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      White House warns of ‘intensifying impacts of climate change’ as Biden tours flood-hit Kentucky – as it happened

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      On Joe Biden’s visit to flood-ravaged eastern Kentucky today he is not just viewing the effects through the lens of a disaster needing federal assistance but also through the lens of the climate crisis that is making events like this more intense, more common and more deadly, in America and around the world.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre addressed the issue in her media briefing aboard Air Force One en route to Lexington with the US president and first lady Jill Biden a little earlier.“The floods in Kentucky and extreme weather all around the country are yet another reminder of the intensifying and accelerating impacts of climate change and the urgent need to invest in making our communities more resilient to it,” she said.Kentucky was hit by massive flash flooding in the last two weeks that killed 37 people and caused mass destruction. The atypical rain storms followed eight months after tornadoes killed almost three times that many people in western Kentucky and many parts of the country are suffering record heatwaves, drought and wildfire after an extreme 2021 in the American west.Jean-Pierre of course emphasized the importance of the Senate vote yesterday to pass the historic climate action bill , which she called “so vital” alongside previous infrastructure legislation.“Over the long term, these investments will save lives, reduce costs and protect communities like the one we are visiting today,” she said. Biden is due to land in Kentucky about now.
      Amidst the flood damage, Joe Biden reiterated his commitment to Kentucky and seeing the areas impacted by the catastrophic flooding that has killed at least 37 set back to rights. “Everybody has an obligation to help. We have the capacity to do this. It’s not like it’s beyond our control,” Biden said. “The weather may be beyond our control for now, but it’s not beyond our control and I promise you, we’re staying, the federal government, along with the state and county and the city, we’re staying until everybody is back to where they were.”
      Two years’ worth of text messages exchanged by right wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones have been turned over to the House select committee tasked with investigating the 6 January attack on the US Capitol, according to CNN. The texts had come out after Jones’ attorneys “messed up” and inadvertently sent the text messages to the plaintiffs’ attorney during a defamation trial in which Jones has been ordered to pay nearly $50m over his repeated claims that the deadly Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax.
      The Biden administration has pledged another $1bn in military aid for Ukraine, the largest promise of rockets, ammunition and other arms to Ukrainian forces. This brings the total US security assistance committed to Ukraine by the Biden administration to roughly $9bn since Russian troops invaded in February.
      Rudy Giuliani, lawyer for Donald Trump, was caught in a lie when he tried to argue that he couldn’t travel to Atlanta to appear before a special grand jury investigating whether Trump and others illegally tried to interfere in the 2020 general election in Georgia. Giuliani said he couldn’t travel because of a medical procedure but Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, pulled up a tweet of his showing that he had gone to New Hampshire recently, as well as evidence that he had purchased airline tickets to Rome and Zurich that were meant for use between 22 July and 29 July, after his medical procedure.
      The photos everyone is talking about today are the ones published by Axios purportedly backing up the claims that Donald Trump periodically blocked up White House and other drains by flushing documents.The photos show folded-up paper, marked with Trump’s telltale handwriting in his favored pen, a Sharpie, submerged at the bottom of various toilet bowls.Read more about it here:Photos suggest Trump blocked toilets with ripped-up White House documentsRead moreRon DeSantis, the governor of Florida who is widely seen as a potential leading Republican presidential contender, will campaign this month for Donald Trump-endorsed party candidates in key swing states for the 2024 White House race, Reuters is reporting.DeSantis, who is currently running for re-election in Florida, will speak at “Unite and Win” rallies on behalf of congressional and gubernatorial candidates in Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio and Pennsylvania later this month, his campaign and rally organizer Turning Point Action said today.“He’s a wildly popular political figure and I think he can really make a difference for some of these candidates,” said Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for Turning Point Action, which is the political arm of the conservative school campus group, Turning Point USA.Joe Biden promised the crowd he spoke to before a toppled building in Lost Creek, Kentucky that even with the at least 37 killed and the substantial flood damage, “we’re going to come back better than we were before”. “We’re the only country in the world that has come out of every major disaster stronger than we went into it,” Biden said. “We got clobbered going in, but we came out stronger. That’s the objective here: not just to get back to where we were, but to get back to better than where we were.” He said with the bipartisan infrastructure bill – the feather in his legislative agenda – “we have the wherewithal to do it now”. Biden said that because of the bill, now when crews are replacing damaged water lines, municipalities have the funds to also lay down high-speed Internet at the same time. “I don’t want any Kentuckian telling me you don’t have to do this for me,” Biden said. “Oh yes we do. You’re an American citizen. We never give up. We never stop. We never bow. We never bend. We just go forward and that’s what we’re going to do here. And you’re going to see.”Joe Biden has taken to the podium in Kentucky, where he is touring flooding damage from the catastrophic flooding that has killed at least 37 and displaced hundreds. “The people here in this community are not just Kentuckians, they’re Americans,” Biden said. “This happened in America. This is an American problem. Everybody has an obligation to help. We have the capacity to do this. It’s not like it’s beyond our control. The weather may be beyond our control for now, but it’s not beyond our control and I promise you, we’re staying, the federal government, along with the state and county and the city, we’re staying until everybody is back to where they were.” Rudy Giuliani was among the many allies of Donald Trump that were subpoenaed by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, in her investigation into whether Trump and others illegally tried to interfere in the 2020 general election in Georgia.A judge ordered Giuliani to appear before a special grand jury in Atlanta this month, and today he made an emergency motion to postpone his scheduled deposition. Rudy GIULIANI has made an emergency motion to postpone his scheduled Fulton County deposition. A hearing on his motion is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. pic.twitter.com/hltHbN2Odn— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 8, 2022
      Giuliani’s excuse was that he had a recent medical procedure that left him uncleared to fly. He was willing to appear virtually and is prepared to testify, but the district attorney is insisting he appears in person. UPDATE Giuliani’s motion to delay his grand jury appearance seems to be medical — he says a recent procedure has left him uncleared to fly. He says he is prepared to testify and even willing to appear virtually but DA has insisted he appear in person. https://t.co/DAPhXqXDp7— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 8, 2022
      The Fulton county district attorney’s office quickly countered with a tweet of Giuliani’s that showed he had traveled out of state – Giuliani said he had traveled to New Hampshire by car. But the district attorney also found evidence that he had purchased airline tickets to Rome and Zurich that were meant for use between 22 July and 29 July, after his medical procedure. The DA says it has obtained records that show Rudy purchased air travel tickets meant for use between July 22-29. They also included a tweet showing Giuliani had traveled (he says by car) to NH last week. https://t.co/y0HVyd3cZl pic.twitter.com/KkSKY1lsgo— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 8, 2022
      Amazing. Giuliani said a recent heart procedure meant he couldn’t travel to ATL out of state …so the Fulton DA’s office found a tweet of Giuliani apparently traveling out of state. pic.twitter.com/LZONxwDxZz— stephen fowler (@stphnfwlr) August 8, 2022
      CNN is reporting that two years’ worth of text messages exchanged by right wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones have been turned over to the House select committee tasked with investigating the 6 January attack on the US Capitol. News: The Alex Jones texts have been turned over to the 1/6 committee, I’m told. https://t.co/s1kQg6AT1g— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) August 8, 2022
      During Jones’ defamation trial, in which Jones has been ordered to pay nearly $50m over his repeated claims that the deadly Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax, an attorney for the plaintiffs revealed that Jones’ attorneys had “messed up” and inadvertently sent him the two years of text messages. The House select committee was immediately interested: Jones’ rhetoric is popular among those who swarmed the Capitol that day, and he was on the grounds in the lead-up to the attack, riling up the crowd. However, according to CNN, Jones claims he tried to prevent people at the Capitol from breaking the law, and has rejected any suggestion that he was involved in the planning of violence. “Well, we know that his behavior did incentivize some of the January 6 conduct and we want to know more about that,” congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who sits on the committee, told CNN this weekend. “We don’t know what we’ll find in the texts because we haven’t seen them. But we’ll look at it and learn more, I’m sure.” Jones’ attorney had asked the judge to order Mark Bankston, the attorney who represented the two Sandy Hook parents who successfully sued Jones, to destroy the texts and not transmit them to the House committee.“I’m not standing between you and Congress,” Judge Maya Guerra Gamble told Bankston. “That is not my job. I’m not going to do that.”The Biden administration has pledged another $1bn in military aid for Ukraine, the largest promise of rockets, ammunition and other arms to Ukrainian forces.This brings the total US security assistance committed to Ukraine by the Biden administration to roughly $9bn since Russian troops invaded in February.“At every stage of this conflict, we have been focused on getting the Ukrainians what they need, depending on the evolving conditions on the battlefield,” Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, said in announcing the new weapons shipment.New today: US announces another $1 billion military package for Ukraine including more ammo for HIMARS. And USAID announces $4.5 billion in economic aid to the Ukrainian government— Josh Lederman (@JoshNBCNews) August 8, 2022
      Greetings all – Vivian Ho here, taking over the blog from Joanna Walters. Over in Kentucky, Joe Biden kicked off his tour of the catastrophic flooding that has killed at least 37 people with a briefing. Touring flood damage in eastern Kentucky – @POTUS participates in briefing at Marie Roberts Elementary School in Lost Creek KY. @AndyBeshearKY welcomes the group – confirms 37 Kentuckians have died in the storm. Adds there are still 2 missing people. pic.twitter.com/Wed6Bei500— Julia Benbrook (@JuliaBenbrook) August 8, 2022
      Hello, live blog readers, with the climate crisis as a powerful undercurrent to Joe Biden’s visit to flood-ravaged eastern Kentucky today, we’ll bring you more news on that and all the developments, as they happen.My colleague Vivian Ho will take over the blog after this and keep you up to speed for the next few hours.Here’s where things stand.
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre addressed the climate issues in her media briefing aboard Air Force One en route to Lexington with the US president earlier. “The floods in Kentucky and extreme weather all around the country are yet another reminder of the intensifying and accelerating impacts of climate change and the urgent need to invest in making our communities more resilient to it,” she said.
      During his time in the Oval Office, Donald Trump wanted the Pentagon’s generals to be like Nazi Germany’s generals in the second world war, according to a book excerpt in the New Yorker. Peeks of Susan Glasser and Peter Baker’s new book The Divider have more on some of those screaming matches in the White House between the-then president and senior aides.
      Joe Biden is visiting eastern Kentucky to tour areas inundated and families devastated by the terrible flooding a week ago that killed dozens of people. Biden is expected to make public remarks (around 2pm ET) as well as talking with relatives and officials in private, and he and the first lady will return to the White House this evening.
      The US president said “I’m not worried, but I am concerned” about China’s aggression towards Taiwan in its live-fire military exercises that lasted for the last four days and menaced the island democracy, whose capital, Taipei, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi controversially visited early last week.
      Joe Biden is touring flood damage in eastern Kentucky with state governor Andy Beshear.The state’s lieutenant governor, Jacqueline Coleman, earlier told CNN that in one county, 50 bridges had been wrecked by the floods that have devastated the region in late July-early August.“The infrastructure needs are monumental,” she said.Coleman described the rains that hit the area.“It happened so fast and it happened overnight and that’s the reason folks were trapped in their homes,” she said, often in areas of mountainous terrain.Asked if, with the climate crisis, this kind of extreme weather is going to become the new normal, she remarked: “I hope this is not the new normal, for sure.”The 700-plus-page inflation reduction bill moving through the US Congress would steer significant new funds toward battling wildfires and extreme heat – climate change-related risks that are wreaking havoc across the country this summer, Reuters reports.The legislation, pared down from earlier versions, would direct approximately $370 billion toward a range of climate and energy initiatives, including renewable energy tax credits, backing for electric cars and heat pumps, and environmental justice..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}This is going to, if passed, be the most action the United States has ever taken on climate. Will there be more that we need to do? Absolutely. But this is just so significant and [it’s] so important that we get this over the finish line,” said Christina DeConcini, director of government affairs at the World Resources Institute, a global research group.As drought-fueled wildfires spread out of control in the western United States, lawmakers want to direct about $2 billion toward hazardous fuels reduction.The money in the bill, formally known as the Inflation Reduction Act, could go toward measures like clearing brush through prescribed burns or mechanical thinning so when fires do occur they’re not as intense.The bill also earmarks funds to combat increasingly extreme heat as the United States – and much of the world – grapples with record-shattering and increasingly deadly temperatures this year.For example, there is $1.5 billion in grant funding through the US Forest Service for initiatives such as helping cities plant trees, which provide natural cooling and can improve air quality.The bill aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade through other spending on clean energy tax incentives and electric vehicle credits.Sponsors of the bill say more than $60 billion in measures included are directed toward “environmental justice” initiatives intended to help communities that have disproportionately borne the brunt of poor air quality and pollution.But that amount isn’t nearly enough, said Anthony Rogers-Wright, director of environmental justice at the nonprofit New York Lawyers for the Public Interest.You can read the full Reuters report here. More

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      in US Politics

      Democrats celebrate as climate bill moves to House – and critics weigh in

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      Democrats celebrate as climate bill moves to House – and critics weigh in Bernie Sanders calls climate measures a ‘very modest step forward’ and Republicans denounce the bill altogether Democrats celebrated the much-delayed Senate passage of their healthcare and climate spending package, expressing hope that the bill’s approval could improve their prospects in the crucial midterm elections this November.The bill, formally known as the Inflation Reduction Act, passed the Senate on Sunday in a party-line vote of 51-50, with Vice-President Kamala Harris breaking the tie in the evenly divided chamber.Raucous applause broke out on the Senate floor after Harris announced the final tally, and Democrats continued their victory lap once the vote had concluded amid a belief that the bill will give Biden – and many Democrats – a record of significant achievement to campaign on.“I’m really confident that the Inflation Reduction Act will endure as one of the defining feats of the 21st century,” the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said at a press conference after the bill’s passage. “To do small things with 50 votes is rough. To pass such a major piece of legislation – with only 50 votes, an intransigent Republican minority, a caucus running from Bernie Sanders to Joe Manchin – wow.”Democrats’ work is not quite done though. The Senate-approved bill now heads to the House, which must pass the legislation before it can go to Joe Biden’s desk. The House is scheduled to return from its recess on Friday to take up the bill, and Democratic leaders have expressed confidence that it will pass.“The House will return and move swiftly to send this bill to the president’s desk – proudly building a healthier, cleaner, fairer future for all Americans,” the Democratic speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said in a statement.Democrats hope the bill’s passage could also help them persuade voters to keep them in control of Congress in November, when every House seat and 34 Senate seats will be up for grabs. So far, Democrats’ prospects in the midterm elections have appeared grim, as Republicans are heavily favored to regain control of the House of Representatives.Asked on Monday morning whether he believed the bill’s approval would benefit Democrats running in November, Biden said, “Do I expect it to help? Yes, I do. It’s going to immediately help.”Biden pointed to some of the bill’s healthcare provisions, including capping Medicare recipients’ out-of-pocket prescription costs at $2,000 a year, to argue that the legislation would provide concrete assistance to millions of Americans. But that policy will not go into effect until 2025, and Biden acknowledged that some of the bill’s most important provisions will take time to kick in.That delayed implementation could prove detrimental to Democratic candidates trying to make a pitch to voters about how the party has made the most of its control of the White House and Congress.Despite its name, the bill is also not expected to provide immediate relief to Americans struggling under the weight of record-high inflation. According to a report issued by Moody’s Analytics, the bill will “modestly reduce inflation over the 10-year budget horizon”.Republicans accused Democrats of ramming through a partisan bill that failed to address voters’ top concerns, as polls show most Americans believe the economy is getting worse.“Democrats have proven over and over they simply do not care about middle-class families’ priorities,” the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said after the bill’s passage. “They have spent 18 months proving that. They just spent hundreds of billions of dollars to prove it again.”Republicans’ talking points were echoed by a surprising voice on Sunday: Bernie Sanders. The progressive senator expressed concern that the bill would do little to help working Americans, after he unsuccessfully pushed amendments to the bill that would have expanded its healthcare and financial assistance provisions.“It’s a very modest step forward,” Sanders told MSNBC. “Bottom line is, I’m going to support the bill because given the crisis of climate change, the environmental community says this is a step forward. It doesn’t go anywhere near as far as it should. It is a step forward.”Democrats have championed the bill’s environmental provisions, which mark America’s most significant legislative effort yet to address the climate crisis. Experts estimate that the climate policies in the spending package will slash US greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels. That accomplishment will bring the US within striking distance of Biden’s goal to cut emissions in half by the end of the decade, which scientists say must be achieved to avoid climate disaster.To win the support of the centrist senator Joe Manchin, the bill also includes controversial proposals to expand oil and gas development on federal lands, which have sparked outcry among some climate activists. But the bill’s defenders say the climate benefits of the legislation far outweigh the costs.As the spending package moves to the House, Pelosi has the weighty task of keeping her entire caucus in line to ensure the bill’s passage. Given Democrats’ narrow majority in the lower chamber, Pelosi can afford to lose only a few votes and still get the bill passed. It seems like Pelosi will have the votes she needs, after moderates and progressives alike endorsed the package, so Biden could be reaching for his bill-signing pen by the end of the week.TopicsUS politicsDemocratsClimate crisisUS SenateHouse of RepresentativesUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      If Democrats want votes, they should rain fury on union-busting corporations | Hamilton Nolan

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      If Democrats want votes, they should rain fury on union-busting corporationsHamilton NolanWe supposedly have the most pro-union US president of our lifetimes. Let’s see him act like it In June, workers at a Chipotle restaurant in Augusta, Maine, became the first in the company’s history to file for a union election. Less than a month later, the company closed the store. In shutting down a location that was set to unionize, Chipotle was keeping company with Starbucks, which has suddenly undertaken a campaign to shut down several unionizing locations from coast to coast due to “safety” issues, and the health food company Amy’s Kitchen, which last month closed an entire factory in California where workers were organizing. It is, of course, impossible to “prove” that these companies closed these locations to try to crush the union drives, in the same sense that it is impossible to prove that a schoolyard bully meant to punch you in the face: he claims that he was merely punching the air while you happened to walk in front of his fist. Who’s to say what’s true in such a murky situation?Delta flights attendants race to unionize: ‘We’re the people behind the profits’Read morePlausible deniability aside, this is an extremely serious problem. Not just for the underpaid, overworked employees at all of these low-wage jobs, desperately hanging on to financial survival by their fingernails, but for all of us. America is mired in a half-century-long crisis of rising inequality that has been fueled, above all, by the combined erosion of labor power and the growth of the power of capital. The American dream enjoyed by the lucky baby-boom generation – buying a home and sending your kids to college on one income – is dead and gone, replaced by a thin crust of the rich sitting atop a huge swamp of once-middle-class jobs that no longer offer enough to sustain a middle-class lifestyle.The power of workers relative to the power of the investment class must be rebalanced. Rebuilding the power of unions is the only way out of this trap, unless you are credulous enough to believe that we will all be rescued by the sudden radicalization of the tax policymakers on the House ways and means committee. If you ever want to live in a country where the American dream is more than a cruel, tantalizing joke, you have a stake in the revival of organized labor.So when you see a big company closing down operations because workers there want to unionize, you should be pissed. Such coldhearted retaliation against people exercising a fundamental right on the job goes to the very heart of how we got all this inequality in the first place. It is meant not just to derail one union drive, but to strike fear in all the other workers who see it happen: if you ask for what you’re worth, this could happen to you. Shut up and eat your gruel, and be happy that the kindly billionaire CEO is allowing you to earn enough not to starve today. Even if you don’t work at a fast-food outlet or a factory, this should enrage you, as a human being. It is an assault on human dignity.America’s convoluted and hostile labor laws actually do allow a business to shut down in response to unionization, unless (and this is important) the company is doing so in order to scare its remaining employees out of unionizing – in other words, exactly what big employers like Chipotle and Starbucks would be doing by closing stores where workers have organized, as workers at many other stores across the country looked on. (Government regulators have not yet ruled on the legality of the recent closures by those companies.) Unfortunately, the evil, high-priced union-busting attorneys these companies hire are well aware that the gears of justice in labor law grind so slowly that even on the off chance that they were found to have closed the stores illegally, it would be far too late for it to mean anything to the workers who were laid off and forced to go find other jobs. The scary, unsubtle message to the company’s workforce would have already been sent.That’s why this stuff is not really a question of law, but of power. The working class, galvanized by the near-death experience of the pandemic, is busily organizing in new industries across the country; the labor movement today is as energized as it has been in two generations. Corporate America is determined to stop this. In the mid-1950s, one in three Americans was a union member; today, that figure is one in 10. Companies know that their ability to extract excess profits will go down as union density goes up. This is going to be a hard, nasty fight. As all of those recently laid-off Chipotle and Starbucks and Amy’s Kitchen workers know, it already is.It is also a golden opportunity for a Democratic party that has spent the last six years wringing its hands about losing working-class voters to the pseudo-populist (and racist) appeal of Trumpism. Want to get working people enthusiastic about Democrats again? Then the Democrats should help working people. National Democratic politicians should be holding press conferences decrying the greedy chief executives closing these stores just because workers tried to stand up for themselves. Joe Biden should be screaming his head off about billionaire Starbucks chief Howard Schultz’s disgusting union-busting at the same volume that Ron DeSantis is blathering about “woke corporations”.Republicans are insincere ghouls who want to harvest working-class votes while their policies stab working-class people in the back – but Democrats are ceding the terrain to these scumbags by failing to match their fervor. We don’t need our politicians making anodyne statements about how unions are nice. We need a rain of zeal and fury emanating from Washington, to terrify companies away from closing down their union stores with threats of merciless retributions from the state.History shows that organized labor thrives when it has the government’s support, and suffers without it. We are supposedly living under the most pro-union president of our lifetimes. So? Let’s hear some damn fire, man. The only reason companies feel so free to abuse their workers is that they don’t believe anyone will make them pay for it.
      Hamilton Nolan is a writer based in New York
      TopicsDemocratsOpinionUS unionsUS politicsJoe BidenStarbuckscommentReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      US Senate passes $739bn healthcare and climate bill – video

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      Senate Democrats passed their climate and healthcare spending package on Sunday, sending the legislation to the House and bringing Joe Biden one step closer to a significant legislative victory ahead of crucial midterm elections in November.
      ‘To the tens of millions of young Americans who spent years marching, rallying, demanding that Congress act on climate change, this bill is for you,’ said Chuck Schumer, the US Senate majority leader. 
      ‘The time has come to pass this historic bill’

      Senate passes $739bn healthcare and climate bill after months of wrangling
      Climate bill could slash US emissions by 40% after historic Senate vote
      What does the US-China row mean for climate change? More

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      Senate passes $739bn healthcare and climate bill after months of wrangling

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      Senate passes $739bn healthcare and climate bill after months of wranglingInflation Reduction Act will reduce planet-heating emissions and lower prescription drug costs – and give Biden a crucial victory Senate Democrats passed their climate and healthcare spending package on Sunday, sending the legislation to the House and bringing Joe Biden one step closer to a significant legislative victory ahead of crucial midterm elections in November.If signed into law, the bill, formally known as the Inflation Reduction Act, would allocate $369bn to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and investing in renewable energy sources. Experts have estimated the climate provisions of the bill will reduce America’s planet-heating emissions by about 40% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels.Climate bill could slash US emissions by 40% – if Democrats can pass itRead moreDemocrats have promised the bill will lower healthcare costs for millions of Americans by allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices and capping Medicare recipients’ out-of-pocket prescription drug prices at $2,000 a year. Those who receive health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplace are also expected to see lower premium costs.The legislation includes a number of tax provisions to cover the costs of these policies, bringing in $739bn for the government and resulting in an overall deficit reduction of roughly $300bn. The policy changes include a new corporate minimum tax, a 1% excise tax on stock buybacks and stricter enforcement by the Internal Revenue Service.“Today, Senate Democrats sided with American families over special interests, voting to lower the cost of prescription drugs, health insurance and everyday energy costs and reduce the deficit, while making the wealthiest corporations finally pay their fair share,” Biden said in a statement celebrating the bill’s passage. “I ran for president promising to make government work for working families again, and that is what this bill does – period.”The final Senate vote was 51-50, with every Democrat supporting the bill while all 50 of their Republican colleagues opposed the legislation. With the Senate evenly divided on the bill’s passage, Vice-President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote.Because Democrats used the reconciliation process to advance the bill, they needed only a simple majority to pass the proposal, allowing them to avoid a Republican filibuster.But the choice to use reconciliation also somewhat limited what Democrats could include in their bill. The Senate parliamentarian ruled on Saturday that a key healthcare provision, which would have placed inflation-related caps on companies’ ability to raise prescription drug prices for private insurance plans, ran afoul of reconciliation rules. Another proposal to cap the cost of insulin in the private insurance market at $35 a month was also stripped out of the bill after 43 Senate Republicans voted to block the policy on procedural grounds.Still, Democrats celebrated that the Senate parliamentarian allowed most of their healthcare and climate provisions to move forward.“While there was one unfortunate ruling in that the inflation rebate is more limited in scope, the overall program remains intact and we are one step closer to finally taking on big pharma and lowering Rx drug prices for millions of Americans,” the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said on Saturday.Democratic leaders previously had to alter the tax provisions of the bill to secure the vote of Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who announced her support for the proposal on Thursday.Sinema caused some last-minute hand-wringing among Democrats on Sunday, as she pushed for changes to the new corporate minimum tax that would exempt some businesses from the policy. Democratic senators ultimately reached an agreement with Sinema to approve the exemption, which was paid for by extending loss limitations for pass-through businesses.Sinema was considered the last Democratic holdout in the negotiations, after fellow centrist Joe Manchin said he would vote in favor of the bill. The Senate’s approval of the bill came nearly eight months after Manchin abruptly scuttled talks over the Build Back Better Act, which was viewed as Biden’s signature legislative proposal. After tanking that bill, Manchin spent months participating in quiet deliberations with Schumer over another spending package that was more focused on reducing the federal deficit and tackling record-high inflation.The resulting bill was able to win the support of the entire Senate Democratic caucus on Sunday, even though the legislation is much smaller in scope than the Build Back Better Act.The bill’s narrower focus frustrated the progressive senator Bernie Sanders, who criticized the compromise in a Saturday floor speech. Sanders complained that the legislation would do little to help working Americans struggling to keep up with rising prices, and he unsuccessfully pushed for expanding the bill to further lower healthcare costs.“This legislation does not address the reality that we have more income and wealth inequality today than at any time in the last hundred years,” Sanders said. “This bill does nothing to address the systemic dysfunctionality of the American healthcare system.”Despite that criticism, Sanders backed the final version of the bill. The Senate’s approval followed a marathon session that lasted overnight and into Sunday afternoon, as Republicans forced votes on dozens of proposed changes to the spending package. Democrats remained mostly unified in opposing Republicans’ amendments, keeping the bill unchanged and ensuring the legislation’s passage.“It’s been a long, tough and winding road. But at last, at last we have arrived,” Schumer said on Sunday. “I know it’s been a long day and a long night, but we’ve gotten it done. Today, after more than a year of hard work, the Senate is making history.”Republicans fiercely criticized the bill, rejecting Democrats’ arguments that the legislation will help tackle rising prices. According to a report issued by Moody’s Analytics, the bill will “modestly reduce inflation over the 10-year budget horizon”.“Democrats want to ram through hundreds of billions of dollars in tax hikes and hundreds of billions of dollars in reckless spending – and for what?” the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said in a Saturday floor speech. “For a so-called inflation bill that will not meaningfully reduce inflation at all.”House Democrats have dismissed Republicans’ criticism of the bill, insisting they will swiftly pass the legislation and send it to Biden’s desk. The majority leader, Steny Hoyer, has said the House will return on Friday to take up the legislation, and Democrats do not need any Republican votes to pass the bill.The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has promised that the chamber would move quickly as soon as the Senate gave the bill its stamp of approval. She told reporters at a press conference last week, “When they send it to us, we’ll pass it.”TopicsUS SenateClimate crisisDemocratsUS politicsUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Democratic ads boosted extremists in Republican primaries. Was that wise?

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      Democratic ads boosted extremists in Republican primaries. Was that wise? Helping election-denying, Trump-endorsed candidates may secure a more beatable general election opponent but some see it as a cynical and morally dubious moveWhen Peter Meijer voted to impeach Donald Trump, breaking with nearly all of his Republican colleagues in one of his first acts as a newly elected member of Congress, Democrats praised him as the kind of principled conservative his party – and the nation – desperately needed.But this election season, as Meijer fought for his political survival against a Trump-endorsed election denier in a primary contest for a Michigan House seat, Democrats twisted the knife and helped his extremist opponent win.It is part of a risky, and some say downright dangerous, strategy Democrats are using in races for House, Senate and governor: spending money in Republican primaries to elevate far-right candidates over more mainstream conservatives in the hope that voters will recoil from the election-denying radicals in November.How a Trump-backed ‘QAnon whack job’ won with Democratic ‘collusion’Read moreIn Michigan, the gamble paid off – for now. Meijer lost after the House Democrats’ official campaign arm spent $425,000 to elevate Meijer’s opponent, John Gibbs, a former Trump administration official who asserted, falsely, that Joe Biden’s victory was “simply mathematically impossible”.It is impossible to know what impact the Democrats’ ad had on the race, but cost more than the Gibbs campaign raised.Now, as the primary season nears its conclusion and the political battlefield takes shape, Democrats will soon learn whether the gambit was successful. While election deniers have prevailed in Republican primaries across the country without any aid from Democrats, critics say the effort has already undermined the party’s grave warnings about the threats to democracy.“It is immoral and dangerous,” said Richard Hasen, a UCLA law professor and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project. He said the risk of miscalculation was great, particularly at a moment when the January 6 committee is attempting to show just how destructive Trump’s stolen election myth has been for American democracy.“It’s hard for Democrats to take the high road when they’re cynically boosting some of these candidates in order to try to gain an advantage in the general election,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that what Democrats are doing is as bad as what Republicans are doing, but it still makes it objectionable.”Meijer’s defeat has fueled a sharp debate among Democrats over the potential perils of the tactic, especially as the party warns of the risks posed by these very Republicans. But others argue it’s a necessary and calculated gamble in pursuit of keeping a dangerous party from winning power.“If you let Republicans back in power, it is going to be those Maga Republicans who are going to take away your rights, your benefits and your freedom,” Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said, defending the strategy in a recent interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “We need to stop it.”The president’s party historically loses ground during the midterms. Decades-high inflation and widespread frustration with leaders in Washington have dragged Joe Biden’s approval ratings to record lows, hampering Democrats’ efforts to preserve their razor-thin majorities in Congress.The ads are ostensibly scripted as an attack – highlighting a candidate’s loyalty to Trump and their conservative views on abortion. In Michigan, for example, Democrats charged that Gibbs was “handpicked by Trump to run for Congress” and “too conservative” for the district. But when aired during a primary, the message is intended to appeal to the conservative base.“The voters in the Republican primary had agency,” said Bill Saxton, the Democratic party chair in Kent county. “They had two choices.”Saxton, whose county is situated in the west Michigan district, said it was now time to set aside the bickering over tactics and focus on the real threat: Gibbs’s extremism.In 2020, Gibbs could not win Senate confirmation to direct Trump’s Office of Personnel Management over past comments he made, among them calling Democrats the party of “‘Islam, gender-bending, anti-police, ‘u racist!’”. Democrats’ efforts to pick their opponents extends far beyond a single Michigan House race. They have deployed this strategy in House, Senate and governor’s races across the country.In Maryland, the Democratic Governors Association boosted Dan Cox, who attended the January 6 rally and called Vice-President Mike Pence a “traitor” for not stopping the congressional certification of Biden’s victory as Trump wished. He won the party’s nomination for governor. That was after Democrats’ spent millions of dollars to successfully promote the Trump-backed election denier in the Illinois Republican gubernatorial primary. Both states lean Democratic and the party is reasonably confident their candidate will prevail.The race causing the most angst is in battleground Pennsylvania. There the Democratic nominee for governor, Josh Shapiro, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in TV ads boosting the rightwing extremist Doug Mastriano – far more than the candidate spent on his own campaign. Mastriano, who attended the January 6 rally and has cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 election, is now the Republican nominee in a swing state where the chief elections officer is appointed by the governor.Polls show a tight race.The strategy hasn’t always worked. In California, the incumbent Republican congressman David Valadao narrowly beat back a rightwing challenger despite Democratic spending on ads that highlighted his vote to impeach Trump.And in Colorado, an outside group aligned with Democrats spent millions to boost an election denier who marched to the Capitol with rioters on January 6 over a relatively moderate Republican, businessman Joe O’Dea, in the race to take on the Democratic senator Michael Bennet. O’Dea won and now the resources Democrats spent to make him unpalatable to the Republican base may help him appeal to moderate and independent swing voters.Meddling in the opposition’s primary is not a new tactic. In 2012, Claire McCaskill, then a Democratic senator from Missouri, was facing a difficult re-election in a state where Barack Obama was deeply unpopular.Surveying her prospective opponents, she devised a plan to lift the one she thought would be the weakest candidate, the far-right congressman Todd Akin. It worked: he won the primary, and she beat him decisively in the general.But a decade later, she is urging caution.“This has to be done very carefully,” she told NPR, adding: “You also have to be careful what you wish for.”Maloney, the DCCC chair, has said the committee has a “high bar” for meddling in a Republican primary, but insisted that there are races where it “does make sense”. Still, it has become an issue for Maloney in his own primary race, where his challenger, Alessandra Biaggi, has accused him of playing “Russian roulette with our democracy”.Some Democrats have also expressed misgivings about punishing the few Republicans willing to stand up to Trump. David Axelrod, a longtime Democratic strategist and political adviser to Barack Obama, said Democrats’ involvement in Meijer’s primary “makes them an instrument of Trump’s vengeance”.Trump’s support has been one of the most decisive factors in choosing the party’s standard bearers, not Democrats, said David Turner, a spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association. In these races, he said Democrats seized the opportunity to expose a prospective opponent’s extremism early and pre-emptively blunt any attempt to “pivot” toward the mainstream during the general election.Turner blamed Republican leaders for being “too cowardly to tell their voters the truth” about the 2020 election, a failure that he said ensured the success of election-deniers in the GOP’s 2022 nominating contests.In Pennsylvania, one of Mastriano’s chief rivals was Lou Barletta, a signatory to the state’s fake elector scheme. And in Colorado, the candidate deemed more moderate won the Republican primary for governor but then selected an election denier to be her running mate.“There aren’t any Liz Cheneys running for governor,” he said, referring to the Republican vice chair of the January 6 committee who may lose her primary over efforts to hold Trump accountable. “In terms of gubernatorial candidates, the scary part is that all these Republicans are regurgitating the same Maga talking points.”Still, some Democrats argue that they are being held to a different standard than Republicans, who have failed to hold Trump and loyalists in Congress accountable. They say Republicans often cheer their leaders for being ruthless while Democrats are criticized for refusing to play hardball, especially when the stakes are the highest.As a result of gerrymandering, Republican dominance of the redistricting process and historical trends, Democrats see few opportunities to flip House seats this cycle. Michigan’s third congressional district is one of them.Gibbs has downplayed the impact of the ads, and projected confidence that he can win in November.Hillary Scholten, the Democrat who will face him in the Michigan House race and had no involvement in the DCCC’s decision, called the focus on her party’s tactics an unwanted distraction from the issues voters care most about.Scholten said: “It is the Republicans that decided who they wanted in their primary, and they chose John Gibbs, an extremist that embraces conspiracy theories and is way out of step with west Michigan. I’m focused on making sure he doesn’t get to Congress.”Her newly redrawn Michigan district is considerably more favorable to Democrats this cycle than it was two years ago. And many Democrats believe Scholten, a former justice department attorney in the Obama administration who came close to beating Meijer in 2020, would have been a strong contender in a rematch.While many are confident she can beat Gibbs, those still haunted by Trump’s against-the-odds victory in 2016 fear that in a “wave” election, Republicans deemed unelectable could be swept to power.On the eve of his primary race, Meijer lashed Democrats in an online essay that accused them of “sell[ing] out any pretense of principle for political expediency”.“Republican voters will be blamed if any of these candidates are ultimately elected,” Meijer wrote in an online essay published on the eve of the primary, “but there is no doubt Democrats’ fingerprints will be on the weapon. We should never forget it.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsDemocratsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Senate Democrats begin vote on landmark $430bn climate bill

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      Senate Democrats begin vote on landmark $430bn climate billSenate kicks off ‘vote-a-rama’ that could drag on as Republicans have promised to try to stall the process US Senate Democrats on Saturday began a vote on a bill that would address key elements of President Joe Biden’s agenda, tackling climate change, lowering the cost of energy and senior citizens’ drugs and forcing the wealthy to pay more taxes.Indiana becomes first US state post-Roe to ban most abortionsRead moreEarlier, a Senate rulemaker determined that the lion’s share of the $430bn bill could be passed with only a simple majority, bypassing a filibuster rule requiring 60 votes in the 100-seat chamber to advance most legislation and enabling Democrats to pass it over Republican objections, majority leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.Democrats hope that the legislation will give a boost to their candidates in the 8 November midterm elections in which Biden’s party is in an uphill battle to retain its narrow control of the Senate and House of Representatives.“Democrats have received extremely good news,” Schumer said in the statement. “Medicare will finally be allowed to negotiate drug prices … This is a major victory for the American people.“Medicare is the government health insurance program for people age 65 and older.There are three main parts to the bill: a 15% minimum tax on corporations, tougher IRS enforcement and a new excise tax on stock buybacks. The legislation has $430 billion in new spending along with raising more than $740 billion in new revenues.Beside billions of dollars to encourage the production and purchase of more electric vehicles and foster clean energy, the bill would set $4 billion in new federal drought relief funds. The latter is a move that could help the re-election campaigns of Democratic Senators Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada and Mark Kelly in Arizona.Republicans have promised to do everything they can to stall or block the bill, with Senator Lindsey Graham on Friday calling the legislation “this jihad they’re on to tax and spend.”Democrats aim to push the bill through the Senate using an arcane and complicated “reconciliation” procedure allowing passage without any Republican support in the chamber divided 50-50 between the parties, with the Democrats in control because Kamala Harris, the vice-president, can cast a tie-breaking vote.One provision cut from the bill would have forced drug companies to refund money to both government and private health plans if drug prices rise more quickly than inflation. The Senate arbiter, known as the parliamentarian, ruled that measure could not apply to private industry.The beginning of the vote kicks off an arduous process that could extend into Sunday or early next week, with senators offering amendment after amendment in a time-consuming “vote-a-rama”.Senators on the left such as Bernie Sanders are likely to try to expand the scope of the bill to include new programs such as federal subsidies for childcare or home healthcare for the elderly. Republicans have signaled that they will offer plenty of amendments touching on another issue: immigrants coming across the US border with Mexico.TopicsUS SenateUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesDemocratsUS politicsUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More

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      Progressives bullish despite mixed results in Democratic primaries

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      Progressives bullish despite mixed results in Democratic primariesMorale-boosting victories were tempered by bruising defeats but US leftwingers feel the party’s center of gravity is shifting Progressives watching the latest US primary results last Tuesday night might have felt understandably torn.Pro-Israel groups denounced after pouring funds into primary raceRead moreWhile two of the most leftwing members of the House, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Cori Bush of Missouri, easily fended off their challengers, Andy Levin lost in his Michigan primary to a much more centrist colleague, Haley Stevens.The results epitomized the mixed success that progressive Democrats in the US have seen in this primary season, which will draw to a close over the next few weeks.Although a number of progressive candidates have secured important victories in congressional primaries, centrists have prevailed in some of the most high-profile races. Rather than being discouraged by their losses, however, progressive groups are celebrating their wins and strategizing about how to continue pushing the Democratic party to the left on crucial issues as they look ahead to November’s midterm elections.Those progressive groups point to the success of congressional candidates like Greg Casar and Jasmine Crockett in Texas and Summer Lee in Pennsylvania to demonstrate how their movement made important gains this year. All three of those candidates won their primaries in reliably Democratic districts, meaning they will almost certainly be elected to Congress in November, boosting the strength of the left of the party.“I started the season with trying to temper my own and my organization’s expectations for what we were able to accomplish,” said Natalia Salgado, director of federal affairs for the Working Families party. “I’m walking away feeling like we far exceeded what our expectations were, and I feel like we truly met our moment.”The primary victories of incumbents like Tlaib and Bush have also proven how progressive lawmakers can have staying power in Congress and potentially build long political careers.“I think a lot of centrists try to paint our movement and the candidates that come from our movement as being sort of temporary,” Salgado said. “I think what [Tlaib and Bush] demonstrate is that progressives are not only able to speak with authenticity and credibility to their electorates, but they are also able to go into Congress and govern like serious lawmakers.”But progressives have also seen some bruising primary losses this year.In Texas, Jessica Cisneros lost an extremely close runoff race to Congressman Henry Cuellar, who is the last anti-abortion Democrat serving in the House. Progressive Nina Turner lost her rematch primary race against Congresswoman Shontel Brown, and Maryland’s Donna Edwards, seeking to return to the House after leaving office in 2017, was defeated by a more centrist candidate.Progressives have blamed some of those losses on massive spending from outside groups aimed at undermining their candidates. Pro-Israel groups like the United Democracy Project, affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), and the Democratic Majority for Israel spent millions of dollars attacking progressive candidates and promoting their centrist opponents.The UDP spent more than $4m against Edwards alone, even though the former congresswoman had secured the endorsements of prominent Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.“I think that should be a real wake-up call for the entire Democratic party, not just progressives,” said Usamah Andrabi, candidate communications manager for the progressive group Justice Democrats. “Mainstream Democrats and Democratic leadership think that they have power over these corporate Super Pacs, but I think [Edwards’s] election shows just how wrong they are.”Andrabi and other progressive leaders have also criticized Democratic leaders for helping to prop up centrist incumbents like Cuellar. In the final days of Cuellar’s race against Cisneros, Pelosi recorded a robocall for the congressman, while the House majority whip, Jim Clyburn, traveled to Texas to campaign alongside his colleague.To Andrabi, Democratic leaders’ aid to Cuellar sent a dangerous message to voters that the party does not live up to the values it espouses ahead of November, when Republicans are heavily favored to regain control of the House.“How can you be the party that supports reproductive freedom, while also supporting the last anti-abortion Democrat in the House?” Andrabi said. “It just doesn’t line up.”But Salgado saw a silver lining to the many hurdles that progressive candidates have faced this primary season. The extensive efforts by big money groups and centrist leaders to promote their preferred candidates demonstrated that progressives are being taken seriously as a political movement, she argued.“If progressives weren’t being successful and weren’t seen as a threat, I don’t know that the forces of the Democratic party – with a capital D – and the centrist and moderate forces in our country and the big money forces would have coalesced in the way that they did,” Salgado said.Even in the races where progressives lost, their supporters say those candidates helped to shape the conversation around important issues such as racial justice and the climate crisis. Given that the Democratic party has moved to the left in recent years, progressives hope that their candidates’ platforms will help persuade voters to embrace even more liberal reforms.“There has been a real battle, especially in the last decade and a half, to redefine what the Democratic party means,” said Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president and executive director of the young progressive voting group NextGen America. “Whether it’s the minimum wage, taxing the rich, climate change, or policing and immigration, progressives are actually winning. They are moving the Democratic party in the right direction.”As the primary season starts to wind down and Democrats prepare for the general elections in the fall, progressives have promised to do everything they can to prevent Republicans from regaining control of Congress. Salgado said her group was eager to use the insight it has gained over the past several months to help Democratic candidates win in November.“We truly have a winning formula for being able to beat back big money,” Salgado said. “When we head into the general election, when we’re all on the same team, let’s take the lessons learned from this cycle … to keep out the true enemy, to keep out insurrectionists, to keep out fascists from taking over our country.”Centrists and progressives alike agree that the stakes could not be higher for this year’s midterm elections, which will mark the first time that every House member will be on the ballot since the January 6 insurrection.As Donald Trump and many of his allies continue to spread lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 election, progressives are committed to putting any lingering disappointment about primary results behind them.“Even if you didn’t get the candidate of choice, the future of democracy is in your hands,” Salgado said. “For me, the choice is clear, and for voters, we hope the choice is clear as well.”TopicsDemocratsUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022featuresReuse this content More