US Politics

Trump held secret meetings in days before Capitol attack, ex-press secretary tells panel Stephanie Grisham gave more significant details than expected about what Trump was doing before 6 January, sources say The former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack that Donald Trump hosted secret meetings in the White House residence in days before 6 January, according to two sources familiar with the matter.The former senior Trump aide also told House investigators that the details of whether Trump actually intended to march to the Capitol after his speech at the Ellipse rally would be memorialized in documents provided to the US Secret Service, the sources said.The select committee’s interview with Grisham, who was Melania Trump’s chief of staff when she resigned on 6 January, was more significant than expected, the sources said, giving the panel new details about the Trump White House and what the former US president was doing before the Capitol attack.Grisham gave House investigators an overview of the chaotic final weeks in the Trump White House in the days leading up to the Capitol attack, recalling how the former president held off-the-books meetings in the White House residence, the sources said.The secret meetings were apparently known by only a small number of aides, the sources said. Grisham recounted that they were mostly scheduled by Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and that the former chief usher, Timothy Harleth, would wave participants upstairs, the sources said.Harleth, the former director of rooms at the Trump International Hotel before moving with the Trumps to the White House in 2017, was once one of the former first family’s most trusted employees, according to a top former White House aide to Melania Trump.But after Harleth sought to ingratiate himself with the Biden transition team after Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election in order to keep his White House role, Trump and Meadows moved to fire him before Melania Trump stepped in to keep him until Biden’s inauguration.Grisham told the select committee she was not sure who exactly Trump met with in the White House residence, but provided Harleth’s name and the identities of other Trump aides in the usher’s office who might know of the meetings, the sources said.The Guardian previously reported that Trump made several phone calls from the Yellow Oval Room and elsewhere in the White House residence to lieutenants at the Willard hotel in Washington the night before the Capitol attack, telling them to stop Joe Biden’s certification.Trump increasingly retreated to the White House residence to conduct work as his presidency progressed, according to another former Trump administration official, as he felt less watched by West Wing aides than in the Oval Office.Towards the end of his presidency, the former Trump administration official said, an aide to former White House adviser Peter Navarro tried at least once to quietly usher into the residence Sidney Powell, a lawyer pushing lies about election fraud, to speak with Trump.A spokesperson for the select committee declined to comment on Grisham’s interview that took place the first week of January. Harleth did not respond to questions about the meetings in the White House residence when reached last week by phone.Over the course of her hours-long interview, Grisham told House investigators that the mystery surrounding Trump’s promise at the Ellipse rally that he would march with his supporters to the Capitol might be resolved in Trump White House documents, the sources said.The former president’s purported intention to go to the Capitol has emerged as a crucial issue for the select committee, as they examine whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy coordinating his political plan to stop Biden’s certification with the insurrection.Trump’s promise is significant as it served as one of the primary motivations for his supporters to march to the Capitol alongside militia groups like the Oath Keepers, and was used by far-right activists like Alex Jones to encourage the crowd along the route.But Trump never went to the Capitol and instead returned to the White House, where he watched the attack unfold on television – after being informed by the Secret Service before the insurrection that they could not guarantee his security if he marched to the Capitol.The select committee is now trying to untangle whether Trump made a promise that he perhaps had no intention of honoring because he hoped to incite an insurrection that stopped the certification – his only remaining play to get a second term – one of the sources said.Grisham told the select committee that Trump’s intentions – and whether the Secret Service had been told Trump had decided not to march to the Capitol – should be reflected in the presidential line-by-line, the document that outlines the president’s movements, the sources said.The chairman of the select committee, Bennie Thompson, has told reporters the panel is already seeking information from the Secret Service about what plans they had for Trump on January 6, as well as what evacuation strategies they had for then-vice president Mike Pence.But the presidential line-by-line, which gets sent to the Secret Service, could also reveal discussions about security concerns and suggest a new line of inquiry into why an assessment about conditions that were too dangerous for the president were not disseminated further.Grisham also told the select committee about the necessary coordination between the Trump White House, the Secret Service and organizers of the “Save America” rally at the Ellipse on 6 January in order to ensure Trump’s appearance, the sources said.The former Trump aide suggested to the select committee that Trump was determined to speak at the rally once he heard about its existence, the sources said, and was constantly on the phone to oversee the event’s optics, the sources said.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsTrump administrationDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

US president Joe Biden has accused the Republicans of blocking his legislative agenda for purely political purposes, saying the party is more interested in defeating his presidency than doing things for the American people. Without mentioning his name, Biden suggested that former president Donald Trump was still in control of the Republican party, with members of Congress fearful they will be defeated in their primaries if they vote contrary to his wishes. Biden questioned what the purpose of the Republican party was during his a press briefing marking the one-year anniversary of his presidency

Winter of peril and impossibility: Biden faces hard truth at anniversary press conference
Joe Biden says his administration has ‘outperformed’ in bruising first year More

Democrats fail to advance voting rights law as Senate holdouts defend filibusterSweeping protections for voters, already passed by House and backed by Biden, fail to clear 60-vote procedural hurdle Senate Democrats failed again to pass sweeping new voting protections on Wednesday, in what may be the most brutal blow yet to efforts to strengthen protections for voters at a perilous moment for US democracy.Just as they have done four other times in recent months, all 50 Republicans united in their opposition to the measure. They relied on the filibuster, a Senate rule that requires 60 votes to advance legislation to a final vote.Bernie Sanders suggests he may support primary challengers against Manchin and SinemaRead moreDespite heavy pressure from Joe Biden and fellow Democrats, two senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, have dug in defending the measure, preventing Democrats from getting rid of it.In a rebuke to Biden, Sinema gave a speech on the Senate floor last week making it clear she would not support changes to the filibuster. Manchin has also consistently made his support clear. “I will not vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster. The filibuster plays an important role in protecting our democracy from the transitory passions of the majority and respecting the input of the minority in the Senate,” he said in a speech on Wednesday.Their opposition set up a showdown as the ultimately doomed bill was taken up for discussion on Wednesday. Late in the evening, Republicans used the filibuster to vote to end debate on the bill, effectively blocking it from advancing. Immediately afterwards, Democrats moved to hold a vote to try and change the filibuster rules anyway. The effort failed 52-48, with Manchin and Sinema voting with all 50 Republicans to preserve the filibuster. Sinema loudly said “aye” when it was her turn to vote in favor of preserving the filibuster changes.“I am profoundly disappointed that the United States Senate has failed to stand up for our democracy. I am disappointed — but I am not deterred,” Biden said in a statement.“Our Administration will continue to fight to pass federal legislation to secure the right to vote. We will not stop fighting against the anti-voter legislation that Republican legislatures continue to push at the state level—and to champion and support state and local elected officials who work to enact pro-voter legislation,” Kamala Harris said in a separate statement.“Isn’t protecting voting rights, the most fundamental wellspring of this democracy, more important than a rule?” Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said just before the vote on the filibuster change.Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia said Democrats were seeking to restore a “talking filibuster”, where senators have to hold the floor of the US senate to prevent a vote on legislation.“We’re going to take up a rules reform proposal that will not blow up the senate,” he said on the Senate floor Wednesday evening. “It switches the secret filibuster into a public filibuster. It makes both parties work on the floor to get the kind of extended public debate we joined together to seek.”Senator Angus King of Maine, who once defended the filibuster, said the process that was in place was a “second cousin once removed of the filibuster”.“I’d venture to say if we had the rules we have today, we wouldn’t have the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act,” he said.Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, described Wednesday as “in all likelihood, the most important day in the history of the Senate.” He said the Democratic proposal was just “smoke and mirrors”, and accused Democrats of undertaking a plot to “to break the Senate”.The voting rights measure has failed before, but Wednesday marks the first time they have taken a formal vote on changing the filibuster. Its likely failure marks a profound setback for Biden’s presidential agenda. The president spent an enormous amount of political capital in recent weeks pressuring Manchin and Sinema to support rule changes to the filibuster, giving a speech in Atlanta and traveling to Capitol Hill to try to get support. In stirring remarks just before the vote on the voting rights bill, Raphael Warnock, a Democrat from Georgia, said senators could not praise the legacy of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr while voting against voting rights. “You cannot remember MLK and dismember his legacy at the same time,” Warnock said. “I will not sit quietly while some make Dr King a victim of identity theft.”“Those of us who are students of Dr King, I know I have, often wonder ‘what would I have done if I was alive during the civil rights movement?’ I know that we all would like to think we had a fraction, just a small fraction of the courage it took for John Lewis to cross that Edmund Pettus Bridge,” he said. “Well, for those of us who serve in the United States Senate in this moment, in this moral moment, we do not have to wonder … we don’t have to wonder what we would have done. I submit that what we would have done back then we are doing right now. History is watching us.”The bill that failed on Wednesday, Freedom to Vote: John R Lewis Act, combined two major voting rights bills into a single mega bill.It would have set a national baseline for election access, guaranteeing 15 days of early voting as well as online voter registration. It protected local election officials from harassment and partisan interference in their jobs and curbed gerrymandering, the severe distortion of partisan district lines. It also restored a key piece of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that required places with a history of voting discrimination to get their changes approved by either the justice department or a federal court in Washington before they go into effect.The bill’s failure comes as states across the US have waged an aggressive effort to restrict voting access after the 2020 election, which saw record turnout. In total, 19 states have passed 34 bills that restrict voting access, making it harder to request and return a mail-in ballot, among other measures, even though there was no evidence of fraud, either in mail-in voting or otherwise, in 2020.Many of those efforts are obviously aimed at Black and other minority voters who helped Democrats win in 2020, activists say. As state legislatures reconvene, Republican lawmakers are proposing even more new restrictions.At the same time, Republicans in state legislatures are redrawing electoral districts at the state legislative and congressional level to virtually guarantee their re-election for the next decade. Seeing Democratic gains in traditionally Republican districts, Republicans have redrawn the lines to simply make many districts uncompetitive for the next decade, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.It’s a strategy that has blunted the growing power of Black, Hispanic and Asian voters in places like the suburbs, which are rapidly diversifying. In North Carolina, for example, Republicans lowered the Black voting age population of a district long represented by GK Butterfield, a former judge who is Black. It will be harder for Black voters in that district to elect their candidate of choice and Butterfield has since announced he is retiring from Congress.There is also growing concern about what experts call election subversion – efforts to inject more partisanship into election administration and counting votes.Republicans are passing laws that give them more partisan control over key administrative roles and Trump allies who have embraced the myth of a stolen election are running for secretary of state in places such as Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada – a perch from which they could exert enormous unilateral control over election rules.Civil rights groups have waged an aggressive campaign, privately and publicly, trying to get Manchin and Sinema to support a filibuster change. “Let’s be honest, every voter suppression bill passed in the 19 states across the country has been passed by Republicans alone. If one party can dismantle our democracy on its own, the other party should muster the courage to safeguard it,” Derrick Johnson, the president and CEO of the NAACP, wrote in a letter to senators.TopicsUS voting rightsThe fight to voteUS SenateUS politicsDemocratsJoe ManchinnewsReuse this content More

Winter of peril and impossibility: Biden faces hard truth at anniversary press conference President touts accomplishments but acknowledges failure to foresee Trump’s grip on Republican partyJoe Biden spent decades in Washington, striving to reach the White House. When he achieved the goal a year ago on Thursday, at the age of 78, he spoke of a “winter of peril and possibility”, of cascading crises as an opportunity to think big and aim high.It turns out the Washington he knows so well has proved more foe than friend, offering more peril than possibility. The 46th US president discovered that not being Donald Trump isn’t enough to get things done or make people love him.Biden held only his second solo White House press conference on Wednesday – a testy and at times rambling near two hours – with his social and environmental spending agenda and push for voting rights laws foundering on Republican rocks.02:04Biden arrived with sepia-tinted nostalgia for the Senate of his youth, promising that he could still work across the aisle for the greater good. The Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, a grandmaster of obstruction, had other ideas.“One thing I haven’t been able to do so far is get my Republican friends to get in the game at making things better in this country,” Biden told reporters in the East Room, flags and shiny gold curtains behind him. (Note that he still refers to them as “friends”.)Joe Biden says his administration has ‘outperformed’ in bruising first yearRead moreBiden went on: “I did not anticipate that there’d be such a stalwart effort to make sure that the most important thing was that President Biden didn’t get anything done.”The president insisted: “I actually like Mitch McConnell. We like one another. But he has one straightforward objective: make sure that there’s nothing I do that makes me look good, in his mind, with the public at large. And that’s OK. I’m a big boy. I’ve been here before… I think that the fundamental question is, ‘What’s Mitch for?’”The man who in his inaugural address declared, “We must end this uncivil war that pits red versus blue,” suggested that his biggest mistake had been underestimating the radicalisation of a party still tethered to Trump.“Did you ever think that one man out of office could intimidate an entire party where they’re unwilling to take any vote contrary to what he thinks should be taken for fear of being defeated in primary?” the president asked.Biden told the story of five Republican senators who privately told him they agreed with him but admitted: “Joe, if I do it, I’ll get defeated in a primary.” He turned the tables on reporters, asking if they thought we’d ever get to a point where not a single Republican would diverge on a major issue.Biden will be praised for speaking plainly about one of America’s two major parties having gone off the rails. He was asked if he should have expected this after eight years as Barack Obama’s vice-president, in which he witnessed the Republican party organising around the principle of “no”. “They weren’t nearly as obstructionist as they are now,” he insisted.This attempt to reframe the narrative by shining a light on Republicans instead of self-inflicted wounds was somewhat undercut because, at that very moment, a member of his own party was holding court in the Senate.Joe Manchin of West Virginia was busy explaining his opposition to reform of the filibuster, a procedural rule that is standing in the way of the voting rights bills in an evenly divided Senate. As a symbol of presidential impotence, the split screen was hard to beat.Manchin and his fellow holdout Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, seem determined to upstage the Biden presidency at every turn. Biden promised to unite the nation but has not even united his own party.Biden has restored civility to the White House – even at its weirdest moments or even when he snapped at reporters, this event had nothing on insult-hurling Trump – but has conducted the fewest press conferences in his first year as president since Ronald Reagan.Wearing a dark blue suit with handkerchief in top left pocket, white shirt and yellow and blue striped tie, Biden naturally began with some chest-thumping about his record. “I didn’t over-promise but I have, probably, outperformed what anybody thought would happen,” he claimed.He fired off a barrage of statistics – more than 20m Americans vaccinated, more than 6m jobs created – that show him in a favourable light.“It will get better,” he insisted from a lectern on a rug spread out on the shiny wood floor. “We’re moving toward a time when Covid-19 won’t disrupt our daily lives, where Covid-19 won’t be a crisis but something to protect against and a threat. Look, we’re not there yet, but we will get there.”It was hardly “Morning in America” but it would have to do.The president took question after question in a press conference that ran longer than any given by Obama or Trump. Biden admitted that more coronavirus testing should have been done earlier. He insisted that his Build Back Better agenda was the best antidote to inflation but conceded it would have to be broken into “chunks” to get through Congress.He caused a diplomatic kerfuffle by seeming to imply that a Russian “minor incursion” into Ukraine would not be such a big deal, forcing the White House to clean up and clarify. Towards the end, he appeared to meander, drifting into talk about the cable news industry “heading south”.One question, harking back to that inaugural address on a chilly day at the US Capitol, asked if the nation was less divided now than it was a year ago. “Based on some of the stuff we’ve got done, I’d say yes,” Biden said, “but it’s not nearly as unified as it should be.”As for the year-two relaunch that many feel is now required, Biden promised to get out and talk to the public more often, bring in more academics, editorial writers and thinktanks for expert advice, and get “deeply involved” in the midterm elections.He did not say he would expending his energies on wooing McConnell or other Republicans. “My buddy John McCain’s gone,” Biden admitted. Washington is a difference place now. The year of living naively is over.TopicsJoe BidenThe US politics sketchUS politicsBiden administrationRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

Joe Biden says his administration has ‘outperformed’ in bruising first yearPresident touts coronavirus relief aid and infrastructure law but acknowledges pandemic is unfinished job
‘I don’t believe the polls’: Biden gives testy press conference02:04Joe Biden on Wednesday conceded that the unshakable threat of the Covid-19 pandemic had left many Americans demoralized, but insisted that his administration had “outperformed” expectations despite the myriad crises facing the nation during his first year in office.Speaking to reporters in the East Room of the White House for his first news conference in months, the US president said he was confident Democrats could pass “big chunks” of his sprawling domestic policy bill currently stalled in the Senate before the 2022 midterm elections.Biden pledged media reset after Trump – so why so few press conferences?Read more“It’s been a year of challenges but it’s also been a year of enormous progress,” Biden said, outlining the administration’s early successes: passing coronavirus relief aid that slashed child poverty rates and a bipartisan infrastructure law that will shower funding for major public works projects on every state in the nation.Biden was also realistic about the difficult road ahead, as the extremely contagious Omicron variant of the coronavirus overwhelms hospitals, inflation rises and his agenda languishes before a Congress controlled by Democrats.“After almost two years of physical, emotional and psychological impact of this pandemic, for many of us, it’s been too much to bear,” he said. “Some people may call what’s happening now ‘the new normal’. I call it a job not yet finished. It will get better.”Grading his efforts to combat the pandemic, Biden insisted the US was better positioned now than when he took office, while acknowledging mistakes, such as not ordering more tests earlier. He vowed the US would not go back to the earliest days of the pandemic when lockdowns and school closures were widespread. “I didn’t overpromise,” he said. “I have probably outperformed what anybody thought would happen.”Wednesday’s press conference was his 10th since taking office, far fewer than his most recent predecessors. Only a limited number of journalists were credentialed for the press conference, and all were required to wear masks, a reminder of the virus’s continuing threat.In a revealing split screen, Biden’s press conference took place as Senator Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat and key holdout on much of Biden’s agenda, took to the floor of the Senate to denounce his party’s efforts to amend the filibuster rule to pass voting rights protections. Biden defended his pursuit of what appeared to be a hopeless effort to pass the bills, which are all but certain to fail without full Democratic support in the evenly-divided Senate.Biden said he was still hopeful that the Congress would find a path forward on voting rights legislation, and as such wasn’t prepared to divulge possible executive actions he might take on the issue. The bills, Biden argued, were urgently needed to counter voter suppression and subversion efforts being carried out in Republican-led states. Lacerating speeches by the president on the need for these protections failed to move Republicans.In the coming months, Biden said he would travel to states and districts across the country to promote his agenda and sell his administration’s accomplishments, trying to correct what he described as a communication failure on his part. Citing the coronavirus and his work in Washington, he lamented not being able to leave Washington more frequently during his first year to “do the things I’ve often been able to do pretty well – connect with people”.He believed key pieces of his Build Back Better agenda could pass the Senate, including popular plans to combat climate change and create a universal pre-kindergarten program.Plans to extend a monthly child tax benefit expanded temporarily as part of the $1.9tn pandemic relief package may not be included in a scaled-back version of the bill, he indicated. The payments, which expired in December, helped keep millions of children out of poverty during the pandemic.To the chagrin of many Democrats, Biden, a veteran of the US Senate, said he failed to anticipate that there would be “such a stalwart effort” by Congressional Republicans to obstruct his agenda.“One thing I haven’t been able to do so far is get my Republican friends to get in the game at making things better in this country,” Biden said. He assailed the Republican party for its deference to Donald Trump, wondering how “one man out of office could intimidate an entire party?”Previewing a line of attack he will use against the party in the midterms, he accused Republicans of lacking a policy core or a set of guiding principles. “What are Republicans for? What are they for? Name me one thing they’re for.”Biden bristled at the notion that his agenda was radical in any way. “I’m not asking for castles in the sky,” he insisted. “I’m asking for practical things the American people have been asking for for a long time.”At ease behind the lectern, Biden parried with reporters for nearly two hours. At one point, he checked his watch, smiled and agreed to take questions for 20 more minutes.The range of questions he fielded – on the pandemic, rising inflation, Russian aggression, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, a daunting electoral landscape, his falling approval ratings – underscored the extent of the challenges that lie ahead for the administration as it aims to recalibrate after a string of setbacks.Addressing the brewing threat at the Ukrainian border, where Russia has amassed tens of thousands of troops, Biden predicted that Moscow would invade Ukraine and promised Vladimir Putin would pay a “dear price” if he moved forward with an attack. He also appeared to suggest that a “minor incursion” would draw a lesser response from Nato than a full-scale invasion.Moments after he spoke, White House press secretary Jen Psaki sought to clarify the remark, saying that any act of aggression by Russia, including cyberattacks and paramilitary tactics, would be “met with a decisive, reciprocal, and united response.”On Afghanistan, Biden said there was no easy way to leave the country after 20 years of war: “I make no apologies for what I did.” And asked about talks with Iran, he said now was “not the time to give up” on efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.Pressed on the economy, he said it was the “critical job” of the Federal Reserve to tame inflation, but touted his domestic agenda as a remedy for rising costs, which has left voters pessimistic about the state of the economy and Biden’s ability to improve it.But Biden was bullish: “I’m happy to have a referendum on how I handled the economy.”Looking ahead, he was unequivocal when asked whether vice-president Kamala Harris would again be his running mate in 2024. “Yes,” he replied.In one exchange, a reporter with a right-wing news outlet asked why some Americans view Biden as mentally unfit to run the country. “I have no idea,” he replied tartly.In another, he pushed back on the notion that he was trying to pull the country leftward. “You guys have been trying to convince me that I am Bernie Sanders. I’m not,” Biden said, asserting that he was a “mainstream Democrat” as he always had been.Asked how he could win back independent voters who supported him in 2020 but have become disillusioned with his leadership so far, Biden pushed back. “I don’t believe the polls.”TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsCoronavirusUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More

Key events

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4.29pm EST

16:29

Biden expresses confidence in passing ‘big chunks’ of Build Back Better

4.21pm EST

16:21

Biden: ‘I didn’t overpromise. I have probably outperformed’

4.05pm EST

16:05

Biden holds press conference to mark one year in office

3.48pm EST

15:48

Manchin’s filibuster speech set to clash with Biden’s press conference

1.00pm EST

13:00

Today so far

11.30am EST

11:30

Biden to hold press conference amid struggles to pass voting rights bill

10.25am EST

10:25

Manchin to deliver floor speech on voting rights and filibuster reform

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Show key events only

4.47pm EST

16:47

Joe Biden confirmed the Build Back Better Act will likely have to be separated into multiple bills in order to get some of its components passed.
“It’s clear to me that we’re going to have to probably break it up,” the president said.
Biden noted that Joe Manchin, who announced his opposition to the spending package last month, supports some of the bill’s key provisions, such as establishing universal access to free prekindergarten.
“I think we can break the package up, get as much as we can now and come back and fight for the rest later,” Biden said.

4.37pm EST

16:37

Joe Biden was asked whether he believes the threatened sanctions against Russia will be enough to prevent Vladimir Putin from approving an invasion of Ukraine, when such economic measures have not proven effective with the Russian president in the past.
“He’s never seen sanctions like the ones I’ve promised will be imposed if he moves,” the president replied.
Biden noted he has had “frank discussions” with Putin in recent weeks, as fears have intensified over a potential invasion of Ukraine.
The US president said that, if Putin moves forward with a full-scale invasion, it will be a “disaster” for the Russian economy.
“Russia will be held accountable if it invades,” Biden said.

4.29pm EST

16:29

Biden expresses confidence in passing ‘big chunks’ of Build Back Better

A reporter asked Joe Biden whether he needed to be more realistic in his legislative goals and and scale down his priorities in order to get something passed.
The president said he did not believe he needed to scale down his goals, arguing his agenda is largely popular with the American people.
“We just have to make the case of what we’re for and what the other team’s not for,” Biden said, underscoring the need for Democrats to contrast their priorities with those of Republicans.
However, in response to a follow-up question, Biden seemed to acknowledge that the Build Back Better Act may need to be broken up into several pieces to get passed.
“I’m confident we can get pieces, big chunks of the Build Back Better law signed into law,” Biden said.
Joe Manchin announced last month that he would not support the $1.75tn spending package, which represents the centerpiece of Biden’s economic agenda.
But the president and Democratic congressional leaders have indicated they are not giving up on the proposal.

4.21pm EST

16:21

Biden: ‘I didn’t overpromise. I have probably outperformed’

Joe Biden is now taking questions from reporters, after delivering some prepared remarks about the coronavirus pandemic and the US economy.
A journalist asked the president whether he believes he promised too much to voters, considering Democrats’ failure to pass a voting rights bill or the Build Back Better Act since he took office.
“I didn’t overpromise. I have probably outperformed what anybody thought would happen,” Biden replied.
The president insisted his administration had made “enormous progress” over the past year, but he acknowledged that the year had not seen much bipartisanship.
Condemning the obstructionist tactics of the opposing party, Biden said he had not succeeded in convincing “my Republican friends to get in the game”.

Updated
at 4.50pm EST

4.16pm EST

16:16

Joe Biden said coronavirus will not disappear anytime soon, but he expressed confidence that the situation in the US will continue to improve in the months ahead.

CBS News
(@CBSNews)
President Biden: “COVID-19 is not going to give up and it’s not gonna go away immediately. But I’m not going to give up and accept things as they are now. Some people may call what’s happening now the ‘new normal.’ I call it a job not yet finished. It will get better.” pic.twitter.com/4MqDerL3H4

January 19, 2022

“I’m not going to give up and accept things as they are now. Some people may call what’s happening now the ‘new normal.’ I call it a job not yet finished,” Biden said.
“It will get better. We’re moving toward a time when Covid-19 won’t disrupt our daily lives, where Covid-19 won’t be a crisis but something to protect against and a threat. Look, we’re not there yet, but we will get there.”
Biden’s remarks come as the Omicron variant causes a surge in cases of coronavirus in the US, putting more pressure on hospitals and resulting in high demand for tests.

4.10pm EST

16:10

While touting the successes of his first year in office, Joe Biden acknowledged that many Americans remain unhappy with the state of the nation.
“For all this progress, I know there’s a lot of frustration and fatigue in this country. And we know why: Covid-19,” Biden said.
The president said he understood Americans are tired nearly two years into the pandemic, but he emphasized the US now has the tools to save lives and keep the economy open — vaccines, tests and masks.
Nodding to criticism that the White House should have made coronavirus tests more widely available sooner, Biden said, “Should we have done more testing earlier? Yes. But we’re doing more now.”

4.05pm EST

16:05

Biden holds press conference to mark one year in office

Joe Biden has now appeared at the podium to kick off his press conference, which comes on the eve of the one-year anniversary of his inauguration.
“It’s been a year of challenges, but it’s also been a year of enormous progress,” the president said.
Biden touted his administration’s success in boosting coronavirus vaccination rates and lowering the US unemployment rate, despite widespread criticism of Democrats’ failure to pass a voting rights bill or their Build Back Better Act.
Biden is expected to deliver prepared remarks for about 10 minutes before taking questions from reporters. Stay tuned.

3.48pm EST

15:48

Manchin’s filibuster speech set to clash with Biden’s press conference

Joe Manchin will deliver his Senate floor speech on voting rights and filibuster reform at 4.30pm ET, his office just confirmed in a statement.
Given that timing, it is quite likely that Manchin will be speaking as Joe Biden holds his press conference, which is scheduled to begin at 4pm ET.
So while Biden is trying to tout the successes of his first year in office, Manchin will simultaneously be taking the podium on the Senate floor and likely eliminating any hope of passing voting rights legislation in the near future.
It should be an eventful afternoon, to say the least. Stay tuned.

3.36pm EST

15:36

Tim Scott, a Republican of South Carolina, criticized Joe Biden for comparing the voting restrictions enacted in the past year to the racist policies of the Jim Crow era.
Scott, the only Black Republican member of the Senate, said the issue of voting rights is “really important to all Americans but specifically important to Americans from the Deep South who happen to look like me”.
“As I listened to the president talk about the importance of stopping what he characterized as ‘Jim Crow 2.0’, I felt frustration and irritation rising in my soul,” Scott said. “I am so thankful, thankful that we are not living in those days.”

CSPAN
(@cspan)
Sen. @CoryBooker: “Don’t lecture me about Jim Crow. I know this is not 1965. That’s what makes me so outraged. It’s 2022. And they’re blatantly removing polling places from the counties where Blacks and Latinos are overrepresented. I’m not making that up. That is a fact.” pic.twitter.com/JtwxQMZtpE

January 19, 2022

After Scott spoke, Cory Booker, another one of the three Black members of the Senate, stepped up to the podium to denounce the voting restrictions and their disproportionate impact on minority voters.
“Don’t lecture me about Jim Crow. I know this is not 1965. That’s what makes me so outraged. It’s 2022,” said Booker, a Democrat of New Jersey.
“And they’re blatantly removing more polling places from the counties where Blacks and Latinos are overrepresented. I’m not making that up. That is a fact.”

3.09pm EST

15:09

The Senate debate over voting rights and filibuster reform has been going on for hours now, and the chamber may not wrap up its work today until 9pm or 10pm ET, per PBS NewsHour.

Lisa Desjardins
(@LisaDNews)
For Senate watchers, consensus in talking with Dem senators and Dem leadership sources is that tonight is heading toward a 9p/10p end time. (As always it’s fluid, who knows, etc.)

January 19, 2022

2.46pm EST

14:46

The Senate debate over Democrats’ voting rights bill and their suggested changes to the filibuster continues, with Republicans denouncing their colleagues’ proposals.
Thom Tillis, a Republican of North Carolina, pledged that he would leave the Senate if his party ever amended the filibuster — or rather the legislative filibuster, as Republicans already eliminated the filibuster for supreme court nominees.

CSPAN
(@cspan)
.@SenThomTillis: “The day that Republicans change the rules for the filibuster is the day I resign from the Senate.” pic.twitter.com/f38byD2vqE

January 19, 2022

“The day that Republicans change the rues for the filibuster is the day I resign from the Senate,” Tillis said.
“And I believe that I have a number of members on my side of the aisle that would never do it. So you don’t have to worry about the argument, ‘If you don’t change it now, they’ll just change it when they hit the trifecta.’ It’s not going to happen.”
It will be interesting to see if those comments ever come back to haunt Tillis.

2.22pm EST

14:22

Joe Biden held a virtual meeting today with some of the senators who traveled to Ukraine over the weekend to meet with the country’s president and discuss concerns over a potential Russian invasion.
“President Biden and the senators exchanged views on the best ways the United States can continue to work closely with our allies and partners in support of Ukraine, including both ongoing diplomacy to try to resolve the current crisis and deterrence measures,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.
“President Biden commended the strong history of support for Ukraine from both sides of the aisle, and agreed to keep working closely with Congress as the Administration prepares to impose significant consequences in response to further Russian aggression against Ukraine.”
Secretary of state Antony Blinken is also in Ukraine today, meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy before traveling to Geneva for talks with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, on Friday.
Blinken has warned that Russia could take “further aggressive action” against Ukraine “at any moment,” the Guardian’s Luke Harding and Andrew Roth report:

2.04pm EST

14:04

Joanna Walters

The US Supreme Court has issued a very unusual statement. Not about any of the high-stakes cases the bench is considering, however, but about coronavirus, masks – the wearing of – and a report of a disagreement between liberal-leaning Sonia Sotomayor and conservative-leaning Neil Gorsuch over what can be a life-or-death issue. More

Louisiana Senate candidate goes viral for smoking marijuana in campaign adDemocrat Gary Chambers Jr smokes blunt in video in effort to ‘destigmatize’ use and raise awareness about racial justice A US Senate candidate from Louisiana has shared a campaign video in which he smokes marijuana in an effort to “destigmatize” its use and raise awareness about racial justice.Gary Chambers Jr, a 37-year-old Democrat and social justice advocate from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is shown seated outdoors in a chair, taking puffs from a blunt.“My first campaign ad, ‘37 Seconds.’ #JustLikeMe,” Chambers tweeted on Tuesday in a caption for the ad, which has spread widely on social media. In it, he recites arrest statistics of Black Americans and marijuana possession.“Every 37 seconds, someone is arrested for possession of marijuana. Since 2010, police have arrested an estimated 7.3 million Americans for violating marijuana laws,” Chambers says, to the sound effect of a ticking clock. “Black people are four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana laws than white people.”He adds: “States waste $3.7bn enforcing marijuana laws every year. Most of the people police are arresting aren’t dealers, but rather people with small amounts of pot, just like me.”Writing about the campaign video, Chambers said:“I hope this ad works not only to destigmatize the use of marijuana, but also forces a new conversation that creates the pathway to legalize this beneficial drug, and forgive those who were arrested due to outdated ideology.”In a statement to CNN, he elaborated that it was “long past due that politicians stop pretending to be better or different than the people they represent”, adding: “Some parts of the country are fighting opioid addictions and creating millionaires and better schools from the marijuana industry. Others are creating felonies and destroyed families. I can’t stand for that.’”According to Chambers’ campaign, the ad was shot over the weekend in New Orleans, a city that just recently passed a law to decriminalize marijuana possession. The city council also added a blanket pardon for marijuana possession convictions dating back to 2010, which the council members said would apply to about 10,000 old cases.Last June, the Louisiana governor, John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, signed a bill into law that reduces the penalty for possessing small amounts of marijuana, and at the beginning of this month lawmakers legalized the “smokable” form of medical marijuana under certain conditions.Chambers is seeking to challenge Republican senator John Kennedy, a staunch conservative and Donald Trump ally, in November’s all-party primary.TopicsLouisianaRaceUS politicsUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

Bernie Sanders suggests he may support primary challengers against Manchin and SinemaProgressive Vermont senator believes ‘there’s a very good chance’ Democrats will face challenges over their filibuster stance Bernie Sanders has said he may consider supporting primary challengers against colleagues Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, the two Democrat holdouts in debate over whether to amend the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation.The progressive Vermont senator told reporters on Tuesday that he believes “there is a very good chance” that Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, and Sinema, a Democrat from Arizona, will face primary challenges because of their stance on the filibuster.He said home-state voters would be disappointed that the pair have refused to support changing Senate rules to overcome a Republican filibuster against major voting legislation while also balking at the massive, Biden-backed spending and social plan known as Build Back Better.When asked if he would consider backing such primary challengers, Sanders replied, “Well, yeah.”Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats, didn’t elaborate on his comment, but it is unusual for senators to suggest they would be willing to campaign against colleagues from their own party.Sanders’s sentiments also lay bare progressives’ growing frustrations with the more conservative senators, Manchin and Sinema, whom the left has blamed for stalling many of Biden’s top legislative priorities.Manchin and Sinema say they support the legislation but are unwilling to change Senate rules to muscle the legislation through the chamber over Republican objections. With a 50-50 split, Democrats lack the 60 votes needed to overcome the Republican filibuster.Manchin is expected to deliver a floor speech on Wednesday afternoon outlining his position on changing chamber rules to allow voting rights legislation to move forward. Yesterday he countered Sanders’s comments, saying he would not be bothered by a primary challenger.“I’ve been primaried my entire life. That would not be anything new for me,” he said Tuesday, when asked about fellow Democrats urging voters not to back him in a primary. “I’ve never run an election I wasn’t primaried. This is West Virginia, it’s rough and tumble. We’re used to that. So bring it on.”Sanders remains one of the nation’s leading progressive voices after strong Democratic presidential primary bids in 2016 and 2020 – and is still popular enough nationally to potentially affect Senate primaries around the country.Manchin and Sinema are not up for re-election until 2024, but both could face serious primary challengers then. Democratic representative Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who has sharply criticized Sinema for not supporting the voting rights legislation, has not ruled out launching a challenge against her.Manchin and Sinema are also experiencing some external pressure as they resist efforts to change the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation. Emily’s List, the progressive group that backs female candidates who support abortion rights and has deep ties to Democrats, said it would withhold its endorsement from Sinema because of her stance on filibuster reform.“Our mission can only be realized when everyone has the freedom to have their voice heard safely and freely at the ballot box,” Emily’s List’s president, Laphonza Butler, said in a statement released on Tuesday.Naral Pro-Choice America, which supports abortion rights and is also influential in top Democratic circles, released its own statement suggesting it would no longer support or endorse Manchin or Sinema because of their stances on the legislation.The voting rights legislation in question is the Freedom to Vote: John R Lewis Act, which civil rights activists say is vital to safeguarding American democracy as Republican-led states pass new restrictive voting laws. It would make election day a national holiday while ensuring access to early voting and mail-in ballots – both of which have become especially popular during the Covid-19 pandemic. The package also seeks to let the justice department intervene in states with a history of voter interference, among other changes.
Associated Press contributed to this report
TopicsBernie SandersDemocratsUS voting rightsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More