US Politics

Janet Yellen tells Congress US faces ‘unacceptable levels of inflation’Treasury secretary admits she regrets describing inflation as ‘transitory’ and says it is ‘top economic problem at this point’ Janet Yellen told Congress that the US is facing “unacceptable levels of inflation” on Tuesday as the treasury secretary defended herself from criticism of her previous comments that rising prices were “transitory”.Although the hearing with the Senate finance committee was centered on Joe Biden’s budget for 2023, Yellen was forced to answer questions on inflation, including some on how she once said that inflation would be “transitory”, or temporary.In response to a question about how she had initially framed inflation, Yellen said: “When I said that inflation would be transitory, what I was not anticipating was a scenario in which we would end up contending with multiple variants of Covid that would be scrambling our economy and global supply chains.“I was not envisioning impacts on food and energy prices we’ve seen from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”Yellen said she and the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, “could have used a better term than transitory”.She said: “There’s no question that we have huge inflation pressures, that inflation is really our top economic problem at this point and that it’s critical that we address it. I do expect inflation to remain high, although I very much hope that it will be coming down now.”Last week, Yellen drew headlines for making similar comments to CNN, during an interview in which she had been “wrong then about the path inflation would take”.At the hearing on Tuesday, Yellen said: “We currently face macroeconomic challenges, including unacceptable levels of inflation, as well as the headwinds associated with the disruptions caused by the pandemic’s effect on supply chain and the effects of supply-side disturbances to oil and food market.”‘We’re still struggling’: low unemployment can’t hide impact of low wages and rising inflationRead moreThe Biden administration has been delicately walking the inflation tightrope over the last few months as they try to push an aggressive response while also emphasizing other indicators that prove the economy is still improving, particularly in the jobs market.Biden celebrated the figures shown in May’s jobs report, released last Friday, which showed that 390,000 new jobs were created that month.“Because of the enormous progress we’ve made on the economy, Americans can tackle inflation from a position of strength,” Biden said in remarks following the release of the jobs report.Republicans in Tuesday’s hearing repeatedly pointed to the passing of the $1.9bn American Rescue Plan, which was passed in March last year and delivered further coronavirus aid, as a key driver of inflation.In response, Yellen noted that Biden “inherited an economy with very high unemployment”.“We had to address the possibility that this could be the downturn that could match the Great Recession,” she said. “In the policy, there were various risks taken into account. Of course, inflation was one of them. But the overwhelming risk was that America would be marred by a deep and long recession.”Yellen pointed to the expansion of child tax credit, which gave extra assistance to families, in the stimulus package that “resulted in a dramatic reduction in childhood poverty and financial insecurity for American families and contributed little to nothing to inflation”.She also said the US is “not the only country that’s experiencing inflation – you can see that in virtually every developed country around the world”.TopicsInflationJanet YellenEconomicsUS politicsBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More

Fake Trump electors told to operate in ‘complete secrecy’, email revealsStartling direction from Trump campaign to Georgia operatives contained in email that is part of US DoJ investigation, reports say Donald Trump’s campaign directed Republican party operatives named as “alternate” electors in Georgia to operate with “complete secrecy and discretion” as the then president attempted to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden.Buffalo shooting victim’s son condemns ‘cancer of white supremacy’ at Senate hearing – liveRead moreThe startling direction was contained in an email which is part of a US justice department investigation, CNN and the Washington Post reported.Trump lost to Biden by more than 7m ballots in the popular vote and by 302-236 in the electoral college – the same margin Trump called a landslide when it was in his favour over Hillary Clinton (who won the popular vote by nearly 3 million) in 2016.Pursuing the lie that Biden’s win was the result of fraud, the Trump campaign sought to overturn its electoral college defeat in part by appointing its own electors in seven key states.On 13 December 2020, a Georgia campaign official, Robert Sinners, emailed alternate electors due to gather the next day.He wrote: “I must ask for your complete discretion in this process. Your duties are imperative to ensure the end result – a win in Georgia for President Trump – but will be hampered unless we have complete secrecy and discretion.”The alternate electors were to gather at the statehouse in Atlanta.Sinners told them: “Please, at no point should you mention anything to do with presidential electors or speak to media.”The meeting did not take place in secret as local media filmed it.A lawyer for the chairman of the Georgia Republican party, David Shafer, told the Post and CNN: “None of these communications, nor his testimony, suggest that Mr Shafer requested or wished for confidentiality surrounding the provisional electors.“Quite to the contrary, Chairman Shafer invited TV news cameras into the proceedings and both issued a statement and gave a televised news interview immediately afterward.”At the time, Schafer said the meeting was necessary in case Trump won any legal challenges in key states.But Trump failed in his attempt to hold on to power, whether through slates of alternate electors, court challenges or the deadly attack on the US Capitol by his supporters on 6 January 2021, an attempt to stop certification of electoral college results.Speaking to the Post, Norm Eisen, a former ethics tsar under Barack Obama, counsel to House Democrats in Trump’s first impeachment and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said of the email to Georgia alternate electors: “If there was nothing wrong with it, why go through such extraordinary lengths to hide what you’re doing?”Sinners told CNN and the Post he worked at Shafer’s direction, and “was advised by attorneys that [secrecy] was necessary in order to preserve the pending legal challenge”.He added: “Following the former president’s refusal to accept the results of the election and allow a peaceful transition of power, my views on this matter have changed significantly from where they were on 13 December” 2020.Sinners now works for Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state who resisted Trump’s demand he “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s win in Georgia – a win recounts confirmed.Trump’s call to Raffensperger is under criminal investigation in Georgia. The district attorney in question is also investigating the alternate electors scheme. So is the House January 6 committee, which will hold public hearings this week. US networks to air January 6 hearings – but Fox News sticks with Tucker CarlsonRead moreIn the federal investigation, Jason Shepherd, a former chairman of the Republican party in Cobb county, Georgia, told the Post he had been interviewed by the FBI.“They seem the most interested in Shafer’s role and any communications from the White House or members of Congress,” he said.Trump advisers under scrutiny include Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York who became Trump’s personal attorney.Patrick Gartland, a would-be alternate elector who ultimately did not take part in the scheme, told the Post he too had been questioned by FBI agents.“They wanted to know if I had talked to Giuliani,” he said.TopicsGeorgiaUS elections 2020Donald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Will anti-abortionists use ‘uterus surveillance’ against women in the US?Arwa MahdawiIf, as is expected, Roe v Wade is overturned by the US supreme court, 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion – and data tracking could mean there’s nowhere for women to hide If you are looking for a cheerful column that will make you giggle and distract you from everything that is wrong with the world, click away now. This week I have nothing but doom, gloom and data trackers for you. If you are hoping to sink into a well of existential despair, maybe let out a few screams into the void, then you’ve come to the right place.Here goes: the US supreme court, as you are no doubt aware, is expected to overturn Roe v Wade and the federal right to an abortion very soon. At least 13 Republican-led states have “trigger laws” in place, which means that the moment Roe is overruled, abortion will be fully or partly banned. Other states will follow suit. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice research organisation, 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion when Roe falls.Perhaps you are the glass half-full sort. Perhaps you are thinking: “Well, at least people can travel to a state where abortion is legal.” Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. There are the obvious logistical and financial constraints, for one thing. Then there’s the fact that we live in a world of mass surveillance: pretty much everything we do these days leaves a digital footprint – one that anti-abortion extremists will not hesitate to weaponise. One Democratic senator has described the potential of new technology to track down and punish anyone who might even be thinking of having an abortion as “uterus surveillance”. Expect to see a big rise in this, not least because some anti-abortion states are providing financial incentives to snitch on your fellow citizens. Texas, for example, has passed “bounty hunter” laws promising at least $10,000 to individuals who help enforce the abortion ban by successfully suing an abortion provider.To be fair, there’s nothing new about uterus surveillance. Anti-abortion activists may be stuck in the past when it comes to reproductive rights, but they have always been adept at using modern technology to further their goals. One tactic they’ve used for decades is standing outside clinics and recording the licence plates of anyone who enters. As far back as 1993, extremists were tracing the people connected to those licence plates, obtaining their phone numbers, then calling up to harass them. Years ago tracing someone took a bit of time and effort. Nowadays, you can look up someone’s personal information with the click of a button and a small fee.The wonders of the modern world mean there are a mind-boggling number of ways in which you can now identify anyone who might be thinking about an abortion. To begin with, there’s location data. Vice media recently reported that a data location company is selling information related to Planned Parenthood facilities (many of which provide abortions). The data shows where groups of people visiting the locations came from, how long they stayed and where they went afterwards. That data is aggregated so it doesn’t provide the names of individuals; however, de-anonymising this sort of information is not very difficult. There is plenty of evidence that location data is almost never anonymous.Period-tracking apps, which are used by millions of people, are also a worrying source of potentially incriminating information in a post-Roe world. Experts have warned that rightwing organisations could buy data from these apps and use it to prove that someone was pregnant then had an abortion. Your text messages could also be used against you, as could your browser history. Indeed, authorities in Mississippi have already used a woman’s online search for abortion pills to indict her for second-degree murder after she miscarried. That happened in 2018; imagine what is going to happen in a post-Roe world. Speaking of which, I’ve just realised I Googled the word “abortion” 100 times while researching this. I’m off to scrub my search history.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
TopicsRoe v WadeOpinionAbortionUS politicsWomenHealthUS supreme courtLaw (US)commentReuse this content More

Only cultural change will free America from its gun problemAndrew GawthorpeThe movement to protect innocent lives from gun violence is a multi-generational struggle akin to that which won African Americans civil rights or gay Americans the right to marry Some days it feels like guns are such a foundational part of American identity that the country would have to cease to be itself before it would give them up. When a gunman murdered dozens of elementary-age schoolchildren, leaving their bodies in such a state that parents had to give up DNA samples for them to be identified, it was one such day. What cultural value, what material interest, could be worth this? It must be something that its defenders consider supremely important.Guns – that’s what. Critics of the sickness which is America’s obsession with guns often focus their fire on the second amendment, or the perverse political influence of the National Rifle Association. But neither of these things really get to the root of the pathology. It’s true that gun-rights advocates rely on a surely mistaken reading of the constitution to justify arming themselves to the teeth. And it’s also true that the NRA is a malign force in American politics. But the constitution can be changed or reinterpreted, and special interest groups can be vanquished. What is at issue here is something more foundational, and more difficult to change: American culture itself.The gun is the great symbol, and poisonous offshoot, of American individualism. The country has long valorized masculine heroes – the cowboy, the frontiersman, the patriotic soldier – who impose their will on the community’s enemies with violence. It’s no coincidence that whenever a horrific mass shooting occurs, those in favor of guns respond by claiming that the solution to the guns of the bad guys is more guns in the hands of the good guys. Such reasoning responds to a deep-seated American historical myth, and allows the speaker to imagine themselves as the hero.But they are not heroes – far from it. Mass shooters may be, as the writer John Ganz put it, the “nightmare obverse” of the ideal of the lone frontiersman. But everyone else who defends their own right to possess a gun, who lauds guns as the bringers of peace and order, is guilty too. Their choices make society less safe, not more. The pleasure derived from guns, the sense of participation in America’s deepest myths about itself which they might foster, come at the expense of tens of thousands of lives a year. Sometimes, they are the lives of small children, innocent to the ways of a world which has allowed them to die.Men own guns at nearly twice the rate of women, and within all of this there is something deeply pathetic about the state of American manhood. American gun culture treats ownership of weapons of war as a sign of masculinity and virility, something that makes you more of a man. Almost anywhere else in the western world, a man seeking to demonstrate his masculinity in this way would be treated as an absurd and tragic poser. No doubt many gun owners tell themselves that they are better equipped to protect the innocent. But they are wrong. Rather, gun culture reveals the centrality of violence to American conceptions of manhood – a violence which ultimately harms rather than protects.If the problem is cultural, then what is the solution? There is no easy one. By now, the grooves of the debate are well-worn, and even a shocking event like the Uvalde massacre will not shake us out of it for long. Proposals to change the law or the constitution will be bitterly criticized, and gun-rights proponents will present the shooter as an anomaly who holds no lessons for “responsible” gun-owners. The supreme court is expected soon to loosen rather than tighten the law around carrying guns in public. Republicans will angrily decry attempts to “politicize” the massacre, as if the fact that innocent children are being brutally murdered due to the policies those very same Republicans support was not already a political issue of the highest order.But cultural change is not impossible. It has happened in recent decades on very important issues. America also contains within itself the will to self-improvement, and citizens who will give their all to achieve it. Sometimes it comes before political or legal change, and sometimes it comes after it. The only way to avoid despair is to see the struggle to protect innocent lives against the ravages of gun violence as a multi-generational struggle akin to that which won African Americans the right to vote, or that which won the right to gay marriage. Each of these required Americans in the grip of myths and pathologies to relinquish them, and each at one time seemed impossible. But change did eventually come.The path ahead will not be easy – and, as the supreme court’s expected ruling on Roe v Wade has shown, there will be setbacks along the way. Those who embody a pathological understanding of what America should be are currently ascendant, and there will be no easy victory over them. But despair would be surrender. That’s why for now there is the need to mourn the tiny lives which were extinguished. Remember them, and in doing so remember something else: America’s genius is that it can be changed, never quickly enough, but always in the end. It’s a slim hope to grasp onto in this moment of rage and sorrow, but it may be all that we have left.
Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States and the host of the podcast America Explained
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Gun crime victims are holding the firearms industry accountable – by taking them to courtFollowing the strategy used in legal actions against cigarette and opioid firms, the lawsuits attempt to sidestep a law shielding gun makers With each slaughter of innocents, the gun industry offers its sympathy, argues that even more weapons will make America safer, and gives thanks for a two-decade-old law shielding the firearms makers from legal action by the victims.Mike Fifer, the chief executive of one of the US’s leading handgun manufacturers, Sturm Ruger, once described the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) as having saved the firearms industry because it stopped in its tracks a wave of lawsuits over the reckless marketing and sale of guns.But now victims of gun crime are following an alternative path forged by legal actions against cigarette makers, prescription opioid manufacturers and big oil in an attempt to work around PLCAA – and the lack of political will to act on gun control – to hold the firearms industry accountable for the bloody toll of its products.‘Significant’ consequences if lawmakers fail to act on gun control, Democrat warnsRead moreOn Tuesday, Ilene Steur, who was badly injured when a man fired 33 shots on the New York subway in April wounding 10 people, filed a lawsuit accusing the manufacturer of the semi-automatic pistol used in the attack, Glock, of breaching “public nuisance” laws.Steur’s lawsuit contends that Glock endangered public health and safety in breach of New York state law with an irresponsible marketing campaign to push its gun’s “high capacity and ease of concealment” in an “appeal to prospective purchasers with criminal intent”.It also accuses Glock of giving significant discounts to American police departments on weapons purchases to “give the gun credibility” in the larger and more lucrative civilian market.“Gun manufacturers do not live in a bubble,” said Mark Shirian, Steur’s lawyer. “They are aware that their marketing strategies are empowering purchasers with ill intent and endangering the lives of innocent people. This lawsuit seeks to hold the gun industry accountable.”The public nuisance strategy has been used against the tobacco industry for lying about the link between cigarettes and lung cancer, and with mixed success against pharmaceutical companies for creating the US opioid epidemic by recklessly pushing prescription opioids.Public nuisance claims are also at the heart of a series of lawsuits by states and municipalities accusing oil firms of covering up and lying about the part fossil fuels play in driving the climate crisis.Until recently, the gun industry thought PLCAA provided a shield from similar actions. The National Rifle Association persuaded a Republican-controlled Congress to pass the law after the families of people shot by the sniper who terrorised the Washington DC area for three weeks in 2002, killing 10 people, won a total of $2.5m from the gun manufacturer, Bushmaster, and the store that sold the weapon.But a lawsuit by the families of 20 young children and six staff murdered in the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre sought to exploit an exception in PLCAA if a firearm is sold in violation of “applicable” state or federal law, in this case public nuisance and consumer protection legislation.The Connecticut supreme court upheld the argument that PLCAA did not prevent the gun maker being sued for breach of state laws for irresponsibly militaristic marketing campaigns for its semi-automatic rifles aimed at young men. Remington appealed to the US supreme court which declined to take the case while it was still in litigation. In February, Remington settled for $73m.At about the time the Connecticut supreme court ruled in favour of the Sandy Hook families, New York introduced the law Steur is relying on that expands public nuisance legislation to cover gun crimes. On Wednesday, a federal district judge in New York dismissed an attempt by the gun industry to quash the law on the grounds that it pre-empted PLCAA.Timothy Lytton, a specialist in gun litigation at Georgia State University college of law and author of Suing the Gun Industry, expects the validity of the New York law, and the claim that public nuisance legislation is an exception to the protection given to the gun industry, to be appealed all the way to the US supreme court.“The most important thing that the supreme court needs to decide with regard to firearms litigation is probably the scope of the federal immunity law and whether or not the exception that was relied upon by the Sandy Hook plaintiffs is a viable legal theory. If it’s a viable legal theory, then I think you’re likely to see an upsurge in litigation,” he said.But, Lytton said, legal actions against the gun industry face an additional challenge because of the supreme court’s interpretation of the second amendment and the rights it gives to gun owners, a legal area that has also yet to be more widely tested.“There are limits on the ability to sue a newspaper for libel because of the first amendment. It may be the case that the second amendment has similar restrictions on the ability of individuals to hold the firearms manufacturer liable. But we don’t know what those restrictions might be because we have very little indication from the supreme court about what the second amendment actually protects other than a basic right for an individual to own a firearm that they can use for ordinary purposes,” he said.Still, as litigation against the tobacco, opioid and oil industries demonstrates, the point of lawsuits is not only to win in court. After each massacre, the gun industry usually seeks to blame the individual shooter and the failure of systems, such as mental health services. Lytton said lawsuits put the focus back on the actions of the firearms makers and forces public discussion of how they sell weapons.“The impact of litigation is not just about who wins and who loses. It’s about the framing, information disclosure and agenda-setting effects that the litigation process creates even if the plaintiffs lose. A great example of that is clergy sexual abuse.“Almost none of those suits have been won and almost none of them in front of a jury. But they’ve revolutionised the global church because of these three effects of the litigation,” he said.Two decades of litigation over the US opioid epidemic that has claimed more than 1 million lives has shifted the focus away from the drug industry’s attempt to blame the victims for their addiction to the big pharma’s responsibility for pushing the wide use of prescription narcotics despite the dangers. Highly embarrassing revelations in several court cases about the drug companies’ cynical marketing techniques helped pressure opioid makers and distributors into settling thousands of lawsuits over the opioid epidemic.Similarly, states and cities suing the oil industry for lying about the climate crisis hope that public disclosure of what fossil fuel companies knew and when they knew it will add to pressure on big oil to reach settlements.But Lytton warned that strategy may not have the same impact on the gunmakers.“There’s something very different about firearms. When it comes to tobacco or opioids or pretty much any other area of public policy in the United States, people tend to reconsider their views and start to rethink the problem,” he said.“The only place in American public policy where this is not true is in firearms violence. No matter how terrible the tragedy is, people tend to get even more committed to the views that they already have.”TopicsUS gun controlUS politicsLaw (US)Gun crimenewsReuse this content More

Former leader of the Proud Boys far-right nationalist group Enrique Tarrio and four of his closest associates have been charged with seditious conspiracy related to the January 6 attack, according to a Justice Department filing released Monday.The rare charge against Tarrio as well as Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, Charles Donohoe, and Dominic Pezzola builds on conspiracy charges filed by the government earlier this year.In January, the Justice Department leveled seditious conspiracy charges against 11 members of another far-right group, the Oath Keepers militia, over their involvement in the assault on the Capitol as lawmakers were meeting to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.Tarrio, 38, is also facing counts of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and obstruction of an official proceeding, and two counts each of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers and destruction of government property.That’s it from us today. Here’s how another eventful day in Washington unfolded:
The former leader of the Proud Boys, far-right nationalist group Enrique Tarrio, and four of his closest associates have been charged with seditious conspiracy related to the January 6 attack, according to a Justice Department filing released Monday. The rare charge against Tarrio as well as Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, Charles Donohoe and Dominic Pezzola builds on conspiracy charges filed by the government earlier this year.
The January 6 committee is preparing to hold its first primetime hearing on Thursday. According to Axios, the committee has enlisted James Goldston, a former ABC News president who ran the shows “Nightline” and “Good Morning America,” to advise the committee on how to televise the hearing. The panel is expected to share never-before-seen photos taken inside the White House as the Capitol attack unfolded.
A Democratic member of the January 6 committee said the panel’s hearings would demonstrate the extensive planning conducted by those who carried out the attack. “The committee has found evidence of concerted planning and premeditated activity,” Jamie Raskin said in a virtual discussion with the Washington Post today. “The idea that all of this was just a rowdy demonstration that spontaneously got a little out of control is absurd. You don’t almost knock over the US government by accident.”
The Senate is trying to find a bipartisan compromise on gun-control legislation in the wake of the Uvalde massacre. Democratic senators are trying to find 10 Republicans to join them in supporting tougher gun laws, but that will be a heavy lift in the evenly divided chamber. Joe Manchin, the centrist Democrat who could play a key role in negotiations, said he would support raising the minimum age required to purchase semi-automatic weapons from 18 to 21. Manchin also signaled openness to an assault weapons ban, but that proposal is unlikely to win enough Republican support to be included in the final bill.
The supreme court released more decisions this morning, but the country is still waiting to hear whether justices will move forward with their initial ruling to overturn Roe v Wade. The abortion case is one of dozens of decisions that the court still needs to release in the coming weeks. The court has announced that its next round of rulings will be released on Wednesday.
Thanks for following along with our coverage today. The blog will be back tomorrow morning, with more updates on the January 6 committee and the Senate negotiations over gun-control. Back in Congress, a group of 10 “frontline” Democratic House lawmakers, who are considered the most vulnerable to getting ousted in the November midterms, have written a letter to the chamber’s leaders asking for votes on bills that would fight inflation.The letter reported by Punchbowl News comes as the country faces an ongoing wave of price increases for essentials like gasoline, as well as a shortage of baby formula that has rattled the Biden administration.Addressed to House speaker Nancy Pelosi and majority leader Steny Hoyer, the letter doesn’t name specific bills, and acknowledges that many proposals the chamber already passed haven’t been brought up in the Senate. The lawmakers nonetheless call for votes:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} With the time that remains in the 117th Congress after the important upcoming votes on gun violence prevention – and particularly in the few months that remain before the late summer district work period – we urge you to prioritize bills that would lower costs for working families, address rising inflation and resolve supply chain challenges. To be clear, we know that many such bills have already received affirmative votes in the House and now await Senate action. However, we believe that more must be done to ensure that this body remains laser focused on addressing the most urgent challenges that continue to impact our constituents.Consumer prices have been rising over the past year at rates not seen since the 1980s, fueling public discontent with the Biden administration. The Federal Reserve is hiking interest rates to tame the price increases, but much of the inflation has been caused by factors beyond their control such as global supply chain snarls and the war in Ukraine. Some economists fear the combination of higher rates and global supply shocks will put the economy into a recession — perhaps next year, just as campaign season for the 2024 presidential election kicks off.Meanwhile in the UK, members of parliament have spent the day voting on whether to boot Prime Minister Boris Johnson from office, and the verdict is in: Johnson survives his no-confidence vote, 211 to 148.That means he stays as prime minister, leader of the Conservatives and Joe Biden’s counterpart in one of America’s closest allies. The Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow has been keeping a meticulous live blog of the historic day.Former leader of the Proud Boys far-right nationalist group Enrique Tarrio and four of his closest associates have been charged with seditious conspiracy related to the January 6 attack, according to a Justice Department filing released Monday.The rare charge against Tarrio as well as Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, Charles Donohoe, and Dominic Pezzola builds on conspiracy charges filed by the government earlier this year.In January, the Justice Department leveled seditious conspiracy charges against 11 members of another far-right group, the Oath Keepers militia, over their involvement in the assault on the Capitol as lawmakers were meeting to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.Tarrio, 38, is also facing counts of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and obstruction of an official proceeding, and two counts each of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers and destruction of government property.Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has signaled a deal between Democrat and Republican lawmakers on a new gun control bill could be reached this week.MCCONNELL on whether senate negotiators will strike a gun deal by the end of the week: “oh I hope so”— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) June 6, 2022
More MCCONNELL on guns. “We’re trying to get a bipartisan outcome here that makes a difference. And hopefully, sometime this week, we’ll come together.”— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) June 6, 2022
Republican Senator John Cornyn and Democratic Senator Chris Murphy have been leading negotiations in the evenly divided chamber to introduce some kind of legislation that could restrict gun purchases following a recent wave of mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, Uvalde, Texas and elsewhere.The January 6 committee will hold its second hearing on Monday, June 13, at 10am ET, the House panel has just announced.The first hearing is happening on Thursday at 8pm ET, and it is expected to attract worldwide news coverage, but the second hearing is not scheduled for the evening.The select committee has reportedly enlisted the help of James Goldston, a former ABC News president, to assist in the planning of the primetime event.Speaking to the Washington Post earlier today, a Democratic member of the committee, Jamie Raskin, said investigators had “found evidence of concerted planning and premeditated activity”.“The idea that all of this was just a rowdy demonstration that spontaneously got a little out of control is absurd,” Raskin said. “You don’t almost knock over the US government by accident.” The supreme court will now issue opinions on Wednesday, June 8, according to its website.The justice have 30 cases to release decisions on, with the workload possible extending into next month. Several of these may be extremely consequential, including an environmental case out of West Virginia, a gun rights case stemming from New York, an immigration case via Texas involving the US-Mexico border and the pivotal Mississippi abortion case that also includes the state authorities asking Scotus to overturn Roe v Wade.Nearly half of Republican voters think the US just has to live with mass shootings, according to a poll released in the aftermath of the Texas elementary school murders last month and as politicians in Washington negotiate for gun reform.The CBS and YouGov poll returned familiar results, including 62% support for a nationwide ban on semi-automatic rifles, the kind of gun used in Uvalde, Texas.Nineteen young children and two adults were killed at Robb elementary school on 24 May by an 18-year-old who bought his weapon legally.But clear national support for a ban on such rifles or changes to purchasing ages and background checks is not mirrored in Congress. Most Republicans, supported financially by the powerful gun lobby, remain implacably opposed to most gun reform.Read the Guardian’s full report:Nearly half of Republicans think US has to live with mass shootings, poll findsRead moreAn end to abortion rights would create yet another crisis for Biden, whose presidency has been increasingly defined by a list problems, annoyances and calamities that seems to only grow longer. From high inflation to the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan to nationwide mass shootings, my colleague Lauren Gambino has an excellent piece on how Biden has become a crisis president — whether he wants to or not:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}In his third run for president, Joe Biden’s pitch to Americans was simple: after half a century in elected office, including eight years as vice-president, he understood the demands of what is arguably the hardest job in the world. It was a point Biden stressed on the campaign trail, in his own folksy way: “Everything landed on the president’s desk but locusts.”
Nearly a year and a half into his presidency, Biden now appraises his own fortunes differently. “I used to say in Barack’s administration: ‘Everything landed on his desk but locusts,’” he told Democratic donors in Oregon. “Well, they landed on my desk.”
Successive mass shootings, including a racist attack at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, and a massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 elementary school students and their teachers dead, present just the latest test for a president desperate to act but constrained, once again, by the limits of his own power.Biden entered office facing daunting crises – only to be hit with more crises Read moreThe White House has released a statement condemning legislation introduced in Louisiana that would make abortion a crime of murder.“Louisiana’s extreme bill will criminalize abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest and punish reproductive healthcare professionals with up to ten years in prison,” said Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, in a statement.“The president is committed to protecting the constitutional rights of Americans afforded by Roe for nearly 50 years, and ensuring that women can make their own choices about their lives, bodies, and families. An overwhelming majority of the American people agree and reject these kinds of radical measures.”Louisiana Republicans advance bill to make abortion a crime of murderRead moreSupporters of the bill admit it’s unconstitutional, but only as long as the Roe v Wade decision that enshrines abortion rights in the United States remains law. That decision’s days appear to be numbered, according to a draft of a supreme court opinion that was leaked last month.Located just across the street from the Capitol, the supreme court has found itself sucked into the inquiry over January 6 as investigators eye the actions of Ginni Thomas, wife of conservative justice Clarence Thomas.In March, my colleague Ed Pilkington reported on the calls for conflict-of-interest rules that erupted after revelations that Ginni Thomas pressed then-president Donald Trump’s chief of staff to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election:Ginni Thomas texts spark ethical storm about husband’s supreme court roleRead moreThe Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reported later that month that committee members have weighed asking Thomas to cooperate either voluntarily or with a subpoena, but no decision has yet been made.House January 6 panel members weigh seeking cooperation from Ginni ThomasRead moreMore revelations about Thomas’s actions around the time of the insurrection have trickled out since then, including that she pressed Republicans in Arizona to overturn Biden’s victory there, as first reported in The Washington Post last month.January 6 committee member Jamie Raskin hinted to The Washington Post that lawmakers have discovered Donald Trump more than just incited the attack on the Capitol. Raskin did not elaborate on what the House committee found, but the actions of the former president have been at the center of the inquiry from the start.“The select committee has found evidence about a lot more than incitement here, and we’re gonna be laying out the evidence about all of the actors who were pivotal to what took place on Jan 6,” Raskin said.“Donald Trump and the White House were at the center of these events. That’s the only way really of making sense of them all,” the Democratic House representative added.Trump was impeached by the Democrat-controlled House immediately following the insurrection, but the Republican-led Senate decided not to convict and remove him from office, allowing Trump to remain in the White House for the final weeks of his term..@RepRaskin on Jan. 6: “Donald Trump and the White House were at the center of these events. That’s the only way really of making sense of them all.” #PostLive pic.twitter.com/gIJJxqPWsx— Washington Post Live (@PostLive) June 6, 2022
A Democratic member of the January 6 committee, Jamie Raskin, said the panel’s hearings would demonstrate the extensive planning conducted by those who carried out the attack on the Capitol.“The committee has found evidence of concerted planning and premeditated activity,” Raskin said in a virtual discussion with the Washington Post today.“The idea that all of this was just a rowdy demonstration that spontaneously got a little out of control is absurd. You don’t almost knock over the US government by accident.” Rep. Liz Cheney talks about the GOP’s “cult of personality” around Trump, and what the hearings will reveal about the threat to democracy. https://t.co/kFhs30uzzC pic.twitter.com/TrqMfQ0Qjs— CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 (@CBSSunday) June 6, 2022
Raskin said the committee would use the hearings to outline all the evidence it has collected and provide recommendations on how to avoid future coups that could threaten the security of the US government.Raskin’s comments echo those of Liz Cheney, the Republican vice-chair of the committee, who said yesterday that she considers the January 6 attack to be a conspiracy.“It is extremely broad,” Cheney told CBS News. “It’s extremely well-organized. It’s really chilling.”Warning of the danger of Trump’s hold on the Republican party, Cheney added, “I mean, it is fundamentally antithetical, it is contrary to everything conservatives believe, to embrace a personality cult. And yet, that is what so many in my party are doing today.”The January 6 committee has enlisted James Goldston, a former ABC News president who ran the shows “Nightline” and “Good Morning America,” to advise the committee on how to televise its hearings beginning Thursday, according to Axios.Axios reports:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} I’m told Goldston is busily producing Thursday’s 8 p.m. ET hearing as if it were a blockbuster investigative special.
He plans to make it raw enough so that skeptical journalists will find the material fresh, and chew over the disclosures in future coverage.
And he wants it to draw the eyeballs of Americans who haven’t followed the ins and outs of the Capitol riot probe.Goldston will apparently have a lot of material to work with. The committee reportedly plans to show never-before-seen photos from inside the White House on January 6, and new security-camera footage from the Capitol, taken as the insurrection occurred, will also be shared.The committee has already conducted more than 1,000 depositions and interviews as part of its investigation, and clips from those conversations are expected to be played during the hearing.Meanwhile, Republicans are busy planning a counter-messaging program to challenge the committee’s findings. According to Axios, House Republican leaders and outside conservative groups will paint the panel as hyperpartisan to try to discredit their conclusions.Joe Manchin, the centrist Democrat who could play a key role in reaching a Senate compromise on a gun-control bill, outlined what he would like to see in the legislation.The West Virginia senator told CNN that he would support raising the minimum age required to purchase semi-automatic weapons from 18 to 21. The gunman who carried out the Uvalde shooting was 18.Manchin also indicated he would support some version of a red-flag provision, as long as the policy allowed for due process for those blocked from purchasing guns.Manchin told me that a final deal should include two things: Raising the age to 21 for purchasing semi-automatic weapons and standards for state red flag laws. He’s also open to an assault weapons ban. On people needing AR-15s? “I never felt I needed something of that magnitude.” pic.twitter.com/GYUlx1Nhkp— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 6, 2022
“We know we can do something that would have prevented this — raising the age,” Manchin said of Uvalde. “And the second thing is that we know that the red-flag laws do work, as long as there’s due process.”On the question of enacting a ban on assault weapons, Manchin said he would be open to the idea, but that proposal faces stiff opposition from Senate Republicans.“I never thought I had a need for that type of high-capacity automatic weapon,” Manchin said. “I like to shoot. I like to go out and hunt. I like to go out sports shooting. I do all that. But I’ve never felt I needed something of that magnitude.”While there were no major decisions made by the supreme court today, the justices did opt not to review legal sanctions against Republican Senate candidate Mark McCloskey and his wife Patricia, who pointed guns at protesters during racial justice protesters in Missouri two years ago.CNN reports that the McCloskeys, both attorneys, pled guilty to misdemeanors over the incident, which were later pardoned by Missouri’s governor. However the state’s supreme court later sanctioned them, calling their actions “moral turpitude.”The McCloskeys contested the penalties, citing the constitution’s second amendment, but CNN reported the argument didn’t have much chance of success.Mark McCloskey is a candidate in the Republican senate primary in Missouri to succeed Roy Blunt, who is retiring, but a SurveyUSA poll released last month did not find him among the race’s frontrunners. As the Senate tries to find compromise on gun control, Joe Biden is using the presidential bully pulpit to urge Congress to take action to prevent more tragedies like Uvalde.“After Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after Charleston, after Orlando, after Las Vegas, after Parkland, nothing has been done,” Biden said on Twitter. “This time, that can’t be true. This time, we must actually do something.”Biden offered the same message to the nation last week, when he delivered a primetime address on the need to enact stricter gun laws.He proposed expanding background checks and banning assault weapons. If Congress cannot approve an assault weapons ban, which seems unlikely given Republicans’ opposition to the idea, then the minimum age required to purchase those guns should be raised from 18 to 21, Biden said.After Columbine,after Sandy Hook,after Charleston,after Orlando,after Las Vegas,after Parkland,nothing has been done.This time, that can’t be true. This time, we must actually do something.— President Biden (@POTUS) June 6, 2022
The House has already passed several gun-control bills, and Biden called on the Senate to act as well in the wake of the Uvalde massacre. However, that will be difficult when the upper chamber is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, and the filibuster rules requires 60 votes to advance most legislation.“I support the bipartisan efforts that include a small group of Democrats and Republican senators trying to find a way,” Biden said last Thursday. “But my God, the fact that the majority of the Senate Republicans don’t want any of these proposals even to be debated or come up for a vote, I find unconscionable. We can’t fail the American people again.”This week will provide some key clues as to whether any gun-control bill can pass the Senate. More

Nearly half of Republicans think US has to live with mass shootings, poll findsCBS and YouGov poll returned familiar results, including 62% support for a nationwide ban on semi-automatic rifles Nearly half of Republican voters think the US just has to live with mass shootings, according to a poll released in the aftermath of the Texas elementary school murders last month and as politicians in Washington negotiate for gun reform.Bipartisan US lawmakers ramp up gun control talks amid crisis of violence – liveRead moreThe CBS and YouGov poll returned familiar results, including 62% support for a nationwide ban on semi-automatic rifles, the kind of gun used in Uvalde, Texas.Nineteen young children and two adults were killed at Robb elementary school on 24 May by an 18-year-old who bought his weapon legally.But clear national support for a ban on such rifles or changes to purchasing ages and background checks is not mirrored in Congress. Most Republicans, supported financially by the powerful gun lobby, remain implacably opposed to most gun reform.In an effort fueled by horror at events in Uvalde, senators led by Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut elected after the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting killed 26 in 2012, and John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, have expressed optimism that some changes may be possible.Such efforts are largely focused on “red flag” laws designed to stop gun purchases by people deemed a potential danger to others or themselves.In the CBS/YouGov poll, support for such laws ran at 72%. Support for federal background checks on all gun purchases ran at 81%.Joe Biden has called for an assault weapons ban, or at least raising the minimum age for purchases of such weapons. In the new poll, 77% said the minimum age for buying an assault rifle should be higher than 18: 32% said it should be 21 and 45% opted for 25.Asked if mass shootings were “unfortunately something we have to accept as part of a free society” or “something we can prevent and stop if we really tried”, 72% of respondents said such shootings could be stopped.Among Democrats, 85% of respondents said mass shootings could be stopped if US politicians would only try. Among independents, the figure was 73%.But 44% of Republicans said mass shootings should be accepted as part of a free society.Following strict messaging guidelines, Republican politicians repeatedly say mental health and security issues are to blame for mass shootings, not access to guns.In the new poll, respondents were also asked: “Regardless of how you feel about the issue, how likely do you think it is that Congress will pass any laws in the next few months that will make significant changes to gun policy?”Only 7% thought it was “very likely” Congress would finally act, while a combined 69% thought it was “not very” or “not at all” likely.Some state governments have moved to introduce reforms. In New York City on Monday, the state of New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, signed a package of laws including licensing measures for assault rifles and a minimum purchase age of 21, expanded red flag provisions and a ban on sales of body armour.Hochul told reporters: “It just keeps happening. Shots ring out, flags come down and nothing ever changes – except here in New York.”Hochul’s state, however, is home to another politician whose fate starkly shows what can happen to Republicans who express openness to gun reform.On Friday, the New York congressman Chris Jacobs abandoned his bid for re-election, after stoking fury by expressing support for a federal assault weapons ban.Jacobs represents suburbs of Buffalo, the city in which 10 people were shot dead at a supermarket on 14 May in what authorities say was a racially motivated attack.Mass shootings, widely defined as shootings in which four people excluding the gunman are hurt or killed, have continued since Buffalo and Uvalde.‘They had no empathy’: for gun violence survivors, police response can be retraumatizingRead moreLast week, at a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a gunman killed two doctors, a receptionist and a patient.According to the non-profit Gun Violence Archive, the following weekend saw mass shootings in Philadelphia, Chattanooga, South Carolina, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, New York and Michigan. Fifteen people were killed and more than 60 wounded.The archive says there have been 246 mass shootings in the US in 2022, considerably more than one a day.On Sunday, Murphy discussed his push for reform. He told CNN: “The possibility of success is better than ever before. But I think the consequences of failure for our entire democracy are more significant than ever.”TopicsUS politicsRepublicansTexas school shootingGun crimenewsReuse this content More

DeSantis beats Trump in conservative group straw poll for 2024 nominationDenver poll indicates Trump is losing grip on Republican party as DeSantis wins 71% of the vote to Trump’s 67% Conservative activists in Colorado have again placed Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, a rising star in Republican circles, above former president Donald Trump in their preference for their party’s 2024 presidential nomination.DeSantis won 71% of the vote to the former president’s 67% in the straw poll, which was taken during the weekend’s Western Conservative Summit in Denver and means little in itself. Participants are allowed to offer multiple responses.But there is a growing perception that Trump is losing his previously impenetrable grip on the Republican party, having achieved mixed results in endorsements in recent primary elections ahead of November’s midterms.And a NBC analysis published on Sunday suggests Trump is mulling a third run at the White House which he is considering announcing imminently, in part to deter a growing field of likely other Republican candidates, some of whom might be sensing blood in the water.They are said to include former vice-president Mike Pence, the Texas senator Ted Cruz, the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor whom Trump chose as US ambassador to the United Nations.“I’ve laid out my case on why I think he should do it,” Trump adviser Jason Miller told NBC.“I think that … clarity about what his intentions are [is important] so he can start building that operation while it’s still fresh in people’s minds and they’re still active.”DeSantis, who has earned the admiration of conservatives for a range of Republican “culture war” legislation in Florida including restricting the rights of the LBGTQ+ community, Black voters and even Disney, has refused to rule out a run at the presidency, regardless of whether Trump runs again.The former congressman, favorite to win a second term as governor in November, has played down the speculation but has been fundraising in a number of other states, most recently South Carolina.“There are other candidates and politicians that people like ideologically here, but none have the excitement that DeSantis does,” Republican activist Wesley Donehue told Politico. “DeSantis has almost transcended politics to become a celebrity.”Critics, however, have accused him of focusing on “nonexistent issues” at the expense of problems facing his state.The Colorado poll almost exactly mirrors last year’s result, when DeSantis beat Trump 74%-71%. This year’s distant third place choice, Cruz, drew only 28%.And DeSantis also won a May straw poll of Wisconsin Republicans with 38% to Trump’s 32%. No other candidate reached double figures in that poll.DeSantis’s rise to prominence, and his position as a possible rival, has sometimes irked Trump, who takes credit for elevating his one-time protege from an also-ran in the 2018 Florida governor’s race to victor.In January, the New York Times highlighted disagreements over Covid-19 policy as a source of friction between the two, although Trump’s oldest son Eric later denied the report.Axios, meanwhile, reported more disharmony, claiming that Trump had privately slammed DeSantis as a “dull personality” with no chance of beating him for the 2024 nomination.TopicsUS elections 2024Donald TrumpRon DeSantisUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More