US Politics

Congress is poised to pass a stopgap funding measure that will avert a government shutdown and provide lawmakers more time to negotiate an emergency coronavirus stimulus legislation amid deepening economic pain.Negotiations over a $1.4tn catch-all spending package are playing out alongside bipartisan efforts to pass long-delayed Covid-19 economic relief.Congressional leaders hope to attach the stimulus bill to the must-pass spending bill, though several key sticking points remain.On Monday, the Democratic House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, said that the House would vote on Wednesday on a one-week spending bill, known as a continuing resolution (CR), to avoid a government shutdown while lawmakers race to reach an agreement. Government funding for federal agencies is due to expire on Friday.Hoyer had initially told lawmakers that the House would finalize its end-of-year business this week, allowing lawmakers to leave Washington for the year, but negotiations over the omnibus spending bill were proceeding more slowly than he had hoped.“I am disappointed that we have not yet reached agreement on government funding,” Hoyer wrote on Twitter. “The House will vote on Wednesday on a one-week CR to keep government open while negotiations continue.”A bipartisan group of senators expressed optimism about a $908bn aid proposal to help alleviate the financial disaster facing millions of American families and businesses as a rise in coronavirus cases threatens the labor market, which has struggled to fully recover from the economic downturn that followed the pandemic’s arrival in March.But their plan, the details of which could be released as early as Monday, remains hung up over provisions to aid states and localities, a Democratic priority, and liability protections for businesses from Covid-related lawsuits, which Republicans want.The proposal is less than half of the $2.2tn relief package passed by the Democratic-controlled House in October and does not include the direct payments to Americans that Trump sought before the election.Yet the senators’ plan is nearly double the $500bn package proposed by the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, who advocated a list of “targeted” relief provisions he said the president would sign.Lawmakers quickly enacted a $3tn aid package to salvage the economy earlier this year, but they have been deadlocked for months over whether to approve another stimulus plan.President-elect Joe Biden has urged Congress to act immediately and endorsed the senators’ bipartisan framework, calling it a “down payment” that would provide immediate relief to those suffering the economic consequences of the virus. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, also tentatively expressed support, saying they would use the plan as a “framework” for their negotiations with Republican leaders, which are proceeding on a different track from the talks with the senators. On Monday, the White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the Trump administration and Congress were nearing an agreement on aid.“We are moving in the right direction, I think,” Kudlow said in an online interview with the Washington Post. “We are getting closer.”The US Chamber of Commerce said in a new memo to Congress that failure to enact relief would risk a “double-dip recession” – which occurs when a recession is followed by a brief recovery and then another recession – that would permanently shutter small businesses and leave millions of Americans with no means of support.The same issues have blocked coronavirus relief legislation for months, leading to mounting frustrations among business owners, unions, state and local government officials, and ordinary Americans.Considering the weakening of the economy coupled with a surge in Covid-19 cases at a time when previously approved relief mechanisms are due to expire, it would be “stupidity on steroids if Congress doesn’t act”, said the Democratic senator Mark Warner, a member of the bipartisan group that wrote the proposal, to CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.A group of emergency aid programs implemented in response to the pandemic, including additional unemployment benefits and a moratorium on renter evictions, is due to expire at the end of December.With US coronavirus deaths topping 283,000 and pressure mounting for aid to a fragile economy, the new package is expected to include fresh emergency assistance for small businesses, unemployment benefits, and funding for Covid-19 vaccine distribution.“We have to get something done for the American people,” Schumer said in a floor speech on Monday, “before the end of the year.” More

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Georgia has re-certified the state’s results in the 3 November presidential election after two separate recounts, confirming again that the Democratic president-elect, Joe Biden, had won the state.
“It’s been a long 34 days since the election on November 3,” Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, said in a press release on Monday. “We have now counted legally cast ballots three times, and the results remain unchanged.”
Georgia conducted a full hand recount shortly after the election, which showed Biden still leading by about 13,000 votes. Despite that hand recount, Donald Trump’s campaign still requested another recount because of the narrow margin of Biden’s victory.
That recount has now confirmed Biden’s victory in Georgia, making the president-elect the first Democrat since Bill Clinton to carry the state.
Shortly after that announcement was made, Trump once again lashed out against Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp. The president has repeatedly called for a special legislative session in the state to once again challenge the election results, a request that Kemp has reportedly declined.
Raffensperger said on Sunday that a special session to overturn the state’s election results “would be then nullifying the will of the people”.
Georgia’s lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan, a Republican, told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that he did not support Trump’s call for a special legislative session.
“Calling the general assembly back in at this point would almost be along the lines of a solution trying to find a problem,” Duncan said. “And we’re certainly not going to move the goalposts at this point in the election. We are going to continue to follow the letter of the law, which gives us a very clearcut direction as to how to execute an election.”
The president staged a rally in Valdosta, Georgia, on Saturday night in which he repeatedly falsely claimed he won the state. Two Georgia Republicans face 5 January runoffs which will decide control of the Senate.
“They cheated and they rigged our presidential election, but we will still win it,” Trump falsely insisted. “And they’re going to try and rig this [Senate] election too.” More

Donald Trump has said that the former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was admitted to hospital on Sunday after being diagnosed with Covid-19, was “doing well” with the virus.“Rudy’s doing well,” Trump said in response to a question from reporters at the White House. “He’s doing very well. No temperature and he actually called me earlier this morning. Was the first call I got.”Neither the White House nor doctors for Giuliani released information about Giuliani’s condition, and the basics of Giuliani’s health status remained unknown. He was admitted to Georgetown University hospital on Sunday.Giuliani, 76, who has kept up a schedule of constant public appearances in recent weeks as the spearhead of Trump’s campaign to spread conspiracy theories about the US election, announced his Covid diagnosis on Twitter on Sunday.“I’m getting great care and feeling good,” Giuliani tweeted. “Recovering quickly and keeping up with everything.”Giuliani has appeared frequently in public recently closely surrounded by people not wearing masks or observing the social distancing measures health officials recommend to prevent the spread of coronavirus.The Giuliani appearances, which have included press conferences as well as video-streamed meetings with Republican legislators in Michigan and Pennsylvania, are part of an improvised traveling show that Trump has put together to challenge the election result.Following one such appearance, at the offices of the Republican National Committee in November, multiple attendees announced Covid diagnoses, including Giuliani’s son, Andrew, who appears to have had a mild case.For years, Giuliani has worked to build and feed conspiracy theories designed to help Trump politically. Before the impeachment inquiry that concluded earlier this year, Giuliani tried to get Ukrainian officials to make public statements the Trump campaign hoped would be damaging to Joe Biden.But Giuliani’s remit has changed since Trump lost the presidency, shifting from weaving complicated stories about a shady conspiracy in a former Soviet republic to weaving similar – entirely false – stories about a shady conspiracy among US elections officials.While he has made a great show of his fraud allegations for the cameras, with likely corrosive effects on US democracy, Giuliani did not dare advance fraud allegations in a court appearance last month, where lying could come with a price in the form of disbarment or other sanction.“It’s not fraud,” Giuliani told a district judge in Pennsylvania of the Trump campaign’s case. “This is not a fraud case.”As one of the highest-profile members of Trump’s inner circle, Giuliani had previously served as a significant source of misinformation about coronavirus. In one Fox News appearance, he mocked contact tracing, asking why it was not used to fight obesity and heart disease.Trump, 74, was hospitalized in early October at Walter Reed medical center in Maryland. He spent three days in the hospital. More

The doctor heading a controversial physician’s advocacy group opposing government involvement in medicine has been announced as a leading witness at a US Senate homeland security and governmental affairs committee hearing on Tuesday.Jane Orient has rejected any “anti-vaxxer” label but her criticism of coronavirus vaccines has drawn scathing rebukes from some senior politicians infuriated by her invitation to testify to Congress.“At such a crucial time, giving a platform to conspiracy theorists to spread myths and falsehoods about Covid vaccines is downright dangerous and one of the last things Senate Republicans should be doing right now,” the Senate minority leader and New York Democrat, Chuck Schumer, said in a statement released on Sunday.Critics have cited Orient’s promotion of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a Covid-19 treatment as well as her organization’s view that federal vaccine mandates are a violation of human rights.In a statement provided to the Senate last year, Orient called vaccine mandates “a serious intrusion into individual liberty, autonomy and parental decisions”.“The regulation of medical practice is a state function, not a federal one,” she wrote. “Governmental pre-emption of patients’ or parents’ decisions about accepting drugs or other medical interventions is a serious intrusion into individual liberty, autonomy, and parental decisions about child-rearing.”Orient is one of four medical professionals set to testify in the hearing in which federal health officials will weigh vaccine mandates and other initiatives to combat a worsening coronavirus pandemic that, so far, has killed more than 282,000 Americans.The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons is a fringe group of fewer than 5,000 doctors that offers advice experts say isn’t “consistent with evidence-based medicine”. It had even been cited by Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale when explaining why the president had taken hydroxychloroquine as a preventive measure.At that time, Orient told the Guardian she believed the drug “should be prescribed more often”, and in a statement claimed the drug offered “about 90% chance of helping Covid-19 patients”.That claim was based on a flawed database.As infections surge towards 15m confirmed cases, Orient has opposed government plans for all Americans to be vaccinated, noting that those emerging vaccines currently awaiting approval by US regulators, one made by the Pfizer and BioNTech partnership and the other by Moderna – use a new scientific method.There is currently no plan for a federal mandate that Americans be inoculated against Covid-19.In a phone interview on Sunday with the New York Times, she called it “reckless to be pushing people to take risks”.“People’s rights should be respected. Where is ‘my body, my choice’ when it comes to this?” Orient said, adding she would not get a coronavirus vaccine, telling the Times that she has an autoimmune condition.Republicans have presented mixed messages on support for government vaccine mandates, with many expressing concerns about the legality of businesses requiring them and infringements on individual liberties.Meanwhile, even as some Republicans questioned the CDC on the safety of the vaccine, Ivanka Trump – White House adviser and daughter of the president – as well as former Republican president George Bush have both confirmed they would publicly take the vaccine. More

Hopefully, Rudolph Giuliani’s battle with Covid-19 will go better than his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Right now, New York’s one-time iconic mayor, has nothing to show for desperation-filled legal maneuvers except a string of losses.The battleground states have certified their election results while the courts have repeatedly rejected the president’s flailing gambits. For the moment anyway, the “will of the people” has prevailed. America’s systemic guardrails have shuddered not shattered.Rather, Giuliani will be remembered as the lawyer whose hair dye ran amok under the klieg lights, the wild-eyed fellow who held a news conference sandwiched between a sex shop and a crematorium, and a desperately wishful septuagenarian caught on film with his hands down his pants. Yesterday really is so far away.Once upon a time, Giuliani made headlines as a crime-busting federal prosecutor who sent mob bosses and errant stockbrokers alike to prison. Rudy was the mayor who embodied national resolve as the twin towers collapsed and a country fell under attack. Now, he stands legally exposed and reportedly beseeches a president for a pardon.Sadly, more than a month has passed since election day and yet the president and his lawyer-in-chief have refused to accede to reality. Instead, Giuliani peddles conspiracy theories to the public even as he declines to make them centerpieces in the courtroom.The US court of appeals for the third circuit framed things this way: “calling an election unfair does not make it so”. Finding that that Trump campaign failed to either allege or prove fraud, the court also used Giuliani’s own words to doom his client’s case. “As lawyer Rudolph Giuliani stressed, the campaign ‘doesn’t plead fraud … this is not a fraud case’,” it opined. Fear of sanctions can deter performative pronouncements.Equally worrisome for Giuliani and Donald Trump is the fact that the supreme court has not ridden to their rescue. With just a week left until the electoral college convenes, the court is finally in the process of receiving submissions from the parties. No date for oral argument has been set, and there is no assurance that it will be. Said differently, this election is not poised to be a replay of Florida 2000 and Bush v Gore. In so many ways.Back then, Al Gore won the popular vote but conceded defeat in the face of the court’s 5-4 decision, one that the late Justice Antonin Scalia confessed was, “as we say in Brooklyn, a piece of shit”. For the record, Giuliani spent his early years in that New York City outer borough and attended high school there.But Trump and Giuliani chose a different path. Instead, Giuliani flew across the US and told receptive audiences that the election was rigged and that the late Hugo Chávez acted from the grave and in cahoots with George Soros to steal the president’s patrimony. All that is missing from this tableau are the Illuminati and the Freemasons. To put things in context, William Barr, the attorney general, will no longer vouch for this nonsense, and is contemplating an early departure.Beyond that, in the process of selling a false reality, Giuliani refused to wear a mask and expected others to do the same – just like Trump. As a result, Arizona’s legislature is closed for a week “out of an abundance of caution” after Giuliani potentially exposed GOP lawmakers to the disease. Meanwhile in Michigan, the head of the Republican party and its staffers are now being tested for the virus. Giuliani also appeared in Georgia.Giuliani’s antics have won the admiration and approval of the president, while at the same time the ire of others, including those who once worked for him. Like the president, Giuliani does not command long-term loyalty.Ken Frydman, press secretary to the 1993 Giuliani campaign, told the Guardian “karma is a bitch.” Another former Giuliani deputy wished the mayor a speedy recovery but remained critical of his recent follies.This city hall veteran explained that it was “unfortunate and sad” that Giuliani was in this situation. At the same time, he called Giuliani’s predicament “entirely due to his own recklessness in the face of a raging pandemic and to his blind fealty to worshipping at the altar of Trump”.Think of Covid-19 as a feature, not a bug, for those in the president’s orbit. In addition to Trump, others close to the president victimized by the disease include Melania Trump, two of his sons, the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, Ben Carson, a Trump cabinet member, and Chris Christie, a key surrogate. Covid-19 even claimed the life of Herman Cain after he attended a Trump rally in Oklahoma.As the US approaches 300,000 deaths, it is safe to say that Trump is bad for your health. And now, Giuliani knows that as a matter of personal experience. None this will make Trump’s legal climb any easier. More

Republican senator Kelly Loeffler repeatedly dodged questions about Donald Trump’s election defeat during her debate with Democratic opponent Raphael Warnock ahead of a crucial Senate runoff election in January. Declining to acknowledge Joe Biden had won after a direct question from Warnock, Loeffler said Trump had the right to ‘legal recourse’ . Warnock replied by attacking Loeffler’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic in Georgia.
Georgia runoff debate: senator Kelly Loeffler refuses multiple times to accept Biden victory More