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      Democratic senator Joe Manchin tests positive for Covid

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      Democratic senator Joe Manchin tests positive for CovidWest Virginia senator, 74, who has thwarted Joe Biden on key policy goals, is fully vaccinated and has only mild symptoms Senator Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who has thwarted many of Joe Biden’s most ambitious policy goals, has tested positive for Covid.The 74-year-old senator is fully vaccinated and said on Twitter on Monday he was experiencing mild symptoms.This morning I tested positive for COVID-19. I am fully vaccinated and boosted and am experiencing mild symptoms. I will isolate and follow CDC guidelines as I continue to work remotely to serve West Virginians.— Senator Joe Manchin (@Sen_JoeManchin) July 25, 2022
      Manchin’s positive diagnosis comes as Biden himself is recovering from Covid-19. After four days of taking the antiviral Paxlovid medication, the president’s symptoms from the virus “have now almost completely resolved”, his physician, Kevin O’Connor, said in a statement on Monday. “When questioned, at this point he only notes some residual nasal congestion and minimal hoarseness.”Both men tested positive amid a surge in Covid cases across the US in recent weeks. The highly contagious BA.5 subvariant, which can avoid immunity from vaccines better than its predecessors, is now the dominant strain of the virus in the US.Manchin’s diagnosis could affect an expected vote this week on increasing semiconductor chip production in the US, the Associated Press reported. While members of the US House of Representatives can vote remotely by proxy, members of the Senate cannot.Manchin dealt a significant blow to Democrats earlier this month when he said he would not support climate change and tax provisions in a bill Biden hoped would be a signature part of his domestic agenda.TopicsJoe ManchinUS politicsJoe BidenCoronavirusnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden ‘doing just fine’ after testing positive for Covid, White House says

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      Biden ‘doing just fine’ after testing positive for Covid, White House saysAshish Jha, coronavirus response coordinator, and physician Kevin O’Connor say president contracted BA.5 variant Joe Biden is “feeling well” and “doing just fine” after testing positive for Covid, the White House coronavirus response coordinator said.Joe Biden’s mild Covid symptoms are improving, doctor saysRead moreAppearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, Ashish Jha said: “So it is the BA.5 variant, which is about 80% of infections. But thank goodness, our vaccines and therapeutics work well against it, which is why I think the president’s doing well.“I checked in with his team late last night. He was feeling well. He had a good day yesterday. He’s got a viral syndrome, an upper respiratory infection … and he’s doing just fine.”The White House later released a letter in which Biden’s physician, Kevin O’Connor, said the president’s “predominant symptom now is a sore throat”.O’Connor also said Biden had completed a third full day of treatment with Paxlovid, which would continue and was “experiencing no shortness of breath at all”.Biden’s positive test was announced on Thursday. At 79, the president is the oldest ever inaugurated. He is also, as he said, double-vaccinated and double-boosted and has access to the best possible care.On Sunday the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, told CNN’s State of the Union he knew Biden was still working “because on Thursday I got a call from the White House about something on transportation that he had asked me to follow up on”.Buttigieg also wished Biden “a speedy path back to 100%”.Jha was asked if the White House “will continue to make disclosures if [Biden] has long-term symptoms from this infection”.“Absolutely,” he said. “You know, we think it’s really important for the American people to know how well the president’s doing, which is why we have been so transparent, giving updates several times a day, having people hear from me directly, hear directly from his physician.“And obviously if he has persistent symptoms, if any of them interfere with his ability to carry out his duties, we will disclose that early and often.“But I suspect this is going to be a course of Covid that we’ve seen in many Americans who have been fully vaccinated, double-boosted, getting treated with those tools in hand. You know, the president has been doing well, and we’re gonna expect that he’s going to continue to do so.”Jha also suggested cities seeing high case rates, including New York, Phoenix and Miami, might consider re-instituting indoor mask mandates.“Masks work, right? They clearly slow down transmission. So in areas of high transmission, I think it’s very prudent for people to be wearing masks indoors, especially if they’re in crowded, poorly ventilated spaces. That’s what the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] recommends. And I think that’s a very important and effective way of reducing transmission, protecting yourself as well.“You know, in terms of mandates, that’s something that we’ve always felt strongly should be done by local officials, mayors, governors, local health officials, and we’re seeing different officials take different tactics. And I think that’s actually appropriate given that we have a very diverse country with different transmission patterns and and willingness to kind of engage in-in wearing masks.”Jha was also asked about monkeypox, which on Saturday the World Health Organization declared a “public health emergency of international concern”. Would the Biden administration declare a pandemic?“Pandemics are declared by the World Health Organization,” Jha said, “and I actually applaud the World Health Organization for declaring that public health emergency of international concern. We are seeing outbreaks that are out of control in many, many parts of the world. It’s very important that we get our arms around this thing.“In the US right now, we’re looking at public health emergency as something that [the health department] might … invoke but it really depends on what does that allow us to do. Right now we have over 2,000 cases, but we have ramped up vaccinations, ramped up treatments, ramped up testing, and we’re going to continue to look at all sort of policy options. Right now, we think we can get our arms around this thing but obviously if we need further tools we will invoke them as we need them.”Jha said he thought monkeypox could be contained.Monkeypox declared global health emergency by WHO as cases surgeRead more“The way we contain monkeypox is we have a very simple, straightforward strategy on this, which is: make testing widely available. We have done that. And now testing is far more frequent and common.Answering the charge that the US was caught flat-footed by monkeypox, Jha said: “What I would acknowledge is that when we started two months ago, we had a limited supply of vaccines. We have obtained more than any other country, probably more than every other country combined. We have acted swiftly.”Asked if people should be concerned about another infectious disease, polio, which has been detected in New York, Jha said: “There is a lot of surveillance that we do for polio, there’s wastewater surveillance that goes on, we are not seeing outbreaks of polio elsewhere.“This one case has heightened everybody’s surveillance. But … CDC and the Department of Health of New York are doing an investigation to try to understand more, but I do not expect polio to become more widespread in the country, again, because so many Americans are vaccinated against this.”TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsOmicron variantCoronavirusBiden administrationDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Joe Biden tests positive for Covid and has ‘mild symptoms’, White House says

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      Joe Biden tests positive for Covid and has ‘mild symptoms’, White House saysPress chief says Biden, 79, who has had two boosters, is taking antiviral Paxlovid, while first lady Jill Biden has tested negative Joe Biden tested positive for Covid on Thursday, underscoring the persistence of the highly contagious virus as new variants challenge the nation’s efforts to resume normalcy after two and a half years of pandemic disruptions.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that Biden was experiencing “mild symptoms” and has begun taking Paxlovid, an antiviral drug designed to reduce the severity of the disease.Biden to unveil $37bn proposal to tackle crime, including 100,000 more policeRead moreShe said Biden “will isolate at the White House and will continue to carry out all of his duties fully during that time.“He has been in contact with members of the White House staff by phone this morning, and will participate in his planned meetings at the White House this morning via phone and Zoom from the residence.”Biden, 79, is fully vaccinated, after getting two doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine shortly before taking office, a first booster shot in September and an additional dose March 30.In a letter released by the White House, Kevin O’Connor, the president’s physician, described Biden’s symptoms as mild.“Mostly rhinorrhea (or runny nose) and fatigue, with an occasional dry cough, which started yesterday evening,” O’Connor wrote. He noted that he anticipates that “he will respond favorably” to Paxlovid, as “most maximally protected patients do”.First lady Jill Biden has tested negative, according to her office. The first lady is in Detroit for an event at a local school. Before the event started, Biden briefly addressed news of her husband testing positive for Covid.“My husband tested positive for Covid. I talked to him just a few minutes ago. He’s doing fine, he’s feeling good,” she said. “I tested negative this morning. I am going to keep my schedule.”The president was scheduled to deliver a speech on gun violence in Pennsylvania on Thursday. That trip has been cancelled, and he is expected to stay at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, for the weekend.While this is Biden’s first bout of coronavirus, multiple members of his administration have contracted the virus. Vice-president Kamala Harris had Covid in April, and Xavier Becerra, the secretary of health and human services, and Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, both tested positive in May.Coronavirus cases in the United States have been on the rise once again as the contagious BA.5 variant has become the dominant strain. The US has been recording as many as 150,000 new Covid cases a day, according to Johns Hopkins University.In her statement, Jean-Pierre said that the White House will provide a daily update on Biden’s status “as he continues to [work] in isolation”.TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsCoronavirusnewsReuse this content More

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      After the long wait, US parents seeking under-5s’ vaccine face yet more hurdles

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      After the long wait, US parents seeking under-5s’ vaccine face yet more hurdlesSome local officials are unsure of how to order Covid vaccines or when they will arrive, while others are aiming to ignore federal guidelines completely Ashley Comegys, a parent of two young children in Florida, was ecstatic when the Covid vaccines were authorized for children above the age of six months in the US. “We’ve been waiting for this for so long,” she said. “We can finally start to spread our wings again.”But then she learned that Florida had missed two deadlines to preorder vaccines and would not make them available through state and local health departments, delaying the rollout by several weeks and significantly limiting access.“Rage does not adequately describe how I felt that they were basically inhibiting me from being able to make a choice to protect my children,” Comegys said.Families with young kids encountered months of delays after the pediatric trials were expanded and regulators pushed back meetings in order to evaluate the data closely. Vaccines for adults were rolled out a year and a half ago.Now new challenges to vaccinating some of America’s youngest are cropping up.“I called probably 20 pharmacies and pediatricians in our area” – including across the state line, said Sheryl Peters, a parent of an 18-month-old and a four-year-old in Tennessee.Even after the vaccines were authorized for this age group, her local health officials didn’t know when they would arrive, and they directed her to the state health department, who told her it would be a few weeks, she said. She was crying on the phone, begging for help, but “nobody knew anything,” she said. “It was so, so disorganized.”-While Tennessee did pre-order vaccines, the rollout has been slow and complicated. And the confusion could deepen.Four Republican lawmakers in Tennessee are petitioning the governor, Bill Lee, to ignore the federal recommendations on vaccinating children under five and to ban state health departments from “distributing, promoting or recommending” the vaccines, creating uncertainty in the state’s approach to vaccinating some of its youngest residents.Tennessee stopped all vaccination outreach to teens – not just around the Covid vaccines – in 2021.The actions by leaders in states like Florida and Tennessee may contribute to existing hesitancy some families feel toward the vaccines, as well as hampering efforts to vaccinate children across the states – particularly those who have been marginalized in the health system, who are also at higher risk of getting sick.“Departments of health, by and large, assist people who don’t have insurance or are on Medicaid or don’t have access to healthcare or live in rural areas where there are no providers,” said Michelle Fiscus, a pediatrician and Tennessee’s former top vaccines official who was fired in July 2021 after promoting vaccines. She was “absolutely furious” to read the lawmakers’ request for a ban.“For an elected body and a governor in a state who has continued to beat the drum of everybody can make their own choice, whether it’s about wearing a mask or gathering in a church or getting a vaccine, to decide for these parents that they are no longer going to have access to these vaccines is really antithetical to everything that they have been preaching,” Fiscus said.“Everything has always been, ‘It’s your choice. You don’t have to quarantine or isolate – it’s your choice. You don’t have to wear a mask – it’s your choice. You don’t have to stay away – it’s your choice.’ But when it comes to getting a vaccine that can actually save lives and prevent hospitalization, then they’re going to make the decision to take that choice away from you.”That’s been one of the hardest parts about this process for Comegys.“If you don’t want to get vaccinated, if you don’t want to mask, OK,” she said. “You can choose that. But why do you then get to make that choice for my family and the way that we want to protect our kids? It doesn’t feel fair.”Some officials continue to spread the narrative that kids aren’t affected by Covid, Fiscus said, even after more than 440 deaths and thousands of hospitalizations among children under five.In March, Florida’s department of health recommended against Covid vaccines for all healthy children. Florida is “affirmatively against the Covid vaccine for young kids”, DeSantis said at a press conference on 16 June, despite ample evidence of the vaccines’ safety and efficacy.The Biden administration soon announced that Florida “reversed course” and would allow doctors to order vaccines directly. State officials disputed the idea of a pivot, saying doctors were already allowed to order the vaccines on their own, but doctors pointed out that the portal to do so was not in place until after the initial shipments had already gone out to every other state.“The state of Florida intentionally missed multiple deadlines to order vaccines to protect its youngest kids,” said Dr Ashish K Jha, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator.With the delays and the confusion, many doctors and health systems haven’t received doses yet.Only federally qualified health centers and pharmacies participating in the national pharmacy program could order vaccines directly in Florida. But most pharmacies can only vaccinate kids three and older, leaving significant access gaps for younger children. (CVS can administer the vaccine to kids as young as 18 months through its Minute Clinic.) And some opted out entirely, with the grocery chain Publix announcing it will not offer the vaccine to children under five through its pharmacies.In Tennessee, Lee has not yet signaled whether he is considering limiting the vaccines. And even if vaccinations and information isn’t limited in Tennessee, the lawmakers’ request could add to hesitancy around the vaccines.“That seems to be their goal, to continue to spread vaccine misinformation and disinformation and to continue to erode confidence around these vaccines,” Fiscus said.In Florida, vaccinations will probably stall amid the message that Covid vaccines for kids aren’t recommended and the confusion around how to find them, especially because Florida isn’t offering the pediatric vaccines at state and local health departments and because pharmacies usually only vaccinate kids above the age of three.“I genuinely don’t know, if you have a child under three, where you will go for that here if your pediatrician’s not getting it,” Comegys said. “Unless you’re on top of it, it’s going to be really hard to find.”Many pediatricians in her area are short-staffed and aren’t able to reach out to families to let them know the vaccines have been authorized and how to get them.Her pediatrician was able to place an order for the under-five vaccines a week ago, but it’s going to take several weeks before they arrive. Her two children were placed on the waitlist.It’s been difficult to know the vaccines are rolling out in other states while her family still can’t access them, Comegys said. “The fact that it is available, and I can’t access it – that’s where I get really angry and really upset.”Families that want to vaccinate their kids are eager to get the shots as soon as possible, as the US faces another potential wave from the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, and with the return to school rapidly approaching.But many families feel like they put their lives on hold while much of the rest of the world moved on. Peters had a family cruise planned for May that they canceled because the shots weren’t available yet, while Comegys is canceling a vacation planned for July.“The finish line has been so close,” Comegys said. “And then to hear, ‘Oh no, it’s going to be another couple of weeks or a couple of months.’ I’m so angry. We’re so close, and now you’re not going to let me get there.”TopicsCoronavirusVaccines and immunisationFloridaParents and parentingUS politicsHealthFamilynewsReuse this content More

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      January 6 hearings: Barr ‘not sure at all’ transition would have happened had DoJ not resisted Trump – live

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      The January 6 committee has concluded its hearing for the day, with the next sessions expected later in July, when House lawmakers return to Washington from a recess.In his closing remarks, committee’s chair Bennie Thompson outlined what the committee had found thus far and what it expected to show in the future..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Up to this point, we’ve shown the inner workings of what was essentially a political coup and attempt to use the powers of the government, from the local level all the way up, to overturn the results of the election. Send fake electors, just say the election was corrupt. Along the way, we saw threats of violence, we saw what some people were willing to do. In a service of the nation, the constitution? No. In service of Donald Trump.
      When the Select Committee continues this series of hearings, we’re going to show how Donald Trump tapped into the threat of violence, how he summoned the mob to Washington, and how after corruption and political pressure failed to keep Donald Trump in office, violence became the last option.The testimony of the justice department officials who gave the bulk of the day’s evidence has concluded, but before they did, Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general, told a tale familiar to those who have watched the committee’s hearings closely: he never heard from Trump on the day of the attack.“I spoke to a number of senior White House officials, but not the president,” Rosen said.What Trump was doing during the attack and who he was talking to are both expected to be focuses of later hearings of the committee.The committee has just unveiled evidence of more Republican congressmen requesting pardons from Trump in his final days in office. NEW on PARDONS: Republican congressman Mo Brooks sent an email on 11 January 2021 seeking pardons for “Every Congressman and Senator who voted to reject the electoral college vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania.”— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 23, 2022
      Trump WH aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Brooks and Gaetz pushed for pardons for every Republican lawmaker who participated in Jan. 6 planning meeting — and Reps. Perry, Biggs, Gohmert asked for pardons. Jordan asked whether White House would pardon members.— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 23, 2022
      The testimony adds to the list of pardon requests that have emerged as the January 6 committee aired its evidence.Capitol attack pardon revelations could spell doom for Trump and alliesRead moreJeffrey Clark came very close to be the acting attorney general, a position in which he could have used his authority to disrupt the certification of Biden’s election win in several states, according to evidence the committee is airing.On January 3, three days before the attack on the Capitol, the White House had already begun referring to Clark as acting attorney general, according to Adam Kinzinger, the Illinois Republican leading the committee’s questioning today.The committee then turned to exploring a meeting between Trump and the leaders of the justice department that day in the Oval Office, in which Trump repeated specific claims of fraud that had been debunked and expressed his will to see Clark take over the department.Richard Donoghue said he warned of mass resignations to follow if Clark took over the department. “You’re gonna lose your entire department leadership. Every single (assistant attorney general) will walk out. Your entire department of leadership will walk out within hours. And I don’t know what happens after that. I don’t know what the United States attorneys are going to do,” Donoghue said. “My guess would be that many of them would have resigned.”Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general in the final weeks of the Trump administration, is now recounting Trump’s attempt to replace him with Jeffrey Clark, who was playing a major roles in his efforts to have states that voted for Biden overturn their results.In a meeting on a Sunday, Rosen said Clark “told me that he would be replacing me,” and had made the atypical request to ask to meet him alone, “because he thought it would be appropriate in light of what was happening to at least offer me, that I couldn’t stay on his his deputy.”“I thought that was preposterous. I told him that was nonsensical,” Rosen said. “There’s no universe where I was going to do that, to stay on and support someone else doing things that were not consistent with what I thought should be done.”However, Clark also said he would turn down Trump’s offer to replace Rosen if the acting attorney general signed the letter disputing the validity of Georgia’s electors for Biden. Richard Donoghue recounted that Rosen made the decisions to begin informing other department officials about the quandary, and almost all the assistant attorney generals said they would resign if Trump replaced Rosen with Clark.As this hearing has unfolded, the justice department officials testifying have said they investigated many of the claims of fraud in the 2020 election brought forward by Trump and his allies. The decision to look into these claims in the weeks after polls closed may be more significant than it appears at first glance.In video testimony aired earlier in the hearing, William Barr, Trump’s attorney general during the election, said be believes that the department’s ability to debunk the false claims of fraud as Trump was making them were essential to allowing Joe Biden to assume office.“I felt the responsible thing to do was to be… in a position to have a view as to whether or not there was fraud,” Barr told investigators.“I sort of shudder to think what the situation would have been if the position of the department was, we’re not even looking at this until after Biden’s in office. I’m not sure we would have had a transition at all.”The committee has returned, and is now asking Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general, about a request from Trump to seize voting machines.“We had seen nothing improper with regard to the voting machines,” Rosen said he replied, noting that investigators had looked into allegations the machines gave fraudulent results and found nothing wrong. “And so that was not something that was appropriate to do … I don’t think there was legal authority either.”Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, is recounting a meeting with Trump, in which he pushed him unsuccessfully to seize voting machines. By the end, “The president again was getting very agitated. And he said, ‘People tell me I should just get rid of both of you. I should just remove you and make a change in the leadership with Jeff Clark, and maybe something will finally get done,’” Donoghue said.Donoghue said he responded: “Mr President, you should have the leadership that you want. But understand the United States justice department functions on facts and evidence, and then those are not going to change. So you can have whatever leadership you want, but the department’s position is not going to change.”The committee is now in recess, but before they finished, Richard Donoghue described his reaction when he first learned of Jeffrey Clark’s proposed letter to the Georgia legislature asking them to convene to declare alternate electoral college voters.“I had to read both the email and the attached letter twice to make sure I really understood what he was proposing because it was so extreme to me I had a hard time getting my head around it initially,” Donoghue said. He responded in writing to Clark’s letter, saying that its allegations were “not based on facts,” and, in his view, “for the department to insert itself into the political process this way, I think, would have had grave consequences for the country. It may very well have spiraled us into a constitutional crisis. And I wanted to make sure that he understood the gravity of the situation because he didn’t seem to really appreciate it.”Clark himself made a brief appearance in video testimony the committee played before it took its break, responding to questions by asserting his fifth amendment rights and executive privilege.The committee will reconvene in a few minutes.One name that’s coming up a lot in this hearing is Scott Perry, the Pennsylvania Republican congressman who the committee said took part in Trump’s plan to pressure the justice department, and in particular install Jeff Clark at its helm.The committee just showed text messages between Perry and Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, which showed the lawmaker encouraging Meadows to work on promoting Clark. Richard Donoghue also detailed a phone call from Perry where the congressman claimed fraud in the results in Pennsylvania from the 2020 election – which the justice department determined unfounded.The committee had sought documents and requested an interview with Perry last year, but the Republican refused to comply. Last month, Perry was among a group of congressmen subpoenaed by the committee.Capitol attack panel subpoenas five Republicans in unprecedented stepRead moreRichard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, is outlining his efforts to convince the president that the justice department could not interfere with a state’s election.“States run their elections. We are not quality control for the states,” he recalled explaining to Trump. “The bottom line was, if a state ran their election in such a way that it was defective, that is to the state or Congress to correct, it is not for the justice department to step in.”But Trump wanted something simpler, Donoghue said.“That’s not what I’m asking you to do,” Donoghue told the committee Trump said after he explained the department’s position. “Just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen,” the president said.Today’s hearing is focusing on the inner workings of the justice department, but as in previous sessions, the committee has tried to make sure the insurrection isn’t far from viewers’ minds.Case in point: lawmakers just aired video from the day of the attack showing marchers chanting “Do your job!” outside the justice department — evidence that Trump’s most ardent supporters were well aware of the president’s attempts to push government lawyers to interfere with Joe Biden’s victory.But as justice department officials tell it, they never believed in Trump’s fraud claims. Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, said Trump lawyer Pat Cipollone described the letter Clark wanted to send for Trump as a “murder-suicide pact. It’s going to damage everyone who touches it.”The committee’s top Republican Liz Cheney is offering more details about the actions of justice department official Jeffrey Clark, who had his house raided today by federal investigators.According to Cheney, Clark and another justice department lawyer drafted a letter addressed to the Georgia state legislature, which would have said the department had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states, including the state of Georgia”, and that the legislature should convene and consider approving a new slate of electors. Joe Biden had won Georgia, but Trump made baseless allegations of fraud in the polls, and the new electors would have presumably given him the state’s electoral votes.“In fact, Donald Trump knew this was a lie,” Cheney said. “The Department of Justice had already informed the president of the United States repeatedly that its investigations had found no fraud sufficient to overturn the results of the 2020 election.”Cheney said Clark had met with Trump privately and agreed to help him sway these states’ legislatures without telling his bosses at the justice department. But Cheney said Clark’s superiors – who are the witnesses testifying today – refused to sign it. That was when Trump began considering installing Clark at the helm at the justice department – which he never ended up doing. The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection has started its fifth hearing, which will focus on Donald Trump’s efforts to get the justice department to go along with his plans to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Testifying in the chamber will be:
      Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general for the final weeks of Trump’s term, including during the attack on the Capitol.
      Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, who appeared in a video aired at the conclusion of Tuesday’s hearing threatening to resign if Trump appointed Jeffrey Clark to head the justice department.
      Steven Engel, the former assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel.
      We’re about 10 minutes away from the start of today’s January 6 hearing, which my colleague Lauren Gambino reports will offer new evidence of how Trump pressured the justice department to take part in his plot to overturn the 2020 election:The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection plans to present new evidence on Thursday about Donald Trump’s brazen attempts to pressure the justice department to overturn the 2020 presidential election that he lost, aides said.After exhausting his legal options and being rebuffed by state and local elections officials, the president turned to the justice department to declare the election corrupt despite no evidence of mass voter fraud, the nine-member panel will seek to show in their fifth and final hearing of the month.Testifying from the Cannon Caucus Room on Capitol Hill are Jeffrey Rosen, the former acting attorney general; Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general; and Steven Engel, the former assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel.Capitol attack panel to show how Trump pressured DoJ to overturn electionRead more More

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      Jan 6 hearings: Trump is ‘clear and present danger to American democracy’, conservative judge warns – as it happened

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      J Michael Luttig, a former US appellate court judge who is considered one of the top conservative legal minds in the United States, has warned the January 6 committee that Donald Trump poses a continuing danger to the country’s democracy.“Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy,” Luttig said. “That’s not because of what happened on January 6. It’s because to this very day, the former president and his allies and supporters pledge that in presidential election of 2024, if the former president or his anointed successor as the Republican party presidential candidate were to lose that election, that they would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election but succeed in 2024 where they failed in 2020.”“That’s what the former president and his allies are telling us,” Luttig said.The US politics live blog is ending its day following the third hearing of the January 6 committee, which revealed that the architect of Trump’s strategy to overturn the election sought a pardon from the president, and featured a warning from a noted conservative jurist that the former president jeopardizes American democracy. Meanwhile, Trump’s troubles in court continued.Here’s what else was in the news:
      President Joe Biden defended his economic record in an interview with the Associated Press, saying a recession was “not inevitable” despite troublingly high inflation and the Federal Reserve’s aggressive moves to lower it.
      John Hinckley, who shot president Ronald Reagan in 1981, was released from court oversight and celebrated on Twitter, as one does.
      Senators continued work on a bipartisan gun control compromise, with the main Republican negotiator saying an agreement needed to be reached today.
      The January 6 committee said it wants to talk to Ginni Thomas following a report from The Washington Post that the wife of conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas corresponded with John Eastman, the Trump lawyer who plotted to overturn the election.
      Deborah Birx, the White House pandemic response coordinator under Trump, will testify before Congress next week for the first time .
      Biden campaigned on fighting climate change, but many of his proposals to do that have stalled in Congress. The Guardian’s Oliver Milman reports that whether or not Washington takes meaningful action to cut its emissions may determine if millions of people live or die:The rapidly shrinking window of opportunity for the US to pass significant climate legislation will have mortal, as well as political, stakes. Millions of lives around the world will be saved, or lost, depending on whether America manages to propel itself towards a future without planet-heating emissions.For the first time, researchers have calculated exactly how many people the US could save by acting on the climate crisis. A total of 7.4 million lives around the world will be saved over this century if the US manages to cut its emissions to net zero by 2050, according to the analysis.The financial savings would be enormous, too, with a net zero America able to save the world $3.7tn in costs to adapt to the rising heat. As the world’s second largest polluter of greenhouse gases, the US and its political vagaries will in large part decide how many people in faraway countries will be subjected to deadly heat, as well as endure punishing storms, floods, drought and other consequences of the climate emergency.How millions of lives can be saved if the US acts now on climateRead morePresident Joe Biden has defended his economic record in an interview with the Associated Press, downplaying the risk of a recession but acknowledging that many Americans are going through hard times.Biden doesn’t grant very many interviews, and this encounter comes after a slew of grim economic developments. These include worse-than-expected inflation numbers in May that show prices continuing to rise, gasoline at a record high and aggressive Federal Reserve action that’s raised fears the economy could be set for a prolonged contraction.All of these have been factors in his record-low approval ratings.Here’s the president’s perspective on the state of the world’s largest economy:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}He said a recession is not inevitable and bristled at claims by Republican lawmakers that last year’s COVID-19 aid plan was fully to blame for inflation reaching a 40-year high, calling that argument “bizarre.”
      As for the overall American mindset, Biden said, “People are really, really down.”
      “They’re really down,” he said. “The need for mental health in America, it has skyrocketed, because people have seen everything upset. Everything they’ve counted on upset. But most of it’s the consequence of what’s happened, what happened as a consequence of the COVID crisis.”
      Speaking to the AP in a 30-minute Oval Office interview, Biden addressed the warnings by economists that the United States could be headed for a recession.
      “First of all, it’s not inevitable,” he said. “Secondly, we’re in a stronger position than any nation in the world to overcome this inflation.”
      The president said he saw reason for optimism with the 3.6% unemployment rate and America’s relative strength in the world.
      “Be confident, because I am confident we’re better positioned than any country in the world to own the second quarter of the 21st century,” Biden said. “That’s not hyperbole, that’s a fact.”The January 6 committee has concluded for the day, but before they finished, they revealed a key piece of information about the conduct of John Eastman, the lawyer who crafted former president Donald Trump’s strategy to overturn the election in 2020.Eastman sought a pardon from Trump in the closing days of his presidency, writing to Rudy Giuliani, another lawyer for the president, “I’ve decided that I should be on the pardoned list, if that is still in the works.” The committee added that he did not receive one.Eastman’s actions were covered in detail at today’s hearing, particularly his efforts to convince Mike Pence that his position as vice-president gave him the authority to hand the election to Trump when Congress met to certify on January 6, 2021. Pence declined to do that.Trump lawyer knew plan to delay Biden certification was unlawful, emails showRead moreJ Michael Luttig, a former US appellate court judge who is considered one of the top conservative legal minds in the United States, has warned the January 6 committee that Donald Trump poses a continuing danger to the country’s democracy.“Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy,” Luttig said. “That’s not because of what happened on January 6. It’s because to this very day, the former president and his allies and supporters pledge that in presidential election of 2024, if the former president or his anointed successor as the Republican party presidential candidate were to lose that election, that they would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election but succeed in 2024 where they failed in 2020.”“That’s what the former president and his allies are telling us,” Luttig said.John Eastman himself has finally appeared, this time in a frosty videotaped deposition shown by the committee. “I assert my fifth amendment right against being compelled to be a witness against myself,” Eastman said in the compilation of clips from the encounter, which shows lawyers from the committee asking Eastman a series of questions about his actions around January 6.“Fifth,” he replies to each one.Before that aired, former White House attorney Eric Herschmann described a call from Eastman the day after the attack.“He started to ask me about something dealing with Georgia and preserving something potentially for appeal. And I said to him, are you out of your effing mind?” Herschmann recalls. “I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth for now on: orderly transition,” he said he told Eastman. “I don’t want to hear any other effing words coming out of your mouth, no matter what.”“Eventually, he said ‘orderly transition.’ I said, good, John. Now I’m going to give you the best free legal advice you’re ever getting in your life. Get a great effing criminal defense lawyer, you’re going to need it. And then I hung up on him,” Herschmann said.Even after the Capitol had been stormed, Trump lawyer John Eastman continued to pressure Pence to try to overturn the election.“I implore you one last time, can the vice-president please do what we’ve been asking him to do these last two days: suspend the joint session, send it back to the states,” Pence’s counselor Greg Jacob recalls Eastman asking, citing alleged violations of the Electoral Count Act during the joint session of Congress disrupted by the insurrection.The committee is now dealing with the storming of the Capitol, showing Pence working in what looks like a loading dock after evacuating the Senate chamber as the rioters approached.“Make no mistake about the fact that the vice-president’s life was in danger,” Representative Pete Aguilar said, pointing to an FBI affidavit from an informant in the Proud Boys militia group.“They said that anyone they got their hands on they would have killed including Nancy Pelosi,” the informant told the FBI, adding that “members of the Proud Boys said that they would have killed Mike Pence if given a chance.”As for Trump, Jacob said the president never called Pence to check on him, which the vice-president reacted to “with frustration.”Pence started January 6 out with a prayer with his staff, followed by what witnesses described to the committee as a nasty phone call from Trump.“The conversation was pretty heated,” testified Ivanka Trump, who saw the president on the phone.“I remember hearing the word wimp,” Nicholas Luna, an assistant to Trump, testified. “I don’t remember, he said you are a wimp. You’ll be a wimp. Wimp is the word I remember.”Gen Keith Kellogg, Pence’s national security advisor at the time, said Trump told the vice-president he was “not tough enough to make the call.”The January 6 committee has resumed its hearing, after spending most of the past two hours detailing the pressure campaign in the days before the insurrection against vice-president Mike Pence.“Despite the fact that the vice-president consistently told the president that he did not have and would not want the power to decide the outcome of the presidential election, Donald Trump continued to pressure the vice-president, both publicly and privately,” California Democrat Pete Aguilar said as the hearing resumed.“You will hear things reached a boiling point on January 6, and the consequences were disastrous.” More

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      Retired judge to testify on Trump’s ‘well-developed plan’ to overturn election at any cost – live

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      In his testimony before the January 6 committee today, former US appellate court judge J Michael Luttig will warn that the plot to overturn the 2020 election was well-coordinated and threatened the nation’s very existence, according to his opening remarks obtained by CNN.Luttig is one of two guests in Thursday’s third hearing of the committee, which will focus on Trump’s pressure campaign against vice-president Mike Pence to get him to go along with his plans to stop Joe Biden from taking office.“The war on democracy instigated by the former president and his political party allies on January 6 was the natural and foreseeable culmination of the war for America,” Luttig warns in his opening remarks. “It was the final fateful day for the execution of a well-developed plan by the former president to overturn the 2020 presidential election at any cost, so that he could cling to power that the American People had decided to confer upon his successor, the next president of the United States instead.”“Had the Vice President of the United States obeyed the President of the United States, America would immediately have been plunged into what would have been tantamount to a revolution within a paralyzing constitutional crisis,” Luttig says.Conspiracies like the effort to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election win could tear the United States apart, former vice-president Mike Pence’s lawyer Greg Jacob will tell the January 6 committee today.“The law is not a plaything for presidents or judges to use to remake the world in their preferred image,” Jacob said in his opening remarks, which do not mention Donald Trump by name but are sharply critical of the idea that Pence could unilaterally decide an election — an idea the former president promoted.“Our Constitution and our laws form the strong edifice within which our heartfelt policy disagreements are to be debated and decided. When our elected and appointed leaders break, twist, and fail to enforce our laws in order to achieve their partisan ends, or to accomplish frustrated policy objectives they consider existentially important, they are breaking America,” Jacob said.You can read the full remarks below:READ: The full statement from Pence counsel Greg Jacob to the select committee. 1/3 pic.twitter.com/2smpKVxDhk— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) June 16, 2022
      Page 2 of 3 pic.twitter.com/TfQKr7sdlm— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) June 16, 2022
      Page 3 of 3 pic.twitter.com/KzpxylqbUK— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) June 16, 2022
      Eric Berger reports on another factor that led to the United States’s disastrous experience with Covid-19: its lack of a universal health care system:The US could have saved more than 338,000 lives and more than $105bn in healthcare costs in the Covid-19 pandemic with a universal healthcare system, according to a study.More than 1 million people died in the US from Covid, in part because the country’s “fragmented and inefficient healthcare system” meant uninsured or underinsured people faced financial barriers that delayed diagnosis and exacerbated transmission, the report states.The US had the highest death rate from the virus among large wealthy countries and is also the only one among such countries without universal healthcare. It spends almost twice as much on healthcare per capita as the other wealthy countries, according to Kaiser Family Foundation data.US could have saved 338,000 lives from Covid with universal healthcare, study findsRead moreThe House subcommittee investigating the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic announced that Deborah Birx, the former president’s Covid-19 coordinator, will testify publicly next week.For the first time, former White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx will publicly testify about her role in the Trump Administration’s #COVID19 response.Tune in next week, June 23, at 10AM ET.https://t.co/aOsMX29Q1b— Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis (@COVIDOversight) June 16, 2022
      Birx was among the public health officials who became household names during the pandemic’s worst months, but later fell out of favor with Trump. Last October, the Democratic chair of the subcommittee Jame Clyburn said its interviews with Birx “confirm that President Trump’s prioritization of politics, contempt for science, and refusal to follow the advice of public health experts undermined the nation’s ability to respond effectively to the coronavirus crisis.”The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell explain why the January 6 committee has opted to make today’s hearing about the actions of Mike Pence, who played a major role in torpedoing Trump’s plan to stop Biden from taking office:The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack intends to outline at its third hearing on Thursday how Donald Trump corruptly pressured then vice-president Mike Pence to reject the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election and directly contributed to the insurrection.The panel will first examine the genesis of Trump’s pressure campaign on Pence to adopt an unconstitutional and unlawful plan to reject certified electors from certain states at the congressional certification in an attempt to give Trump a second presidential term.The select committee then intends to show how that theory – advanced by external Trump legal adviser John Eastman – was rejected by Pence, his lawyers and the White House counsel’s office, who universally told the former president that the entire scheme was unlawful.Third panel hearing will show Trump’s pressure on Pence to overturn electionRead moreIn his testimony before the January 6 committee today, former US appellate court judge J Michael Luttig will warn that the plot to overturn the 2020 election was well-coordinated and threatened the nation’s very existence, according to his opening remarks obtained by CNN.Luttig is one of two guests in Thursday’s third hearing of the committee, which will focus on Trump’s pressure campaign against vice-president Mike Pence to get him to go along with his plans to stop Joe Biden from taking office.“The war on democracy instigated by the former president and his political party allies on January 6 was the natural and foreseeable culmination of the war for America,” Luttig warns in his opening remarks. “It was the final fateful day for the execution of a well-developed plan by the former president to overturn the 2020 presidential election at any cost, so that he could cling to power that the American People had decided to confer upon his successor, the next president of the United States instead.”“Had the Vice President of the United States obeyed the President of the United States, America would immediately have been plunged into what would have been tantamount to a revolution within a paralyzing constitutional crisis,” Luttig says.The Washington Post report further detailing Ginni Thomas’s involvement in the effort to stop Joe Biden from taking office underscores just how much evidence the January 6 committee is accumulating in its effort to unravel what happened that day.It’s not clear if the lawmakers will opt to publicly explore what they’ve learned about conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas’s wife in the course of their investigation, but they must surely feel tempted. Thomas was the only one of the court’s nine members who dissented from a January ruling ordering the release of records from the Trump administration to the committee.The revelations about Ginni Thomas come as tensions around the court are as high as ever. Its conservative majority is widely believed to be poised to strike down the nationwide right to an abortion, and a draft opinion of the decision was leaked last month, sparking uproar. Other decisions expected in the coming days or weeks could expand the right to carry a concealed weapon, weaken the government’s ability to regulate and upend the Biden administration’s effort to end the “remain in Mexico” policy Trump implemented to stop border crossings.Trump is out of office but the court’s rightward swing is one of his legacies. Had he not won in 2016, it’s possible the institution’s ideological makeup may look quite different.Good morning, US politics blog readers! Today’s marquee event in Washington will be the third hearing of the January 6 committee, which is to center on the pressure campaign around Mike Pence, the vice-president to Donald Trump. The Washington Post is reporting that the committee is also considering what to do with new evidence that shows Ginni Thomas, wife of conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, was talking to a lawyer for Trump, who played a major role in trying to stop Joe Biden from taking office.Here’s what else is happening today:
      Anthony Fauci is positive for Covid but that’s apparently not stopping him from testifying before the Senate health committee, though he will undoubtedly not be in the room.
      Biden will sign a bill to overhaul regulations on ocean shipping that he hopes will help lower the US’s high rate of inflation.
      Republicans are kicking off their “Road to Majority” conference hosted by the Faith & Freedom Coalition, which is accurately named: the party is viewed as having a good chance of taking back one or both houses of Congress in the November midterm elections.
      The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives may be closer to getting a director after the Senate Judiciary Committee votes on confirming Steven Dettelbach. More