US Politics

Secret Service were warned of security risk to Pence day before Capitol attackEx-vice-president’s chief of staff warned head of his Secret Service detail that Trump was about to turn on Pence A day before the deadly attack on the US Capitol, Mike Pence’s chief of staff warned the head of Pence’s Secret Service detail that Donald Trump was about to turn on his own vice-president, endangering his security.Ex-Trump aide Peter Navarro indicted for defying Capitol attack panelRead moreThe news was reported on Friday by Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, who said she uncovered it during research for a book on Trump due out in October.On 5 January, Haberman wrote, Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, did not know how his boss’s security might be threatened if Trump turned on him. But Trump and advisers had been formulating a plan under which Pence would stop certification of electoral college results in Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden.Under pressure which the Times said included withholding funding for the vice-president’s transition out of power, Pence considered the plan before concluding he did not have the authority to reject electoral college results.When the mob attacked the Capitol on 6 January, rioters were heard to chant “Hang Mike Pence” while a gallows was set up outside.The Times recently reported that two witnesses who spoke to the January 6 committee said Trump told Mark Meadows, his own chief of staff, “something to the effect of, maybe Mr Pence should be hung”.The Times said it was not clear if Trump was serious.Trump told another reporter and author, Jon Karl, his supporters “were very angry” with Pence and that it was just “common sense” to be so, because Pence was not helping overturn Trump’s election defeat.US Justice Department could be zeroing in on Trump lawyers, experts sayRead moreThe Times said it was not clear what Tim Giebels, the head of Pence’s Secret Service detail, did with the warning from Short.The next day, with the Capitol under attack, Pence’s protectors rushed him from the Senate chamber to an underground parking bay. Multiple accounts have said the vice-president refused to leave the building.According to Short, Pence said: “I’m not going to let the free world see us fleeing the Capitol, and I’m staying.”Authors of books on the Trump presidency have been widely criticised for withholding news until publication. Haberman was known for having strong sources in the Trump White House, and was filmed taking calls from Trump himself.She published her nugget about Trump’s threat to Pence in the run-up to public hearings due to be staged by the House committee investigating the events of 6 January 2021.Pence and the Secret Service did not comment on the new Times report.TopicsUS Capitol attackMike PenceDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Florida man arrested for threatening far-right congresswoman Lauren BoebertMatthew Lee Comiskey was charged on Friday with five felony counts for making interstate threats starting 31 August last year A Florida man has been arrested for allegedly threatening the life of Lauren Boebert, the far-right Republican congresswoman from Colorado.Ex-Trump aide Peter Navarro indicted for defying Capitol attack panelRead moreAuthorities arrested Matthew Lee Comiskey of Palm Beach county, Florida, on Friday and charged him with five felony counts of making interstate threats.Starting on 31 August 2021, Comiskey allegedly made several Twitter posts threatening Boebert’s life, as was first reported by the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.According to court documents that were unsealed on Friday, Comiskey posted about hurting the US House representative several times. In one tweet posted on 31 August 2021, Comiskey wrote: “If I ever see Lauren I’d be glad to take her out and go to prison. Would be job well done.”In other posts, Comiskey encouraged others to harm Boebert, tweeting on 15 September 2021: “Someone needs to put Lauren down like a sick dog. She is a true waste of life! Someone exercise their second amendment right to her face! Since the [CIA] is a failure and [FBI] is incompetent at charging her for being a terrorist it’s time to do it ourselves! Pew pew Lauren.”In a final post on 17 September 2021, Comiskey wrote: “[D]on’t come to Florida us libs have big guns here and we stand our ground. Take you down like Trayvon,” referring to the 2012 shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager, in Florida.On Friday, a federal magistrate set Comiskey’s bond at $50,000. His arraignment is scheduled for 8 June.If indicted, Comiskey could face a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment.Boebert could not immediately be reached for comment.TopicsUS newsUS politicsFloridaColoradoRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

Hillary Clinton faced constant sexism in 2016 campaign, says ex-aideHuma Abedin says candidate and her team would feel obliged to laugh off offensive remarks When Hillary Clinton ran for the US presidency in 2016, she received sexist comments “on a constant basis” and her team had “no idea” how to deal with them, her former aide Huma Abedin has said.Abedin, who worked closely with Clinton on her campaign, recalled that the former secretary of state was deluged with openly sexist remarks as well as unhelpful advice, or instructions to emulate male politicians.Abedin said these started when Clinton sought the Democratic nomination in 2008 and continued when she ran for president in 2016, and “nothing changed over that period”, which took place before the #MeToo movement began in 2017.Speaking to the Hay festival to promote her recent memoir, Both/And, Abedin said Clinton and her team would feel obliged to laugh off offensive remarks from conservative commentators such as the newsreader Tucker Carlson, who said: “When Hillary Clinton shows up on TV I inadvertently cross my legs.”Other frequent gendered criticisms included that her voice was too loud or annoying; commentary on her choice of dress – with some people recommending that she only wear dark colours, and other saying she should wear colours “to look more cheerful” – and advice that she look at a picture of her granddaughter when speaking to prevent her from “looking so angry”. Abedin told the audience: “Who says that to Boris Johnson or Barack Obama? Nobody ever says that!”Abedin recalled that one Hollywood director offered media training to Clinton. “I said: ‘Can you give me an example of who she should emulate, who’s her model? Give me an idea of a woman.’ He said: ‘Yeah, yeah, her husband.’ ‘Anybody else?’ ‘President Obama.’”However, she said Clinton did not suit the “personality-driven” nature of US politics, which she said favoured the likes of Donald Trump, a “charismatic shock and awe communicator”; Barack Obama, who would make people “think anything’s possible, it’s going to rain honey and ice-cream”; and Bill Clinton, who “connected with every single person in the room” whenever he gave a speech.While the latter two were “amazing orators, communicators of their generations”. Abedin said, “Hillary’s the first person to say that was not her strength, she’s a policy wonk and she gets stuff done”.She added: “If we voted for people based on how popular they were and how many numbers of people voted for them, Hillary Clinton would be in her second term as president now. But that’s not how we do it. There’s a system and it’s an outdated system.”Abedin shared how she and Clinton were connected through their mutual experiences of sex scandal. Bill Clinton had an affair with Monica Lewinsky, while Abedin’s ex-husband Anthony Weiner was convicted of sexual assault after he sexted with a teenage girl.She said that while Clinton was still “judged” for having chosen to remain with her husband, she had been told “you left, but it was easy for you”.She stressed how difficult the experience of becoming part of “the first sex scandal in the digital age” had been. Although it did not damage her professionally, she felt like the “elephant in the room” and found it “hard being out on the streets”.She said Weiner’s sexting was the result of falling into “a pattern of behaviour online that started as a compulsion” and turned into an addiction.“We didn’t understand what it was … Anthony really struggled with the advent of social media. Twitter and Facebook in 2009 were these new portals. He was very popular and as he had more followers he fell down this rabbit hole of behaviour and it just exploded. We lost everything, he lost his reputation, he lost his job, it was very hard.”TopicsHillary ClintonHuma AbedinUS politicsWomen in politicsHay festivalnewsReuse this content More

Until the US Senate is accountable to America, we’ll never get gun controlOsita NwanevuDemocrats are heading into this year’s elections without having tried even basic steps to balance the chamber, including ending the filibuster or admitting liberal Washington DC as a state What more can be said about mass shootings in America? We who find ourselves outraged anew by each fresh massacre have settled into a routine⁠. There’s now a canon of essays and satirical pieces to share on social media; in conversations online and off, we offer familiar rebuttals to familiar Republican diversions and deflections. Democratic politicians, for their part, have just about perfected their own boilerplate language⁠. “When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” Biden asked in his Tuesday speech on the Uvalde shooting. “When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?”Eighteen-year-old Americans can’t drink. Why can they buy assault rifles? | Ross BarkanRead moreFor the first time since the Sandy Hook shooting a decade ago, the Democratic party has the power to do what needs to be done. It controls the White House. It controls the House of Representatives. And it controls the Senate, where a bipartisan group of senators has talked in recent days about measures ⁠– from universal background checks to incentives for states to allow the confiscation of guns from threatening individuals ⁠– that probably would not have a prayer if Republicans were in the majority. But they still might not even now. While we will not have a clear sense of where everyone stands until the Senate returns from a fortuitously timed holiday, gun control legislation faces the same basic obstacles that have hobbled the rest of the Democratic party’s agenda ⁠– the filibuster and the rhetoric of consensus.As many weary Democratic voters are now well aware, it effectively takes 60 votes in the US Senate, not the simple majority that Democrats hold, to break a filibuster and pass non-fiscal measures. And while rage at Republicans, the NRA and the gun lobby remains well justified, it is moderate Democrats who support keeping the filibuster ⁠– Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema and Democratic colleagues who might privately back their position ⁠– who are preventing the party from simply advancing gun control legislation on its own. Instead, they will need the support of at least 10 Republicans ⁠– a daunting hurdle Manchin and Sinema have defended on the grounds that major policy changes should win broad bipartisan support.“It makes no sense why we can’t do commonsense things to try to prevent some of this from happening,” Manchin told reporters this week. “The filibuster is the only thing that prevents us from total insanity.”As Manchin knows personally, the filibuster is actually the only thing preventing the Senate from passing the commonsensical reforms he putatively supports. In 2013, he and the Republican Senator Pat Toomey co-authored a bill expanding background checks to gun shows and gun sales over the internet. The majority of the chamber supported it ⁠– 54 votes, including four Republicans. But it needed 60 to overcome the filibuster. It died ⁠– a failure that gives lie to the canard that the filibuster actually facilitates bipartisanship. With an extremely modest bipartisan compromise on the table, the Senate instead passed nothing.That same fate may await the bill Senate negotiators are piecing together now; there’s a plot in the graveyard alongside Biden’s other legislative priorities already waiting for it. And if it fails, the design of the Senate itself will bear most of the blame. The reality Democrats are loth to admit is that if the NRA and the whole gun lobby sank into hell tomorrow, the chamber would still disproportionately empower voters in the most sparsely populated and conservative states in the country ⁠– the voters most likely to vehemently oppose not only regulations on gun ownership, but most of the major policies that Democrats, backed by majorities of the American public, hope to pass. And while significantly altering or eliminating the Senate obviously will not be in the cards anytime soon, Democrats are heading into this year’s midterms and the potential loss of at least one chamber of Congress without having taken more basic steps to balance the chamber, including the elimination of the filibuster or the admission of liberal Washington DC as a state.Instead, they have left the American public chained to a fantasy ⁠– the idea that the surest and most defensible route to meaningful change is bipartisan action, no matter how intransigent the Republican party proves itself to be. That’s a delusion pushed not only by moderate politicians who have an interest in constraining the Democratic party’s capacity to pass left-of-center policies, but by the mainstream press, which mourns these shootings with calls for the parties to set aside their differences and “come together” on the issue.But there will not be a grand coming-together on guns. The modest reforms on the table, even if passed, would do little to change the outcome of a culture war one side has already won. For all the ranting and raving we have heard from the right in the last few months about the cultural power liberals wield, the values of rural and exurban conservatives plainly govern the country here. It matters not a whit what liberals in cities like Buffalo or Pittsburgh think about living in a country where people are gunned down in stores and synagogues with legal assault weapons. An inescapable reality has been imposed upon them ⁠– there are more firearms than people in the United States.If recent history is any guide, the conversations we are having now about improving the situation at the margins will be drowned out and defeated by noise and nonsense in a matter of days. Arming schoolteachers, outfitting the nearly 100,000 public schools in this country with the kind of trip wires and traps you might see in the next Mission Impossible film ⁠– this is the blather of degenerates who know they have already succeeded, who know they have no need for arguments that might convince most Americans. The status quo they defend is being upheld by the deference of Democrats now in a position to upend it.
Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist
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US Justice Department could be zeroing in on Trump lawyers, experts saySubpoenas for information on Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman’s roles in the fake electors scheme were issued in April Legal experts believe the US Justice Department has made headway with a key criminal inquiry and could be homing in on top Trump lawyers who plotted to overturn Joe Biden’s election, after the department wrote to the House panel probing the January 6 Capitol attack seeking transcripts of witness depositions and interviews.Trump calls Capitol attack an ‘insurrection hoax’ as public hearings set to beginRead moreWhile it’s unclear exactly what information the DoJ asked for, former prosecutors note that the 20 April request occurred at about the same time a Washington DC grand jury issued subpoenas seeking information about several Trump lawyers including Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, plus other Trump advisers, who reportedly played roles in a fake electors scheme.Giuliani, Trump’s former personal lawyer, worked with other lawyers and some campaign officials to spearhead a scheme to replace Biden electors with alternative Trump ones in seven states that Biden won, with an eye to blocking Congress’ certification of Biden on January 6 when a mob of Trump loyalists attacked the Capitol.Deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco announced early this year that the justice department had begun investigating fake elector certificates at the behest of some state attorneys general including Michigan’s.The House committee’s sprawling investigation, which has interviewed over 1,000 people, has included a strong focus on top Trump loyalists including Eastman and Giuliani. Last month, Giuliani testified virtually for over seven hours but reportedly asserted privilege and dodged many questions about his contacts with Trump House allies.Ex-prosecutors also caution that while the justice department may want to obtain more evidence from the House select committee about the fake electors scheme and lawyers including Giuliani, there are other top Trump allies who sought to overturn Biden’s win, plus key figures in the Capitol attack who have drawn scrutiny from both the panel and justice, who prosecutors may now have in their sights.A grand jury in Washington DC, for instance, also began issuing subpoenas a few months ago seeking information about Trump allies involved in the planning and financing of the large Trump rally that preceded the Capitol attack, as the Washington Post first reported.Further, other recent grand jury activity in Washington indicates a widening justice inquiry into top Trump allies including a subpoena last month to Peter Navarro, Trump’s former top trade advisor, for testimony and some of his written communications with Trump. Navarro has responded with a lawsuit to block the subpoena.In addition, several months ago the House sent the justice department a criminal contempt of Congress referral about Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, who played key roles in efforts to overturn Biden’s win, and was not fully cooperative with the panel’s requests for documents and testimonyIn replying to justice department’s letter, the January 6 panel chair Bennie Thompson stressed that the committee’s inquiry is ongoing and that “we told them that as a committee, the product was ours, and we’re not giving anyone access to the work product … we can’t give them unilateral access.” and called the DoJ request “premature.”But Thompson also told reporters last month the committee may allow some materials requested to be reviewed in the panel’s officesFormer prosecutors say Thompson’s response, albeit mixed, seems to augur well for more cooperation in the future and pointed to several ways that the overture to the House panel could substantially benefit current inquiries.“The DoJ request for the fruits of the House committee investigation was inevitable but is still very important,” former justice inspector general Michael Bromwich said.“It will substantially advance the DoJ investigation into the role played by higher-level architects of the insurrection,” Bromwich added. “ It will save DoJ time and resources in pushing the investigation forward. It’s very much like having a large second investigative staff that has been working in parallel rather than at cross-purposes with the criminal investigators. Because the House committee has not immunized any witnesses, the legal obstacles for using that testimony don’t exist.”Despite Thompson’s initial guarded response, Bromwich said he expects “they will comply promptly”, adding that the panel “is probably irritated that the request didn’t come earlier, rather than at a time its members are swamped with prep for public hearings and is well into drafting its report”.Likewise, Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for the eastern district of Michigan, told the Guardian that outreach to obtain key transcripts from the House panel could prove a boon to prosecutors.“Obtaining the transcripts directly from the committee is a way to maximize efficiency,” said McQuade, now a professor of practice at the University of Michigan Law School. “Investigators can see what witnesses have said before and decide whether they need to be interviewed again. They can use the transcripts to eliminate witnesses who don’t have much light to shed on the matters under investigation.”McQuade noted that months ago, “Monaco confirmed that DoJ had received evidence from state AGs about alternate slates of electors and was investigating. It appears that DoJ is now issuing subpoenas regarding this episode. They will likely ask questions about why and how this plan was carried out and who was involved. The answers to those questions will guide the investigation. One could imagine each link leading to the next and possibly all the way to Donald Trump.”As of late May, the justice department had charged over 830 people for crimes related to their roles in the January 6 Capitol attack which followed a Trump rally where he urged a large crowd to “fight like hell.” The federal charges range from illegal entry to seditious conspiracy involving Proud Boys and Oath Keepers members, some of whom have pleaded guilty.On another front, a CNN report in late May revealed that FBI agents had recently conducted interviews in Georgia and Michigan with individuals who initially signed up to be Trump electors but then bowed out, asking specific questions about their contacts with Trump campaign officials and others.As DoJ has ramped up its inquiry into Trump’s fake electors, ex-prosecutors see more benefits that DoJ’s request to the House committee could produce.“One expects that the main purpose is to check the consistency of critical accounts – which is valuable and does signal that DoJ is moving forward amid signs that it is increasingly examining the conduct of Giuliani and Eastman,” ex-prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig saidIn another investigative twist, Paul Pelletier, the former acting chief of the fraud section at DoJ said: “DoJ’s public acknowledgment of their interest in the January 6 transcripts may well be only the tip of the iceberg.“While Chairman Thompson has deferred a formal response to the government’s inquiry, they likely have been informally sharing evidence for some time as is common in these investigations.”Looking forward, other ex-prosecutors sound bullish the House panel will extend cooperation to DoJ.“The panel is sure to cooperate because they are patriots,” former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut told me. “They know the importance of January 6 criminal accountability. That is the DoJ’s department, not theirs,” but predicted that the committee “will cooperate on their schedule”.Aftergut stressed that the committee has done a “bang up job” with its wide ranging investigation, but likely wants to keep the public’s attention focused on their upcoming hearings which Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin has predicted will “blow the roof off the House”.Still, he added, “Chairman Thompson calling cooperation now “premature” signals that it’s coming.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS justice systemRudy GiulianiUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

This week, Joe Biden confirmed he will send more advanced rocket systems to Kyiv. As Russian troops continue their assault on the Donbas region in the east of the country, Joan E Greve talks to Susan Glasser of the New Yorker about what the future holds for US support to Ukraine.

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President Joe Biden will address Americans at 7.30pm eastern time following mass shootings across the country, including at a Texas elementary school last week that left 19 children and two teachers dead.Biden will deliver “remarks on the recent tragic mass shootings, and the need for Congress to act to pass commonsense laws to combat the epidemic of gun violence that is taking lives every day”, the White House said.The speech comes on the same day that the House judiciary committee is holding a hearing to mark up Democrats’ omnibus gun-control bill, the Protecting Our Kids Act.Chris Murphy, the Democratic senator from Connecticut who was sworn into office shortly after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, has published an op-ed in Fox News calling for gun reform. Appealing to a conservative Fox News audience, he wrote: .css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I believe that the Second Amendment protects a citizen’s right to buy and own firearms. But I also believe that like every constitutional right, there are limits. I don’t believe the Constitution protects the right of criminals or people with serious mental illness to own weapons. And while all of us might draw the line in a different place, I think we all agree that the Constitution allows Congress to decide which weapons are so dangerous as to be kept exclusively in the hands of the military.
And as I said on the Senate floor last week, I also acknowledge that in order to find common ground, I will need to agree to a smaller set of reforms than I would prefer. I’m willing to pass incremental change, like tightening up our background checks system and helping states pass laws to allow law enforcement to temporarily take guns away from individuals who pose a threat to themselves or others. I’m also very supportive of providing more mental health resources to help young men in crisis and more funding to pay for security upgrades at our schools.
For me, the only thing we cannot do is nothing.
The White House expects that Covid-19 vaccinations for children under 5 could begin as early as 12 June, said Dr Ashish Jha, Covid response coordinator. “Our expectation is that within weeks, every parent who wants their child to get vaccinated will be able to get an appointment,” he said. Children under 5 are the last remaining Americans who are not yet eligible for vaccines. Within weeks, “every parent who wants their child to get vaccinated will be able to get an appointment”, Jha said. A decision on authorizing the vaccine for young kids is expected soon after the panel of experts advising the US Food and Drug Administration meets 14 and 15 June. Donald Trump will “fight even harder” on the road to a possible White House run in 2024 because of the acquittal of a lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign on a charge of lying to the FBI.“If anything, it makes me want to fight even harder,” the former president told Fox News Digital. “If we don’t win, our country is ruined. We have bad borders, bad elections and a court system not functioning properly.”Full story:Trump says Clinton lawyer acquittal fuels 2024 election ambitionsRead moreOhio is poised to allow teachers and other school employees to forgo hundreds of hours of training normally needed to carry a gun at work under a bill awaiting the governor’s signature.House Bill 99 will streamline the process for school employees to carry weapons on campus, and has been welcomed by Republican governor Mike DeWine. “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,” he said in a statement.The bill, which passed the Senate Wednesday, has raised eyebrows given its passage following a wave of mass shootings, including at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. The Associated Press reported that it’s opposed by teachers unions, gun control advocates and law enforcement groups, and supported by some police departments and school districts. Republicans who backed the law see it as a work around for a recent court ruling that said school employees must undergo a lengthy training process before coming to work armed.That’s it from me today. I’m handing the blog over to my west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, to cover Joe Biden’s speech tonight on gun violence. Here’s where the day stands so far:
Biden will deliver a primetime address at 7.30pm ET on “the need for Congress to act to pass commonsense laws to combat the epidemic of gun violence”, the White House said. The speech comes less than two weeks after a mass shooting at Robb elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers. The massacre has intensified calls for national gun-control legislation, but it remains unclear whether any bill can pass Congress.
The House judiciary committee held a markup hearing on Democrats’ omnibus gun-control bill, the Protecting Our Kids Act. The bill would raise the age requirement for purchasing semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21, and it would also establish severe restrictions on the sale and possession of high-capacity magazines, among other reforms. The committee hearing could set up a full House vote on the bill, but the legislation currently has no path to passage in the evenly divided Senate.
Democrats on the House judiciary committee accused Republicans of being “complicit” in mass shootings by refusing to amend gun laws, while Republicans argued Democrats were moving too quickly to pass gun-control legislation days after the Uvalde tragedy. Noting that it has been 23 years since the shooting at Columbine High school, committee chairman Jerry Nadler asked his Republican colleagues, “What the hell are you waiting for?”
Donald Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, met with the House select committee investigating January 6. Barr’s conversation with the lawmakers investigating the Capitol attack lasted for two hours, CNN reports, and he discussed his interactions with Trump before and after the 2020 election.
Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.A Florida legislative map that favors Republicans is set to stay in place during the state’s upcoming elections after a court declined on Thursday to block it.The ruling, reported by Politico, adds to the woes facing Democrats in Congress, where court rulings have given Republicans an edge in redistricting, while President Joe Biden faces low approval ratings. The Florida case centered on a Congressional district map drawn, in an unusual move, by Republican governor Ron DeSantis, rather than the legislature. Civil rights and voting groups had sued over the map, arguing it violates anti-gerrymandering clauses in the state’s constitution.The decision by the state supreme court not to intervene in the case means an appeals court will likely decide the matter, but not before the state’s August 23 primary. The map gives Republicans an advantage in congressional districts and also dismantles the district of House Rep. Al Lawson, a Black Democrat representing North Florida.William Barr, who served as attorney general under former president Donald Trump, on Thursday met with the House select committee investigating January 6, CNN reports.Barr met for two hours with lawmakers investigating the assault on the US capitol, and discussed his interactions with Trump before and after the 2020 election, CNN said, citing sources familiar with the investigation. The network also saw him in the room where interviews are done. The meeting dealt with Barr’s interactions with Trump before and after the election, as well as his conclusion that the 2020 election was not affected by fraud, as the former president claims.The committee’s chairman Bennie Thompson said in January that the former attorney general had spoken to the panel repeatedly. Barr was accused of turning the Justice Department into the then-president’s tool during his time as attorney general, but ultimately resigned before the end of Trump’s term.John Hinckley, who shot and injured then-president Ronald Reagan in 1981, will have all court restrictions on him lifted later this month, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.Declaring 67-year-old Hinckley is “no longer a danger to himself or others,” US district court Judge Paul L. Friedman said as he decided to release Hinckley from court oversight on June 15, the Associated Press reports.A jury found Hinckley not guilty by reason of mental insanity in the March 30, 1981 shooting that also partially paralyzed Reagan’s press secretary James Brady and injured a Secret Service agent and a Washington police officer. Hinckley was obsessed with actress Jodi Foster and the movie “Taxi Driver,” in which a character attempts to kill a presidential candidate.Hinckley spent more than two decades in a mental hospital following the shooting before being gradually allowed to visit and eventually live in his parents’ Virginia community. The remaining restrictions include giving notice before traveling more than 75 miles from his home, allowing officials access to his electronic devices and online accounts and avoiding travel to areas where someone under Secret Service protection might be present. Friedman had made the decision to end the restrictions in September of last year but delayed its effective date to ensure Hinckley was fitting in well to his community.Reagan died in 2004, and his foundation issued a statement objecting to the end of restrictions on Hinckley, particularly his plans to pursue a career in music. “We strongly oppose his release into society where he apparently seeks to make a profit from his infamy,” the Reagan Foundation and Institute said.President Joe Biden’s approval rating has risen by six percentage points from the low point it hit last week, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Wednesday found, but it still lingers at an unpopular 42 percent.A spike in inflation coupled with the chaotic US military pullout from Afghanistan sent Biden’s approval rating sinking last August, and it has struggled to recover in the months since. The poll conducted over two days of more than 1,000 US adults found that 52 percent of Americans disapprove of Biden’s performance.The low numbers have raised alarms that Biden’s Democrats, who control both the House and Senate by narrow margins, could lose control of one or both chambers in the midterm elections set for November. Abortion rights groups have filed a lawsuit in Florida to stop its ban on abortions after 15 weeks from taking effect next month.The suit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of two Planned Parenthood affiliates and six abortion providers, attempts to block the law signed by governor Ron DeSantis from being enforced starting July 1, arguing it violates the state’s constitutional guarantee of privacy.The law “will force Floridians to remain pregnant against their will, violating their dignity and bodily autonomy, and endangering their families, their health, and even their lives,” the ACLU said in a statement announcing a suit.Florida’s law was one of a host of measures passed by states in anticipation of a Supreme Court ruling expected later this month that could see the Roe v Wade decision allowing abortion in the United States reversed or greatly weakened. Flordia’s law is modeled on similar legislation approved in Mississippi, which is the subject of the supreme court’s deliberations. More

Republican brandishes private arsenal in House hearing on gun reformGreg Steube displays succession of firearms he says would be banned under bill being debated in response to mass shootings A Republican congressman used a House hearing on gun control in the aftermath of multiple mass shootings to show off his own collection of guns and brandishing them via remote video link.A Democrat, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, interjected and said: “I hope the gun is not loaded.”Massie’s gun collection: ‘They shouldn’t be in the hands of civilians’Read moreBut Greg Steube replied: “I’m in my house, I can do whatever I want with my guns.”The hearing on the Protecting Our Kids Act, an omnibus bill backed by House Democrats, was held amid calls for meaningful reform after mass shootings in Buffalo, New York (10 dead); Uvalde, Texas (21 dead, including 19 children); and Tulsa, Oklahoma (four dead).Joining the hearing from his Florida home, Steube complained about proposals to ban high-capacity magazines.“The Glock 19 was the highest-sold handgun in the United States,” he said. “It comes with a 15-round magazine. That gun would be banned.”Then he held up a weapon.“Right in front of you I have a Sig Sauer P226. Comes with a 21-round magazine. This gun would be banned. Here’s a 12-round magazine. This magazine would be banned under this current bill, it doesn’t fit as this gun was made for [a] 21-round magazine. This gun would be banned under this bill.”He showed another gun.“Here’s a Sig Sauer P320. It takes a 20-round magazine. Here’s a 12-round magazine that would be banned. It doesn’t fit. Because it would be banned. This gun would be banned under this bill.”And another.“Here’s a gun I carry every single day to protect myself, my family, my wife, my home. This is an XL Sig Sauer P365, comes with a 15-round magazine. Here’s a seven-round magazine which would be less than what would be lawful under this bill … it doesn’t fit. So this gun would be banned.”Steube is a former US army lawyer who supported Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. He voted against awarding the congressional gold medal to police officers who defended the Capitol from rioters on 6 January 2021.On Thursday, he refused requests to yield from the Democratic committee chair, Jerry Nadler of New York.The shootings in Buffalo, Uvalde and Tulsa happened within two weeks. More mass shootings, widely defined as events in which four or more people not including the shooter are injured or killed, occurred around the US during the Memorial Day weekend.The Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit, says there have been 232 mass shootings in the US this year – substantially more than one a day.Republicans remain opposed to gun reform, although senators from both parties have said talks initiated after the Uvalde shooting have shown promise.On Thursday, two Democrats on the House judiciary committee, Sylvia Garcia of Texas and Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania, read the names of the 19 children killed in Uvalde.Garcia argued Republicans were “complicit” in such mass shootings because they have refused to countenance gun reform.Her voice shaking, Dean asked: “Where is their outrage over the slaughter of 19 fourth-graders and their two teachers? Why don’t they feel an urgency to do something?“This is on our watch.”TopicsUS gun controlHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More