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      Schumer and Manchin’s ‘dirty side deal’ to fast-track pipelines faces backlash

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      Schumer and Manchin’s ‘dirty side deal’ to fast-track pipelines faces backlashScientists and environmental groups call proposed legislation a ‘giveaway’ to fossil fuel industry that will gut protections Scientists, health experts and environmental groups have condemned new legislation negotiated in secret by the fossil-fuel-friendly Democratic senator Joe Manchin and the Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, which will fast-track major energy projects by gutting clean water and environmental protections.Senator Joe Manchin unveils bill that would expedite federal energy projectsRead moreThe permitting bill published on Wednesday was the result of a deal between Manchin and Democratic leaders, which secured the West Virginia senator’s vote for Joe Biden’s historic climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, which Manchin held up for months.The bill mandates all permits for the Mountain Valley pipeline (MVP), a project long delayed by environmental violations and judicial rulings, be issued within 30 days of passage and strips away virtually any scope for judicial review.Democratic leaders want to push through Manchin’s bill without debate or analysis, and are expected to attach the legislation to a funding measure Congress must pass before 1 October.Energy industry associations have widely welcomed the reforms but opposition from Democrats and Republicans could scupper the deal.Critics say the bill is a giveaway to the fossil fuel lobby, paving the way for oil and gas production that will stop the US meeting its obligations to cut greenhouse gases and lead to further environmental injustices for people of color, Indigenous communities and low-income areas. It slashes judicial and state powers and oversight, handing Washington greater control over major projects.“This is not permitting reform,” said the Greenpeace USA co-executive director Ebony Twilley Martin. “This is permitting a giveaway that benefits those who continue to line their pockets at the expense of those affected by climate disasters. Our country cannot afford any new oil, gas or coal projects if we’re going to avoid climate catastrophe.”On Thursday, more than 400 scientists, doctors and nurses delivered a letter imploring Schumer and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to reject the deal. “The scientific consensus is now crystal clear … fossil fuel projects carry enormous risks to public health … we need to leave oil, gas and coal in the ground and turn off the spigot of carbon pouring into the air.”Jennifer K Falcon, an Indigenous environmentalist from the Ikiya Collective, said: “Our communities have already lost so much from environmental racism but there is so much to save. [They] are not sacrifice zones for corrupt politicians like Manchin and Schumer who benefit from big oil’s windfall profits.“The science is clear about the worsening climate crisis. We have no time to waste on dirty side deals.”Manchin has received more campaign contributions from fossil fuel industries than any other lawmaker this election cycle, according to Open Secrets.The legislative side deal requires Biden to designate at least 25 energy projects of strategic national importance for federal review within 90 days of passage. The projects must include at least five that produce, process, transport or store fossil fuels or biofuels, as well as six that are not fossil fuels and four mining projects.The bill mandates a two-year limit on environmental reviews for major projects – regardless of their complexity and potential for harming the environment, water supplies and human health.According to Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, the bill contains the most significant loss of protections under the bedrock National Environmental Policy Act (Nepa) and the Clean Water Act since at least the last Bush administration, when Republicans had full control of Congress.“Any member of Congress who claims this disastrous legislation is vital for ramping up renewables either doesn’t understand or is ignoring the enormous fossil fuel giveaways at stake,” Hartl said.The bill was negotiated under a cloak of secrecy. Passage through the Senate is far from assured. A small group of progressive Democrats are looking to separate Manchin’s legislation from the stopgap funding bill, so they can vote against the permitting bill without voting to shut down the government.Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon has organised a letter to Schumer, with the support of Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont – a move that mirrors a similar plea by 77 House progressives earlier this month.The letter, which was leaked to Politico, states: “We have heard extensive concerns from the environmental justice community regarding the proposed permitting reforms and are writing to convey the importance of those concerns, and to let you know that we share them.”On Tuesday, Schumer said he planned to add permitting reform to the spending bill and “get it done”.But Republicans who want more radical regulatory and permitting reforms may also vote against the bill, which requires 60 votes to move to the House. Earlier this month, 46 Republicans signed on to an alternative permitting bill introduced by the other West Virginian senator, Shelley Moore Capito.Schumer’s decision to capitulate to Manchin has angered progressives.Manchin agreed to back his party’s historic climate legislation before the midterm elections but only after negotiating a side deal to fast-track the MVP, a shale gas pipeline which would stretch 303 miles across the Appalachian mountains from north-western West Virginia to southern Virginia.Before construction was suspended, the MVP had produced more than 350 water quality violations. Manchin’s bill exempts the MVP from the Endangered Species Act, which experts say will push two species – the Roanoke logperch and the candy darter – much closer toward extinction.On Wednesday, the Democratic senator Tim Kaine, of Virginia, said he could not support the “highly unusual provisions” regarding the MVP which “eliminate any judicial review”. Kaine said he had been excluded from talks, even though 100 miles of the pipeline would run through his state.Raúl Grijalva, chair of the House natural resources committee, said: “These dangerous permitting shortcuts have been on industry wishlists for years. And now they’ve added the Mountain Valley pipeline approval as the rotten cherry on top of the pile.“The very fact that this fossil fuel brainchild is being force-fed into must-pass government funding speaks to its unpopularity. My colleagues and I don’t want this. The communities that are already hit hardest by the fossil fuel industry’s messes certainly don’t want or deserve this. Even Republicans don’t want this. Right now, our focus should be on keeping the government open, not destructive, unrelated riders.”In favor of the bill Gregory Wetstone, chief executive of the American Council on Renewable Energy, said it “includes provisions that will help streamline the transmission approval process, improving our ability to meet our nation’s decarbonisation goals”.Heather Zichal, chief executive of the American Clean Power Association, said: “Our current permitting system is overly cumbersome and mired in delays, hamstringing our ability to grow the clean energy economy.”TopicsUS SenateFossil fuelsOil (Environment)Gas (Environment)Oil (Business)Gas (Business)Joe ManchinnewsReuse this content More

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      White House rejects ‘sham referendums’ in occupied Ukraine – as it happened

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      National security adviser Jake Sullivan says the Biden administration will be “unequivocal” in rejecting the “sham referendums” in four Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.Speaking at a White House press briefing, Sullivan said the announcement of the votes in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which analysts say is a likely forerunner to the Kremlin formally annexing the provinces, is “an affront to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity that underpin the international system”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We know that these referenda will be manipulated. We know that Russia will use the sham referenda as a basis to purportedly annex these territories, either now or in the future.
      Let me be clear, if this does transpire, the United States will never recognize Russia’s claims to any purportedly annexed parts of Ukraine. We will never recognize this territory as anything other than a part of Ukraine. We reject Russia’s actions unequivocally.Sullivan also addressed reports of new Russian mobilization measures, including the calling up of prisoners to shore up depleted troop numbers:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}This is reflective of Russia’s struggles in Ukraine. [Russian president Vladimir Putin] may be resorting to partial mobilization, forcing even more Russians to go fight his brutal war in Ukraine, in part because they simply need more personnel and manpower given the success that Ukraine has had on the battlefield, particularly in the north east but even pushing into other parts of previously occupied territory.
      The bottom line is that Russia is throwing together sham referendums on three days’ notice as they continue to lose ground on the battlefield and as more world leaders distance themselves from Russia on the public stage.
      Russia is scraping for personnel to throw into this fight. These are not the actions of the competent country. These are not acts of strength, quite the opposite.That’s a wrap on Tuesday’s US politics blog. Thanks for joining us.It was a brutal afternoon for Donald Trump, whose lawyers were excoriated by the “special master” in his document-hoarding case for having no proof to back up the former president’s vocal proclamations he declassified the papers before he left office.Judge Raymond Dearie, who was the Trump team’s nomination to act as independent arbiter in the justice department’s criminal investigation, told his attorneys at a hearing in New York: “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”Here’s what else we followed:
      Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis refused to confirm reports he was behind another planeload of migrants reportedly sent on Tuesday to Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware. The White House decried as “a political stunt” DeSantis’s action to dump about 50 Venezuelan migrants in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, last week.
      The flow of so-called “dark money” in politics is damaging democracy in the US and eroding public trust, Joe Biden said at an afternoon briefing in which he called on Congress to pass the Disclose Act requiring sizeable campaign donations to be declared.
      The White House says the US will never accept Russia attempting to annex occupied areas of Ukraine through “sham” referendums, the Biden administration’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan told a press briefing at the White House.
      Sullivan offered a preview of Joe Biden’s address to the United Nations general assembly on Wednesday, saying the president will offer a strong rebuke of Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, and make “significant new announcements” about his government’s investments to address global food insecurity.
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden was “closely monitoring” the devastating impact of Hurricane Fiona on Puerto Rico, and says hundreds of federal emergency workers are already on the ground, including Fema administrator Deanne Criswell.
      Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell says he is now “cautiously optimistic” about his party’s chances of winning back control of the chamber in November’s midterm elections, Axios reports. The former Senate leader had previously expressed doubt about a Republican majority.
      Please join us again tomorrow.If Judge Raymond Dearie’s first meeting with Donald Trump’s lawyers on Tuesday is anything to go by, the former president’s insistence on a “special master” for his classified documents case is backfiring spectacularly.According to reports of their meeting in New York this afternoon, which was also attended by attorneys for the justice department, Dearie was brutal in his dismissal of the Trump legal team’s assertions that papers marked “top secret” found at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach last month were not classified.Trump has claimed, with no evidence whatsoever, that he declassified the documents before he left office. And now Dearie, who was proposed by Trump’s team to serve as the special master to independently vet the documents, is calling him on it, demanding to see proof from his lawyers that such an act took place.They had none.“You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” Dearie said, according to Politico.NEW: Special master in Trump Mar-a-Lago docs case chides Trump lawyers for declining to produce evidence of declassification. Judge Dearie: ‘You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.’ More from Brooklyn. w/@kyledcheneyhttps://t.co/urQaYOP1F7— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) September 20, 2022
      Dearie was appointed last week to the role of independent arbiter by Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, in a surprise ruling that halted the justice department’s criminal investigation into thousands of documents found in the FBI search.Trump had claimed he had earlier returned to the National Archives all the boxes of documents he took from the White House to Florida when he left office in January 2021.Cannon denied a request from the justice department to be allowed to resume their investigation last week, prompting an immediate appeal, and an indication from department lawyers on Tuesday they were prepared to take their argument to the supreme court.Dearie indicated that he considered closed the issue of whether the documents were classified or not.“What business is it of the court?” he said.“As far as I’m concerned, that’s the end of the matter.”I’d like to report a murder. https://t.co/XQue0soT9l— George Conway🌻 (@gtconway3d) September 20, 2022
      The “special master” appointed to look into top secret documents seized by the FBI last month in a search of Donald Trump’s Florida home has met with lawyers for the former president and the justice department this afternoon.According to early accounts, Judge Raymond Dearie did not appear sympathetic to Trump’s assertions, which haven’t been repeated by his legal team on the record, that he declassified the documents before leaving office.The justice department has argued the papers are in fact classified, and it needs to be allowed to continue its investigation into Trump’s improper handling of them.We’ll have more details of the meeting as we learn them.BREAKING: Judge Dearie makes clear he is taking government’s position that the classified Mar-a-Lago documents are in fact classified.“What business is it of the court? … As far as I’m concerned that’s the end of it.”Trump’s insistence on a special master is NOT going well.— Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) September 20, 2022
      Ron DeSantis is refusing to confirm reports that he’s sent another planeload of migrants that reports suggest will imminently touch down in Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware.The White House on Tuesday decried as “a political stunt” the Republican Florida governor’s action to dump about 50 Venezuelan migrants in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, last week, and today’s reported flight from Texas of more to a small airport in Delaware.The Biden administration was “coordinating” with federal and local authorities in Delaware to aid those on the flight, the White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at her afternoon briefing.She said DeSantis had not attempted to contact the administration:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Alerting Fox News, and not city or state officials about a plan to abandon children fleeing communism on the side of the street is not burden sharing. It is a cruel, premeditated political stunt.DeSantis, speaking at a morning press conference in Bradenton, Florida, refused to say he was behind today’s reported flight of migrants to Delaware, WESH2 News said.“I cannot confirm that, I can’t,” DeSantis said when asked by reporters if he had arranged the flight.He also defended dropping off the Massachusetts migrants with no notice, blamed the government, and attempted to paint himself as their savior:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Those migrants were being treated horribly by Biden. They were hungry, homeless, had no opportunity at all.DeSantis’s asylum flights, meanwhile, are now the subject of a criminal inquiry in Texas:Criminal investigation launched into DeSantis asylum seeker flightsRead moreThe flow of so-called “dark money” in politics is damaging democracy in the US and eroding public trust, Joe Biden has said at an afternoon briefing in which he called on Congress to pass the Disclose Act requiring sizeable campaign donations to be declared.In the address from the White House, the president highlighted a recent example of an anonymous donor who secretly transferred $1.6bn to a Republican political group as one reason for needing to curb the “influence on our elections” of undeclared streams of cash.Biden called on Republicans to join congressional Democrats to sign the act, which would require the disclosure of individual donations of $10,000 and above during an election cycle, and ban foreign money outright:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}A conservative activist who spent decades working to put enough conservative justices on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade now has access to $1.6bn in dark money to do more damage and, from our perspective, restrict more freedoms.
      Dark money erodes public trust. Republicans should join Democrats to pass the Disclose Act and to get it on my desk right away.
      Dark money has become so common in our politics, I believe sunlight is the best disinfectant. Biden said Republicans had so far shown little interest in “more openness and accountability” other than “Republican governors and state legislatures in Tennessee and Wyoming that have passed disclosure laws”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Let’s remember, getting dark money out of our politics has been a bipartisan issue in the past. My deceased friend [Republican former Arizona senator] John McCain spent a lot of time fighting for campaign finance reform.
      For him, it was a matter of fundamental fairness. And he was 100% right about that.Here’s where things stand midway through a busy day in US politics:
      The White House says the US will never accept Russia attempting to annex occupied areas of Ukraine through “sham” referendums, the Biden administration’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan told a press briefing at the White House.
      Sullivan offered a preview of Joe Biden’s address to the United Nations general assembly on Wednesday, saying the president will offer a strong rebuke of Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, and make “significant new announcements” about his government’s investments to address global food insecurity.
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden was “closely monitoring” the devastating impact of Hurricane Fiona on Puerto Rico, and says hundreds of federal emergency workers are already on the ground, including Fema administrator Deanne Criswell.
      Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell says he is now “cautiously optimistic” about his party’s chances of winning back control of the chamber in November’s midterm elections, Axios reports. The former Senate leader had previously expressed doubt about a Republican majority.
      National security adviser Jake Sullivan says the Biden administration will be “unequivocal” in rejecting the “sham referendums” in four Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.Speaking at a White House press briefing, Sullivan said the announcement of the votes in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which analysts say is a likely forerunner to the Kremlin formally annexing the provinces, is “an affront to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity that underpin the international system”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We know that these referenda will be manipulated. We know that Russia will use the sham referenda as a basis to purportedly annex these territories, either now or in the future.
      Let me be clear, if this does transpire, the United States will never recognize Russia’s claims to any purportedly annexed parts of Ukraine. We will never recognize this territory as anything other than a part of Ukraine. We reject Russia’s actions unequivocally.Sullivan also addressed reports of new Russian mobilization measures, including the calling up of prisoners to shore up depleted troop numbers:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}This is reflective of Russia’s struggles in Ukraine. [Russian president Vladimir Putin] may be resorting to partial mobilization, forcing even more Russians to go fight his brutal war in Ukraine, in part because they simply need more personnel and manpower given the success that Ukraine has had on the battlefield, particularly in the north east but even pushing into other parts of previously occupied territory.
      The bottom line is that Russia is throwing together sham referendums on three days’ notice as they continue to lose ground on the battlefield and as more world leaders distance themselves from Russia on the public stage.
      Russia is scraping for personnel to throw into this fight. These are not the actions of the competent country. These are not acts of strength, quite the opposite.Joe Biden is heading for the United Nations summit in New York “with the wind at his back”, and will deliver a firm rebuke of Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, national security adviser Jake Sullivan is telling reporters at the White House.He’s speaking at the daily press briefing and outlining what the president will be talking about in his address to the UN general assembly on Wednesday morning, as well as taking a dig at world leaders who won’t be there:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’re making historic investments at home; our alliances are stronger than they’ve been in modern memory; our robust, united support for Ukraine has helped the Ukrainians push back against Russian aggression; and we’re leading the world in response to the most significant transnational challenges that the world faces from global health to global food security to global supply chains to tackling the climate crisis.
      Meanwhile, our competitors are facing increasingly strong headwinds, and neither President Xi [Jinping of China] nor [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin are even showing up to this global gathering.Sullivan says Biden will concentrate on foreign policy in his address on Wednesday morning:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}He’ll offer a firm rebuke of Russia’s unjust war in Ukraine and make a call to the world to continue to stand against the naked aggression that we’ve seen these past several months.
      He will underscore the importance of strengthening the UN and reaffirm core tenets of its charter at a time when a permanent member of the security council has struck at the very heart of the charter by challenging the principle of territorial integrity and sovereignty.Sullivan adds Biden will also make “significant new announcements” about the US government’s investments to address global food insecurity, and hold a number of meetings with other world leaders, including his discussions with new UK prime minister Liz Truss.An afternoon “pledging session” hosted by Biden for the global fund to fight HIV, Aids, tuberculosis and malaria is expected to “produce a historic outcome in terms of the financial commitments made by our partners and by the US”, Sullivan adds.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre says the Biden administration is “closely monitoring” the impact of Hurricane Fiona on Puerto Rico, and says hundreds of federal emergency workers are already on the ground in the island.She opened up her daily press briefing at the White House with some words of comfort:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}As the president has said, we are keeping the people of Puerto Rico in our prayers. Before the hurricane made landfall, President Biden issued an emergency disaster declaration to ensure the federal government was ready to surge resources and emergency assistance to Puerto Rico.
      The President called Governor [Pedro] Pierluisi from Air Force One to discuss Puerto Rico’s immediate needs as the storm made landfall. Today, Fema [Federal Emergency Management Agency] administrator Deanne Criswell will be on the ground to assess the emergency response.
      Hundreds of Fema and federal responders are on the ground in Puerto Rico, including US army corps of engineer power restoration experts. And urban search and rescue teams. More federal responders are arriving in the coming days.
      President Biden is receiving regular updates on the storm and these emergency efforts.Mary Peltota’s election as the first Native Alaskan to represent the state in Congress had even more historical significance.As NPR notes today, it means that for the first time, spanning back more than 230 years, Indigenous people are fully represented with a Native American, a Native Alaskan and a Native Hawaiian all in the House of Representatives.Congressman Kaiali’i Kahele of Hawaii tweeted a photo of himself with Peltota, and Sharice Davids of Kansas, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation.It has taken 233 years for the U.S. Congress to be fully represented by this country’s indigenous peoples. Tonight, a Native American, a Native Alaskan & a Native Hawaiian are sitting members of the people’s House. Welcome U.S. Representative Peltola to the 117th Congress! 🤙🏽 pic.twitter.com/AxJ8MH7aLQ— Congressman Kaiali‘i Kahele (@RepKahele) September 14, 2022
      The House press gallery notes all six Indigenous Americans who are members here.Democrat Peltota, also the first woman elected to represent Alaska in the House, beat off a challenge from the state’s former governor and Republican former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin to capture the seat last month.Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar is seizing on the occasion of National Voter Registration Day to make a new, likely quixotic, bid to make it easier to go to the polls nationwide.The Minnesota lawmaker has introduced two bills containing ideas included in a major voting rights proposal that died earlier this year. First is the Same Day Voter Registration Act, which is intended to expand Americans’ ability to register to vote at the same time as they cast ballots. The second, the Save Voters Act, would clamp down on states’ ability to kick people off voting rolls, while offering new flexibility to Americans who have recently moved and are looking to cast ballots.Don’t expect either measure to pass the chamber. Not only are senators really busy, the bills would probably need at least 10 Republican votes in addition to all Democrats to overcome a filibuster, and the GOP has showed few signs of changing its mind about such laws.Democrats fail to advance voting rights law as Senate holdouts defend filibusterRead moreOn another note, the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe is now at the reigns of the blog, and will take you through the afternoon, including Joe Biden’s speech on a proposal to require more disclosure from the super PACs that have become influential in American politics.The gears of justice continue turning in the case of the alleged government secrets found at Mar-a-Lago, with lawyers for Donald Trump facing a deadline today to file their latest response in the case. Here’s the latest from Ramon Antonio Vargas on the saga:Donald Trump’s legal team has acknowledged the possibility that the former president could be indicted amid the investigation into his retention of government secrets at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.Despite claiming days earlier that Trump couldn’t imagine being charged, his lawyers made the stark admission in a court filing on Monday proposing how to conduct an outside review of documents that were seized by the FBI in August.A special court official appointed to help administer the review process, the federal judge Raymond Dearie, had previously asked Trump to detail any materials stored at Mar-a-Lago that he may have decided to declassify. In the court filing, Trump’s lawyers said that requiring him to do so could hurt any possible defense should he later be charged, and that he should not have to “fully and specifically disclose a defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment without such a requirement being evident” during the review.Trump legal team admits possibility that ex-president could be chargedRead more More

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      Poll shows Democrats and Republicans tied for control of Congress ahead of midterms – as it happened

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      Let’s dig deeper into the two polls that came out over the weekend and amount to a mixed bag for the Democratic party as they face losing control of potentially both house of Congress in the upcoming midterm.First, the headline: voters in the NBC News poll are split over which party they’d prefer to see in charge of Congress, with 46% each backing the GOP and Democrats. That, however, is an improvement from August, when Republicans had a slight edge. GOP voters do lead in terms of enthusiasm, but not by much, which is a reversal from the double-digit lead they had earlier this year.Consider those the silver linings for the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, from a poll that otherwise confirms they will have to fight to keep their jobs. But there were also more disquieting signs from NBC’s data, such as the 47% of voters who say Biden’s policies have hurt the economy, versus the 23% who say they’ve helped and the 28% who say they’ve made no difference at all.The New York Times/Siena College poll of Hispanic voters is important because the demographic is considered a bulwark of Democratic support, with some analysts predicting that increasing numbers of Hispanic voters pose a long-term threat to the GOP’s support base. The former remains true, at least for now, with 56% percent of respondents to the poll saying they plan to vote for Democrats. Dig a little deeper and the news isn’t quite so good for Joe Biden’s party. Economic issues are the biggest motivator for Hispanic voters, but the data showed they are almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans on which party they agree with most on the economy.Polling released over the weekend confirms that Democrats will have to fight hard to keep their hold on Congress in the midterms, including with Hispanic voters, an important party bulwark. Meanwhile, Joe Biden has arrived back in Washington DC after paying his respects at the funeral for Queen Elizabeth II in London.Here’s what else happened today:
      Biden committed to providing Puerto Rico with federal support after Hurricane Fiona knocked out water and power across the island.
      The White House cheered the release of an America held hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan, saying it underscores its commitment to freeing jailed citizens worldwide.
      Congress may soon vote on a bill to stop the sorts of legal schemes that could have overturned the 2020 election results on January 6.
      As always, the legal wrangling in the Mar-a-Lago case continued.
      “Fighting zombies”. That’s how comedian Jon Stewart described the process of getting a bill through Congress in an interview.
      Senators will later this week vote on a measure that would require more disclosures from super PACS, but which could stumble in the face of Republican opposition.According to Politico, top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer announced the renewed effort to pass the DISCLOSE Act:Schumer says the Senate will vote later this week on the DISCLOSE Act, requiring more donor transparency in politics. Unlikely to get much if any GOP support— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) September 19, 2022
      Democrats have been wanting to pass such legislation for a while, but have been unable to overcome GOP opposition, HuffPosts reports:Schumer announces Senate vote this week on the DISCLOSE Act— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) September 19, 2022
      DISCLOSE Act would require super PACs to disclose donors who have given $10k or more. “Republicans will have to choose whether they want to fight the power of dark money or allow this cancer to get worse,” Schumer says— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) September 19, 2022
      Last straight up or down vote on DISCLOSE Act was in 2012. GOP filibustered https://t.co/4oMriRFJLP— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) September 19, 2022
      President Joe Biden spoke with Puerto Rico’s governor Pedro Pierluisi and promised federal support to help the recovery from Hurricane Fiona, which knocked out power and water to the island.Here’s what the White House had to say about the call, which took place as Biden returned from Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral in London:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}President Biden described the surge of Federal support to the island, where more than 300 Federal personnel are already working to assist with response and recovery. In the coming days, as damage assessments are conducted, the President said that number of support personnel will increase substantially.The President said that he will ensure that the Federal team remains on the job to get it done, especially given that Puerto Rico is still recovering from the damage of Hurricane Maria five years ago this week. Governor Pierluisi expressed his appreciation for the partnership and support that he is receiving already from the Biden Administration. Puerto Rico battles blackout and lack of safe water in wake of Hurricane FionaRead moreCase in point of the perilous moment America is in: Donald Trump continued his embrace of the extremist QAnon conspiracy theory at a weekend rally, The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe writes:Donald Trump made one of his highest-profile embraces to date of the extremist conspiracy group QAnon at a political rally in Ohio on Saturday, making the apparently deliberate choice to play music that is virtually indistinguishable from the cult organization’s adopted anthem.Dozens of the former president’s supporters in Youngstown engaged in raised-arm salutes as Trump delivered a fiery address to the background of a song his team insisted was a royalty-free tune from the internet, but to many ears it was nearly identical to the 2020 instrumental track Wwg1wga.Trump embraces QAnon at rally by playing music similar to its anthemRead more“I think we’re in the fourth and perhaps the most difficult crisis in the history of America.” That’s how acclaimed documentarian Ken Burns described where the United States is today in an interview with The Guardian’s David Smith. Read the interview here:Ken Burns is driving in heavy traffic, trying to get from New York, where he was born, to New Hampshire, where he lives and works in bucolic splendour. He made the move in 1979, not to service a grand masterplan but out of financial desperation.“I was making my first film and starving and rent was going up in New York City and I couldn’t afford it,” the documentarian recalls by phone. “I found the connection to nature incredibly important for this labour-intensive work that we do.”But when Burns’s debut film, Brooklyn Bridge, was nominated for an Oscar, friends and colleagues assumed that he would move back to New York or try Los Angeles. He surprised them. “I made the biggest, the most important professional decision, which was to stay.Ken Burns: ‘We’re in perhaps the most difficult crisis in the history of America’Read moreNegotiations over government spending bills in Congress are somewhat high risk, because if no agreement is reached, the government could be forced to shut down, as has happened repeatedly in recent years.These shutdowns – and there’s been a bunch of them – often come when one faction in Congress or another refuses to budge on a contentious issue, resulting in everything from embassies abroad to government offices at home closing their doors until an agreement is reached.Politico reports on an early sign of that spirit of intransigence remaining alive, at least in some corners of the House. Around 50 far-right Republican lawmakers say they will not vote for any funding measure approved in this Congress:Texas Rep. Chip Roy is leading a group of nearly 50 other House Rs — mostly House Freedom Caucus members or those who tend to vote w/the HFC — in a dear colleague letter saying they will oppose a CR /any approps package put fwd this Congress while Dems in power. pic.twitter.com/P2DamVlgPN— Olivia Beavers (@Olivia_Beavers) September 19, 2022
      Democratic leaders in Congress are pushing for another $12 billion in aid to be sent to Ukraine, and hope to get it into a bill to fund the government through mid-December, Punchbowl News reports.Administration officials will brief lawmakers tomorrow about how the aid could be used, which comes as Kyiv presses its offensive in Ukraine’s east that has retaken substantial territory from Russia.New: Bipartisan member briefing on Ukraine tomorrow at 8 AM pic.twitter.com/uxkJPTq5zP— Heather Caygle (@heatherscope) September 19, 2022
      The aid is among several provisions of the spending bill – known as a continuing resolution – that is under negotiation in the final months of year. Congress members are also considering how much new Covid-19 aid to include, as well as provisions to reform the process for permitting energy projects, including both fossil fuel and renewables.The US territory of Puerto Rico appears to be in the midst of a major humanitarian crisis after a hurricane knocked out power to the island and cut off clean drinking water, with forecasts predicting more rain to come. Here’s the latest from Nina Lakhani:Most of Puerto Rico was still without power or safe drinking water on Monday, with remnants of a category 1 hurricane that struck there a day earlier forecast to bring more heavy rain and life-threatening flooding.Hundreds of people are trapped in emergency shelters across the Caribbean island, with major roads underwater and reports of numerous collapsed bridges. Crops have been washed away while flash floods, landslides and fallen trees have blocked roads, swept away vehicles and caused widespread damage to infrastructure.Two-thirds of the island’s almost 800,000 homes and businesses have no water after Hurricane Fiona caused a total blackout on Sunday and swollen rivers contaminated the filtration system. The storm was causing havoc in the Dominican Republic by early Monday.Puerto Rico battles blackout and lack of safe water in wake of Hurricane FionaRead moreTo its Democratic and Republican supporters, the Freedom to Marry Act does nothing more than ensure same-sex couples don’t have their rights rolled back by the conservative-dominated supreme court. But to rightwing GOP senator Ted Cruz, the yet-to-be passed bill is something else.“This bill is about empowering the Biden IRS to target every church and school and university and charity in America that refuses to knuckle under to their view of gay marriage,” is how the Texas lawmakers described it in a recent interview.Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) fear-mongers about bill codifying federal recognition of same-sex marriages:“This bill is about empowering the Biden IRS to target every church and school and university and charity in America that refuses to knuckle under to their view of gay marriage.” pic.twitter.com/EtgCVD3xV2— The Recount (@therecount) September 19, 2022
      His comments weren’t much of surprise, since he has already declared he would not support the measure. But as for whether or not it would get the 60 votes it needs to pass the Senate, Cruz said he did not know – underscoring the mystery around the legislation, which will likely only be resolved when it comes up for a vote after the midterms.“You have to seal up every window, and every vent, and every door… you’re fighting zombies, and if there’s any way that they get in the house, you lose.”That’s how comedian and former host of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart, described his experience over the summer of pushing Congress to expand medical coverage for military veterans exposed to toxic substances.”You don’t come out of there feeling like this system has any connection to the needs of the people that it purports to serve. That’s for sure.”— Jon Stewart reflects on his political activism, saying it’s like “fighting zombies.” pic.twitter.com/cVOSsMrq7E— The Recount (@therecount) September 19, 2022
      The Pact Act, as the legislation was called, passed in August.Jon Stewart celebrates after Senate passes bill to assist veterans exposed to toxinsRead more More

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      January 6 panel could release report on Trump and Capitol attack before midterms – as it happened

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      The House committee investigating January 6 plans to release preliminary findings into the attack on the Capitol sometime in October, meaning voters may be digesting new details of the insurrection as the midterms approach, Axios reports.The committee has tentative plans to hold its first public hearing since July on 28 September, and Axios reports that its members are meeting today to flesh out the rest of their schedule. The Democratic chair Bennie Thompson said an early version of its report into the attack will come out in October. “The goal is to have … some information pushed out, obviously, before the November election,” he said, adding that the time between the late-September hearing and the 8 November election “won’t be a quiet period.”The committee’s public hearings held in June and July dredged up highly publicized details of the attack and Donald Trump’s actions before, during and after that put the former president and his Republican allies on the defensive. That dynamic may repeat in the two months ahead, assuming the committee is able to match its earlier revelations.For a sense of how the committee is thinking in relation to its impact on the midterms, here are the thoughts of one of its Democratic members, Jamie Raskin: “There are those partisans of former President Trump that will denounce anything we do, so we’re not going to jump through hoops to please people who will call anything we do partisan.”The run-up to the 8 November midterms will be even more eventful than usual, after the January 6 committee made clear its plans to release more details of the attack on the Capitol in the weeks ahead. Meanwhile, a federal judge has approved the appointment of a special master to review documents seized by the government from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, while stopping the justice department from further examining them until the master has finished his work.Here’s what else happened today:
      President Joe Biden will meet with the families of two Americans detained in Russia, while Moscow has yet to act on a reported prisoner-swap offer made to secure their freedom.
      The White House condemned GOP governors’ transportation of migrants to Washington, DC and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.
      Donald Trump has apparently embraced the QAnon conspiracy theory to shore up his support base amid mounting legal problems.
      Lawmakers faced rancor and strife of all kinds, including a condemnation at a committee hearing, a feud on a flight and a kicking outside the Capitol.
      No, the White House did not hire a satanist as the deputy coordinator of its monkeypox response.
      West Virginia’s Republican governor Jim Justice has signed a recently passed abortion ban into law, making it the latest state to crack down on the procedure after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last June.Today I signed HB 302 – a bill that protects life.I said from the beginning that if WV legislators brought me a bill that protected life and included reasonable and logical exceptions I would sign it, and that’s what I did today.Read the bill ⬇️https://t.co/G7i9DTirSN— Governor Jim Justice (@WVGovernor) September 16, 2022
      The legislation approved by the GOP-controlled state legislature is intended to shut down the state’s only abortion clinic, but contains some exceptions for minors and victims of rape and incest.West Virginia passes sweeping abortion ban with few exceptionsRead moreElsewhere on Thursday, the partisan venom went airborne, when Senator Ted Cruz encountered a supporter of Democrat Beto O’Rourke on a flight.The Texas senator’s camera-wielding foe, whose identity remains unclear, captured their encounter on video, in which he challenged Cruz’s stance on gun control and asked him to name a victim of the May shooting in the town of Uvalde:Senator Cruz was on my flight, and I asked him to name any of the Uvalde victims. He couldn’t. Texas deserves better than spineless hacks like this. Right the wrongs of 2018, and make @betoorourke our next Governor. #betoforgovernor #cancuncrus #uvaldestrong pic.twitter.com/AW34oxuUNv— Beto For Everyone (@Nathan_VBB) September 15, 2022
      Cruz defeated O’Rourke when he stood against him for Senate in 2020. O’Rourke is currently trying to unseat Texas governor Greg Abbott, who is running for a third term.The congressional tumult extended beyond committee chambers on Thursday, when video appeared to show rightwing Republican House representative Marjorie Taylor Greene kicking an activist as they argued about gun control.The Georgia lawmaker herself posted a lengthy video of the encounter. The alleged kicking happens at about the 1:15 mark:These foolish cowards want the government to take away guns & the rights of parents to defend their children in schools.You have to be an idiot to think gun control will create a utopian society where criminals disarm themselves and obey the law.“Gun-free” zones kill people. pic.twitter.com/1T37HH8jEO— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) September 15, 2022
      The Washington Post has a write-up about the encounter between Voters of Tomorrow, a group representing Gen Z, and Greene, whom Democratic leadership booted from her committee assignments for a series of offensive remarks last year.The entire encounter is reminiscent of what Greene used to do before being elected to Congress in 2020. She appeared in Washington the year prior to follow for several blocks and heckle gun control activist David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 shooting in Parkland, Florida.Meanwhile in the House of Representatives, rancor was the order of the day in a Thursday committee hearing when one Republican lawmaker’s comments to a witness prompted a rebuke from his Democratic colleague.“I’m trying to give you the floor, boo,” Republican Clay Higgins said as Raya Salter, a clean energy advocate, spoke before the House oversight committee.New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was not pleased by how her colleague from Louisiana treated Salter, who was talking about how the fossil fuel industry affected Black people and other racial minorities.“In the four years that I’ve sat on this committee, I have never seen members of Congress, Republican or Democrat, disrespect a witness in the way that I have seen them disrespect you today,” Ocasio-Cortez told Salter. “Frankly, men who treat women like that in public – I fear how they treat them in private.”In a statement to the Hill, Higgins said, “When radicals show up in front of my committee with an attitude talking anti-American trash, they can expect to get handled. I really don’t care if I hurt anybody’s feelings while I’m fighting to preserve our Republic.”Here’s a video of the exchange:Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis said bringing migrants to Democratic-led areas of the country was necessary to draw attention to the government’s failures at the southern border, Richard Luscombe reports:Joe Biden has accused Ron DeSantis of “playing politics with people’s lives” for flying Venezuelan migrants to the wealthy liberal island community of Martha’s Vineyard without warning, while the legality of the Florida governor’s move is also under scrutiny.In what immigration activists and Democratic politicians have decried as a “political stunt”, DeSantis, who is expected to run for the Republican party’s presidential nomination in 2024, arranged for two charter planes of about 50 migrant adults and children to fly from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday.Claiming that “every community in America should be sharing in the burdens,” DeSantis told a press briefing he wanted to draw attention to what he claimed was a failure by the Biden administration to secure the US-Mexico border.DeSantis criticized for sending migrants to Martha’s Vineyard: ‘It’s un-American’Read moreOne migrant had to be taken to urgent care upon arriving in Washington. Another wasn’t aware that he was arriving on the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard until his plane began its descent.Those were some of the anecdotes White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre relayed as she continued her condemnation of Republicans governors sending migrants from the southern border to Democratic-run communities.“This should not be happening,” she said. “Republican officials should not be using human beings as political pawns.”White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is echoing Joe Biden last night in slamming Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, after he arranged for a group of migrants from Venezuela to be flown to the small Massachusetts island, without warning to the state or a true explanation to the people being transported.She said DeSantis did not notify Massachusetts that “migrant children, in need of food and shelter, were about to land on their doorstep.”Jean-Pierre added: “These vulnerable migrants were misled about where they were headed.”She said they were told they were going to Boston and misled about what benefits they would be provided when they arrived, “promised shelter, refuge benefits and more”.She accused the Florida leader, and Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, who has unilaterally been bussing thousands of migrants awaiting the processing of their immigration applications in the US to Democratic-led cities New York, Washington and Chicago, of “the tactics of smugglers in places like Mexico and Guatemala”.“And for what? A photo op? Because these governors care about creating political theater, not creating actual solutions,” Jean-Pierre fumed.She accused Republicans of treating humans like “chattel in a cruel, pre-meditated political stunt”.From the White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. https://t.co/kKrEtpMa1q— Danny Usher (@dsurte66) September 16, 2022
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is due to brief the media shortly, in Washington DC. The session has been put back slightly from its original 1pm ET scheduling.Joe Biden is due to meet South African president Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House early afternoon.The US president plans to fly to the UK tomorrow, ahead of Queen Elizabeth’s state funeral on Monday.But on Sunday he plans to have his first meeting with the brand new British prime minister, Liz Truss. She met the Queen as incoming prime minister just two days before the monarch’s death last Thursday, providing the world with the last official photographs of the Queen, at Balmoral, smiling and wearing a tartan skirt.And as the campaigns rev up for the US midterm elections in early November, the White House has just said that Biden will hit the trail, traveling to Orlando, Florida, on Tuesday to attend a Democratic National Committee rally.Then next Wednesday, Biden plans a major speech in New York at the United Nations general assembly, where he will expand on the theme he is hammering on this autumn – the battle between the forces of democracy and autocracy, including within the US.Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has also now been confirmed as a speaker at UNGA and will address world leaders via a video-link from is country, embattled since the invasion by Russia six months ago.If readers want to dive into live news of all the developments in the war, do follow our global blog on the topic, here.And for news on Queen Elizabeth and the British royal family, as thousands queue to see the casket of the monarch as she lies in state in London, follow developments in our blog out of London, as they happen, here.The run-up to the 8 November midterms will be even more eventful than usual, after the January 6 committee made clear its plans to release more details of the attack on the Capitol in the weeks ahead. Meanwhile, a federal judge has approved the appointment of a special master to review documents seized by the government from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, while stopping the justice department from further examining them until the master has finished his work.Here’s what else has happened today:
      President Joe Biden will meet with the families of two Americans detained in Russia, while Moscow has yet to act on a reported prisoner-swap offer made to secure their freedom.
      Donald Trump has apparently embraced the QAnon conspiracy theory to shore up his support base amid mounting legal problems.
      No, the White House did not hire a satanist as the deputy coordinator of its monkeypox response.
      One of the biggest outstanding questions the January 6 committee is trying to answer is what the Secret Service knew about the attack, and why agents acted the way they did as the Capitol was being stormed.Questions have swirled around the Secret Service as its actions were brought to light, particularly after it was revealed that it deleted much of agents’ communications from around the time of the insurrection. Bloomberg reports that the committee has obtained documents, text messages and other materials from the Secret Service that could answer some of those questions. “It’s a combination of a number of text messages, radio traffic, that kind of thing. Thousands of exhibits,” the committee’s chair Bennie Thompson said earlier this week.It was unclear if any of what had been turned over were the communications from January 5 and 6 that were reported as erased. Another committee member, Zoe Lofgren, said some of what had been obtained was “relevant”.Secret Service watchdog suppressed memo on January 6 texts erasureRead moreThe House committee investigating January 6 plans to release preliminary findings into the attack on the Capitol sometime in October, meaning voters may be digesting new details of the insurrection as the midterms approach, Axios reports.The committee has tentative plans to hold its first public hearing since July on 28 September, and Axios reports that its members are meeting today to flesh out the rest of their schedule. The Democratic chair Bennie Thompson said an early version of its report into the attack will come out in October. “The goal is to have … some information pushed out, obviously, before the November election,” he said, adding that the time between the late-September hearing and the 8 November election “won’t be a quiet period.”The committee’s public hearings held in June and July dredged up highly publicized details of the attack and Donald Trump’s actions before, during and after that put the former president and his Republican allies on the defensive. That dynamic may repeat in the two months ahead, assuming the committee is able to match its earlier revelations.For a sense of how the committee is thinking in relation to its impact on the midterms, here are the thoughts of one of its Democratic members, Jamie Raskin: “There are those partisans of former President Trump that will denounce anything we do, so we’re not going to jump through hoops to please people who will call anything we do partisan.”If there’s one thing Donald Trump likes, it’s people who like him. The Associated Press reports that the former president has reached out to a new group of friends: QAnon supporters.While saying as recently as 2020 that he didn’t know much about the convoluted conspiracy theory-turned-movement, he has lately made several social media posts embracing some of its ideas. The AP reports that it may be a way to shore up his support base as he deals with an array of legal troubles, like the Mar-a-Lago investigation:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The former president may be seeking solidarity with his most loyal supporters at a time when he faces escalating investigations and potential challengers within his own party, according to Mia Bloom, a professor at Georgia State University who has studied QAnon and recently wrote a book about the group.
      “These are people who have elevated Trump to messiah-like status, where only he can stop this cabal,” Bloom told the AP on Thursday. “That’s why you see so many images (in online QAnon spaces) of Trump as Jesus.”
      On Truth Social, QAnon-affiliated accounts hail Trump as a hero and savior and vilify President Joe Biden by comparing him to Adolf Hitler or the devil. When Trump shares the content, they congratulate each other. Some accounts proudly display how many times Trump has “re-truthed” them in their bios.
      By using their own language to directly address QAnon supporters, Trump is telling them that they’ve been right all along and that he shares their secret mission, according to Janet McIntosh, an anthropologist at Brandeis University who has studied QAnon’s use of language and symbols.
      It also allows Trump to endorse their beliefs and their hope for a violent uprising without expressly saying so, she said, citing his recent post about “the storm” as a particularly frightening example.A survey published earlier this year found that belief in QAnon has surged ever since Trump left the White House.Belief in QAnon has strengthened in US since Trump was voted out, study findsRead more More

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      Biden says US democracy is under threat. Here’s what he can do to help fix it | Stephen Marche

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      Biden says US democracy is under threat. Here’s what he can do to help fix itStephen MarcheWe don’t need lofty rhetoric about democracy. We need to pack the courts, fight partisan gerrymandering, campaign finance reform and more In the run-up to the midterm elections, liberal America is starting to realize how much danger it’s in. The right has been openly, defiantly stoking the fires of civil war since at least 2008 – openly promoting secession, political violence and the overturning of electoral outcomes. Now the left, slowly, probably too late, is having some of the same discussions about the catastrophic failure of American political institutions. Biden’s speech in Philadelphia, his attempt to set the agenda for the midterms, mattered in this respect if in no other. The Democratic leader has finally, against all instinct, acknowledged the risk of national collapse.I’m 65 and have $300,000 in student debt. I and other older debtors are going on strike | Lystra Small-CloudenRead more“As I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault,” the president declared. “We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise.” He even allowed himself to be specific, going so far as to call the Republican party under Trump “a threat to democracy”. Biden has a gift for stating what has been obvious to everyone as if he were thinking it for the first time. Still, his diagnosis was accurate, which is what made his proposed solution to the threat so frighteningly shallow: “I’m asking our nation to come together, unite behind the single purpose of defending our democracy regardless of your ideology.”That’s not good enough. It’s nowhere even close to good enough. If the president of the United States declares that democracy in his country is under assault, then he needs to announce in the next breath what he’s doing about it, not try to exploit it for temporary political gain in a single election cycle.A recent poll found that more than 40% of Americans believe that a civil war is likely with the next decade. The past two years have seen the rot of American government accelerate, even as Biden has made real legislative progress. That’s the irony of these midterms. Biden has made hugely significant strides on matters of policy, on climate crisis, on infrastructure, on education during his first two years. At the same time, the forces tearing America apart are more intense than they were during the Trump years.Since the Dobbs decision, American women have come to exist in a patchwork of legal statuses, not only between states but even on county level. Just as before the first civil war, the question of free movement between different jurisdictions is once again unclear. The Mar-a-Lago raid has created a situation in which there are no good options: the government must either arrest an ex-president or allow classified secrets to fill up random closets. Already the fundamental question of civil war is in the air: how do you deal legally with citizens who want to destroy the basis of law? The success of election deniers across American states has created inevitable conflict over 2022 and 2024. The peaceful transition of power is more doubtful now than it has been at any period since the 19th century.The drift towards disunion is not in Biden’s control if, indeed, it is in anyone’s control at this point. Hyper-partisanship is increasing and increasingly violent. Trust in institutions continues to decline. The sense of legitimacy in the press and the courts continues its long slide. Biden’s approach to the collapse of American institutions is institutionalist, and he is trying to make his faith in institutions the focus of the next election cycle. But the current crisis requires more than politics as usual, and more than Biden is providing.If you want to take America off the high boil, promote open primaries, not vacuous calls to national unity. Independent redistricting commissions to fight partisan gerrymandering, campaign finance reform to pull America back from the black hole of dark money, and a general overhaul of the Federal Election Commission are, at this point, obviously necessary on the most basic level if American democracy is to survive. They are also against the interests of both parties. They are not on the table in 2022.A pro-democracy agenda also requires a genuine reckoning with the opponents of democracy. The US supreme court is already dive-bombing into illegitimacy, passing through theocracy on its way to irrelevance. Biden is not preserving the legitimacy of the court by choosing not to stack it. He is only ensuring that an already illegitimate court will be opposed to democracy.How far Biden can enact a pro-democracy agenda is dubious, of course, and every year, from now on, it will become more dubious. Biden seems to have nothing more to offer than the old soaring rhetoric that somehow still has people who will listen to it: “This is where the United States constitution was written and debated. This is where we set in motion the most extraordinary experiment of self-government the world has ever known,” he said, flanked by marines. Then he put the onus for defending that experiment on the American people.That’s an alibi, an abrogation of responsibility. Biden was elected in 2020 to defend US democracy, but the solution to America’s crisis is not political but structural. It doesn’t require the American people to vote one way or another in order to enact one or another legislative agenda but to find a different way to govern themselves.The first portion of the Biden administration has revealed a clandestine tragedy: the president has loved American institutions so much that he cannot bring himself to do what’s required to save them.
      Stephen Marche is the author of The Next Civil War
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionJoe BidenBiden administrationDemocratsRepublicansDonald TrumpcommentReuse this content More

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      Biden touts efforts to boost electric vehicles at Detroit auto show – as it happened

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      Self-confessed “car guy” Joe Biden is about to take the podium at the Detroit motor show to tell Americans why they should be buying electric vehicles.The president, who owns a vintage Corvette, has set what the White House calls “a bold goal” for electric vehicles to make up 50% of all vehicles sold in the US by 2030. Biden is in Detroit touting the Inflation Reduction Act, the marquee spending bill he signed last month that includes incentives for buying electric vehicles, as part of a larger strategy to lower America’s carbon emissions.President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act makes it easier and cheaper to purchase an electric or fuel-cell vehicle – new or used – through tax credits for consumers.Learn more at https://t.co/KTCwt5Tmue.— The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 13, 2022
      While we await Biden’s words, here’s the White House factsheet, which says that since Biden took office last year, companies have invested nearly $85bn in manufacturing electric vehicles, batteries, and EV chargers in the US.The number of electric vehicles sold in that time has almost tripled, the handout claims.But there are concerns that his plans to build a nationwide network of charging stations will leave behind disadvantaged and lower income areas and communities of color.Read more:Is Biden’s goal to build charging stations for electric cars leaving low-income areas behind?Read morePresident Joe Biden struck a triumphant note in a Detroit speech where he promoted his administration’s efforts to revitalize manufacturing and get Americans behind the wheel of electric vehicles. Meanwhile, the January 6 committee has signaled it will resume public hearings later this month, and potentially share more of its evidence with justice department investigators looking into the attack on the Capitol.Here’s what else happened today:
      House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed optimism that Democrats would gain, not lose, seats in the chamber in the November midterms, despite widespread expectations that voters will elevate the Republicans into the majority.
      Donald Trump disavowed his former vice-president Mike Pence, saying he would not choose him as a running mate again, according to a soon-to-be-published book obtained by The Guardian.
      FBI agents paid a visit to prominent Trump ally and pillow mogul Mike Lindell, seizing his cellphone and questioning him in a fast food restaurant’s drive-thru lane.
      Biden called Britain’s King Charles III and expressed condolences over the death of the queen. It remains unclear if the president will meet Charles III or new prime minister Liz Truss when he heads to London for the queen’s funeral.
      Florida’s Republican senator Marco Rubio co-sponsored a bill to ban abortions nationwide after 15 weeks, in what could help his Democratic challenger Val Demings as she looks to energize pro-abortion sentiment among voters.
      Amtrak has begun canceling long-distance routes ahead of a possible rail strike that could begin within days, Axios reports.Unions and freight rail companies are negotiating furiously to prevent the strike, which would be the first in three decades and worsen supply chains that have been plagued by delays and manpower and equipment shortages over the past two years as the United States has bounced back from the pandemic.“While we are hopeful that parties will reach a resolution, Amtrak has now begun phased adjustments to our service in preparation for a possible freight rail service interruption later this week,” Amtrak said, according to Axios.“Such an interruption could significantly impact intercity passenger rail service, as Amtrak operates almost all of our 21,000 route miles outside the Northeast Corridor (NEC) on track owned, maintained, and dispatched by freight railroads. These initial adjustments include canceling all Long Distance trains and could be followed by impacts to most State-Supported routes.”The negotiations between the railroad companies and 12 unions are complex and have drawn in the Biden administration. Here’s the latest from the Associated Press:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Members of one union rejected a tentative deal with the largest U.S. freight railroads Wednesday while three other unions remained at the bargaining table just days ahead of a strike deadline, threatening to intensify snarls in the nation’s supply chain that have contributed to rising prices.
      About 4,900 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 19 voted to reject the tentative agreement negotiated by IAM leadership with the railroads, the union said Wednesday. But the IAM agreed to delay any strike by its members until Sept. 29 to allow more time for negotiations and to allow other unions to vote.
      Railroads are trying to reach an agreement with all their other unions to avert a strike before Friday’s deadline. The unions aren’t allowed to strike before Friday under the federal law that governs railroad contract talks.
      Government officials and a variety of businesses are bracing for the possibility of a nationwide rail strike that would paralyze shipments of everything from crude and clothing to cars, a potential calamity for businesses that have struggled for more than two years due to COVID-19 related supply chain breakdowns.Joe Biden’s inclination for optimism was on full display in Detroit, but he was outdone today by his Democratic colleague House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who insisted in an interview with Punchbowl News that the party was poised to gain – not lose – seats in the chamber in the midterms.“Yes, indeed,” she told Punchbowl when they asked if she thought the party’s majority would grow in the November 8 election.Let’s unpack the many reasons that statement appears improbably. First of all, it’s a reflection of how much the political climate is thought to have shifted in the Democrats’ favor over the past few months. Declining gas prices, the supreme court’s overturning of national abortion access and Biden’s legislative wins are all believed to have energized Democratic voters, while on their part, Republicans have chosen some weaker nominees for key races.But history is against Pelosi. As The Guardian’s Joan E Greve has reported, the party holding the White House has only gained seats in the House in two midterms, and Pelosi personally experienced the ruinous 2010 election that saw Democrats lose 63 seats in the lower chamber and end her speakership for eight years. She may well be poised to endure that again – poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight gives the GOP a very good shot at returning to the majority next year in the House, though the Senate may be harder to conquer. Nonetheless, analysts generally believe that the political developments over the past few months are meaningful for Democrats, and while Republicans may win the House, their gains won’t be enormous, and certainly not comparable to 2010.Here’s what Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel had to say about Biden’s visit to Detroit, which she described as a stop on his “failure tour”:“Whether it’s handing out tax credits for luxury electric vehicles or bailing out the wealthy’s debts, Biden and Democrats are leaving hardworking Americans behind. Democrats will be driven out of office in November because they put their left-wing special interests ahead of Americans struggling to fill grocery carts and gas tanks.”“American manufacturing is back, Detroit is back, America is back,” Biden declared at the conclusion of his speech in Detroit, where he touted the benefits of legislation passed to repair infrastructure and promote electric vehicles.The speech at the Detroit Auto Show hit familiar talking points for the president as he attempts to convince voters to re-elect Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections and preserve their majorities in Congress. Among these were his recent legislative successes, including the $1 trillion measure Democrats and some Republicans in Congress approved last year to overhaul the nation’s infrastructure. In his speech, he announced that he had authorized funding from that law for 35 states to build electric vehicle charging stations.Beyond being the center of the auto industry, Michigan is among the more crucial states to Biden’s political fortunes. It’s a perennial swing state that Biden narrowly won in the 2020 election, and its Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer will also be on the ballot in November as she stands for second term against Republican challenger Tudor Dixon. Biden appeared at the show along with the governor, and spent much of his speech shouting out other Michigan Democrats, while closing on a note of triumph. “Folks, we’re proving it’s never, ever, ever a good bet to bet against the American people, never never, never. You just gotta remember who we are.”In the ongoing legal wrangling over documents seized by the government from Mar-a-Lago, The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reports that the justice department is sounding the alarm over an order preventing them from reviewing the materials.Donald Trump’s lawyers are causing “irreparable harm” to the government and public by delaying the investigation into his hoarding of highly classified documents at his Florida mansion, the US Department of Justice said.The claim came in a strongly worded court filing urging a district judge, Aileen Cannon, to reconsider her ruling last week granting Trump’s request for an independent “special master” in the case.The Department of Justice argued that the order stops it continuing its review of thousands of documents, some reportedly containing details of a foreign power’s nuclear secrets, seized during an FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach last month.Mar-a-Lago documents: Trump delaying tactics causing ‘irreparable harm’ – DoJRead moreSelf-confessed “car guy” Joe Biden is about to take the podium at the Detroit motor show to tell Americans why they should be buying electric vehicles.The president, who owns a vintage Corvette, has set what the White House calls “a bold goal” for electric vehicles to make up 50% of all vehicles sold in the US by 2030. Biden is in Detroit touting the Inflation Reduction Act, the marquee spending bill he signed last month that includes incentives for buying electric vehicles, as part of a larger strategy to lower America’s carbon emissions.President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act makes it easier and cheaper to purchase an electric or fuel-cell vehicle – new or used – through tax credits for consumers.Learn more at https://t.co/KTCwt5Tmue.— The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 13, 2022
      While we await Biden’s words, here’s the White House factsheet, which says that since Biden took office last year, companies have invested nearly $85bn in manufacturing electric vehicles, batteries, and EV chargers in the US.The number of electric vehicles sold in that time has almost tripled, the handout claims.But there are concerns that his plans to build a nationwide network of charging stations will leave behind disadvantaged and lower income areas and communities of color.Read more:Is Biden’s goal to build charging stations for electric cars leaving low-income areas behind?Read moreCall it a magical mystery tour… migrants being sent on buses from Texas to New York by the lone star state’s governor Greg Abbott in protest at Joe Biden’s immigration policies are being moved on to Florida.That’s according to Fox 5 New York, which interviewed the city’s commissioner of immigration Manuel Castro on its Good Day New York show on Wednesday.New York City officials claim that many of the migrants who are being bused from Texas did not want to go to New York so they are helping them get to other states. https://t.co/KFbzJyMs4N— Fox5NY (@fox5ny) September 14, 2022
      Castro says many of those arriving from Texas don’t want to be there, and have ties elsewhere:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Many want to go to places like Florida, where the largest community of Venezuelans live.
      We’re helping them get to their actual final destination. We’re doing our best.The move probably isn’t going to go down too well with Florida’s hardline Republican governor and frequent Biden critic Ron DeSantis, who likes what he sees coming out of Texas and has been mulling his own plan to bus undocumented Cuban migrants from Florida to Washington DC.“All states and all cities have a role to play here, not just New York and Chicago and other places,” Castro told Fox 5. Joe Biden plans to nominate career diplomat Lynne Tracy, who is currently serving in Armenia, as the next US ambassador to Russia, CNN says.Tracy has experience of Moscow, having served there as deputy ambassador from 2014 to 2017. She would be the first woman in the role, the network said.The Biden administration hopes to get her in place swiftly to replace John Sullivan, who stepped down earlier this month. But the timing of her arrival and official nomination will depend on Russia agreeing to accept her as ambassador at a time of huge tension between Washington and Moscow as the war in Ukraine continues. Typically, the host country will approve the name of an ambassador pick before they are officially nominated through a process called agrément. The US has already given Tracy’s name to the Russians to begin that process, two sources told CNN.While we’re on the subject of November’s midterm elections, Martin Pengelly has this look at how Democrats got the matchup they wanted – an extremist, Trump-supporting election denier – as their Republican opponent for a New Hampshire Senate seat:A far-right Republican who backs Donald Trump’s election fraud lie and has vowed to decertify results in 2024 will be the GOP candidate for US Senate in New Hampshire.Don Bolduc, a retired special forces general who has said he suffered from PTSD and a traumatic brain injury, edged out Chuck Morse, the state senate president, to face the incumbent Democrat, Maggie Hassan, in November.Most if not all forecasters called the race for Bolduc before Morse conceded.The primary was the last in a series that have seen Republicans select candidates aligned with Trump, causing some to fear damage to their chances of winning the Senate in November.Bolduc, 61, has echoed Trump’s lie about election fraud in his defeat by Joe Biden. He has also questioned whether the FBI should be abolished following its search of Trump’s Florida estate, which turned up a cache of classified documents.Though Bolduc has courted Trump, he has not won an endorsement. Trump did call Bolduc a “strong guy”.Last October, Bolduc spoke to the New Yorker. He said he thought his “values and principles as an American, and the constitution, which I served for 33-plus years in the military, was safe with President Trump”, and that Trump’s appeal stemmed from the (notoriously reading-averse) former president’s reading and understanding of the constitution.He also said “there was a tremendous amount of fraud” in 2020, adding: “I very much believe it and I think it exists, and I think it happens and it’s been happening for a long time in this country. When you try to steal the presidency, a lot of people are going to go, ‘OK, wait a minute. What the hell’s going on here?’”Read more:Republican backer of Trump’s big lie wins New Hampshire Senate primaryRead moreFlorida Republican Marco Rubio has emerged as a co-sponsor of Lindsey Graham’s nationwide 15-week abortion ban bill, providing Democratic hopeful Val Demings new ammunition as she challenges for his Senate seat in November.Rubio’s campaign has not said why he’s signed on to the controversial and extreme bill, which has confused and angered many congressional Republicans. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell says he’s sure his members would prefer to leave the issue to the states. But Rubio’s overall position on abortion is clear. Talking to a Christian group in south Florida earlier this month, he said an unborn child’s rights outweighed those of the mother and that, in an apparent contradiction to his position on the Graham bill, “The state legislatures will decide [the] law.” “I would rather be right and lose an election than [be] wrong,” he said, according to ABC10 Miami.He may get his wish, at least the losing the election part, if Demings has her way. The former Orlando police chief and US congresswoman is a vocal pro-choice advocate and has slammed Rubio’s position.“It’s outrageous to mandate what a woman can and can’t do with their bodies,” she says in a televised campaign message.“I know something about fighting crime, Senator Rubio. Rape is a crime. Incest is a crime. Abortion is not.”Polling by RealClearPolitics gives Rubio, a former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, a narrow lead over Demings.President Joe Biden is set to proclaim his administration’s efforts to boost the electric car business with a speech at the Detroit Auto Show set for 1:45 pm eastern time. Meanwhile, the January 6 committee has signaled it will resume public hearings later this month, and potentially share more of its evidence with justice department investigators looking into the attack on the Capitol.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Donald Trump disavowed his former vice-president Mike Pence, saying he would not choose him as a running mate again, according to a soon-to-be-published book obtained by The Guardian.
      FBI agents paid a visit to prominent Trump ally and pillow mogul Mike Lindell, seizing his cellphone and questioning him in a fast food restaurant’s drive-thru lane.
      Biden called Britain’s King Charles III and expressed condolences over the death of the queen. It remains unclear if the president will meet Charles III or new prime minister Liz Truss when he heads to London for the queen’s funeral.
      Let’s check in with Joe Biden, who has arrived at the Detroit Auto Show.He’s set to deliver “remarks highlighting the electric vehicle manufacturing boom in America” at 1:45 pm eastern time according to the White House, but is first getting a look at the latest models from America’s automakers.Biden is a vintage Chevrolet Corvette owner, and CNN caught him behind the wheel of the latest model:Biden at the Detroit Auto Show pic.twitter.com/54IMxuUnfO— Kate Sullivan (@KateSullivanDC) September 14, 2022
      Here he is checking out Ford’s new electric offerings:The Mustang Mach-E. “0 to 60 in three seconds,” Biden said. “3.5, but who’s counting?” Bill Ford replied. pic.twitter.com/yctQP3c9LX— Josh Wingrove (@josh_wingrove) September 14, 2022
      Why does Biden care so much about electric cars? In part because the Inflation Reduction Act, as the marquee spending bill he signed last month is known, includes incentives to try to get more Americans to buy the vehicles, as part of a larger strategy to lower America’s carbon emissions. The other reason is that Biden is a “car guy”, as he likes to describe himself.Electric cars to solar panels: tax breaks in Biden’s climate law for AmericansRead more More

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      in Elections

      January 6 committee plans to hold new public hearing this month – live

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      The January 6 committee has accumulated reams of evidence and testimonies in its investigation into the attack on the Capitol, but one outstanding question has been what will happen to it all. Will the evidence be shared with federal prosecutors? What about the lawyers of people facing charges over the attack?The lawmakers in the committee gathered behind closed doors yesterday for their first meeting in more than a month, and Politico has reported a few details about where they were on these questions. “I think now that the department of justice is being proactive in issuing subpoenas and other things, I think it’s time for the committee to determine whether or not the information we’ve gathered can be beneficial to their investigation,” the committee’s chair Bennie Thompson said.Indeed, the justice department has recently issued a flurry of subpoenas to associates of Donald Trump as part of its investigation into the attack on the Capitol, and the January 6 committee seems to be aware that some of what it has found in its own, separate investigation could be useful to them. However, that could also open the door for attorneys of people defending charges over the attack to get access to the committee’s evidence as well.Either way, expect to be hearing a lot more from the committee later this month. Thompson said the lawmakers are eyeing September 28 as the date to resume their hearings, according to Politico.Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposal to ban abortion after 15 weeks nationwide was excoriated by Democrats and downplayed by Republicans after it was introduced yesterday.But pro-abortion sentiment isn’t unanimous among Democrats in the chamber. National Review reports that Joe Manchin, the conservative Democratic senator representing West Virginia, reiterated his support for banning abortion after 20 weeks, noting he’d voted for such a measure in the past. As for Graham’s more stringent proposal, Manchin said he was “very interested” in it. As long as Democrats control the Senate, Graham’s measure probably won’t even be put up for a vote. And even if Republicans did gain control, they’d need to find 60 votes to overcome an inevitable filibuster from Democrats before the bill could pass.Yesterday should have been a rough day for the Biden administration. It started off with the government releasing new inflation data that was worse than expected, and ended with a massive sell-off on Wall Street. Both developments should have been potent fodder for Republicans aiming to convince voters that inflation was the fault of Biden and the Democrats ahead of the November midterms. Instead, much of yesterday’s news cycle was dominated by Republican senator Lindsey Graham’s proposal for federal restrictions on abortion, which are controversial with many voters, including in the GOP.Politico has published a rundown of the own goal scored by the senator and the unexpected reprieve it won for Democrats from the disquieting economic news:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}So obvious was the apparent ill-timing of the bill’s introduction that one White House aide said a Republican lobbyist friend joked that Graham appeared to be working for the Biden administration. Other aides suggested that the comments continued a Democratic winning streak that started mid-summer and began to imagine holding onto both houses of Congress.
      “Dems might need to send gift baskets and champagne to Graham and other Republicans for their selfless act of service today,” another Democratic official told POLITICO.
      The immediate response to Graham’s legislation, which would not just establish a ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy but also allow states to keep and pass more restrictive laws, was a microcosm of the way abortion politics has wholly upended the midterm sprint.
      It’s not as if the images out of the White House were pristine. Live TV coverage of Biden’s speech was bracketed by large red arrows signifying the stock market’s downward trajectory. The more Biden talked about how the legislation would help the economy, the more the markets tumbled. By the closing bell, Wall Street had suffered its worst day since June 2020, with the Dow dropping more than 1,250 points.
      But Democrats, who have been on the defensive for months over stubbornly high inflation, felt once again revitalized in trying to fend off GOP-led initiatives to restrict abortion rights. Virtually every Senate candidate quickly issued statements excoriating Graham’s bill and asking their Republican opponents whether they would sign off on it.Biden has said he will attend the funeral of Elizabeth II, but it remains unclear if he will meet with new prime minister Liz Truss or King Charles III.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did not shed much light on the matter today, The Washington Post reports:Asked if Biden will be meeting with new King Charles III or new British prime minister Liz Truss while he’s in London, @PressSec says: “I don’t have an update on who he’s going to be meeting or anything like that.” She notes this morning’s call between the president and the king.— Matt Viser (@mviser) September 14, 2022
      President Joe Biden called Britain’s King Charles III today and offered his condolences on the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the White House announced.Here’s the full readout from the Biden administration:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. spoke today with King Charles III to offer his condolences on the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. The President recalled fondly the Queen’s kindness and hospitality, including when she hosted him and the First Lady at Windsor Castle last June. He also conveyed the great admiration of the American people for the Queen, whose dignity and constancy deepened the enduring friendship and special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. President Biden conveyed his wish to continue a close relationship with the King.Elizabeth II passed away last week, and her coffin has just arrived in the Palace of Westminster in London to lie in state. The Guardian is running a live blog with the latest events, which you can read below.Queen Elizabeth’s coffin arrives at Palace of Westminster to lie in state – latest updatesRead moreBusy times for the feds, it seems. FBI agents reported to the drive-thru lane of a Minnesota Hardee’s to question and seize the cellphone of Mike Lindell, a prominent Trump ally and 2020 election denier who is also known for his company MyPillow, which makes… pillows. The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe explains what they were looking for:Mike Lindell, the pillow salesman who became an enthusiastic mouthpiece for Donald Trump’s lie about a stolen election, has said he was forced to hand his phone to FBI agents who surrounded him at a fast-food drive-through.The incident happened on Tuesday as Lindell, chief executive of My Pillow, was in line at a branch of Hardee’s in Mankato, Minnesota, his home town, following a hunting trip.“Cars pulled up in front of us, to the side of us, and behind us and I said those are either bad guys or the FBI,” the conspiracy theorist said on his internet show, the Lindell Report. “Well, it turns out they were the FBI.”Lindell said the agents questioned him about Tina Peters, a fellow election denier facing criminal charges in Colorado for tampering with voting machinery as a county clerk, and who in June lost a Republican primary to become the state’s top election official.My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell has phone seized by FBI at fast-food outletRead moreIn June, federal investigators issued a subpoena for surveillance footage from inside Mar-a-Lago and obtained a hard drive in response, according to a newly revealed portion of the warrant authorizing last month’s search of Donald Trump’s resort by the FBI.The detail was redacted from the warrant released by a federal judge last month, but the Associated Press reports that the justice department asked for it to be released after Trump’s lawyers publicly revealed the subpoena’s existence.Here’s more from the AP about the possible significance of the subpoena for surveillance footage:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The newly visible portions of the FBI agent’s affidavit show that the FBI on June 24 subpoenaed for the footage after a visit weeks earlier to Mar-a-Lago in which agents observed 50 to 55 boxes of records in the storage room at the property. The Trump Organization provided a hard drive on July 6 in response to the subpoena, the affidavit says.
      The footage could be an important piece of the investigation, including as agents evaluate whether anyone has sought to obstruct the probe. The Justice Department has said in a separate filing that it has “developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”The January 6 committee has accumulated reams of evidence and testimonies in its investigation into the attack on the Capitol, but one outstanding question has been what will happen to it all. Will the evidence be shared with federal prosecutors? What about the lawyers of people facing charges over the attack?The lawmakers in the committee gathered behind closed doors yesterday for their first meeting in more than a month, and Politico has reported a few details about where they were on these questions. “I think now that the department of justice is being proactive in issuing subpoenas and other things, I think it’s time for the committee to determine whether or not the information we’ve gathered can be beneficial to their investigation,” the committee’s chair Bennie Thompson said.Indeed, the justice department has recently issued a flurry of subpoenas to associates of Donald Trump as part of its investigation into the attack on the Capitol, and the January 6 committee seems to be aware that some of what it has found in its own, separate investigation could be useful to them. However, that could also open the door for attorneys of people defending charges over the attack to get access to the committee’s evidence as well.Either way, expect to be hearing a lot more from the committee later this month. Thompson said the lawmakers are eyeing September 28 as the date to resume their hearings, according to Politico.Good morning, US politics blog readers. After weeks of quiet, congress members investigating the January 6 attack have reconvened with plans to hold a new public hearing later this month, and potentially share evidence with the justice department. That would set the stage for the insurrection at the Capitol to remain in the public eye in the lead up to the November midterms, where a slew of Trump-supporting Republicans are on the ballot.Here’s what else is happening today:
      President Joe Biden is traveling to Michigan for an appearance promoting electric vehicles at the Detroit auto show.
      Federal health officials including CDC director Rochelle Walensky will testify about the response to Monkeypox before the Senate health committee.
      Donald Trump has ruled out picking his former vice-president Mike Pence as his running mate, a soon-to-be published book obtained by The Guardian reveals. More

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      in US Politics

      Biden seeks to motivate voters from all parties against ‘Maga Republicans destroying politics’

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      Biden seeks to motivate voters from all parties against ‘Maga Republicans destroying politics’Biden has repeatedly hammered the theme of Republican extremism in recent weeks as midterm elections loom Democrats are trying to defy history in November. Since 1934, there have only been two midterm elections – in 1998 and 2002 – when the president’s party gained seats in the House of Representatives. Democrats hope that the pattern will be broken for a third time.While midterms are generally viewed as a referendum on the sitting president and his party, Biden and other Democratic leaders have instead sought to reframe the upcoming elections as a test of American democracy itself. Democrats believe that, if Americans view the elections as a choice between extremists threatening their fundamental rights and candidates seeking to protect those vulnerable freedoms, then the party may be able to maintain their congressional majorities. In Democrats’ view, a historic election calls for a history-defying result.Biden has repeatedly hammered the theme of Republican extremism in recent weeks, as the president has turned more of his attention to the midterm elections. In the past month, Biden has compared Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” philosophy to “semi-fascism”, and he has warned that the former president and his allies “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic”.Biden continued his attacks on “extreme Maga Republicans” on Thursday night, as he spoke at the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting in Oxon Hill, Maryland.“We’re in a serious moment in this nation’s history,” Biden said on Thursday. “That’s why those who love this country – Democrats, independents and mainstream Republicans – have to be stronger, more determined and more committed to saving American democracy than the Maga Republicans are to literally destroying American politics. You just have to vote.”Democratic organizers have similarly embraced issues like voting rights and the protection of America’s system of government as they enter the final stretch of the campaign season before the November elections. They argue that a pro-democracy message can help mobilize voters and carry their candidates across the finish line, despite the significant headwinds that the party faces.There is some evidence to suggest that Biden’s pro-democracy messaging is resonating with voters. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken this week, 58% of Americans believe Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement is threatening the country’s democratic foundations.Fear over the fate of American democracy also appears to be weighing on voters’ minds more, which could negatively impact Republicans’ midterm prospects. One NBC News poll taken last month found that voters now name “threats to democracy” as the most important issue facing the country, outranking “cost of living” and “jobs and the economy”.“This election is a critical inflection point for American democracy,” said Kim Rogers, executive director of Democratic Association of Secretaries of State. “Because democracy is inextricably linked to other fundamental freedoms and representation, I think it’s an incredibly motivating factor for voters.”Biden has similarly sought to directly tie attacks on democracy to threats on other rights, including abortion access. In the wake of the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade, ending federal protections for abortion access, Democrats have framed the midterm elections as a vital fight for fair healthcare.“I want to be crystal clear about what’s at stake on the ballot. Your right to choose is on the ballot,” Biden said on Thursday. “Your right to vote, even our democracy, is on the ballot. Are you ready to fight for these things?”Since the supreme court issued its decision to overturn Roe in June, Democrats have notched some important electoral victories. Last month, voters in Kansas, which Trump won by double digits in 2020, resoundingly rejected an anti-abortion amendment to their state constitution. Weeks later, Democrat Pat Ryan won a hotly contested special congressional election in New York after touting his support for abortion rights. Democrat Mary Peltola was also declared the winner of Alaska’s special congressional race last week, pulling off an upset in another state carried by Trump in 2020.Those developments have forced some election forecasters to reconsider their previous predictions of a shellacking by Republicans in November.“The reversal of Roe is mobilizing people to either switch parties and also mobilizing millions of people to get off the sidelines and get engaged because they see what’s at stake in this election,” said Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president and executive director of the progressive youth voting group NextGen America. “When you take away a fundamental right, you’re going to motivate an entire pissed-off generation, and I think that’s what we’re going to see this election.”Republicans summarily reject that argument, insisting that this midterm election will follow the traditional pattern of the president’s party losing ground in Congress. They predict that kitchen-table issues, particularly record-high inflation, will drive frustrated voters to the polls and cost Democrats their majorities in the House and the Senate.“Biden and Democrats are doing what they do best – dividing Americans, dodging questions and ducking blame,” said Emma Vaughn, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee. “In two months, the DNC will be hosting a meeting to show Democrats in Congress how to transition to retired life.”Republicans also have some structural advantages in the race, namely Democrats’ razor-thin majorities in both the House and the Senate. Republicans only need to win five more House seats than they did in 2020 to retake the majority, and flipping one seat in the Senate will be enough to regain control of the upper chamber.Democrats have some reason to hope they can keep their majority in the Senate, after Republicans nominated vulnerable candidates in key battleground states. But the battle for the House will be particularly painful for Democrats, especially after Republicans notched some important redistricting wins.“I think the idea of Democrats holding both chambers to me is still far-fetched,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “The Democrats basically have to sweep the toss-ups or come really close to sweeping the toss-ups in order to win [the House].”Kondik also noted a key distinction between this year’s elections and those that took place in 1998 and 2002, when the president’s party was able to pick up House seats. Both Bill Clinton and George W Bush had strong approval ratings when the midterms were held those years, while Biden’s approval rating has been underwater for more than a year.“It wouldn’t be unprecedented for Democrats to hang on to the Senate, even as Biden’s approval is bad,” Kondik said. “I do think it would be odd for them to hold both.”But, as Kondik acknowledged, history can serve as a guide but not necessarily as a fortune-teller when it comes to American politics.“Sometimes elections are just different than any election we’ve had before,” he said. “Maybe history is not particularly instructive in this instance.”Ramirez embraces that argument, insisting that Biden’s approval rating does not tell the whole story about the midterms. After a once-in-a-century pandemic, an attempted insurrection and a monumental supreme court decision, it is hard to say exactly what the 2022 electorate might look like, she said.“The traditional political wisdom doesn’t go along with the current political state of our country,” Ramirez said. “I think Biden’s numbers will not reflect overall what happens with Democratic voters because it’s beyond just one politician. It’s about saving our country and basic fundamental freedoms, and I think people understand that.”TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsDemocratsnewsReuse this content More