Biden administration

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      US Covid emergency status ends as officials plan ‘new phase of managing’ virus

      by

      Thursday marked the end of Covid-19’s public health emergency status in the US, concluding more than three years of free access to testing, vaccines, virtual accommodations and treatment for the majority of Americans.The end of the emergency designation comes just weeks after the World Health Organization declared an end to the global health emergency. But the nation’s leading health officials also wanted to be sure Americans don’t confuse this marker for the end of Covid-19 concerns.“This does not mean it’s over. This is just a new phase of managing it,” Dr Becky Smith, infectious disease specialist and director of Duke Health News, said. “The ability to make the transition out of the public health emergency phase signals a lot of successes in vaccine development, immunity and effective therapeutics.“All of those successes have paid off and now because we’re seeing less severe disease we can sort of fold it into how we think about other respiratory infections.”The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates more than 1,000 people are still dying of Covid-19 in the United States every week and many suffer from long Covid symptoms months or years after being affected. Meanwhile, at the height of the pandemic, there were sometimes upwards of 20,000 people dying in the country in just one week.According to the CDC, both vaccines and medication, like Pfizer’s Paxlovid, will remain available for free “while supplies last”. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted access to these supplies under the Covid-19 emergency use authorization declaration and insured Americans can continue to get vaccinated at no cost.However, most Americans will be left to foot the bill for testing. Without public health emergency designation, insurance providers aren’t required to waive costs for testing. The federal government will continue to distribute tests online via their website through the end of May.For those who have Medicaid benefits, a program which largely insures low-income families, at-home and in-office testing will remain free until 24 September, when federal funding expires. At this point, those who are uninsured will no longer have access to free testing, though community health organizations and local clinics are still likely to offer these supplies.There are other ways that the emergency designation changed the US healthcare system that could extend beyond Thursday.Telehealth and telemedicine, for which many restrictions were lifted to expand access and stop viral spread, will remain largely intact for now.The Consolidated Appropriations Act passed last December and included provisions that extend access to telehealth through December 2024 for Americans with Medicare. In addition, clinics in rural areas can continue to see patients remotely.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThrough November 2024, the Drug Enforcement Administration announced, providers can still prescribe controlled substances via telehealth after the emergency is lifted.But for Medicaid recipients and children enrolled in the Children’s Health Insurance Program, telehealth flexibilities are up to the states.After years of updating maps and statistics, the Biden administration’s Covid-19 response team will disband after Thursday and Americans will lose access to data collected and shared by the CDC. Federal tracking of Covid-19 infections will be largely left to individual states.The Department of Health and Human Services will also no longer require labs to report Covid-19 test results, meaning data regarding test positivity at the county level will no longer be available.The CDC will end weekly updates of case and death counts and officials urge states to sign agreements to enable the sharing of vaccine administration data. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Fox News sued for defamation by ex-government disinformation chief

      by

      The former head of a disinformation group created by the US Department of Homeland Security has sued Fox News for defamation, saying its attacks threatened her safety.In the lawsuit filed on Wednesday, Nina Jankowicz alleged that multiple Fox News hosts spread lies about her work, fueling an internet campaign against her that ultimately led to her resignation and the disbandment of the group.Jankowicz was executive director of the Disinformation Governance Board, created to coordinate efforts to combat disinformation posing a threat to US security.The group was created in April 2022 but paused just three weeks later, after a barrage of conservative attacks. Jankowicz resigned and in August the group was shut down.Jankowicz’s lawsuit focuses on three claims she says Fox levied against her: that she intended to censor speech, that she was fired, and that she wanted to give verified Twitter users, including herself, the power to edit others’ tweets, a claim taken from a video clip used out of context.“Several of these falsehoods stand out as especially destructive – and directly contrary to available, verifiable evidence,” the lawsuit says.The lawsuit also says Fox hosts continuously attacked Jankowicz, calling her a “wicked witch”, a “disinformation czaress” and a “lunatic”, among other things.The suit adds: “Fox’s defamatory coverage has caused Jankowicz and her family immense suffering. Jankowicz has been doxxed, threatened, harassed and even cyber-stalked.“Threatening and harassing messages and social media posts are usually linked to Fox’s coverage of Jankowicz and nearly always premised on Fox’s false statement that Jankowicz intends to police online speech.”Speaking to the New York Times, Jankowicz, 34, said Fox News used her as a “punching bag” even after her resignation and the closure of the Disinformation Governance Board.“It shouldn’t be something we just accept,” she said, “that the most powerful cable network in the world can attack individuals willy-nilly and not face any consequences after they ruin their lives.”Fox did not comment to the Times or immediately respond to Guardian inquiries.Jankowicz’s lawsuit references the recently settled $1.6bn defamation suit between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems, saying the network’s “commitment to stay the course even as readily available information contracted statements of fact made on Fox’s platform” can be seen in both cases.Before the Dominion case was settled, internal communications in court filings revealed that Fox hosts and executives knew Donald Trump’s claims about a stolen election were false but did not stop their broadcast.Last month, Fox and Dominion reached a $787.5m settlement. Fox did not air an apology, though it did acknowledge “court rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false”.Fox faces other lawsuits, including a $2.7bn claim from another voting machine company, Smartmatic, and a suit filed by a former producer for the now fired host Tucker Carlson, who accuses the network of sexism and trying to use her as a scapegoat in the Dominion case.Fox has said the former producer’s claims are “riddled with false allegations”. It has called the Smartmatic suit “outrageous, unsupported and not rooted in sound financial analysis”. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Saudi family urges US to intervene in teens’ possible death sentence

      by

      Two Saudis who were arrested and allegedly tortured for crimes they were accused of committing as minors are facing an imminent threat of execution, in what human rights experts say is a sign of the kingdom’s violation of its own promise to end death penalty cases against child defendants.In a letter to US secretary of state Antony Blinken, a family member of one defendant, Abdullah al-Derazi, describes how Abdullah was swept off the street and disappeared for three months in August 2014 for protest crimes he is alleged to have committed when he was 17 years old.“Saudi Arabia’s government is deaf to our cries but it will listen to you,” the letter said. “You can help bring our sweet and sensitive boy home and prevent him being taken from us forever.”In their appeal, the family urged Blinken to intervene on Abdullah’s behalf, saying the young man from the Qatif region of Saudi Arabia had been rounded up by authorities and imprisoned in order to “scare people to stop them from protesting”.The other case concerns Youssef al-Manasif, who according to a new report by Reprieve – which is representing both men – was accused of crimes including attending funerals between the ages of 15 and 17 that were deemed to be “protests” by Saudi authorities. Reprieve claims Youssef was tortured and coerced into signing a false confession, was denied legal representation.Both cases are currently being reviewed by Saudi’s supreme court. If their sentences are upheld, both would be at risk of execution, which could happen imminently and without notice, Reprieve said.Saudi Arabia issued a royal decree to abolish the death penalty for children in 2020, stating unequivocally that individuals would not be sentenced to death for crimes committed when they were minors. But the kingdom has since then upheld the death penalty in a number of cases involving minor defendants.The cases have reinforced criticism not only of the Saudi government, but of US president Joe Biden, who has fallen short of imposing any restrictions or consequences on the Saudi government.In Washington, two US senators – including a key Democratic ally of the administration – have introduced a resolution that would force the White House to release a report on Saudi’s human rights violations, along with a detailed explanation of what steps the US government is taking to address the violations. The report would have to include specific information about Saudi’s conduct in the war in Yemen. If passed, the resolution would also force the administration to provide the Congress with an assessment of the necessity of continued US security assistance to the kingdom.Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut – who introduced the measure along with Republican Mike Lee – said he was disappointed that the administration had “not made good” on its promise to significantly reform the nature of its partnership with Saudi Arabia.“I think the world notices when we talk a big game on human rights but we don’t often follow through. I think that the Gulf is getting a message that it can continue with its campaign of unprecedented political repression, business as usual, with very few changes with the relationship with the United States,” Murphy told the Guardian.He added that his critique of US police towards Saudi, the UAE, and Egypt, among others, was that the government’s “asks” are too small.“I don’t think we should be satisfied by just releasing one or two Americans [prisoners] or the Egyptians releasing three or four Americans. I don’t think it suits us to be so deeply wedded to countries that are engaged in these broad dizzying campaigns of political repression.”If passed, the resolution allows Congress to recommend changes to US-Saudi cooperation, with only a 50 vote requirement to pass such changes. Asked for an example on what kind of changes could be imposed, Murphy cited the possibility of new statutory limits on military aid tied to human rights conditions.The US-Saudi relationship appeared to have reached a crossroads in October 2022, when Biden said the Saudis would face “consequences” for having sided with Russia and cut oil production over the objections of the White House just weeks before US midterm elections.But despite the threat, the administration took no action.Asked about why more had not been done to address Saudi abuses, Murphy, who is a senior member of the foreign relations committee, said: “This town is bathed in Gulf money. The sacredness of the US relationship with Saudi Arabia is baked into the DNA of Washington. You are seen as heretical if you suggest the US can get along okay in the world without a deep enduring partnership with the Saudis. I think we have to wake up that it’s not 1979 anymore.”It is not clear when the resolution will be brought for a vote but is backed by human rights experts and dissidents.Maya Foa, Reprieve’s US director, said: “Biden had not only promised to make Saudi Arabia a ‘pariah’ state, but also to hold it accountable. His fist-bump with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman symbolised the craven abandonment of those goals. Perhaps Senate action will help him to honour his promise.”The state department said in a statement to the Guardian: “We reaffirm our longstanding opposition to the use of the death penalty when imposed following trials that do not guarantee fair treatment, as punishment for actions taken as a minor, or for crimes that do not meet the ‘most serious crimes’ threshold for capital punishment, as recognized under international law.”The department also said it continued to regularly raise concerns with Saudi officials about specific cases and the need for broader legal and policy reforms. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      White House prepares for possible charges against Hunter Biden

      by

      The White House is bracing for political fallout from a looming decision by federal prosecutors over whether to charge Joe Biden’s son Hunter with tax crimes and lying about his drug use when he bought a handgun.In a signal that the investigation is nearing completion, Hunter’s lawyers last month held a meeting with David Weiss, the top federal prosecutor in Delaware, at the justice department in Washington, the Washington Post said. A separate report by CNN noted that Hunter’s longtime lawyer Chris Clark was among those entering the department headquarters.Republicans would be sure to seize on a high-profile criminal case against Hunter, 53, in an effort to inflict political damage on the US president, who last week announced his bid for re-election in 2024.Attacks on Hunter and his alleged laptop in the 2020 campaign fizzled but the 53-year-old is taking an increasingly public role at his father’s side, appearing at a state dinner honouring the French president, Emmanuel Macron; at the Kennedy Center Honors; and on a recent trip to the Republic of Ireland.Hunter’s taxes and foreign business dealings have been under investigation by a federal grand jury in Delaware since at least 2018. His membership on the board of a Ukrainian energy company and his efforts to strike deals in China have raised questions by Republicans about whether he traded on his father’s public service.As the FBI sought to interview him in 2020, Hunter was forced to publicly acknowledge that he was under scrutiny, stating: “I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.”Then media reports last October claimed that federal agents believed they had enough evidence to criminally charge Hunter on two matters: failing to report all his income to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and making a false statement in relation to buying a gun in 2018.According to the Washington Post, Hunter filled out a federal form in which he allegedly answered “no” to the question of whether he was “an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance”. Yet the president’s son has acknowledged his long struggle with drug addiction and, in his 2021 memoir Beautiful Things, recalled spells in 2018 when he smoked crack “every 15 minutes”.If prosecutors agree that evidence is likely to lead to a conviction at trial, it would represent a political gift to Republicans whose efforts to paint the Biden family as corrupt have failed to gain much traction beyond rightwing media.Hunter’s new career as a painter previously raised ethical questions and now his legal and financial woes continue to pile up, posing political risks for his father’s re-election campaign.This week, Hunter was ordered to appear in a court in Arkansas in a paternity case involving Lunden Roberts, a woman with whom he had a child, now four years old. Citing a “substantial material change” in his income, Hunter’s lawyers have been seeking to lower child support payments from what they say are currently $20,000 a month.Republicans, now in control of the House of Representatives, have opened their own investigations into nearly every facet of Hunter’s business dealings, including examining foreign payments and other aspects of his finances. Last month, an IRS special agent requested whistleblower protection to disclose information about alleged political interference and mishandling of the tax investigation.On Friday, the Axios website reported growing disagreement between the White House and Hunter’s own team over how to handle the onslaught. Without consulting his father’s aides, the site said, Hunter hired the lawyer Abbe Lowell to take a more aggressive stance, while his team is planning to create a legal defence fund to help pay mounting bills that have reportedly put him millions of dollars in the red.Richard Painter, a former chief ethics lawyer in George W Bush’s White House, declined to comment on whether he had been approached to act as an adviser to such a fund. “I’m an attorney and I get lots of calls from people who are interested in legal issues,” he said on Friday. “I end up engaging as a lawyer only for a small fraction of those but I’m not at liberty to discuss any of those types of calls publicly under the lawyer’s ethics rules for confidentiality.”A legal defence fund could trigger further ethical problems for the White House. Anthony Coley, a former spokesman for the justice department, told Axios: “For this fund to work, it must be extraordinarily transparent and even restrictive by prohibiting foreign citizens and registered lobbyists from contributing. Without these type of guardrails, the fund will be a legitimate headache for the White House.”Biden has said he has never spoken to his son about foreign business. There are no indications that the federal investigation involves the president. The attorney general, Merrick Garland, told a congressional hearing that he would not interfere with the department’s investigation and had left the matter in the hands of Weiss, the US attorney for Delaware, who would be empowered to expand his investigation outside the state if needed.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “If Biden’s son gets indicted, that obviously is going to lead to a long process that will most likely continue through the election and will give fodder to Republican claims about Hunter Biden being corrupt.“On the other hand, I’m sure there will be people in the Biden camp, though not Biden himself, who will point to this as evidence of the rule of law, that the change from Trump to Biden is clear. That is, he did not interfere in the justice department’s investigation. It was straight up. It’s kind of good news for America, maybe bad news for Joe Biden’s family.”Whether charges against Hunter would carry much sway with voters remains doubtful, especially if his father faces a rematch against Trump, who recently became the first former president to be indicted and has more legal headaches to come.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, commented: “If there’s traction on the things that arguably could have affected policy during his dad’s vice-presidency, that could be troublesome. But if it’s simply troubled guy doing troubled guy things, it’s bad for Hunter and it will be touted a bit in the conservative press but I don’t think it’ll have a significant bearing on the president’s re-election.” More

    • 188 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      US sends 1,500 troops to Mexico border as Covid-era asylum rule is set to expire

      by

      Joe Biden will send 1,500 troops to the US-Mexico border, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, in preparation for a possible rise in immigration when Covid-19 border restrictions lift later this month.The 90-day deployment of active-duty troops will supplement the work of the US border patrol but will not carry out law enforcement duties, said Brig Gen Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, in a statement.The force will be in addition to an ongoing deployment of about 2,500 national guard troops.The deployment comes as the Title 42 restrictions, which allow US authorities to rapidly expel non-Mexican migrants to Mexico without the chance to seek asylum, are set to to end on 11 May. Donald Trump activated the policies during the pandemic and Biden had expanded the controversial public health measure, despite criticism from immigration advocates.Now officials are bracing for the Biden administration’s ending of Title 42 next week. El Paso, the Texas border city, has declared a state of emergency in preparation for a potential influx of more than 35,000 asylum seekers who are currently stuck in the Mexican sister city of Juárez.Biden has grappled with record numbers of migrants caught illegally crossing the US-Mexico border since he took office in 2021.Republicans have criticized Biden for rolling back the hardline policies of Donald Trump while some Democrats and immigration activists also have lambasted Biden for gradually toughening his approach to border security.Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat and chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, said Biden’s decision to send troops was unacceptable.“Trying to score political points or intimidate migrants by sending the military to the border caters to the Republican party’s xenophobic attacks on our asylum system,” Menendez said in a statement.The 1,500 troops could arrive at the US-Mexico border by 10 May, Ryder said during a briefing. They will conduct ground-based monitoring, data entry and warehouse support to free up border agents and “fill critical capability gaps”, he said.The Pentagon is looking at ways to replace the active-duty personnel with those from the reserve force, he said.When asked about the troop deployment in a news conference, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the Mexican president, said the US is a sovereign nation and that Mexico respects its decisions.The US has used military troops at the border during previous presidential administrations, including Republican George W Bush, Democrat Barack Obama and Trump, who deployed thousands of active-duty and national guard troops.The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, called such deployments “a common practice”.Pentagon leaders have long been frustrated about military deployments to the border, privately arguing that the mundane tasks are better suited for law enforcement agencies and can affect military readiness.Immigration advocates have criticized previous efforts to send troops to the border.“People seeking asylum should be met with humanitarian professionals, welcoming volunteers, and medical and mental health professionals. Not soldiers,” Bilal Askaryar, the interim campaign manager of the #WelcomeWithDignity Campaign, said on Twitter. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Bipartisan US debt ceiling talks restart as deadline moves closer – as it happened

      by

      That’s it for today’s live politics blog!Here’s what happened today:
      Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has said he will be in the 9 May meeting on the debt ceiling, but emphasized that Biden has to negotiate with House speaker Kevin McCarthy. “There is no solution in the Senate,” said McCarthy to reporters on Tuesday.
      A Florida woman faces two charges of battery – one a felony – after allegedly throwing a drink at the far-right Republican congressman Matt Gaetz.
      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has said that Democrats will wait on a 9 May meeting between Biden and congressional leaders to decide if they will move forward on a clean debt ceiling push that would not include spending cuts, but added that Democrats will be pushing for a two-year full extension.
      Illinois senator Dick Durbin said that he wants to move on a bill imposing a code of ethics on supreme court justices, but wants to make sure he has the votes, as California senator Dianne Feinstein remains absent from the Senate following a bout of shingles.
      New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said late on Monday that Feinstein should resign, joining a bipartisan chorus calling for Feinstein to step down amid absences from the Senate.
      A new poll puts Donald Trump ahead of Florida governor Ron DeSantis among Republican primary voters in a hypothetical 2024 presidential primary election, as Trump continues to outperform DeSantis in several polls.
      Thank you for reading! Check in for more updates tomorrow!The White House’s economist warned against Republicans “playing games” with the US economy through the debt ceiling debate when interest rate increases are already having an averse impact on the economy, Reuters reports.“The economy remains, it’s been strong. You don’t want to be pushing it off of the course that it’s on,” said Heather Boushey in an interview with Reuters.Boushey added: “The Fed is raising interest rates in the hope of reducing inflation. That is having this negative effect on the banking sector. Why would we add to that?”Boushey noted that raising the debt ceiling could remove the risk of a debt default, one that could take affect on 1 June.A Florida woman was charged with allegedly throwing a drink at the Florida representative Matt Gaetz. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports.
      A Florida woman faces two charges of battery – one a felony – after allegedly throwing a drink at the far-right Republican congressman Matt Gaetz.
      The Walton county sheriff reportedly said Gaetz insisted on pressing charges. Gaetz maintained he was justified in doing so, saying 41-year-old Selena Jo Chambers “cross[ed] the Rubicon beyond just words to throwing stuff”.
      A previous case of a drink being thrown at Gaetz resulted in a woman being sent to prison.
      In 2019, Amanda Kondrat’yev, then 35 and a former political opponent of Gaetz, received a 15-day prison sentence for throwing a slushie at her rival.
      That beverage-blitzing brouhaha happened at an “Open Gaetz” public event at restaurant in Pensacola appropriately named the Brew Ha Ha.
      Read the full story here.Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has said that Democrats will wait on a 9 May meeting between Biden and congressional leaders to decide if they will move forward on a clean debt ceiling push that would not include spending cuts. Schumer added that he wants a two-year extension of the debt ceiling versus a stopgap measures, the Washington Post reported.Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has said he will be in the 9 May meeting on the debt ceiling, but emphasized that Biden has to negotiate with House speaker Kevin McCarthy.“There is no solution in the Senate,” said McConnell to reporters on Tuesday.From CNN’s Manu Raju:Many expect McConnell to ultimately help negotiate a bipartisan debt ceiling agreement, as the Kentucky senator did in 2021.But McConnell has maintained that Biden must negotiate with McCarthy and House Republicans about the debt ceiling.Illinois senator Dick Durbin said that he wants to move on a bill imposing a code of ethics on supreme court justices, but wants to make sure he has the votes.CNN’s Manu Raju noted that with California senator Dianne Feinstein out, Durbin is unsure of when he could forward such legislation.“I’d like to make sure we have enough folks to pass it,” said Durbin.Feinstein is a member of the Senate judiciary committee, but has been out due a case of shingles. Durbin confirmed to Raju that he has “not personally” spoken with Feinstein about when she would return.The defense department and the Federal Aviation Administration have been tracking a balloon that was flying off the coast of Hawaii last week, but a defense official said today there’s no indication it is connected to China or any other adversary, and it presents no threats to aviation or national security, the Associated Press reports.The balloon was first detected by radar on Friday.
      Pacific Air Forces launched three F-22s to assess the situation and visually identified a spherical object. We monitored the transit of the object and assessed that it posed no threat,” US Indo-Pacific Command said.
      The defense official said the balloon was floating at about 36,000ft (11,000 meters), and it did not fly over any critical defense infrastructure or sensitive sites.After determining that the balloon presented no threat to people on the ground or to aviation over Hawaii, the military took no action to bring it down, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.It’s not clear who owns the balloon, which has now passed out of Hawaii’s airspace, the official said.The latest balloon sighting comes about three months after the US military shot down what officials said was a Chinese spy balloon that crossed Alaska and part of Canada before returning to the US and triggering widespread interest as it flew across the country.It was shot down over the Atlantic off the South Carolina coast on 4 February. Large portions of the balloon were recovered by the US military.US officials said it was equipped to detect and collect intelligence signals as part of a huge, military-linked aerial surveillance program that targeted more than 40 countries. Beijing insisted the balloon was just an errant civilian airship used mainly for meteorological research that went off course due to winds and had only limited “self-steering” capabilities.The US military acknowledged there have been several other balloons that have been tracked over and near the US in recent years, but none lingered over America for as long as that one did. The incident further eroded relations between the US and China.At a press conference just now, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre elaborated on what Joe Biden will discuss with House majority leader Kevin McCarthy over the debt ceiling next week:“The president is going to make it clear to them that they have to avoid a default. It is their constitutional duty to do this. It is their constitutional duty to the American people for them to do their jobs. He will also say we will have a conversation about the budget and appropriations, and that is something that he will be very clear about. We can have a conversation about that, but it is important to not default.“The president is going to continue to make that clear. He is going to make that clear and have that conversation.”The Biden administration will temporarily send an additional 1,500 troops to the US-Mexico border as pandemic-related restrictions to migration are set to expire on 11 May.An unnamed US official told Reuters on Tuesday that the additional troops will be part of a supplementary preparation for an increase in illegal immigration as Title 42 comes to an end. Title 42 allowed the US to expel migrants amid the Covid-19 pandemic.The troops will not carry out any law enforcement operations and will assist US border patrol that is currently in the area, said the US official who asked to stay anonymous.The number of Americans listing guns and crime as a top issue for them has increased, according to a new Gallup poll.Of those polled for Gallup’s Most Important Problem list, seven percent said that guns and gun control were a priority issue for them, the Hill reported. Six percent listed crime and violence.In polling done months earlier, only 3% listed crime as their top issue and 1% listed crime.Both issues were listed below problems such as government and poor leadership, immigration and the economy.House Democrats have quietly started taking steps to introduce a rare legislative procedure that could force a debt limit increase and bypass Republican legislation for cuts.The New York Times just reported that Democrats are trying to set up a discharge petition that would allow Democrats to force a bill onto the floor if they get enough signatures – 218. This would mean all 213 house Democrats would need to sign the petition, and five Republican representatives would have to join.Though the House is in recess today, House Dems held a pro forma session and introduced an emergency rule that would give them two weeks, until 16 May, to collect the 218 signatures.Though Democrats see the bill as a gamble, Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic House minority leader, sent a letter to fellow Democrats today expressing a tone of defiance and saying that House Dems “are working to make sure we have all options at our disposal to avoid default”.Oklahoma is the latest state to pass legislation banning gender-affirming care for minors, as several states pass bills targeting the rights of transgender people.The Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, signed a bill on Monday making it a felony for healthcare practitioners to provide children with gender-affirming care, including puberty-blockers and hormones, the Associated Press reported.The bill comes as parents of transgender children, healthcare workers, and transgender people say that such care is essential.“Gender-affirming care is a critical part of helping transgender adolescents succeed, establish healthy relationships with their friends and family, live authentically as themselves, and dream about their futures,” said Lambda Legal and the ACLU in a joint statement, PBS Newshour reported.At least 15 other states have taken similar measures, with over 500 bills introduced in 2023 that target aspects of life for transgender people.A Montana lawmaker is suing the state, Montana’s house speaker, and the sergeant of arms of the state’s house after she was censured, asking to be fully reinstated to her position.House GOP voted to ban representative Zooey Zephyr on Wednesday from the state’s floor, gallery and anteroom after Zephyr, who is the state’s first openly transgender representative, criticized legislators for supporting a ban on gender-affirming care for minors.Zephyr is now suing to be allowed back onto the house floor as she is only allowed to vote virtually. The lawsuit, filed on Monday, argues that limiting her ability to vote violates “free speech and expression rights,” the Washington Post reported.“House leadership explicitly and directly targeted me and my district because I dared to give voice to the values and needs of transgender people like myself,” said Zephyr in a statement.“By doing so, they’ve denied me my own rights under the constitution and, more importantly, the rights of my constituents to just representation in their own government.”We’ve reached the midpoint for today’s politics live blog.Here’s what’s happened so far:
      New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said late on Monday that the California senator Dianne Feinstein should resign, joining a bipartisan chorus calling for Feinstein to step down amid absences from the Senate.
      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said during a Tuesday speech on the Senate floor that Democrats will only pass a “clean” debt ceiling increase, as a 1 June debt default looms.
      A new poll puts Donald Trump ahead of Florida governor Ron DeSantis among Republican primary voters in a hypothetical 2024 presidential primary election, as Trump continues to outperform DeSantis in several polls.
      Debt ceiling talks have gained a second wind after a warning on Monday by the US treasury secretary Janet Yellen that the US could default on its debt as soon as 1 June, as Biden confers a 9 May meeting with top congressional leaders.
      Here is reporting on the Senate judiciary committee meeting from the Guardian’s Chris Stein, who is currently in the hearing room.Partisan splits were apparent in the Senate judiciary committee today as it kicked off a hearing on the supreme court’s ethics, with Democrats accusing the nation’s highest court of believing itself to be outside the law, and Republicans defending the justices from what they said were attacks motivated by bitterness over its recent rulings.“Ethics cannot simply be left to the discretion of the nation’s highest court,” the committee’s Democratic chair Richard Durbin said. “The Court should have a code of conduct with clear and enforceable rules so both Justices and the American people know when conduct crosses the line. The highest court in the land should not have the lowest ethical standards. That reality is driving a crisis in public confidence in the supreme court.”Durbin called the hearing after a series of reports about entanglements between the court’s justices, particularly its six conservatives, and lawyers and donors with interests in the court’s outcome. Chief justice John Roberts was invited to testify, but declined, instead sending a document signed by all of the court’s nine justices that outlined their approach to ethics.Lindsey Graham, the judiciary committee’s top Republican, said the Democrats were using the hearing to retaliate against justices who authored opinions they didn’t agree with. Last year, the court’s conservatives upended nearly a half-century of precedent by overturning Roe v Wade and allowing states to ban abortion entirely, cut into the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate power plant emissions and weakened laws on possession of concealed weapons.“This is not about making the court better,” Graham said. “This is about destroying a conservative court. It will not work.”The Senate judiciary committee is holding a meeting to discuss whether the US supreme court should bolster its ethics rules following a series of reported conflicts between supreme court justices and personal interests.The Tuesday meeting comes after several scandals that have called into question the ethics of the court and diminishing public confidence in the institution, the Washington Post reported.Most recently, supreme court justice Clarence Thomas has come under fire after media organization ProPublica publicized that the longest-serving justice accepted luxury travel and vacations over two decades from the real estate mogul and Republican donor Harlan Crow.Such gifts and a real estate deal between Thomas and Crow were undisclosed by Thomas.Ahead of today’s meeting, Chief Justice John Roberts declined an invitation to appear and testify about judicial ethics. The justice instead forwarded a three page “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices”, which is signed by all nine justices. The non-binding memo is meant to “reaffirm and restate foundational ethics principles and practices to which they subscribe”.But Roberts himself is facing scrutiny after a whistleblower alleged that Roberts’s wife, Jane Roberts, made millions through recruiting for top law firms. More

    • 175 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Muslim mayor turned away from White House Eid event: ‘There is a secret list’

      by

      The US Secret Service denied security clearance for Mohamed Khairullah, the longest-serving Muslim mayor in New Jersey, and prevented him from attending a White House Eid al-Fitr event on Monday afternoon marking the end of Ramadan.Khairullah, who was critical of the Trump administration’s travel ban in 2017 that restricted entry to the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries, received the call from the Secret Service while he was en route to the White House. President Joe Biden revoked that ban in 2021.“It’s disappointing and it’s shocking that this continues to happen under our constitution which provides that everyone is innocent unless proven guilty,” Khairullah, 47, told NewJersey.com. “I honestly don’t know what my charge, if you want to put it that way, is at this point, to be treated in such a manner.”In a statement to the newspaper, United States Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi confirmed that Khairullah was denied entry to the event on Monday night, regretting “any inconvenience this may have caused” and noting that they were unable to “comment further on the specific protective means and methods used to conduct our security operations at the White House”.Two days earlier, Khairullah, who has been mayor of Prospect Park, New Jersey, a small town of 6,000 people, for more than 17 years, appeared alongside the state’s governor, Phil Murphy, at the gubernatorial mansion for an Eid celebration.Khairullah, who was born in Syria before fleeing persecution as a teenager and moving to the United States with his parents in the 1990s, served as a volunteer firefighter and delivered humanitarian aid to refugees in Syria and Bangladesh for the Syrian American Medical Society and the Watan Foundation. In 2019, Khairullah had been detained for three hours at John F Kennedy international airport after he returned from a trip to Turkey with his family.Khairullah told NewJersey.com that he sought out more information from federal officials on why he was detained but they would not disclose their reasoning. After he informed the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of what happened, the group reviewed a leaked copy of the federal terrorist screening dataset, which contains details on more than 1 million people suspected of being involved in terrorist activities, and informed him that his name and birthdate appeared in it.The Council on American-Islamic Relations has criticized the list for containing “almost entirely lists of Arabic and Muslim names” and called on the Biden administration to stop the FBI from spreading information from that terrorism dataset. Representatives for the group condemned the White House’s denial of entry to Khairullah, with the New Jersey chapter’s executive director, Selaedin Maksut, describing it as “wholly unacceptable and insulting”.“If these such incidents are happening to high-profile and well-respected American-Muslim figures like Mayor Khairullah, this then begs the question: what is happening to Muslims who do not have the access and visibility that the mayor has?” Maksut told the local New Jersey news outlet.Khairullah lamented that he could not enter the “People’s House”, telling NewJersey.com that “there is a secret list I can’t clear my name from and it still haunts me and follows me where I go”.“It’s not a matter of ‘I didn’t get to go to a party.’ It’s why I did not go. And it’s a list that has targeted me because of my identity,” Khairullah added to Al Jazeera. “And I don’t think the highest office in the United States should be down with such profiling.” More

    • 150 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden denies ‘bomb train’ permit to ship liquid gas through populated areas

      by

      The Biden administration’s transportation department has denied a special permit request from gas giant New Fortress Energy that was needed to run up to 200 liquified natural gas “bomb train” cars daily from north-east Pennsylvania to a New Jersey shipping terminal.The proposal’s opponents warned before the recent East Palestine train wreck that a derailment would likely result in a catastrophe, and those fears were amplified in the Ohio train disaster’s wake.The plan was significant because it asked for approval to move an “unprecedented” amount of liquified natural gas by rail, and seemed to be designed to circumvent more heavily regulated pipeline transportation, said Kim Ong, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which worked to derail the plan.The Department of Transportation did not give a reason for the denial in federal registry documents, and opponents to the proposal were “surprised” but pleased by the development, Ong added.“It is hard to say why they decided to do what they did, but hopefully the East Palestine disaster would make them look more closely at the transport of all hazardous and explosive materials across the country,” Ong said.But she noted the New Fortress plan is still possible as long as Biden’s transit department keeps in place a Trump-era rule allowing liquified natural gas, or LNG, to be transported by rail.New Fortress did not immediately respond to a request for a comment.Prior to the East Palestine disaster, 47 people were killed in the town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, in 2013 when a runaway train exploded. In February 2020, a crude oil train derailed and exploded outside Guernsey, Saskatchewan, and an ethanol train in Kentucky derailed and burst into flames a week later.Still, the Trump transportation department in 2020 approved a rule to allow 100 or more tank cars filled with 30,000 gallons (114,000 litres) of LNG to be shipped via rail. The decision was opposed by local leaders, unions, fire departments and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).“The risks of catastrophic LNG releases in accidents is too great not to have operational controls in place before large blocks of tank cars and unit trains proliferate,” the NTSB wrote in a comment on the proposed rule.Public health advocates note that 22 train cars filled with LNG hold the equivalent energy of the Hiroshima bomb, and the risk to people living near the rail lines was too great.New Fortress’s route would have taken its trains through Philadelphia and other densely populated areas where about 1 million people live in blast zones. Its destination was Gibbstown, New Jersey, from where the gas largely would have been shipped to the Caribbean.Ong noted it is possible that New Fortress could still sue the transportation department because the Trump LNG rule remains on the books, and advocates have been pressuring US transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg to repeal it after the department missed three deadlines to do so, most recently in March.“I hope they’re delaying it because they’re developing robust scientific studies and a robust set of evidence that demonstrates that LNG by rail is not safe to transport in any part of the US, under any circumstance,” Ong said.In a statement, the transportation department downplayed the urgency. It said specialized cars are needed to transport LNG under the new rule, and none had been ordered for manufacture.The denial leaves the development of an LNG shipping terminal in Gibbstown unclear, though a department spokesperson said external litigation around exports had already halted it. The gas could be shipped by truck, but the volume that needs to be moved could be too large, Ong said.The proposal was likely an industry test balloon to see if it could ship gas by rail instead of pipelines, which are subjected to much stricter environmental review and public scrutiny, and which can be blocked by state environmental rules, Ong said. By contrast, the federal environmental review for shipping by rail is “brief” and “very narrow in scope”, she added.“This is overtly an attempt to bypass federal regulations and build out LNG infrastructure in a much more rapid and much less responsible way,” Ong said. More