US Politics

Kinzinger slams fellow Republican Boebert and warns of ‘Christian Taliban’Adam Kinzinger says ‘no difference between this and the Taliban’ after Lauren Boebert’s call to end separation of church and state A Republican congressman slammed GOP colleague Lauren Boebert’s recent call to end separation of church and state in the US, warning: “There is no difference between this and the Taliban.”“We must opposed [sic] the Christian Taliban,” Adam Kinzinger, a US representative for Illinois, said on Wednesday. “I say this as a Christian.”Republicans seek to install ‘permanent election integrity infrastructure’ across USRead moreKinzinger, who is on the committee investigating the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol, was referring to comments that the Colorado Republican congresswoman made at a church in her state. During an address at the Cornerstone Christian Center in Basalt, Boebert said she was exhausted by the separation of church and state principle; this principle is a key tenet of the US constitution.“The church is supposed to direct the government,” Boebert said, according to the Hill. “The government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our founding fathers intended it.”“I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk – that’s not in the constitution. It was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like they say it does,” Boebert also remarked, reportedly prompting applause. The extreme rightwing politician routinely makes comments that foment the culture war: she opposes gun control, questions the efficacy of vaccines, and the 2020 election outcome.Boebert was alluding to an 1802 letter that Thomas Jefferson – who was president at the time – sent to a church organization. In this correspondence, Jefferson said that the American public had constructed “a wall of separation between Church and State”, the Hill said.Despite Boebert’s remarks about the letter, the first 10 US constitutional amendments – called the Bill of Rights, as they sought to confirm the “fundamental rights” of US citizens – were ratified on 15 December 1791. That means they predate the letter.The first amendment, which is part of the Bill of Rights, states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”This reference to religion is the “Establishment Clause”. The Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute explained that this clause “prohibits the government from making any law ‘respecting an establishment of religion’”.“This clause not only forbids the government from establishing an official religion, but also prohibits government actions that unduly favor one religion over another,” the Institute continued. “It also prohibits the government from unduly preferring religion over non-religion, or non-religion over religion.”The US supreme court, which now has a super majority of conservative justices, has increasingly indicated openness to permitting religion in the public sphere. Earlier in June, the panel rejected a Maine statute that had barred religious schools from receiving tuition assistance from public money, the Hill noted.The justices also ruled in support of a one-time public high school football coach who was suspended for praying with players at the 50-yard line following games. In her dissent on the ruling, the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor said: “This court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the framers fought to build.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

The Republican US representative Liz Cheney has said Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election were ‘more chilling and more threatening’ than first imagined, while calling on Republicans to choose between loyalty to Trump and the constitution. 
Cheney, a commanding presence on the congressional panel investigating the January 6 Capitol riot by Trump supporters, warned against descending into vitriolic partisan attacks that could tear the political fabric of the country apart and urged her audience to rise above politics. 
‘My fellow Americans, we stand at the edge of an abyss, and we must pull back,’ she said in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California

Liz Cheney’s condemnation of Trump’s lies wins over Democrats
Tuesday’s hearing was a masterclass on the threats posed by Trump to our republic More

Earthly Order: ‘mercurial professor’ with urgent ideas on climate changeIn his ambitious new book, distinguished professor Saleem Ali tries to bridge the gap between politics and science to help plan for a safer future Saleem Ali – whose Twitter bio begins “Mercurial Professor” – is not trying to be the new Stephen Hawking.“People buy all these theoretical physics books in droves because they think having them on the shelves will make them look smart,” opines the distinguished professor of energy and the environment at the University of Delaware. “A Brief History of Time is a very difficult book to read.”Poisoned legacy: why the future of power can’t be nuclearRead moreAli believes his own, anecdote-filled book is far more accessible. Earthly Order: How Natural Laws Define Human Life is an ambitious effort to bridge the gap between politics and science, drawing on his experience as a National Geographic field explorer who has worked in more than 150 countries.Ali has three passports, having been born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, moved to Pakistan aged nine and lived in Australia for several years. In a phone interview from Delaware, he happily ruffles feathers by defending nuclear power, suggesting that democracies can learn lessons from autocracies and attacking the last sacred space on television: the nature documentary.“Some of these nature biodiversity documentaries can, in fact, create a problem because they lead to niche thinking,” he says. “They are good for some things like biodiversity conservation but they are not making the connections often that you need to do.”Indeed, the 48-year-old revels in complexity and loathes dumbing down – even if it means frustrating literary agents. “When I was writing the book, agents would ask me, ‘What’s your one argument?’ I’d say, ‘You know, I’m writing a book about earth systems, I can’t have one argument. I have to approach the issues with nuance.’ This is the problem we have, unfortunately, in terms of communication of environmental issues.”To illustrate the point, Ali cites predictions that Dubai in the United Arab Emirates will soon be so hot that it will be uninhabitable. “That is such a ludicrous statement from the point of view of looking at how humans have interacted with the environment,” he contends.“Most cities in the western world are uninhabitable in winter without infrastructure, including New York City or London – if you didn’t have heating you wouldn’t be able to survive or you could have a very short existence with hypothermia.“We have developed adaptive mechanisms so to say that Dubai would be uninhabitable in summer without air conditioning makes no sense from the point of view of earth systems. But it makes a good headline because people immediately start panicking and they’re like, ‘Oh my goodness, it’s becoming so bad.’”Humanity will have to adapt, he argues, for example through different types of architecture and more subterranean dwellings. He believes this is the pragmatic way forward in responding to some climate crisis thresholds that are now irreversible – while still aggressively reducing dependence on fossil fuels and refusing to surrender to the worst-case scenario.“If we frame the conversation as, look, this is going to be a future which is not ideal, we wish we had not gone that pathway, we wish we had reduced emissions, but now we need to figure out what’s the best way to adapt to this new future, that would be much more constructive and realistic to work through with some of the people who have been climate deniers.“But it wouldn’t mean complacency. You still need a lot of action around it. That’s where I feel as though we’ve been remiss in attacking this issue.”Ali is among the voices who contend that nuclear power, long anathema to many on the left, deserves a second look. It currently provides about a fifth of electricity in the US, accounting for about half the country’s carbon-free energy, and some companies – including one started by the Microsoft founder Bill Gates – are developing smaller, cheaper reactors that could supplement the grid.But the US has no long-term plan for managing or disposing of radioactive waste that can persist in the environment for thousands of years. Nuclear disasters at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island, Chernobyl in Ukraine and Fukushima in Japan have cast a long shadow. Although countries such as France are sticking with the technology or planning to build more plants, others, including Germany, are phasing out their reactors.Ali argues: “There has been a completely emotional kneejerk response to Fukushima, especially in Germany, which they are realising now was a mistake. If you look at the actual science in terms of the natural order of how energy is extracted from materials, nuclear energy is the most energy-dense resource.“If you look at the data in terms of the the morbidity and mortality of Fukushima, you had not a single person die of radiation exposure; they died of the tsunami. The International Atomic Energy Agency published a report last year which showed that there were no cancer clusters around there either. And yet you had an entire energy policy recrafted. That is why Germany is in this dependency situation.”Indeed, Ali does not believe that western democracies have all the right answers. He suggests that for decades their leaders have been talking about climate in a fashion that is too narrow, failing to join dots in the public imagination. He is donating all royalties from the book to environmental literacy programmes in developing countries.“There was a strategic mistake made in terms of framing it just as climate change. I always like, with my students, to talk about global environmental change. We’re talking about many aspects of the global system which are changing. When people think of climate change, immediately it is just resonating as, ‘Oh, are we getting more heat or cold?’“That’s not really what’s going on. We’re talking about water scarcity. We’re talking about the ways in which energy is going to be delivered. If we had framed the conversation around global environmental change, it would have been easier to be able to figure out all of these interconnections.”Ali, who has a PhD in environmental planning, continues: “We assume that democratic systems are going to be able to deliver efficient outcomes but the reality is democratic systems are often very short-term-oriented because they are driven by election cycles.“We have the same problem with reference to even business decision making, especially publicly traded companies which are driven by quarterly earnings reports. When you’re talking about long-range impacts, there is definitely a disconnect between both aspects.“We threw the baby out with the bathwater when we started to lobby against planning. ‘Planning’ had these connotations that it was going back to somehow centrally planned economies but you need a certain bureaucracy to continue the planning programmes and we needed to have planning independent of the political apparatus. That’s been another reason why, unfortunately, we have ended up in this current impasse with climate change.”Do autocracies, which Joe Biden warns are locked in a global struggle with democracies, do it better? Ali, whose book draws a contrast between China and India, says: “China is going to have problems in terms of their dependence on coal but there is definitely a much more technically oriented approach to decision making in China. Even if you take out the part about the central planning, the Confucian approach has been much more around let’s bring technocracy to the mix.”Public transport in a classic example, he believes, with China deciding to switch from planes to trains as the dominant mode between major cities and getting it done within a decade. “Here in the US we’re stuck with Amtrak, which they have still not been able to change because there isn’t this sense of let’s work through all of the technical details and make it happen based on those decisions.“That’s also linked to the fact we have a very litigious culture that makes it very challenging to be able to develop new projects. Unfortunately, in current democracies the actual process of getting feedback and stakeholder engagement and litigation becomes an end in itself. There is just no point at which you draw the line and say, OK, now we have to move forward.”This, he continues, is one of the reasons that the outsider businessman Donald Trump was an attractive proposition to millions of frustrated voters in the 2016 presidential election. “People saw that at least there was this willingness to make a decision. Much as I lament many aspects of his policies – building the wall – there was a decision.“In environmental discourse, we often talk about the precautionary principle, that you have to be careful about things, but if you go to the extreme, it becomes paralysis because you can’t make any kind of forward movement. That’s the main problem we have had.”But no, Ali is not calling for dictatorship in America, as he insists: “Democracies can correct that. I don’t see this as being something that only autocracies can do. We just need democracies to be made more efficient and form processes where decisions are based on technical knowledge and, after a certain point, that technical knowledge should trump – for want of a better word – negotiations.”By Ali’s lights, environmental awareness is no longer enough; environmental literacy is critical to the survival of the planet. Or as he puts it: “Depth in understanding of complexity is essential for functional order on Earth.”
Earthly Order: How Natural Laws Define Human Life is out on 15 July
TopicsBooksClimate crisisPolitics booksUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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The US congressional hearings on the Capitol Hill attack have been prime time viewing. And the case against Donald Trump has been building for all to see, says Lawrence Douglas

How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

The testimony was unprecedented. In an extraordinary sitting in Washington DC of the congressional committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol building, a White House staffer detailed how Donald Trump had attempted to grab the steering wheel of his presidential car in determination to join his supporters as they rioted. Cassidy Hutchinson also testified that Trump would fly into rages, on one occasion throwing a plate at the wall, smashing it in anger and leaving ketchup dripping down a White House wall. Lawrence Douglas, a professor of law at Amherst College, tells Michael Safi that, throughout the series of slickly produced hearings, the committee has told a compelling narrative of the events that led up to the riots on January 6. And it goes beyond that, to alleged attempts to “steal” the election via slates of “fake electors” and by piling pressure on key officials such as the vice president and the justice secretary. As the case against Trump and many of his aides is laid out though, the next steps are far from certain. Even if the evidence unearthed by the committee does reach the standard needed to bring prosecutions, would a prosecution of the former president be deemed in the public interest – and could a jury be found of 12 people who would act completely impartially, in what is now a deeply polarised country? More

Captured US veteran told mom captors were ‘anxious’ to start release talksIn a statement, Lois Drueke said she was ‘happy to hear his voice and know he’s alive and all right’ An Alabama army veteran who was captured in Ukraine while voluntarily helping the country fight Russian invaders spoke with his mother on Tuesday and said his captors were “anxious to begin negotiations for his release”, according to his family.US state department spoke by phone to veteran captured in Ukraine, family saysRead moreAlex Drueke did not communicate any demands from his captors or say when negotiations should start during the 10-minute conversation with his mom, said Lois “Bunny” Drueke, in a statement Wednesday from her and his aunt, Dianna Shaw.But Drueke’s mention of possible negotiations for his release came after the leader of the Russian-controlled territory Donetsk in Ukraine – where he is being detained – said he did not plan to swap him or another captured Alabama veteran for Russian prisoners of war.Bunny Drueke on Wednesday also said that her son “sounded tired and stressed, and he was clearly reciting some things he had been made to practice or read, but it was wonderful to hear his voice and know he’s alive and all right”. She added that he described spending most of his time in captivity but has food, water and bedding, and he asked repeatedly about the well-being of his dog, a mastiff named Diesel.Additionally, Alex Drueke, 40, said he had not spoken with his fellow Alabama prisoner in Donetsk, Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh. He presumed Huynh, 27, was being held in solitary confinement as well.“I told him I was doing everything I knew to do to help get him and Andy released,” Bunny Drueke added.Alex Drueke completed two tours of combat with the US army in Iraq – leaving him with post-traumatic stress disorder – before arriving in Ukraine via Poland in April, according to his mother. He was teaching Ukrainian soldiers how to use weapons they received from other countries in their fight against Russia’s invasion, which began in February.Tuesday’s talk was the first communication between mother and son since 8 June, when he texted her and told her he would be out of reach for the next few days. A member of Drueke’s unit later called his mother and told her that he and Huynh had been captured by Russian forces during a battle on 9 June north of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.He and Huynh, who previously served with the US marines, were taken to a detention center in Donetsk, where Russia’s moratorium on the death penalty is not in effect. The Kremlin has claimed both men face execution, after a court in Donetsk gave death sentences to two Britons and a Moroccan national caught fighting for Ukraine.Drueke spoke with the US state department before the follow-up conversation with his mom.A Russian state news agency on Wednesday released an interview showing Drueke recounting how his only combat experience in Ukraine occurred on the day of his capture.“I didn’t fire a shot,” Drueke said, according to the news agency Reuters, who described his words as an apparent plea for leniency. “I would hope that would play a factor in whatever sentence I do or don’t receive.”Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said his government would do what it could to ensure the safe return of Drueke and Huynh, labeling the American pair “heroes” for volunteering to help his nation fight Russia.“We are grateful the Ukrainian government is standing behind Alex and Andy,” Shaw’s statement Wednesday said.TopicsUS newsUkraineUS politicsReuse this content More

A woman sitting next to President Calvin Coolidge at a dinner party once told him she had made a bet that she could get him to say more than two words.

“You lose,” replied Coolidge, who served as president from 1923 until 1929.

During a White House recital, a nervous opera singer foundered through a performance before Coolidge. Someone asked him what he thought of the singer’s execution. “I’m all for it,” he said.

Coolidge was so taciturn that he was known as “Silent Cal.”

Three U.S. presidents – all of them Founding Fathers, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe – died on July 4.

Only one was born on July 4.

Calvin Coolidge was born in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, 150 years ago, on July 4, 1872. He died in January 1933.

Calvin Coolidge inspects a campaign truck painted with images of himself and his running mate, Charles G. Dawes.
FPG/Getty Images

Getting to know Coolidge

Fireworks rarely followed Coolidge during his political career.

Coolidge was balding, 5-foot-9 with a slight build, and he could walk into an empty room and blend in. He rarely smiled or changed expression. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, described Coolidge’s dour expression by saying he looked as if “he had been weaned on a pickle.”

Such a description would not have offended Coolidge. “I think the American public wants a solemn ass as a president,” he said, “and I think I’ll go along with them.”

Best known for a laugh or two

The 30th president remains a footnote in the history of U.S. presidents. Coolidge was preceded in the White House by Warren Harding, whose administration was one of the most corrupt in U.S. history. Coolidge was succeeded by Herbert Hoover, who was in office when the country fell into the throes of the Great Depression, which began with the crash of the stock market in October 1929, several months after Hoover took office.

Coolidge is probably best known for his contributions to books of political humor. I included him in a 2020 book I edited, “The Art of the Political Putdown: The Greatest Comebacks, Ripostes, and Retorts in History.”

Coolidge, a Republican who believed in small government, low taxes, morality, thrift and tradition, rose quickly – but quietly – in Massachusetts politics, where he became president of the state Senate in 1914. While serving in this capacity, two senators got into a bitter exchange of words in which one told the other to go to hell. The recipient of the remark demanded that Coolidge take his side. “I’ve looked up the law, Senator,” Coolidge told him, “and you don’t have to go.”

Coolidge was elected governor of Massachusetts in 1919. He soon earned a national reputation for being decisive by firing striking police officers in Boston and ordering the state militia to bring calm to the city after the strike had left its inhabitants vulnerable to violent mobs in September 1919.

Warren Harding, the Republican presidential nominee in 1920, chose Coolidge as his running mate. Harding and Coolidge won the election. Coolidge then became president when Harding died in 1923.

Early in his term, in December 1923, Coolidge spoke to Congress and pressed for isolation in U.S. foreign policy and tax cuts. He believed in small government and also benefited from the country’s strong economic position in the early 1920s. This helped his popularity rise, and he got more than 54% of the popular vote in the 1924 election.

Calvin Coolidge and his wife, Grace Goodhue Coolidge, eat ice cream at a garden party for veterans at the White House in an undated photo.
Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)

A genius for inactivity

If it was Coolidge’s decisive action that brought him to national attention, it was his inaction as president that defined his presidency and won him the admiration of political conservatives.

Newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann wrote this about Coolidge in 1926: “Mr. Coolidge’s genius for inactivity is developed to a very high point. It is a grim, determined, alert inactivity, which keeps Mr. Coolidge occupied constantly.”

Historians, however, praise Coolidge for presiding over low inflation, low unemployment and budget surpluses during every year of his presidency. He kept the country at peace and restored confidence in the government after the scandal-plagued Harding years.

But being president and taking daily naps still apparently left Coolidge with a lot of free time.

Coolidge reportedly liked to press the alarm buttons in the Oval Office, and when the Secret Service agents ran into the office to see what was wrong, he would be hiding.

Coolidge decided not to run for reelection in 1928. When reporters asked him why, he answered with characteristic succinctness. “Because there’s no chance for advancement,” he said.

If Coolidge had been reelected, he would have suffered Hoover’s fate of being president during the Depression. His political timing was as good as his comic timing.

Social critic H.L. Mencken once speculated on how Coolidge would have responded to the collapse of the stock market and the collapse of the nation’s economy.

“He would have responded to bad times precisely as he responded to good ones – that is, by pulling down the blinds, stretching his legs upon his desk, and snoozing away the lazy afternoons,” Mencken wrote. And yet the iconoclastic Mencken had this begrudging praise for Coolidge. “There were no thrills while he reigned, but neither were there any headaches. He had no ideas, and he was not a nuisance.”

When American writer Dorothy Parker, who, like Coolidge, could say much with few words, learned that the former president had died in 1933, she replied, “How could they tell?” More

Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani who was a figure in President Donald Trump’s first impeachment investigation, was sentenced Wednesday to a year and eight months in prison for fraud and campaign finance crimes.Parnas, who had helped Giuliani connect with Ukrainian figures as part of a campaign to dig up dirt on President Joe Biden’s son, had sought leniency on the grounds that he’d helped the Congressional probe, Associated Press reported.But prosecutors said the Soviet-born businessman’s aid was in response to a subpoena and deserved little credit.Instead, they asked the judge to focus on a jury’s finding that Parnas used the riches of a wealthy Russian to make illegal donations to politicians who might aid the launch of a legal recreational-marijuana business.Prosecutors had asked that Parnas be sentenced to more than six years.An October conviction also supported a finding that he made illegal donations in 2018 to jump-start a new energy company.In March, Parnas pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud, admitting that between 2012 and 2019 he conspired with another person to give investors false information about a Florida-based business, Fraud Guarantee.Fraud Guarantee was promoted as a company that could protect investors against fraud. Giuliani accepted $500,000 from the company to act as a consultant, but was not accused of wrongdoing or charged with any crimes.The criminal case against Parnas was not directly related to his work acting as a fixer for Giuliani as the former New York City mayor tried to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden’s son, Hunter, before he was elected president.Giuliani, who was working at the time as a personal lawyer for then-President Donald Trump, has said he knew nothing about the crimes of Parnas and others.That’s it from us today, thanks for reading. Here’s how the day unfolded in Washington: Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani and a key figure in Donald Trump’s first impeachment investigation, was sentenced to a year and eight months in prison for fraud and campaign finance crimes. Parnas used the riches of a wealthy Russian to make illegal donations to politicians who might aid the launch of a legal recreational-marijuana business. Trump-backed candidates had a mixed Tuesday in Republican primary elections around the country. Colorado voters largely rejected most Trump-supporting candidates in Tuesday’s GOP primaries, although Lauren Boebert, the extremist Colorado Republican congresswoman, won her bid for re-election. Moderate Republicans held off challenges from more extreme challengers in Utah, Mississippi and Oklahoma, but two Trump-endorsed officials triumphed in Illinois.The Supreme Court will issue two key decisions tomorrow which could impact both the climate crisis and immigration. The court has been weighing how much power the Environmental Protection Agency should have to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and is also considering whether Joe Biden can end Remain in Mexico, the controversial Trump-era policy which sends asylum seekers to Mexico while they wait for their immigration cases to be heard.Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General, said he would be “willing and able” to defend a law which banned sodomy, in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade.In an interview with News Nation, Paxton was asked about Lawrence v Texas, a 2003 Supreme Court ruling that overturned a state anti-sodomy law and made all such laws invalid nationwide.Last week Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion following the Supreme Court overturning the right to abortion, wrote that the court should also “reconsider” the Lawrence v Texas ruling.In the News Nation Paxton was asked if he would “feel comfortable defending a law that once again outlawed sodomy,” as well as gay marriage and birth control.“I mean, there’s all kinds of issues here, but certainly, the Supreme Court has stepped into issues that I don’t think there was any constitutional issues dealing with, they were legislative issues,” Paxton said. “This [abortion] is one of those issues, and there may be more.”The News Nation host then asked Paxton how he would act if Texas passed a law banning sodomy.Paxton said: “My job is to defend state law and I’ll continue to do that. That is my job under the Constitution and I’m certainly willing and able to do that.”Joe Biden has announced that the US will increase its military forces across Europe with more land, sea and air deployments, as he gathered with Nato leaders for a two-day summit in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Arriving at the meeting in Madrid, the US president announced the stationing of a brigade of 3,000 combat troops in Romania, two squadrons of F-35 fighters in the UK and two navy destroyers in Spain.“The US and its allies are going to step up. We’re stepping up. We’re proving that Nato is more needed now than it ever has been,” Biden said in a short statement he read out before the first summit meeting began.Biden’s announcement is expected to be followed by further commitments by Nato members to a strengthening of forces on the alliance’s eastern flank, which was being discussed by Nato leaders on Wednesday morning.The US president also said the US fifth army corps would establish a permanent base in Poland, extra troops would be committed to the Baltic states and extra air defence systems would be stationed in Germany and Italy.It was, Biden said, a response to Russian aggression, adding: “Together with our allies, we are going make sure Nato is ready to meet threats across every domain, land, air and in the sea”, which came “at a moment when Putin has shattered peace in Europe and the very tenets of rules-based order”.The US sent a further 20,000 troops to Europe earlier this year, taking the total based across the continent to over 100,000. Wednesday’s announcements come on top of that and Biden said the US would “continue to our adjust our posture” if necessary.A lawyer for Ginni Thomas, the wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, has dimmed prospects for a quick appearance before congressional investigators probing the January 6 Capitol riot, after the attorney asked for more information on her requested appearance.Ginni Thomas on June 16 expressed eagerness to speak with the House of Representatives panel investigating the 2021 assault, telling the Daily Caller she “can’t wait to clear up misconceptions.”The committee sent an invitation that day.On Tuesday, however, Thomas’ lawyer, Mark R. Paoletta, wrote to the committee that he did not “understand the need to speak with Mrs Thomas”.“Before I can recommend that she meet with you, I am asking the Committee to provide a better justification for why Mrs Thomas’s testimony is relevant to the Committee’s legislative purpose,” Paoletta wrote.Earlier this month the Washington Post reported that Thomas emailed 29 Arizona lawmakers in a bid to help overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat.Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani who was a figure in President Donald Trump’s first impeachment investigation, was sentenced Wednesday to a year and eight months in prison for fraud and campaign finance crimes.Parnas, who had helped Giuliani connect with Ukrainian figures as part of a campaign to dig up dirt on President Joe Biden’s son, had sought leniency on the grounds that he’d helped the Congressional probe, Associated Press reported.But prosecutors said the Soviet-born businessman’s aid was in response to a subpoena and deserved little credit.Instead, they asked the judge to focus on a jury’s finding that Parnas used the riches of a wealthy Russian to make illegal donations to politicians who might aid the launch of a legal recreational-marijuana business.Prosecutors had asked that Parnas be sentenced to more than six years.An October conviction also supported a finding that he made illegal donations in 2018 to jump-start a new energy company.In March, Parnas pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud, admitting that between 2012 and 2019 he conspired with another person to give investors false information about a Florida-based business, Fraud Guarantee.Fraud Guarantee was promoted as a company that could protect investors against fraud. Giuliani accepted $500,000 from the company to act as a consultant, but was not accused of wrongdoing or charged with any crimes.The criminal case against Parnas was not directly related to his work acting as a fixer for Giuliani as the former New York City mayor tried to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden’s son, Hunter, before he was elected president.Giuliani, who was working at the time as a personal lawyer for then-President Donald Trump, has said he knew nothing about the crimes of Parnas and others. It was a mixed Tuesday for Donald Trump-backed candidates in Republican primary elections around the country. Colorado voters largely rejected most Trump-supporting candidates in Tuesday’s GOP primaries, although Lauren Boebert, the extremist Colorado Republican congresswoman, won her bid for relection. In Illinois, Mary Miller, who had been criticized after she declared the Supreme Court’s abortion decision as a “victory for white life” – a spokesman said she had mixed up her words – won in after she was backed by Trump. Darren Bailey, who was also endorsed by Trump, won the Republican gubernatorial primary in the state. Elsewhere John Curtis, and Blake Moore, Republican congressional candidates in Utah, defeated more extreme challengers. Stephanie Bice, a congresswoman from Oklahoma who – like Moore and Curtis – voted to form the January 6 commission, won her primary bid, as did Michael Guest, in Mississippi.Stephen Breyer, the Supreme Court justice, has formally announced his retirement from the Court, effective Thursday.Breyer, who announced earlier this year that he would retire – Ketanji Brown Jackson has already been chosen to replace him – wrote to Joe Biden to confirm he would step down tomorrow.“This past January, I wrote to inform you of my intent to retire from regular active service as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, upon the Court rising for its summer recess,” Breyer wrote.“The Court has announced that tomorrow, beginning at 10 am, it will hand down all remaining opinions ready during this Term. Accordingly, my retirement from active service under the provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 371(b) will be effective on Thursday, June 30, 2022, at noon.“It has been my great honor to participate as a judge in the effort to maintain our Constitution and the Rule of Law.”‘So much joy’: Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation lauded as ray of hopeRead moreThe extremist Colorado Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert won her primary on Tuesday night, shortly after attacking the separation of church and state under the US constitution.“I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk,” she said.A dedicated controversialist first elected in 2020, backed by Donald Trump and described by NBC News as a “Maga lightning rod”, Boebert convincingly beat Don Coram, a state senator, for the nomination to contest the midterm elections.At one event recently Coram, 74, told voters: “My politics are very similar to my driving. To the chagrin of both my wife and my Republican colleagues, I tend to crowd the center line and sometimes I veer over a bit.”In contrast, Boebert has heckled Joe Biden during the state of the union address; made racist attacks on Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota; vowed to carry a gun on to the House floor; and voted to object to results in swing states in the 2020 presidential election.Boebert beat Coram by 31 points.Republican Lauren Boebert wins in Colorado after denouncing separation of church and stateRead moreFox News Channel is airing the January 6 committee hearings when they occur in daytime hours – and a striking number of the network’s viewers have made clear they’d rather be doing something else, according to Associated Press.During two daytime hearings last week, Fox averaged 727,000 viewers, the Nielsen company said. That compares to the 3.09 million who watched the hearings on MSNBC and the 2.21 million tuned in to CNN.It completely flips the typical viewing pattern for the news networks. During weekdays when the hearings are not taking place, Fox News routinely has more viewers than the other two networks combined, Nielsen said.Last Thursday, Fox had 1.33 million viewers for the 2 pm Eastern hour before the hearing started – slightly below its second quarter average, but on par for early summer, when fewer people are watching TV.After the hearing started, Fox’s audience’s sank to 747,000 for the 3 pm Eastern hour and even lower, to 718,000, at 4 pm. Fox cut away from the hearing at 5 pm to show its popular panel program, “The Five,” and fans immediately rewarded them: viewership shot up to 2.76 million people, Nielsen said.The apparent lack of interest explains why the Trump-friendly network stuck with its regular lineup during the committee’s only prime-time hearing, while ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC all showed the Washington proceedings.Presidential historian Michael Beschloss made a joke at Donald Trump’s expense, in the aftermath of Cassidy Hutchinson’s explosive testimony before the January 6 committee yesterday.This morning, Beschloss shared a photo to Twitter of the last meal that Richard Nixon ate at the White House before he resigned as president. “Nixon’s last lunch at White House, 1974,” Beschloss said of the photo. “Record shows that although he was leaving Presidency against his will, he did not throw this plate at the wall.”Nixon’s last lunch at White House, 1974. Record shows that although he was leaving Presidency against his will, he did not throw this plate at the wall. pic.twitter.com/joCuuCsTcg— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) June 29, 2022
That appeared to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to Hutchinson’s claim that Trump had a habit of throwing food when he was angry. That habit reared its head in December 2020, when the AP published an interview with then-attorney general William Barr, who said there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.According to Hutchinson, she walked into the White House dining room that day to see a valet cleaning up a dirty tablecloth. She noticed ketchup dripping down the wall where a television was mounted, and a porcelain plate lay shattered on the floor.Asked whether Trump often engaged in such behavior, Hutchinson said: “There were several times throughout my tenure with the chief of staff that I was aware of him either throwing dishes or flipping the tablecloth to let all the contents of the table go onto the floor.”New York City is suing five companies it says are involved in the sale of illegal, largely untraceable “ghost guns” flowing into the city, Reuters reports:In a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday, New York attorneys said the companies have created a public nuisance by selling “unfinished” firearms components that purchasers can build into guns, without undergoing background checks.The result is “a proliferation of unserialized, untraceable, unlawful ghost guns in the city’s streets and homes, making the City more dangerous for both the public and for law enforcement, causing a quintessential public nuisance,” the complaint said.Arm or Ally LLC, Rainier Arms LLC, 80P Builder, Rock Slide USA LLC and Indie Guns LLC were named as defendants The companies did not immediately respond to requests from Reuters for comment.New York City wants the defendants to stop selling ghost gun components and provide records of sales into the city over the last five years. City officials said this month that gun arrests are at a 28-year high.Colorado voters rejected most Trump-supporting candidates in Tuesday’s GOP primaries, and they weren’t the only ones.In Utah Blake Moore, a first-term US congressman who voted for an independent commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection, defeated his more extreme challengers.John Curtis, a moderate Republican, also defeated a primary opponent from the right.Stephanie Bice, a congresswoman Oklahoma from who – like Moore and Curtis – voted to form the January 6 commission, won her primary bid, as did Michael Guest, in Mississippi.Tina Peters, who became nationally known after being indicted for her role in a break-in of her own county election system, lost her bid for the GOP nomination for Colorado secretary of state.Still, there were some victories for Trump.Lauren Boebert, the extremist Colorado Republican congresswoman, who has been backed by Trump, won her bid for relection, days after denouncing separation of church and state.Mary Miller, who had been criticized after she declared the Supreme Court’s abortion decision as a “victory for white life” – a spokesman said she had mixed up her words – won in Illinois after she was backed by Trump. Darren Bailey, who was also endorsed by Trump, won the Republican gubernatorial primary in the state.Andrew Giuliani, the anti-vax, Trumpite son of Rudy Giuliani, lost his bid to be governor of New York on Tuesday night.Lee Zeldin, a US congressman who, like the younger Giuliani, supported Donald Trump, defeated his opponent by 19 points, bringing to an end a chaotic, firebrand campaign by Giuliani that failed to catch on with New Yorkers.One of Giuliani’s final campaign events was marked by his father claiming a supermarket employee had assaulted him during a campaign event. Video footage showed a man patting Rudy Giuliani on the back. Giuliani Sr said he could have been killed. Eric Adams, New York City’s mayor, has suggested Giuliani, Trump’s on-again, off-again friend/lawyer/advisor, should be prosecuted for falsely reporting a crime.What Rudy Giuliani says happened at ShopRite vs. what actually happened pic.twitter.com/ZQ1Qwi1HC0— The Recount (@therecount) June 27, 2022
Republicans in Colorado rejected two prominent candidates whose political profiles were centered on election falsehoods, in a fresh reminder that fealty to former President Donald Trump’s lies about mass voter fraud is no guarantee of success with conservative voters, Associated Press reports:Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk who became nationally known after being indicted for her role in a break-in of her own county election system, lost her bid for the GOP nomination for Colorado secretary of state. Instead, Republicans selected Pam Anderson, a critic of Trump’s election lies and a former clerk in suburban Denver who is well-regarded among election professionals. She is now positioned to challenge Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold.“I will continue my fight for restoring the confidence of Colorado voters against lies and the politicians or interest groups that seek to weaponize elections administration for political advantage,” Anderson said after her victory.One of Peters’ top Colorado allies, state Rep Ron Hanks, lost his bid for the party’s Senate nomination to Joe O’Dea, a businessman who has repeatedly acknowledged that Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election. That was a sharp contrast with Hanks, who attended the January 6 rally in Washington, doesn’t believe Biden is a legitimate president and says he discovered a new, animating purpose fighting election fraud after 2020.Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the day’s political news. Here’s what we’re monitoring today:The Supreme Court is expected to give decisions today which could have lasting effects on how the US handles the climate crisis. The court has been weighing how much power the Environmental Protection Agency should have to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.Remain in Mexico, the controversial Trump-era policy which sends asylum seekers to Mexico while they wait for their immigration cases to be heard, is also on the table. The Supreme Court is due to decide whether Joe Biden can end the program, which has kept thousands of would-be immigrants in sometimes dangerous conditions across the US border.After the bombshell testimony that Donald Trump directed his supporters to march on the Capitol, despite knowing many of them were armed, the Secret Service has begun to push back. Numerous outlets have reported that members of the Secret Service are willing to testify that elements of the testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to the then White House chief of staff, are inaccurate. More

Two men charged after police find possible link to Texas migrant deathsMen were detained leaving home listed on registration papers for abandoned trailer truck where 53 migrants were found dead Two Mexican nationals at an address linked to the abandoned trailer truck where at least 53 migrants were found dead Monday evening in Texas have been charged with illegally possessing guns as federal authorities continue investigating the grim discovery.‘A free land for everyone’: San Antonio residents mourn tragic loss of livesRead moreJuan Claudio D’Luna Mendez and Juan Francisco D’Luna Bilbao were at a house in the 100 block of Arnold Drive in San Antonio, listed on the registration papers for the big rig that contained the bodies, which had been discovered abandoned in an industrial area of the Texas city, agents with the federal bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms wrote in a criminal complaint.Local police were staking the building at the address when they saw the D’Lunas get into a Ford F-250. Officers stopped the pickup truck to question the men after they began driving off, said the criminal complaint, which was filed in federal court Tuesday.Officers said they obtained a warrant to search the house, and they found a shotgun, a rifle and three pistols divided among the men’s bedrooms. There was also a pistol in the F-250.Neither man could legally possess guns because they allegedly admitted that they were in the US from Mexico on visas that had expired and which they had overstayed, agents wrote in their complaint. They jailed both D’Lunas on illegal weapons possession charges, and a judge ordered both to be held without bond until at least Friday, records show.Either man could face up to 10 years in prison if eventually convicted as charged.Agents as of Wednesday had stopped short of directly connecting the D’Lunas to the deaths of the migrants. But it’s clear they are suspected of other illicit conduct.Authorities said three people whom police detained within hours of the bodies’ discovery were suspected of plotting to smuggle the migrants across the southern US border without permission.One of the detained was the driver of the rig, who had pretended to be a migrant passenger. The two others were initially described only as Mexican nationals, which the D’Lunas are.The attorney listed for D’Luna Mendez declined comment Wednesday. D’Luna Bilbao’s lawyer couldn’t immediately be reached.At least 53 people found in the trailer of the rig at the center of the case have died, and 11 more have been hospitalized. It is believed to be the nation’s deadliest smuggling episode on the US-Mexico border, reigniting the longstanding debate about American immigration policies.Officials believe the truck was carrying 67 migrants from countries such as Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. Forty of the dead so far were male, and 13 were female, said the medical examiner’s office in Bexar county, which includes San Antonio.The identities of fewer than 40 of the dead had been established as of Wednesday afternoon, authorities said, citing challenges in tracking down the names and relatives of people who furtively cross borders.Eleven people were hospitalized with dehydration and other heat-related illness, having been in a trailer that lacked water and air conditioning as it traveled through temperatures approaching 100F (38C).Texas’ governor, Greg Abbott, said the state’s public safety department would immediately begin adding more checkpoints for large trailer trucks on well-trafficked roadways in an effort to limit episodes like the one Monday.TopicsTexasUS politicsUS immigrationUS-Mexico bordernewsReuse this content More