulated commission.”Also worth watching…
The Trump administration sought to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census as part of an effort to change the way congressional seats are allocated
A bipartisan group of senators has introduced a bill to reform the Electoral Count Act.
TopicsUS newsFight to voteUS politicsOhioRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

Trump as tyrant and Cheney’s cliffhangers: key moments from the January 6 hearingsFrom Trump’s lack of concern about armed rioters to possible witness tampering, the revelations have been startling The hearings of the House January 6 committee have presented some extraordinary testimony about Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election and his supporters’ deadly assault on the US Capitol. Ahead of the primetime TV hearing on Thursday night, here are some of those pivotal moments so far.Hutchinson’s bombshellsSome said that in Cassidy Hutchinson the committee had found its John Dean, the White House counsel who turned on Richard Nixon during Watergate.01:42Hutchinson, a former aide to Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s chief of staff, delivered her dramatic testimony with notable calm. She made headlines by describing how Trump struggled physically with a Secret Service agent who would not let him march to the Capitol himself, and how the president, furious, hurled his dinner at the White House wall.More importantly, Hutchinson described how Trump knew some in the crowd who heard him speak on January 6 were armed – and told them to march on the Capitol anyway. Many observers said such testimony could be crucial to establishing criminal intent, and therefore central to any criminal charges against Trump.Van Tatenhove’s warningJason van Tatenhove, a former spokesperson for the far-right group the Oath Keepers, testified about links between Trump and the far right. Van Tatenhove said the president attempted to mount “armed revolution”. He also said the Oath Keepers leader once asked him to create a deck of cards showing key targets, among them Hillary Clinton.01:10“People died [on 6 January 2021],” Van Tatenhove said. “Law enforcement officers died, there was a gallows set up in front of the Capitol.“This could have been the spark that started a new civil war, and no one would have won there. That would have been good for no one.”Cheney’s cliffhangersLiz Cheney has been the star of the hearings. A hardline Wyoming Republican nonetheless at odds with her party, she has offered successive cliffhangers, each setting up the next session. One was about Trump advisers and allies in Congress seeking pardons. But what she said about possible witness tampering made, perhaps, the biggest impact. In the Hutchinson hearing, Cheney revealed that Trump associates had contacted a witness to say the former president would be watching the hearings and reading transcripts. The witness turned out to be Hutchinson. After the hearing on far-right links to Trump, Cheney said Trump himself had attempted to call another witness, not yet seen.Trump’s enablersThe committee’s reconstruction of an 18 December 2020 meeting at the White House between Trump’s official and unofficial advisers was for the ages. Witnesses including Trump’s White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, described shouts and threats from members of so-called “Team Crazy”, which included Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn.Giuliani remembered calling the White House advisers “pussies”. Powell said it was the official aides who were crazy, for not backing a scheme to seize voting machines. She also drank a lot of Dr Pepper.Eric Herschmann, a former Trump Organization lawyer who testified by video in front of a baseball bat with “justice” written on it, said Flynn, a retired general, “screamed at me that I was a quitter and kept standing up and turning around and screaming at me. I’d sort of had it with him so I yelled back, ‘Either come over or sit your fucking ass back down.’” More

January 6 panel to show Trump violated law by refusing to stop Capitol attackThe committee will demonstrate the ex-president was ‘derelict in his duty’ to protect the US Congress as supporters mobbed building The January 6 House select committee is expected to make the case at its hearing on Thursday that Donald Trump potentially violated the law when he refused entreaties to take action to stop the 2021 attack on the US Capitol by a mass of his supporters, according to two sources familiar with the matter.Meet the key players who have defined the January 6 hearingsRead moreThe panel will demonstrate that the former Republican president was “derelict in his duty” to protect the US Congress and might have also broken the federal law that prohibits obstructing an official proceeding before Congress, which had gathered to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.Trump could have called on national guard troops to restore order when he saw on TV the melee unfolding at the Capitol, the panel is expected to argue, or he could have called off the rioters via a live broadcast from the White House press briefing room, but he did not. Or he could have sent a tweet trying to stop the violence far earlier than he actually did, during the 187-minute duration of the Capitol attack.The former president instead only reluctantly posted a tweet in the afternoon of January 6, hours after his top advisors at the White House and Republicans allies in Congress repeatedly implored him to intervene, the select committee will show.And the panel is expected to reinforce that Trump’s inaction directly contributed to the extended battle between the US Capitol police and rioters, who outnumbered them, since many rioters dispersed after he tweeted the now-infamous video asking them to leave the Capitol.The sources described what the select committee sees as potential legal culpability for the former president, speaking on the condition of anonymity ahead of the prime time hearing.Among the witnesses for the eighth hearing – characterized by the panel’s members as a “season finale” with more hearings after the summer recess – include Trump’s former deputy national security advisor Matthew Pottinger and former Trump press aide Sarah Matthews.The two witnesses with inside knowledge of how the West Wing operated on January 6 are expected to narrate how that day unfolded, starting with how desperately Trump did not want to return to the White House after delivering his speech at the rally at the nearby Ellipse, where he had urged supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat.Former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified in a previous hearing that Trump was so determined to go to the Capitol alongside his supporters that at one point, infuriated, he attempted to wrestle control of the steering wheel from the Secret Service in the presidential vehicle as they insisted he return to the White House.The Guardian has learned, according to a person directly familiar with the matter, that in a previously unreported incident, the fracas about going to the Capitol, after Trump told his supporters at the rally to go to Congress and “I’ll be there with you”, continued when he arrived back at the White House, and the argument spilled into the West Wing driveway.Pottinger and Matthews are expected to testify about what happened when Trump was back at the White House, including details on Trump in his dining room off the Oval Office, where he watched the Capitol attack erupt on TV, transfixed by the images as rioters overran police and rampaged through the halls of Congress, the sources said.The select committee will show through videotaped testimony from the Trump White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, and other aides, that the former president ignored repeated entreaties from advisers to help stop the Capitol attack, the sources said.Hutchinson previously testified that she tried to get Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to lobby Trump – only for him to tell her that the former president “wanted to be left alone”.The select committee will also show that Trump never once called the national guard or other law enforcement, the sources said.With Trump unwilling to act, the panel is expected to describe how the duties of commander in chief were effectively assumed by then vice-president Mike Pence, who was sheltering in a loading-dock on the Senate-side of the Capitol after lawmakers had to flee the chamber amid the violence.“Trump gave no order to deploy the national guard that day, and made no effort to work with the Department of Justice to coordinate and deploy law enforcement assets,” the panel’s vice-chair, Liz Cheney, previously said. “But Mike Pence did each of those things.”The Guardian has also learned, according to another person directly familiar with the matter, that then First Lady, Melania Trump, appeared to choose not to intervene with her husband or try and stop the Capitol attack herself.That day, the person said, Melania Trump was conducting a photoshoot for a new rug for the White House residence and when her then chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham, asked if she wanted to tweet condemning the attack, Melania responded curtly: “No.”Meanwhile, Cipollone told top aides that Trump might have legal liability, the sources said. And the hearing may present more details of the calls that mounted after the insurrection for Pence to convene the Cabinet and remove Trump from office through the 25th Amendment.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpMelania TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Meet the key players who have defined the January 6 hearingsAs the eighth public hearing begins, know the people who helped understand Trump’s efforts to overturn the election The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol has introduced Americans to a cast of characters critical to understanding then president Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn a free and fair democratic election. Arizona Republican censured by party over testimony on resisting TrumpRead moreThe committee interviewed hundreds of witnesses during its yearlong investigation into the 2021 insurrection and the events that led to it. Some appeared in person, others taped depositions that were played during the hearings. Some pled the fifth or refused to cooperate.Here are the major players who have defined the January 6 hearings.Bennie ThompsonMississippi Democratic congressman Bennie Thompson, 74, was chosen by House speaker Nancy Pelosi to lead the panel, the capstone of a career devoted to protecting voting rights. He grew up in the racially-segregated south, an experience he has cited as a reminder that antidemocratic forces are as old as the nation itself.With his solemn, reverent tone, the chairman has essentially acted as narrator of the story of a democracy in peril. Thompson will chair Thursday’s hearing remotely due to a Covid-19 diagnosis. Liz CheneyWyoming Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney has led the charge against erstwhile colleague Donald Trump, acting as the panel’s top prosecutor. Unsparring and matter-of-fact, the committee vice-chair has provided some of the hearing’s most shocking revelations, among them that Trump appeared to endorse his supporters’ chants to “hang Mike Pence” for the then vice-president’s refusal to try to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory, and that the former president had sought to contact a committee witness.Cheney, the 55-year-old daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney, is one of the few in her party willing to criticize the former president, though her dogged efforts to hold Trump accountable for the insurrection could cost her a seat in Congress as she faces a Trump-backed primary challenge. Cassidy HutchinsonA former aide to Trump’s last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, Cassidy Hutchinson provided the committee – and the country – with damning testimony.Hutchinson described a president spiraling out of control as he clung to power. She recalled Meadows, who refused to cooperate with the committee, warning that “things might get real bad” on 6 January.Hutchinson described violent outbursts by Trump and testified under oath that he knew some of his supporters were armed when he directed them to march to the Capitol.Hutchinson has been likened to John Dean, a key witness in the Watergate hearings. But her turn from junior White House staffer to star witness has drawn harsh scrutiny from those she once worked alongside, including Trump. She has stood by her testimony.Pat CipollonePat Cipollone, Trump’s second and final White House counsel recently appeared before the January 6 committee, after it subpoenaed him following Hutchinson’s testimony. Cipollone resisted Trump’s schemes to reverse the election and believed he should concede.Cipollone attended meetings at which Trump’s efforts to subvert the election were discussed, including a December 2020 confrontation just before Trump sent a tweet the committee described as a “call to arms” to extremist supporters. Cipollone said he asked informal advisors pushing wild claims of voter fraud: “where is the evidence?” They never provided it.Rudy Giuliani and Sidney PowellRudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, and Sidney Powell, a lawyer for Trump’s 2020 campaign, led the unsuccessful legal campaign to overturn the 2020 election based on spurious claims of voter fraud. Called “Team crazy” by White House officials, Giuliani, Powell and a group of others promoted outlandish conspiracy theories and tactics, including citing far-fetched plots involving hacked thermostats, a deceased former leader of Venezuela and a push to seize voting machines.As a result of their efforts to subvert the election, Giuliani had his law license in New York suspended and is ensnared in a Georgia investigation. Powell is facing disbarment in Texas. John EastmanJohn Eastman was a conservative law professor in California before he became a key figure in Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Eastman devised a brazen plan that vice-president Mike Pence could unilaterally block or delay Congress’ certification of the electoral college results, which finalized Biden’s victory.In a legal memo, Eastman mapped out the actions Pence could take to thwart Congress from counting the electoral votes, an unprecedented deviation from the vice-president’s ceremonial role in the process. A June hearing revealed that Eastman warned Trump that the plan was illegal.A federal judge determined that he and Trump “more likely than not” attempted to illegally obstruct Congress.Jeff ClarkA former mid-level justice department official, Jeff Clark worked closely with Trump to undo the 2020 election. He proposed sending a letter to Georgia and other closely-contested states that falsely claimed the justice department had “identified significant concerns” with the results.In a June hearing, his superiors at the department testified that any assertion the department had substantiated claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election were brazenly false. Clark sought, ultimately unsuccessfully, to persuade Trump to install him as the acting attorney general. Last month, Clark said federal agents searched his home as part of the separate Department of Justice investigation into the 6 January 2021 attack and election subversion efforts.Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss and Ruby FreemanShaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, poll workers in Fulton county, Georgia, had their lives upended when Giuliani placed them at the center of an election-rigging conspiracy. Though the claims were baseless, the women’s testimony described in wrenching detail the very real consequences of Trump’s lie that he had won the 2020 election.Freeman, known as Lady Ruby, told the committee she had lost her sense of security. Her daughter, who testified publicly, said she received a torrent of racist and “hateful” messages on social media. Election-result deniers even showed up at her grandmother’s house claiming they could make a “citizen’s arrest” of the poll workers.Moss was awarded the John F Kennedy profile in courage award for her “hard and unseen work to run our democracy”.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansDonald TrumpRudy GiulianifeaturesReuse this content More

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US president Joe Biden campaigned on climate issues, but recent events may have sounded a death knell for his promises. Last week, his attempts to pass sweeping climate legislation were thwarted – by a senator in his own party. And in June, a landmark US Supreme Court ruling has greatly limited the federal government’s ability to regulate emissions from the fossil fuel industry. So where does that leave the Democrats’ climate plans? Ian Sample speaks to Prof Elizabeth Bomberg about what these developments mean for the Biden administration and the rest of the world

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Archive: Elizabeth Bomberg is professor of environmental politics at the University of Edinburgh Listen to the episode of Science Weekly that Elizabeth mentioned in the podcast, featuring Katherine Hayhoe The UK recorded its hottest ever day this week. Hear what it will take for us to adapt to extreme heat in Tuesday’s episode of Today in Focus Let us know what you think of the episode, and tell us about any stories you would like us to cover in the future. Email us at [email protected] More

Bipartisan Senate group reaches deal to reform Electoral Count ActLawmakers agreed to two bills that will overhaul federal law and prevent presidential candidates from overturning election results A bipartisan group of senators reached a deal on Wednesday to reform a federal law and prevent a future presidential candidate from overturning the will of the people and the result of a valid presidential election.The lawmakers have agreed to two bills that would reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which governs how electoral votes are counted following a presidential election. Citing ambiguities in the law, Donald Trump and his attorneys pushed his vice-president, Mike Pence, to disrupt the counting of electoral votes that showed he lost the 2020 election, escalating calls for the 135-year-old law to be reformed. Even before the election, experts warned the law was ambiguous and could be exploited. Arizona Republican censured by party over testimony on resisting TrumpRead more“Through numerous meetings and debates among our colleagues as well as conversations with a wide variety of election experts and legal scholars, we have developed legislation that establishes clear guidelines for our system of certifying and counting electoral votes for president and vice-president. We urge our colleagues in both parties to support these simple, commonsense reforms,” the group of 16 senators said in a joint statement. Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, the two Democrats who stymied more sweeping voting rights reform earlier this year, are among the group that developed the proposal. Republicans in the group include Maine senator Susan Collins, South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham and North Carolina senator Thom Tillis.The first bill is called the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act, and would fix ambiguities in the existing law while clarifying when an incoming administration can access federal resources.Under current law, Congress has to consider an objection to the counting of electoral votes if just one member of each house objects. One of the proposed bills would raise that threshold, requiring the support least 20% of members in each house to consider an objection. The bill also creates a judicial process with expedited review, first by a three-judge panel then by the US supreme court, over certain matters related to disputed electors.In 2020, Trump and allies encouraged submitting alternative slates of electors in key swing states Trump lost. The new law clarifies that only the slate of electors officially approved by the state’s governor can be submitted to Congress. It also clarifies the term “failed election” used in another 19th century law, saying that a state can move its presidential election only if there were “extraordinary and catastrophic events”. There were concerns in 2020 that ambiguities in that language could be used by state legislatures to throw out the popular vote.After Trump insisted Pence had the authority to unilaterally throw out electoral votes, the bill makes certain that the vice-president has no such authority. It makes clear that the vice-president’s presence at the counting of electoral votes is solely in a ministerial role.The bill also clarifies that both presidential candidates should get access to presidential transition funds while an election result is disputed. Trump delayed giving Joe Biden access to resources to transition in the White House after the 2020 election.The Enhanced Election Security and Protection Act is the second proposal, and would up criminal penalties against people convicted of intimidating or threatening candidates, voters and poll workers, amid a significant uptick in threats after 2020. It increases the maximum penalty for those who make threats from one to two years in prison.The bill would require election records to be preserved, help the US Postal Service deal with mail-in ballots and reauthorize for five years a commission that works with states to improve their voting practices.TopicsUS SenateUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More