US Politics

The House select committee investigating the 6 January Capitol attack presented video testimony from some of Donald Trump’s top aides, including ex-attorney general and former Trump loyalist William Barr, who said the former president’s claims of election fraud were baseless. Barr told the committee that Trump had ‘become detached from reality’ and his allegations of election fraud were ‘bogus’, ‘idiotic’ and ‘bullshit’

Top aides repeatedly told Trump fraud claims were baseless, Jan 6 panel hears
Jan 6 hearings: follow the second hearing live More

Attorney General Merrick Garland said he and his prosecutors are watching the hearings of the January 6 committee as the justice department faces pressure to bring charges against former president Donald Trump.NEW: AG Merrick Garland says he’s watching the Jan. 6 committee hearings, adding “I can assure you the January 6 prosecutors are watching the hearings as well”— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 13, 2022
Some of the lawmakers on the committee have called for Garland to levy criminal charges against Trump. The former president is at the center of an array of investigations, including an inquiry into his business practices in New York. He will testify under oath in that probe on 15 July, along with his daughter Ivanka Trump and son Donald Trump Jr.Donald Trump to testify in New York investigation into his business practicesRead moreGarland answered reporters questions during a DoJ press conference about gun trafficking.The January 6 committee’s second public hearing was today’s main story, as it aired testimony from several of Donald Trump’s top advisors, all of whom said they told the former president there was no fraud in the 2020 election that would change the result of his loss to Joe Biden.Nonetheless, Trump pressed on with making the claims, which the committee said fueled the violence at the Capitol.Here’s what else happened today:
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said the chamber will vote on a bipartisan gun control bill as soon as it’s written. The compromise measure doesn’t go as far as Democrats would like, but represents the best chance to pass legislation at the federal level in response to the mass shootings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas.
The supreme court released five opinions that dealt with a number of aspects of federal law, though none of the verdicts were in any of the major cases touching on abortion, gun rights or other hot-button issues.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said he is watching the hearings of the January 6 committee, as the justice department comes under pressure to bring charges against Trump.
Separately, Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, who was hailed for leading rioters away from the senate chamber, testified in the criminal trial of two men facing charges in the attack.
The blog is wrapping up for the day and will return on Tuesday morning around 9am ET. For updates on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, please tune into our global live blog on the war, here.At the White House daily media briefing, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has reiterated in response to a question that Joe Biden is going to leave the topic of whether Donald Trump will be prosecuted over the January 6 hearing “up to the Department of Justice”.The White House wants “Americans to watch” the January 6 hearings, the second of which occurred this morning, “and remember the horrors of one of the darkest days in our history” but the US president will stay away from commenting on related prosecutions.He chose US attorney general Merrick Garland “because of his loyalty to the law”, Jean-Pierre said, and also “to restore the independence and integrity of the Department of Justice.”That’s a dig at how the DoJ was regarded by Democrats as an extension of Donald Trump’s White House and under his sway instead of staying independent.Meanwhile in New York, an ongoing sell off on Wall Street has pushed the S&P 500 into a bear market, meaning a loss of 20 percent from its most recent high.The stock market’s health and wider economy’s health are generally regarded as two different things, but the S&P 500’s nearly four percent loss in today’s trading is fueled in part by concerns that the United State’s decades-high inflation rate will cause a recession. It’s also more bad news for Joe Biden and his economic policies, overshadowing more positive developments such as the drop in unemployment on his watch.From the Associated Press:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The S&P 500 dropped 3.8% in the first chance for investors to trade after getting the weekend to reflect on the stunning news that inflation is getting worse, not better. The Dow Jones was down 879 points, or 2.8%, at 30,513, as of 11.08am ET, and the Nasdaq composite was 4.5% lower.
The center of Wall Street’s focus was again on the Federal Reserve, which is scrambling to get inflation under control. Its main method is to raise interest rates in order to slow the economy, a blunt tool that risks a recession if used too aggressively.
Some traders are even speculating the Fed on Wednesday may raise its key short-term interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point. That’s triple the usual amount and something the Fed hasn’t done since 1994. Traders now see a 34% probability of such a mega-hike, up from just 3% a week ago, according to CME Group.
No one thinks the Fed will stop there, with markets bracing for a continued series of bigger-than-usual hikes. Those would come on top of some already discouraging signals about the economy and corporate profits, including a record-low preliminary reading on consumer sentiment that was soured by high gasoline prices.S&P 500 sinks into bear-market territory as recession fears pound US stocksRead moreSenate majority leader Chuck Schumer said he’ll bring a recent bipartisan gun control bill to a vote on the chamber’s floor as soon as it’s written.“I will put this bill on the floor as soon as possible, once the text of the final agreement is finalized so the Senate can act quickly to make gun safety reform a reality,” Schumer said in a speech in the Senate. “Yesterday’s agreement does not have everything Democrats wanted but it nevertheless represents the most significant reform to gun safety laws that we have seen in decades.”Democratic and and Republican lawmakers have been trying to find a common ground on the highly controversial topic of gun control following a recent spate of mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York.Attorney General Merrick Garland said he and his prosecutors are watching the hearings of the January 6 committee as the justice department faces pressure to bring charges against former president Donald Trump.NEW: AG Merrick Garland says he’s watching the Jan. 6 committee hearings, adding “I can assure you the January 6 prosecutors are watching the hearings as well”— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 13, 2022
Some of the lawmakers on the committee have called for Garland to levy criminal charges against Trump. The former president is at the center of an array of investigations, including an inquiry into his business practices in New York. He will testify under oath in that probe on 15 July, along with his daughter Ivanka Trump and son Donald Trump Jr.Donald Trump to testify in New York investigation into his business practicesRead moreGarland answered reporters questions during a DoJ press conference about gun trafficking.Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who was one of Trump’s top attorneys near the end of his term, has denied he was drunk on election night in 2020.Giuliani’s attorney says Giuliani was not drunk on election night. “Giuliani denies all falsehoods by the angry and misguided Ms Cheney,” Robert Costello tells CNN. https://t.co/lsOdoaOgvv— Kara Scannell (@KaraScannell) June 13, 2022
While the latest report of Giuliani being drunk in public came from today’s hearing of the January 6 committee, such claims are not new.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will soon start her daily briefing to reporters, and there’s a chance she’ll be asked about this story from The New York Times.The piece asks a provocative question: given his low approval ratings, among other issues, should Biden not run in 2024? The president says he will stand again, but the article features a trickle of Democratic voices questioning the wisdom of that idea, or even outright telling him not to.As the Times reported:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}As the challenges facing the nation mount and fatigued base voters show low enthusiasm, Democrats in union meetings, the back rooms of Capitol Hill and party gatherings from coast to coast are quietly worrying about Mr. Biden’s leadership, his age and his capability to take the fight to former President Donald J. Trump a second time.
Interviews with nearly 50 Democratic officials, from county leaders to members of Congress, as well as with disappointed voters who backed Mr. Biden in 2020, reveal a party alarmed about Republicans’ rising strength and extraordinarily pessimistic about an immediate path forward.
“To say our country was on the right track would flagrantly depart from reality,” said Steve Simeonidis, a Democratic National Committee member from Miami. Mr. Biden, he said, “should announce his intent not to seek re-election in ’24 right after the midterms.”Democratic stalwart Howard Dean has perhaps the sharpest criticism in the piece, though it’s not aimed at Biden alone:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Howard Dean, the 73-year-old former Vermont governor and Democratic National Committee chairman who ran for president in 2004, has long called for a younger generation of leaders in their 30s and 40s to rise in the party. He said he had voted for Pete Buttigieg, 40, in the 2020 primary after trying to talk Senator Chris Murphy, 48, of Connecticut into running.
“The generation after me is just a complete trash heap,” Mr. Dean said.The United States is indeed led by elderly people these days, as Axios reports in a closer look at the subject that’s fittingly titled “American gerontocracy”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Diversity and technology are making the workplace, home life and culture unrecognizable for many older leaders. That can leave geriatric leadership of government out of step with everyday life in America — and disconnected from the voters who give them power.
Washington is run by Biden, 79 … House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 82 … Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a comparatively youthful 71 … and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, age 80.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, running the U.S. pandemic response, is 81.Separate from the January 6 committee hearing, Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman was in a federal courtroom describing how one of two defendants facing charges over the attacked jabbed him with a Confederate battle flag.Goodman is one of the most prominent defenders of the Capitol that day, credited with diverting the mob away from the Senate chamber and appearing in a well-known photo.He was testifying at the trial of Kevin Seefried and his adult son Hunter Seefried, whom the Associated Press reported face charges including a felony count of obstruction of an official proceeding. According to the AP:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Goodman recalled seeing Kevin Seefried standing alone in an archway and telling him to leave. Instead, Seefried cursed at him and jabbed at the officer with the base end of the flagpole three or four times, Goodman said.
“He was very angry. Screaming. Talking loudly,” Goodman said. “Complete opposite of pleasant.”
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden is hearing testimony without a jury for the Seefrieds’ bench trial, which started Monday. The Seefrieds waived their right to a jury trial, which means McFadden will decide their cases.Today has been dominated by the latest revelations from the January 6 Committee, which aired testimony from a number of former officials in Donald Trump’s campaign and White House, all of whom told the president the same thing: the 2020 election was not stolen. Nonetheless, Trump pressed on with making the claims, which the committee said fueled the violence at the Capitol.Here’s what else happened today:
The supreme court released five opinions that dealt with a number of aspects of federal law, though none of the verdicts were in any of the major cases touching on abortion, gun rights or other hot-button issues.
The senate reached a compromise on gun rights legislation that can hopefully win enough support from both Democrats and Republicans to pass the evenly divided chamber. Further negotiations on the bill are expected in the days to come.
Lawmakers on the January 6 committee continued their calls for the justice department to bring criminal charges against Trump, saying the evidence they uncovered justifies the move.
Separately, Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, who was hailed for leading rioters away from the senate chamber, testified in the criminal trial of two men facing charges in the attack.
The US Supreme Court has ruled against immigrants who are seeking their release from long periods of detention while they fight deportation orders, the Associated Press writes.In two cases decided on Monday morning, the court said that the immigrants, who fear persecution if sent back to their native countries, have no right under a federal law to a bond hearing at which they could argue for their freedom no matter how long they are held.The nine justices also ruled 6-3 to limit the immigrants ability to band together in court, an outcome that Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Will leave many vulnerable non-citizens unable to protect their rights.”In recent years, the high court has taken an increasingly limited view of immigrants’ access to the federal court system under immigration measures enacted in the 1990s and 2000s..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} For a while, it seemed like the court was going to push back a bit. In extreme cases, it would interpret a statute to allow for as much judicial review as possible. Clearly now, the court is no longer willing to do that,”said Nicole Hallet, director of the immigrants rights clinic at the University of Chicago law school.The immigrants who sued for a bond hearing are facing being detained for many months, even years, before their cases are resolved.The court ruled in the cases of people from Mexico and El Salvador who persuaded Homeland Security officials that their fears are credible, entitling them to further review.Their lawyers argued that they should have a hearing before an immigration judge to determine if they should be released. The main factors are whether people would pose a danger or are likely to flee if set free.Sotomayor wrote the court’s opinion in one case involving Antonio Arteaga-Martinez, who had previously been deported to Mexico. He was taken into custody four years ago, and won release while his case wound through the federal courts. His hearing on whether he can remain in the United States is scheduled for 2023.But Sotomayor wrote that the provision of immigration law that applies to people like Arteaga-Martinez simply doesn’t require the government to hold a bond hearing.The court, however, left open the issue of the immigrants’ ability to argue that the Constitution does not permit such indefinite detention without a hearing.Justice Samuel Alito wrote the court’s opinion holding that federal judges can only rule in the case of the immigrants before them, not a class of similarly situated people.Sotomayor dissented from that decision, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.She wrote that the ability to join together in a class was especially important for people who have no right to a lawyer and “are disproportionately unlikely to be familiar with the U.S. legal system or fluent in the English language.”The cases are Johnson v Arteaga-Martinez, 19-896, and Garland v Aleman Gonzalez, 20-322.The US Supreme Court issued five opinions this morning, just around the time the January 6 hearing was getting underway. None of them was one of the four big cases being mostly closely watched, on abortion, gun rights, rules on emissions affecting climate change and an immigration issue affecting undocumented people crossing the US-Mexico border in order to claim asylum in the United States, known as Remain in Mexico.In one of the most significant opinions of the day, the nine-judge court ruled that Native Americans prosecuted in certain tribal courts can also be prosecuted based on the same incident in federal court, which can result in longer sentences, the Associated Press writes.The 6-3 ruling is in keeping with an earlier ruling from the 1970s that said the same about a more widely used type of tribal court.The case before the justices involved a Navajo Nation member, Merle Denezpi, accused of rape. He served nearly five months in jail after being charged with assault and battery in what is called a Court of Indian Offenses, a court that deals exclusively with alleged Native American offenders.Under federal law Courts of Indian Offenses can only impose sentences of generally up to a year. Denezpi was later prosecuted in federal court and sentenced to 30 years in prison. He said the Constitution’s “Double Jeopardy” clause should have barred the second prosecution.But the justices disagreed..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Denezpi’s single act led to separate prosecutions for violations of a tribal ordinance and a federal statute. Because the Tribe and the Federal Government are distinct sovereigns, those offenses are not the same. Denezpi’s second prosecution therefore did not offend the Double Jeopardy Clause,” the court decided.Amy Coney Barrett, the ultra conservative leaning associated justice confirmed in the dying days of the Trump administration, wrote the opinion for the majority.The Biden administration had argued for that result as had several states, which said barring federal prosecutions in similar cases could allow defendants to escape harsh sentences.In a dissent, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the case involved the same “defendant, same crime, same prosecuting authority” and said the majority’s reasoning was “at odds with the text and original meaning of the Constitution.” The conservative Gorsuch was joined in dissent by two of the court’s three liberal justices, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan.The case before the justices involves a tribal court system that has become increasingly rare over the last century.Courts of Indian Offenses were created in the late 1800s during a period when the federal government’s policy toward Native Americans was to encourage assimilation. Judges and generally prosecutors are appointed by federal officials.The January 6 committee has ended the day’s testimony by taking viewers back to the scene of the attack and showing how the people who broke in to the Capitol were believers in a conspiracy that many of Trump’s top officials told him was bogus.“I know exactly what’s going on right now. Fake election!” a rioter said in video aired by the committee. The hearing closed with the jarring words of Eric Herschmann, a White House lawyer, who recalled a phone call with John Eastman, another of the president’s lawyers whom a judge has said conspired with Trump to overturn the election. “I said to him, Are you out of your effing mind?” Herschmann recalled. “I said I… only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth for now on: orderly transition.”Before the hearing ended, the committee’s senior investigative counsel Amanda Wick outlined one possible motivation for why Trump stuck with the fraud claims: they were a money-making opportunity.“As the select committee has demonstrated, the Trump campaign knew these claims of voter fraud were false, yet they continue to barrage small dollar donors with emails encouraging them to donate to something called Official Election Defense Fund. The select committee discovered no such fund existed,” she said.Wick goes on to say much of the $250 million raised for the supposed effort was funneled into a political action committee that made donations to pro-Trump organizations, as well as confidantes like his chief of staff Mark Meadows. The barrage of fundraising emails to supporters “continued through January 6, even as President Trump spoke on the ellipse. Thirty minutes after the last fundraising email was sent, the Capitol was breached,” Wick said.The committee said to expect more testimony from Herschmann in the future. It reconvenes on Wednesday at 10 am.The second panel of witnesses for the day has been dismissed, after Lofgren went through the many court rulings against Trump’s claims of fraud.“The rejection of {resident Trump’s litigation efforts was overwhelming. Twenty two federal judges appointed by Republican presidents, including 10 appointed by President Trump himself and at least 24 elected or appointed Republican state judges dismissed the president’s claims,” Lofgren said, noting that 11 lawyers have been referred for disciplinary proceedings due to “due to bad faith and baseless efforts” to undermine the election.Prior to their dismissal, the committee heard from Benjamin Ginsberg, whom Lofgren called, “the most preeminent Republican election lawyer in recent history.” “In no instance did a court find that the charges of fraud were real,” Ginsberg said. He also rejected arguments pushed by the Trump campaign that they didn’t get a fair hearing, noting that of 62 lawsuits filed by the campaign, 61 were dismissed, and the one upheld didn’t affect the outcome. More

Trump loyalists push desperate counter narrative to combat damaging January 6 testimonyThe Republican faithful defiantly claim the House committee is illegitimate, politically motivated and out of touch Deep in denial, Republicans loyal to former US president Donald Trump mounted a desperate rearguard action on Monday to counter the devastating narrative of Congress’s latest January 6 hearing.A House of Representatives panel investigating the insurrection used testimony from Trump’s own attorney general and campaign manager to assert that the former president knowingly propagated “the big lie” of a stolen election with deadly consequences.But even as the hearing unfolded on live television, leading Republicans defiantly pushed a counter narrative that claims the committee is illegitimate, politically motivated and out of touch with Americans’ everyday lives.“The whole thing’s an absurdity designed by desperate Democrats to try to help them this fall and to try to weaken Trump if he should run again in 2024,” Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker, told the Guardian. “So I don’t pay any attention to it.”Gingrich described the hearings as “a Stalinist show trial” that have “nothing to do with fairness or finding the truth”.On Monday the House committee made the case that Trump and his advisers knew that his claims of fraud in the 2020 election were false. It played video clips in which Trump’s former campaign manager, Bill Stepien, told investigators that lawyer Rudy Giuliani was urging Trump to declare victory on election night, despite Stepien’s warnings that it was “way too early” to make such a prediction.Distancing himself from the wild conspiracy theories, Stepien said: “I didn’t mind being categorized – there were two groups of them, we called them kinda my team and Rudy’s team – I didn’t mind being categorized as Team Normal.”But Republican leaders in the House tweeted a very different sets of messages during the hearing. One even sought to deflect attention to Democrats’ supposed fixation on “woke” cultural issues such as transgender rights.Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House judiciary committee, posted: “The same party that thinks men can get pregnant wants you to trust them when it comes to the economy and the January 6th Committee.”Others cited House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to exclude Jordan and colleague Jim Banks (both of whom backed Trump’s efforts to overturn the election) as evidence that the committee is one-sided and lacks credibility.Elise Stefanik, chair of the House Republican conference, wrote on Twitter: “Lame Duck Speaker Pelosi’s select committee is illegitimate. Its purpose is to distract the American people from the FACT that House Dems have no agenda for Americans and no real solutions to the problems that we face on a daily basis.”In more video testimony shown at the hearing, former attorney general William Barr dismissed Trump’s claims of voter fraud as “crazy stuff” and “complete nonsense”.A Twitter account known as “Trump War Room”, run by his political action committee Save America, sought to challenge these assertions. It posted: “FLASHBACK: Barr admits mail-in ballots have been found to have ‘substantial fraud!’ ‘Elections that have been held with mail have found substantial fraud …’” Republican Twitter accounts also deployed the tried and trusted tactic of “whataboutism” – claiming that Democrats have also frequently questioned the legitimacy of elections (though none has instigated an insurrection).Trump War Room posted: “Remember when Hillary Clinton claimed President Trump’s election was illegitimate?”RNC Research posted: “In 2017, Democrat Bennie Thompson – chair of Pelosi’s illegitimate committee – refused to attend President Trump’s inauguration because he questioned the legitimacy of the 2016 election.”The hearing was again broadcast on major nonpartisan TV networks, making it hard for Republicans to ignore. Trump diehards are unlikely to be moved but the damning evidence could cut through and persuade some moderate and independent voters of his culpability.Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal ran an opinion column over the weekend that concluded: “Trump betrayed his supporters by conning them on Jan. 6, and he is still doing it.” Murdoch’s New York Post encouraged readers to move on from Trump, telling them to “unsubscribe from Trump’s daily emails begging for money” and to “pick your favorite from a new crop of conservatives”.But another glimpse into the Republican psyche was offered by Fox News which, having refused to broadcast Thursday’s first hearing during primetime, did provide live coverage of the second during daytime.Its panel of experts gave the session a distinctly lukewarm reception.Martha MacCallum, a Fox News host, pivoted to politics: “You have former President Trump, who is obviously the focus of this, tying him to these events and we’ll see the effort to do that throughout the course of the next hearings, and then you have all these stories this morning about Democrats saying that they think that President Biden is the anchor that needs to be cut loose.“So you’re looking at the two individuals who are the most likely clear next runners for the presidential election and there’s just a lot of questions all across the board.”Then Jonathan Turley, a legal analyst, said he was unsure what case the committee is making and argued it would have greater weight if more Republicans were involved. He commented: “You can say this is laying a foundation for what they said they would be proving, which is an attempted coup. That’s a tall order.“But so far, they seem to be trying to sort of create a persona non grata trial, to declare President Trump a horrible person, and they may not get much pushback by the end of the hearing. I thought the most telling moment came at the end when the chairman said, I’m going to introduce this video unless there is an objection, and that really put a pin on it. It’s like asking at a wedding, anyone who objects to this union speak up. Nobody is really there to do it.”Andy McCarthy, an author and lawyer, also challenged the process: “They’ve got a very good story to tell. The problem is they’ve set it up in a process that is not a fair process that’s aimed at getting to the truth and giving whatever contra arguments there are their day in court. And as a result, it’s more like messaging than it is like a real investigation. I could have been very impressive in court if there were no defense lawyers, you know.”But America’s news agenda is likely to be dominated by clips of Barr and others. The former attorney general delivered some memorable lines, telling investigators at one point that Trump had “become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff.”TopicsRepublicansUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More

An ‘apparently inebriated’ Rudy Giuliani told Donald Trump to declare victory on election night in 2020 despite Fox News calling Arizona for Joe Biden and with votes yet to be fully counted in other states, former advisers to the then president told the House select committee investigating the 6 January riot. The hearing presented testimonies given by Giuliani, the former Trump campaign chair Bill Stepien, the former Trump senior adviser Jason Miller, and Ivanka Trump that detailed the former New York mayor’s actions on election night

January 6 hearings: latest updates More

New Ohio law allows teachers to carry guns in schools without a permitGovernor Mike DeWine signs law which also applies to custodians and bus drivers, while slashing training requirements Ohio’s permitless gun carry law for “qualifying” adults went into effect on Monday – a measure that would lift restrictions on school teachers, custodians and bus drivers from carrying firearms at work.After Governor Mike DeWine announced he signed House Bill 99, which lowers the required training hours for armed personnel from 728 hours to 24 hours, DeWine said he still preferred law enforcement officers to carry the guns at schools.Amy Schumer among stars urging change in Hollywood gun portrayalsRead moreSigned into law after 19 children and two teachers were killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, the legislation no longer makes it a requirement for Ohioans aged 21 and older to complete eight hours of the handgun training course to carry and conceal a firearm. And it eliminates the requirement for gun carriers to tell police officers they have a concealed weapon on them, though they must say if they are asked.“My office worked with the general assembly to remove hundreds of hours of curriculum irrelevant to school safety and to ensure training requirements were specific to a school environment and contained significant scenario-based training,” DeWine said in a statement after the bill passed earlier this month.He thanked lawmakers “for passing this bill to protect Ohio children and teachers”.DeWine said local school districts may still prohibit guns on school grounds. “This does not require any school to arm teachers or staff,” he said. “Every school will make its own decision.”While school boards will not be required to arm personnel, they will have to notify parents if they choose to do so. Boards can mandate additional training beyond what is required in the new state law.According to the bill, training must include how to stop an active shooter, how to de-escalate a violent situation, trauma care and first aid, at least four hours in “scenario-based or simulated training exercises” and completing “tactical live firearms training”.Republican state lawmakers have said that HB 99 was a “doing something” response to the Uvalde massacre and other recent deadly mass shootings.However, Democratic politicians in the state have argued against the measure, saying that lifting carry laws for teachers was not what the community was asking for. “They’re not asking for no guns. They’re asking for background checks,” state representative Juanita Brent, a Democrat from Cleveland, said after the bill passed.According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 28 states allow people other than security officers to carry guns on school grounds. A 2018 Gallup poll showed that 73% of teachers opposed the idea.In Ohio, school employees have been allowed to carry guns on school grounds for years as long as the local school board consents. The Ohio supreme court ruled in 2021 that they should receive the same 700 hours of training as law enforcement officials or security officers.In Ohio, “permitless carry” applies only to adults over 21 who are not prohibited from possessing a firearm under state or federal law. Under the new law, adults who can lawfully own a firearm will be able to conceal carry a handgun without a permit or background checks.TopicsOhioUS politicsUS gun controlnewsReuse this content More

House panel to scrutinize conspiracy theories that led to Capitol attackHouse committee’s second hearing on Monday will focus on ‘the lies that convinced those men and others to storm the Capitol’ The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection in 2021 will reconvene Monday to scrutinize the conspiracy theories that led a group of Donald Trump’s supporters to attack the US Capitol.House January 6 panel shows it still has surprises in store in televised hearingRead moreThe Democratic chair of the committee, Mississippi congressman Bennie Thompson, has said the second hearing will focus on “the lies that convinced those men and others to storm the Capitol to try to stop the transfer of power”.“We’re going to take a close look at the first part of Trump’s attack on the rule of law, when he lit the fuse that ultimately resulted in the violence of January 6,” Thompson said on Thursday.The select committee said ahead of the hearing that the panel would focus on how Trump embraced baseless claims of a stolen election starting on election night – when he falsely declared victory over Joe Biden – and seized upon those claims in the weeks that followed.Trump was told repeatedly on election night that he did not have the numbers to win, the panel is expected to say, relying on live witness testimony from former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien and former Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt.The select committee will then show how Trump embraced election fraud claims despite being told otherwise by top officials, hearing from former US attorney BJay Pak, who resigned when he was told Trump would fire him for not pushing harder that fraud occurred in Georgia.Trump had an obligation to make court challenges if he believed there was fraud, the panel will say, and also accept the decisions of the courts – he lost virtually every case – but he instead chose to attack the “rule of law”.The select committee said it would also show how Trump and the Republican political apparatus used those baseless claims to rake in millions of dollars from unsuspecting Americans in fundraising, and how the Capitol attack was fueled by those claims perpetuated by Trump.The hearing on Monday, which will last around two hours and see select committee member Zoe Lofgren take a lead role in questioning witnesses instead of committee counsel, comes four days after the panel held its first hearing in primetime.At that first session, the select committee featured shocking and at times emotional testimony from key witnesses who have spoken to investigators over the past year as they conducted the first stage of their inquiry behind closed doors in Washington.Members of Trump’s inner circle testified that the former president was repeatedly told his claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election that deprived him of victory over Democrat Joe Biden were entirely baseless, but he continued to spread those lies in the weeks leading up to the insurrection.“I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff, which I told the president was bullshit,” William Barr, Trump’s former attorney general, told investigators in a clip shared on Thursday.Last week’s hearing laid the groundwork for the committee’s argument that Trump played a central role in the planning of the insurrection and bears personal responsibility for the deadly attack. A mob overran the US Capitol on January 6 last year, the day that Congress was due to officially certify Biden’s win over Trump in the previous Novembers presidential election.The five remaining hearings are expected to build upon that argument, as committee members attempt to present a meticulous case for Trump’s culpability.“On the morning of January 6, President Donald Trump’s intention was to remain president of the United States despite the lawful outcome of the 2020 election and in violation of his constitutional obligation to relinquish power,” Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney, the Republican vice-chair of the committee, said Thursday.“Over multiple months, Donald Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power. In our hearings, you will see evidence of each element of this plan.”The Monday hearing will provide committee members with another opportunity to convince the country that America’s democracy is facing a threat from those who do not believe in free and fair election. The panel has accused Trump and his associates of having engaged in a “criminal conspiracy” and argues that the former president bears personal responsibility for the deadly attack on the US Capitol.Although Trump was impeached by the House for inciting the insurrection, he was acquitted by the Senate, leaving many of his critics feeling as though he was not held accountable for his actions.If the committee is successful in building its case against Trump, the hearings could deliver a devastating blow to the former president’s hopes of making a political comeback in the 2024 presidential election. But if Americans are unmoved by the committee’s findings, the country faces the specter of another attempted coup, Thompson warned.“Our democracy remains in danger. The conspiracy to thwart the will of the people is not over,” Thompson said on Thursday. “January 6 and the lies that led to insurrection have put two and a half centuries of constitutional democracy at risk. The world is watching what we do here.”Hugo Lowell contributed to this reportTopicsUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Capitol attack panel members urge DoJ to consider criminal charges for Trump‘I’d like to see DoJ investigate any credible allegation of criminal activity,’ says Adam Schiff as pressure builds on Merrick Garland Members of the House committee investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat called on Sunday for the US justice department to consider a criminal indictment for the former president and warned that “the danger is still out there”.Their comments on the eve of the second of the panel’s televised hearings into the January 6 2021 insurrection and deadly Capitol attack will add further pressure on attorney general Merrick Garland, who has angered some Democrats by so far taking no action despite growing evidence of Trump’s culpability.“There are certain actions, parts of these different lines of effort to overturn the election, that I don’t see evidence the justice department is investigating,” committee member Adam Schiff, Democratic congressman for California, told ABC’s This Week.“I would like to see the justice department investigate any credible allegation of criminal activity on the part of Donald Trump.”Schiff, who led Democrats’ prosecution of Trump at his first impeachment trial in 2020, said Thursday’s primetime televised hearing, which attracted 20 million viewers, provided “just a sample” of the evidence the panel has gathered.During Monday’s daytime hearing, he said, the committee will “tell the story of how Trump knowingly propagated his big lie” that his election defeat by Joe Biden was stolen from him by fraud, and how that lie was used to spread disinformation by Trump and his allies.“Once the evidence is accumulated by the justice department, it needs to make a decision about whether it can prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt the president’s guilt or anyone else’s,” Schiff said.“But they need to be investigated if there’s credible evidence, which I think there is.”Maryland Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin, another panel member, appeared on CNN’s State of the Union to assert his confidence that Garland “knows what’s at stake”.“One of the conventions that was crushed during the Trump administration was respect by politicians for the independence of the law enforcement function,” Raskin said.“Attorney general Garland is my constituent, and I don’t browbeat my constituents [but] he knows, his staff knows, US attorneys know, what’s at stake here.“They know the importance of it, but I think they are rightfully paying close attention to precedent in history as well as the facts of this case.”Raskin said Thursday’s televised hearing had “pierced the sound barrier” but that “Americans need to pay further attention because the danger is still out there”.It emerged that “multiple” Republican congress members had sought pardons from Trump, with Pennsylvania representative Scott Perry, the only one identified so far, denying he had done so.Perry was included in a meeting of congressional Republicans before the 6 January attack that strategized how to prevent lawmakers certifying Biden’s victory on that day.“The seeking of pardons is a powerful demonstration of the consciousness of guilt, or at least the consciousness that you may be in trouble,” Raskin said.“Everything we’re doing is documented by evidence, unlike the big lie, which is based on nonsense. Everything that we’re doing is based on facts.”TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpMerrick GarlandnewsReuse this content More

AOC refuses to endorse Biden for 2024 as Democrats doubt his ability to win Congresswoman says she’s focused on trying to preserve Democrats’ congressional majority in November’s midterms Left-wing congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday refused to endorse Joe Biden for another run at the White House, adding to growing anxiety in Democratic circles over the president’s ability to run in and win the 2024 election.The powerful progressive New Yorker said she could not commit to supporting Biden during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, saying she was more focused on trying to preserve Democrats’ congressional majority in November’s midterms.“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Ocasio-Cortez said when asked directly if she would support Biden.“If the president has a vision and that’s something we’re all willing to entertain and examine when the time comes… we should endorse when we get to it. We’ll take a look at it.”“Right now we need to focus on winning a majority instead of a federal presidential election.”Ocasio-Cortez is a vocal member of the Democratic party’s left wing, which has been pushing Biden to take executive actions to get past a congressional logjam in his agenda.But there appears to be growing discomfort with the 79-year-old president across the array of Democratic ranks.The New York Times reported on Saturday that “dozens of frustrated Democratic officials, members of Congress and voters” were doubtful Biden possessed the ability to turn around the party’s fortunes.And New York magazine’s Intelligencer explored the issue of Biden’s longevity last month, noting that: “Many of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors – even as they pledge to back Biden’s reelection in earnest – have quietly started to poke around for alternatives in 2024.”Biden is mired by the lowest approval ratings of his presidency and seemingly unable to solve a raft of problems facing the country from inflation to abortions rights and gun reform.Despite Democrats having control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, he has also been unable to advance signature policy objectives such as the Build Back Better act and voting protections.Adding to the discomfort is Biden’s age: he will turn 82 the day barely two weeks after he would be seeking re-election.“The presidency is a monstrously taxing job and the stark reality is the president would be closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a second term, and that would be a major issue,” David Axelrod, former president Barack Obama’s chief strategist, told the New York Times.Ocasio-Cortez did tell CNN that she thought Biden was “doing a very good job so far” and didn’t rule out eventually backing him “if the president chooses to run again”.Traditionally, however, sitting first-term presidents have always enjoyed the unswerving loyalty and backing from their party, something Biden clearly does not have. The questioning is expected to intensify if, as polls suggest, Democrats take a hammering in November’s midterms and lose control of one, or both chambers of Congress.“[Biden] should announce his intent not to seek re-election right after the midterms,” Steve Simeonidis, a Miami-based member of the Democratic national committee (DNC) told the Times.“To say our country was on the right track would flagrantly depart from reality.”Many of the Democrats interviewed by the newspaper, including elected officials, indicated the situation was not helped by a lack of clarity over a natural successor.At a Detroit rally during his 2020 campaign, Biden said he viewed himself “as a bridge” to a younger generation of Democratic leaders, an indication that his objective was to run to get Donald Trump out of office, then prepare to hand over the baton.But vice-president Kamala Harris, once seen as Biden’s heir apparent, has struggled to make a mark, despite attempting to seize the lead on Democrats’ opposition to the supreme court’s expected imminent ruling ending almost half a century of abortion rights.Biden has indicated he intends to run again, telling his old boss Obama in April that he was preparing for 2024 with Harris on the ticket. Sources said he sees himself as the only candidate capable of keeping Trump out of the White House if the former president launches another campaign.According to Intelligencer, Democrats are broadly split into two camps, those who see Biden’s troubles as familiar midterms woes facing most administrations, with fortunes set to improve as 2024 approaches; and those who consider that the unprecedented combination of circumstances, including Biden’s age, his strategy and uncertainty of succession, make a future path uncertain and unpredictable.Jasmine Crockett, a Democratic Texas state representative, told the New York Times that many of her party’s problems at a national level, and by extension Biden’s problems too, come down to one thing: failing to stimulate voters by using their power.“Democrats are like, ‘What the hell is going on?’” Crockett said.“Our country is completely falling apart. And so I think we’re lacking in the excitement.”TopicsUS elections 2024Joe BidenUS politicsDemocratsUS CongressAlexandria Ocasio-CorteznewsReuse this content More