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      Can televised hearings bring the truth about January 6 to the US public?

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      Can televised hearings bring the truth about January 6 to the US public? The first of eight congressional hearings will start on Thursday but emulating the impact of 1973’s Watergate sessions will be hard in today’s fractured media and political environmentOn Thursday the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol will open the first of eight hearings, marking the turning point when “one of the single most important congressional investigations in history”, as the Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney billed it, will finally go public.It will be the culmination of almost a year of intensive activity that, aside from a succession of leaks, has largely been conducted in private. More than 1,000 people have been called for depositions and interviews to cast light on the events of January 6, 2021, when hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in answer to Donald Trump’s call to “fight like hell” to prevent Congress certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory.Ex-Trump adviser Peter Navarro indicted for defying Capitol attack panelRead moreThe committee has collected 125,000 documents, pursued almost 500 leads through its confidential tip line. It has examined text messages between Trump’s closest advisers and family members discussing how to keep the defeated president in power; reviewed memos from conservative lawyers laying out a roadmap to an electoral coup; and listened to recorded conversations in which top Republicans revealed their true feelings about Trump’s actions “inciting people” to attack the heart of US democracy.Now the nine-member committee, Cheney included, have a different – and arguably more difficult – job to do. They must let the American people into their deliberations, share with them key facts and exhibits, grill witnesses in front of them, and through it all begin to build a compelling narrative of how ferociously Trump attempted to subvert the 2020 election – and how close he came to succeeding.“It’s important that we tell the American public, to the best we are able, exactly what happened,” said Zoe Lofgren, a congresswoman from California who is among the seven Democratic members of the committee. “The public need to understand the stakes for our system of government, and we need to devise potential changes in legislation or procedures to protect ourselves in future.”In an interview with the Guardian, Lofgren was hesitant to get into details of the investigation. But asked whether she has been surprised by the breadth and depth of the plot to overturn the 2020 election and the extent to which it was organized, she replied: “The short answer is yes.”Lofgren brings to Thursday’s opening session her deep personal understanding of the dynamic role played by congressional hearings in recent American history. She has had a ringside seat, initially as a staff observer and then as an elected participant, in many of the most significant hearings stretching back to Watergate.At the time of the Watergate hearings in May 1973, when she was still a young law student, Lofgren worked as an intern for Don Edwards, a Democrat on the judiciary committee. She sees similarities between today’s January 6 investigation and the way Nixon’s cover-up of the Watergate break-in was teased out by Congress, starting with inquiries behind closed doors and then bursting out into explosive televised Senate proceedings.“Much of what the judiciary committee did in Watergate – like January 6 – was behind closed doors,” Lofgren said. “I remember various Nixon functionaries being deposed in the committee back rooms.”Once sufficient intelligence was amassed, it was time to let the public in. “Ultimately, you have to let people know what you have found.”The Watergate hearings became a national obsession, with millions of Americans tuning in to ABC, CBS or NBC which scrapped normal scheduling to broadcast the deliberations live. The New York Times called them “the biggest daytime spectacular in years”.There was so much viewer demand that the networks ran replays at night. It was worth it, to experience such spine-tingling moments as the former White House counsel John Dean being asked: “What did the president know and when did he know it?”, or to be present when another assistant, Alexander Butterfield, revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes.Lofgren does not expect the January 6 hearings to grip the nation to the all-encompassing extent that Watergate did. Times have changed, not least the media.“During Watergate there were three TV channels and that’s how everybody got their news – if Walter Cronkite said it was true, it must be true, right?” Lofgren said. “Today people are getting their information from a multiplicity of sources, and we need to deal with that and make sure we are finding people where they are.”It’s not just how media is consumed that has changed, it’s also how media itself approaches public hearings. During Watergate, TV anchors responded to Nixon’s jibes that they were peddlers of “elitist gossip” – a foreshadow of Trump’s “fake news” – by keeping their commentary to a bare minimum.In today’s universe, by contrast, the January 6 hearings are likely to be subjected to heavy spin that will leave individual Americans with drastically different impressions according to which media bubble they are in.Kathryn Cramer Brownell, associate professor of history at Purdue University, has studied the measured way television handled the Watergate hearings. She said it stands starkly apart from, say, how Robert Mueller’s testimony before the House judiciary committee on his Russia investigation was transmitted to the American people in 2019.“Fox News tried to spin the information as it was coming out of the Mueller proceedings, so people were receiving the information as it was filtered through that instant spin. That can change their understanding,” she said.Brownell has highlighted how the advent of the TV age elevated congressional hearings to another level. Before television, hearings such as those into the Titanic disaster in 1912 or the 1923 Teapot Dome scandal could still command the nation’s attention, but it was the small screen that supercharged them into major political events.By being beamed into millions of Americans’ living rooms, they had the power to turn individual Congress members into superstars. Ironically the beneficiaries included Nixon who came to prominence in the 1948 Red Scare investigation against Alger Hiss; he was followed soon after by Estes Kefauver in the 1950 investigation against organized crime.Oliver North became a bogey figure for progressives and a darling of the right after his appearance in the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings.Hearings also have the reverse power to tear down politicians who go too far, as the Republican senator Joe McCarthy discovered to his cost in his 1954 televised hearings into alleged communist infiltration of the US army. McCarthy’s reign of terror was abruptly brought to a close when the army’s lawyer Joseph Welch challenged him with the now legendary refrain: “Have you no sense of decency?”In the end, congressional hearings are likely only to be as compelling as the matter they are addressing – whether anti-communism, organized crime or presidential misconduct. That should play to the January 6 committee’s advantage: it would be hard to imagine more essential subject material than an assault on democracy itself.“If we believe in the rule of law and democratic norms, then we have to make this effort,” said Jeannie Rhee, a partner in the law firm Paul, Weiss who frequently represents witnesses in congressional hearings. “What we do in this moment, how we proceed – that is imperative.”Rhee led the team investigating Russian cyber and social media interference in the 2016 presidential election within the Mueller investigation. She now represents the attorney general of Washington DC in the prosecution of far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers for their part in the January 6 insurrection.As an immigrant, Rhee said, for her, the upcoming hearings are deeply personal. Her father was a student protester in the 1960s fighting for democratic reforms in South Korea, and it was America’s free and fair elections and peaceful transition of presidential power that led him to relocate their family to the US.“I came to the US with my parents in 1977 and it was my father’s greatest dream to be able to stay here. I remember my mother dressing me up in my Sunday church clothes to pay respects to the nation’s Capitol. I live here now, and my father has passed away. I think about him often in relation to what is unfolding, and whether this is the country he knew.”Rhee sees the challenge facing the January 6 committee as bridging the growing political divide by laying out facts around which most Americans can coalesce. She thinks the best way to conduct the hearings is to let what happened on that fateful day speak for itself.“The less the members talk and the more the witnesses and victims and people who were there tell their own truth, the more powerful that will be,” she said.The job of letting the facts do the talking will be complicated, though, by the fact that the Republican leadership in the House is effectively boycotting the hearings. Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, decided not to appoint members to the panel after the Democratic speaker, Nancy Pelosi, rejected two of his choices.The two participating Republican members – Cheney and Adam Kinzinger – have both been censured by the Republican National Committee. The official view of the House leadership is that January 6 – which led to the deaths of seven people and injured more than 140 police officers – was “legitimate political discourse”.Many of the most important witnesses around Trump have refused to play ball with the investigation. Steve Bannon, Mark Meadows, Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino have all been held in criminal contempt of Congress for failing to respond to subpoenas, and Bannon and Navarro have been indicted by a federal grand jury (the justice department said on Friday it would not charge Scavino and Meadows).Many other top Republicans have invoked their fifth amendment right to silence in answer to every question they were posed. Those resisting testifying include five members of Congress, McCarthy among them.That’s a sign of how far the canker of political discord has spread within Congress, and how far the Republican party has shifted in a fundamentally anti-democratic direction. Consider by contrast the fact that the lethal Watergate question about what the president knew and when he knew it was asked by a senator from Nixon’s own Republican party, Howard Baker from Tennessee.“Congressional hearings have become increasingly partisan-driven,” said Stanley Brand, a former general counsel to the House who has legally represented numerous people called to testify before Congress spanning decades. “From the Clinton administration, through the Republican House’s investigation of the IRS and Benghazi, political lines are being drawn quicker and harder, and now there’s much more effort put on political point scoring.”Brand, who is representing Scavino in his battle to resist the January 6 committee, thinks that by opting out over the hearings the Republicans have fundamentally changed their nature. “Every party has to decide how much it wants to participate, but I’ve never known a big hearing like this with only one side represented – that’s a major difference.”Secret Service were warned of security risk to Pence day before Capitol attackRead moreBrand, a Democrat, thinks that partisanship is also being displayed by the Democratic leadership. He accuses the January 6 committee of straying well beyond its official remit as laid down by the US supreme court – an oversight role in which Congress informs itself for the purpose of writing legislation.He interprets the committee’s aggressive pursuit of witnesses as an attempt to push the justice department into bringing charges against key Trump individuals. “This committee has acted more like a prosecutorial agency than a legislative agency of any congressional investigation in which I’ve been involved in 50 years,” Brand said.Lofgren disputes the claim. “We’ve made it very clear that we are a legislative committee and the Department of Justice are the prosecutors,” she said.Any consideration of bringing prosecutions after the hearings have concluded, she added, “is beyond our purview”.As she prepares for the momentous start of the public hearings, Lofgren had some tough words for the Republican holdouts. She noted that in Watergate Republican leaders were also initially resistant, disputing claims that Nixon had acted improperly. But as soon as he admitted key details, they changed tack.“The difference with the Republican leadership today is that they know they are lying. It’s pretty clear that some of my Republican colleagues – not all – are willing to lie for power,” Lofgren said.What does she hope the hearings will achieve?“I hope they will tell the complete truth about what happened in a way that can be accepted and understood by the broad spectrum of American society, leading to a reinvigorated love of our democratic republic and system of elections.”That is a tall order.“You know, you don’t get anywhere by thinking small,” she said. “We’ll do the best we can, that’s all we can do, and hope this will be an important moment for America.”TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesRepublicansDemocratsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      John Fetterman admits he ignored heart condition before his stroke: ‘I almost died’

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      John Fetterman admits he ignored heart condition before his stroke: ‘I almost died’The Pennsylvania lawmaker’s condition is ‘stable’, says his doctor, and he should be able to return to the Senate campaign trail John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and Democratic senate nominee, said Friday that he “almost died” after suffering a stroke on 13 May. Fetterman, whose health problems have reportedly prompted concerns about his campaign, also revealed that he had cardiomyopathy, which makes it more difficult for the heart to pump blood throughout the body.In a statement, Fetterman admitted that he had neglected his health. “As my doctor said, I should have taken my health more seriously. The stroke I suffered … didn’t come out of nowhere,” he said in a note, according to CBS News’s Ed O’Keefe.Fetterman provided a timeline of his health issues – and lapses in caring for them – in his statement. “Back in 2017, I had swollen feet and went to the hospital to get checked out,” Fetterman said. “That’s when I learned I had a heart condition. Then, I didn’t follow up.”Can this offbeat tattooed Democrat flip a Pennsylvania Senate seat?Read more“I thought losing weight and exercising would be enough,” Fetterman continued. “Of course it wasn’t.”“I want to emphasize that this was completely preventable. My cardiologist said that if I had continued taking the blood thinners, I never would have had a stroke. I didn’t do what the doctor told me,” Fetterman also said.Fetterman said he wouldn’t make the same mistake again and is following his physicians’ advice to rest and focus on recovery.“It will take some more time to get back on the campaign trail like I was in the lead-up to the primary. It’s frustrating – all the more so because this is my own fault – but bear with me, I need a little more time,” he said. “I’m not quite back to 100% yet, but I’m getting closer every day.”Fetterman also made public a statement from his cardiologist. In 2017, the doctor diagnosed him with atrial fibrillation as well as a “decreased heart pump” – but Fetterman “did not go to any doctor for 5 years”.The doctor said that Fetterman’s present condition was “stable” and that he had a pacemaker-defibrillator, adding, “The prognosis I can give for John’s heart is this: if he takes his medications, eats healthy, and exercises, he’ll be fine.“If he does what I’ve told him, and I do believe that he is taking his recovery and his health very seriously this time, he should be able to campaign and serve in the US Senate without a problem.”Some Democrats previously told NBC News that they worried about Fetterman’s health and felt that his team hadn’t been transparent when he was admitted to hospital several weeks ago. In a report published Thursday on NBC News, an elected Pennsylvania Democrat pointed to the unclear timing of when Fetterman would campaign again, saying “a lot of us Democratic party types are very nervous about it”.“I think people I’ve talked to – myself included – don’t know what to make of it,” a longtime Democratic strategist in Pennsylvania told NBC News. “It’s not like Fetterman has close institutional allies, so Dems are calling around wanting to ask the question, but no clue where to get a sense of how serious it is.”Several hours after Fetterman spoke about his health, David McCormick conceded Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate primary to Dr Mehmet Oz, a celebrity heart surgeon backed by Donald Trump. Oz’s win sets the stage for a general election between him and Fetterman, which could easily turn into one of the US’s most important races, as the victor might determine which party controls the Senate.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022PennsylvaniaUS SenateDemocratsUS politicsReuse this content More

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      Until the US senate is accountable to America, we’ll never get gun control | Osita Nwanevu

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      Until the US Senate is accountable to America, we’ll never get gun controlOsita NwanevuDemocrats are heading into this year’s elections without having tried even basic steps to balance the chamber, including ending the filibuster or admitting liberal Washington DC as a state What more can be said about mass shootings in America? We who find ourselves outraged anew by each fresh massacre have settled into a routine⁠. There’s now a canon of essays and satirical pieces to share on social media; in conversations online and off, we offer familiar rebuttals to familiar Republican diversions and deflections. Democratic politicians, for their part, have just about perfected their own boilerplate language⁠. “When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” Biden asked in his Tuesday speech on the Uvalde shooting. “When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?”Eighteen-year-old Americans can’t drink. Why can they buy assault rifles? | Ross BarkanRead moreFor the first time since the Sandy Hook shooting a decade ago, the Democratic party has the power to do what needs to be done. It controls the White House. It controls the House of Representatives. And it controls the Senate, where a bipartisan group of senators has talked in recent days about measures ⁠– from universal background checks to incentives for states to allow the confiscation of guns from threatening individuals ⁠– that probably would not have a prayer if Republicans were in the majority. But they still might not even now. While we will not have a clear sense of where everyone stands until the Senate returns from a fortuitously timed holiday, gun control legislation faces the same basic obstacles that have hobbled the rest of the Democratic party’s agenda ⁠– the filibuster and the rhetoric of consensus.As many weary Democratic voters are now well aware, it effectively takes 60 votes in the US Senate, not the simple majority that Democrats hold, to break a filibuster and pass non-fiscal measures. And while rage at Republicans, the NRA and the gun lobby remains well justified, it is moderate Democrats who support keeping the filibuster ⁠– Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema and Democratic colleagues who might privately back their position ⁠– who are preventing the party from simply advancing gun control legislation on its own. Instead, they will need the support of at least 10 Republicans ⁠– a daunting hurdle Manchin and Sinema have defended on the grounds that major policy changes should win broad bipartisan support.“It makes no sense why we can’t do commonsense things to try to prevent some of this from happening,” Manchin told reporters this week. “The filibuster is the only thing that prevents us from total insanity.”As Manchin knows personally, the filibuster is actually the only thing preventing the Senate from passing the commonsensical reforms he putatively supports. In 2013, he and the Republican Senator Pat Toomey co-authored a bill expanding background checks to gun shows and gun sales over the internet. The majority of the chamber supported it ⁠– 54 votes, including four Republicans. But it needed 60 to overcome the filibuster. It died ⁠– a failure that gives lie to the canard that the filibuster actually facilitates bipartisanship. With an extremely modest bipartisan compromise on the table, the Senate instead passed nothing.That same fate may await the bill Senate negotiators are piecing together now; there’s a plot in the graveyard alongside Biden’s other legislative priorities already waiting for it. And if it fails, the design of the Senate itself will bear most of the blame. The reality Democrats are loth to admit is that if the NRA and the whole gun lobby sank into hell tomorrow, the chamber would still disproportionately empower voters in the most sparsely populated and conservative states in the country ⁠– the voters most likely to vehemently oppose not only regulations on gun ownership, but most of the major policies that Democrats, backed by majorities of the American public, hope to pass. And while significantly altering or eliminating the Senate obviously will not be in the cards anytime soon, Democrats are heading into this year’s midterms and the potential loss of at least one chamber of Congress without having taken more basic steps to balance the chamber, including the elimination of the filibuster or the admission of liberal Washington DC as a state.Instead, they have left the American public chained to a fantasy ⁠– the idea that the surest and most defensible route to meaningful change is bipartisan action, no matter how intransigent the Republican party proves itself to be. That’s a delusion pushed not only by moderate politicians who have an interest in constraining the Democratic party’s capacity to pass left-of-center policies, but by the mainstream press, which mourns these shootings with calls for the parties to set aside their differences and “come together” on the issue.But there will not be a grand coming-together on guns. The modest reforms on the table, even if passed, would do little to change the outcome of a culture war one side has already won. For all the ranting and raving we have heard from the right in the last few months about the cultural power liberals wield, the values of rural and exurban conservatives plainly govern the country here. It matters not a whit what liberals in cities like Buffalo or Pittsburgh think about living in a country where people are gunned down in stores and synagogues with legal assault weapons. An inescapable reality has been imposed upon them ⁠– there are more firearms than people in the United States.If recent history is any guide, the conversations we are having now about improving the situation at the margins will be drowned out and defeated by noise and nonsense in a matter of days. Arming schoolteachers, outfitting the nearly 100,000 public schools in this country with the kind of trip wires and traps you might see in the next Mission Impossible film ⁠– this is the blather of degenerates who know they have already succeeded, who know they have no need for arguments that might convince most Americans. The status quo they defend is being upheld by the deference of Democrats now in a position to upend it.
      Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsTexas school shootingOpinionUS politicsDemocratsUS gun controlGun crimeUS SenateRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

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      Biden plans primetime address on gun violence following mass shootings – live

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      President Joe Biden will address Americans at 7.30pm eastern time following mass shootings across the country, including at a Texas elementary school last week that left 19 children and two teachers dead.Biden will deliver “remarks on the recent tragic mass shootings, and the need for Congress to act to pass commonsense laws to combat the epidemic of gun violence that is taking lives every day”, the White House said.The speech comes on the same day that the House judiciary committee is holding a hearing to mark up Democrats’ omnibus gun-control bill, the Protecting Our Kids Act.Chris Murphy, the Democratic senator from Connecticut who was sworn into office shortly after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, has published an op-ed in Fox News calling for gun reform. Appealing to a conservative Fox News audience, he wrote: .css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I believe that the Second Amendment protects a citizen’s right to buy and own firearms. But I also believe that like every constitutional right, there are limits. I don’t believe the Constitution protects the right of criminals or people with serious mental illness to own weapons. And while all of us might draw the line in a different place, I think we all agree that the Constitution allows Congress to decide which weapons are so dangerous as to be kept exclusively in the hands of the military.
      And as I said on the Senate floor last week, I also acknowledge that in order to find common ground, I will need to agree to a smaller set of reforms than I would prefer. I’m willing to pass incremental change, like tightening up our background checks system and helping states pass laws to allow law enforcement to temporarily take guns away from individuals who pose a threat to themselves or others. I’m also very supportive of providing more mental health resources to help young men in crisis and more funding to pay for security upgrades at our schools.
      For me, the only thing we cannot do is nothing.
      The White House expects that Covid-19 vaccinations for children under 5 could begin as early as 12 June, said Dr Ashish Jha, Covid response coordinator. “Our expectation is that within weeks, every parent who wants their child to get vaccinated will be able to get an appointment,” he said. Children under 5 are the last remaining Americans who are not yet eligible for vaccines. Within weeks, “every parent who wants their child to get vaccinated will be able to get an appointment”, Jha said. A decision on authorizing the vaccine for young kids is expected soon after the panel of experts advising the US Food and Drug Administration meets 14 and 15 June. Donald Trump will “fight even harder” on the road to a possible White House run in 2024 because of the acquittal of a lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign on a charge of lying to the FBI.“If anything, it makes me want to fight even harder,” the former president told Fox News Digital. “If we don’t win, our country is ruined. We have bad borders, bad elections and a court system not functioning properly.”Full story:Trump says Clinton lawyer acquittal fuels 2024 election ambitionsRead moreOhio is poised to allow teachers and other school employees to forgo hundreds of hours of training normally needed to carry a gun at work under a bill awaiting the governor’s signature.House Bill 99 will streamline the process for school employees to carry weapons on campus, and has been welcomed by Republican governor Mike DeWine. “My office worked with the general assembly to remove hundreds of hours of curriculum irrelevant to school safety and to ensure training requirements were specific to a school environment and contained significant scenario-based training,” he said in a statement.The bill, which passed the Senate Wednesday, has raised eyebrows given its passage following a wave of mass shootings, including at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. The Associated Press reported that it’s opposed by teachers unions, gun control advocates and law enforcement groups, and supported by some police departments and school districts. Republicans who backed the law see it as a work around for a recent court ruling that said school employees must undergo a lengthy training process before coming to work armed.That’s it from me today. I’m handing the blog over to my west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, to cover Joe Biden’s speech tonight on gun violence. Here’s where the day stands so far:
      Biden will deliver a primetime address at 7.30pm ET on “the need for Congress to act to pass commonsense laws to combat the epidemic of gun violence”, the White House said. The speech comes less than two weeks after a mass shooting at Robb elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers. The massacre has intensified calls for national gun-control legislation, but it remains unclear whether any bill can pass Congress.
      The House judiciary committee held a markup hearing on Democrats’ omnibus gun-control bill, the Protecting Our Kids Act. The bill would raise the age requirement for purchasing semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21, and it would also establish severe restrictions on the sale and possession of high-capacity magazines, among other reforms. The committee hearing could set up a full House vote on the bill, but the legislation currently has no path to passage in the evenly divided Senate.
      Democrats on the House judiciary committee accused Republicans of being “complicit” in mass shootings by refusing to amend gun laws, while Republicans argued Democrats were moving too quickly to pass gun-control legislation days after the Uvalde tragedy. Noting that it has been 23 years since the shooting at Columbine High school, committee chairman Jerry Nadler asked his Republican colleagues, “What the hell are you waiting for?”
      Donald Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, met with the House select committee investigating January 6. Barr’s conversation with the lawmakers investigating the Capitol attack lasted for two hours, CNN reports, and he discussed his interactions with Trump before and after the 2020 election.
      Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.A Florida legislative map that favors Republicans is set to stay in place during the state’s upcoming elections after a court declined on Thursday to block it.The ruling, reported by Politico, adds to the woes facing Democrats in Congress, where court rulings have given Republicans an edge in redistricting, while President Joe Biden faces low approval ratings. The Florida case centered on a Congressional district map drawn, in an unusual move, by Republican governor Ron DeSantis, rather than the legislature. Civil rights and voting groups had sued over the map, arguing it violates anti-gerrymandering clauses in the state’s constitution.The decision by the state supreme court not to intervene in the case means an appeals court will likely decide the matter, but not before the state’s August 23 primary. The map gives Republicans an advantage in congressional districts and also dismantles the district of House Rep. Al Lawson, a Black Democrat representing North Florida.William Barr, who served as attorney general under former president Donald Trump, on Thursday met with the House select committee investigating January 6, CNN reports.Barr met for two hours with lawmakers investigating the assault on the US capitol, and discussed his interactions with Trump before and after the 2020 election, CNN said, citing sources familiar with the investigation. The network also saw him in the room where interviews are done. The meeting dealt with Barr’s interactions with Trump before and after the election, as well as his conclusion that the 2020 election was not affected by fraud, as the former president claims.The committee’s chairman Bennie Thompson said in January that the former attorney general had spoken to the panel repeatedly. Barr was accused of turning the Justice Department into the then-president’s tool during his time as attorney general, but ultimately resigned before the end of Trump’s term.John Hinckley, who shot and injured then-president Ronald Reagan in 1981, will have all court restrictions on him lifted later this month, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.Declaring 67-year-old Hinckley is “no longer a danger to himself or others,” US district court Judge Paul L. Friedman said as he decided to release Hinckley from court oversight on June 15, the Associated Press reports.A jury found Hinckley not guilty by reason of mental insanity in the March 30, 1981 shooting that also partially paralyzed Reagan’s press secretary James Brady and injured a Secret Service agent and a Washington police officer. Hinckley was obsessed with actress Jodi Foster and the movie “Taxi Driver,” in which a character attempts to kill a presidential candidate.Hinckley spent more than two decades in a mental hospital following the shooting before being gradually allowed to visit and eventually live in his parents’ Virginia community. The remaining restrictions include giving notice before traveling more than 75 miles from his home, allowing officials access to his electronic devices and online accounts and avoiding travel to areas where someone under Secret Service protection might be present. Friedman had made the decision to end the restrictions in September of last year but delayed its effective date to ensure Hinckley was fitting in well to his community.Reagan died in 2004, and his foundation issued a statement objecting to the end of restrictions on Hinckley, particularly his plans to pursue a career in music. “We strongly oppose his release into society where he apparently seeks to make a profit from his infamy,” the Reagan Foundation and Institute said.President Joe Biden’s approval rating has risen by six percentage points from the low point it hit last week, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Wednesday found, but it still lingers at an unpopular 42 percent.A spike in inflation coupled with the chaotic US military pullout from Afghanistan sent Biden’s approval rating sinking last August, and it has struggled to recover in the months since. The poll conducted over two days of more than 1,000 US adults found that 52 percent of Americans disapprove of Biden’s performance.The low numbers have raised alarms that Biden’s Democrats, who control both the House and Senate by narrow margins, could lose control of one or both chambers in the midterm elections set for November. Abortion rights groups have filed a lawsuit in Florida to stop its ban on abortions after 15 weeks from taking effect next month.The suit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of two Planned Parenthood affiliates and six abortion providers, attempts to block the law signed by governor Ron DeSantis from being enforced starting July 1, arguing it violates the state’s constitutional guarantee of privacy.The law “will force Floridians to remain pregnant against their will, violating their dignity and bodily autonomy, and endangering their families, their health, and even their lives,” the ACLU said in a statement announcing a suit.Florida’s law was one of a host of measures passed by states in anticipation of a Supreme Court ruling expected later this month that could see the Roe v Wade decision allowing abortion in the United States reversed or greatly weakened. Flordia’s law is modeled on similar legislation approved in Mississippi, which is the subject of the supreme court’s deliberations. More

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      Clinton lawyer acquitted of lying to FBI when he briefed them on Trump-Russia links – as it happened

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      A lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign was acquitted Tuesday of lying to the FBI when he pushed information meant to cast suspicions on Donald Trump and Russia in the run-up to the 2016 election.The jury in the case of Michael Sussmann deliberated on Friday afternoon and Tuesday morning before reaching its verdict, the Associated Press said.The case was the first courtroom test of special counsel John Durham since his appointment three years ago to search for government misconduct during the investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign.Michael Sussman not guilty — eminently predictable, given Durham’s desperate stretching of the law and facts.I wrote this back in September:https://t.co/EUWxptnMYd— Elie Honig (@eliehonig) May 31, 2022
      The verdict represents a significant setback for Durham’s work, the AP says, especially since Trump supporters had looked to the probe to expose what they contend was sweeping wrongdoing by the FBI.In the indictment filed in September 2021, Sussmann was accused of falsely telling FBI general counsel James Baker in September 2016 that he did not represent any client when he met him to give the bureau white papers and other data files containing evidence of questionable cyber links between the Trump Organization and a Russia-based bank.The indictment alleged that in fact Sussmann had turned over this information not as a “good citizen” but rather, as an attorney representing a US technology executive, an internet company and Clinton’s presidential campaign.Trump is suing Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and other people and entities tied to the investigation of Russian election interference in 2016, claiming they attempted to rig the election he won.Read more: Trump sues Hillary Clinton, alleging ‘plot’ to rig 2016 election against himRead moreThank you for reading the US politics blog today. We’ll be back on Wednesday.For all the detailed news on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, please consult our global war blog here.Here are the main events that occurred today:
      The White House is making efforts to communicate that Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell may disagree on what the problems are at the root of America’s repeated mass shootings, but the US president can still call the Senate majority leader a “rational Republican” and try to find common ground on gun violence.
      US supreme court clerks may be required to release their phone records as the investigation into who leaked the Roe v Wade opinion draft widens.
      A lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, Michael Sussmann, was acquitted Tuesday of lying to the FBI when he pushed information meant to cast suspicions on Donald Trump and Russia in the run-up to that election.
      Joe Biden has been speaking at the White House with Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand prime minister, ahead of their mini-summit.
      The US president is meeting with Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, today to discuss the economy in the US and globally, and what steps can be taken to ease inflation and lower prices. Biden is calling the issue his “top domestic priority”.
      An emergency gun reform package, the Protecting Our Kids Act, will be presented to the House judiciary committee on Thursday as politicians grapple with the aftermath of mass shootings in New York and Texas this month that killed 31 people, including 19 elementary school children.
      The White House is making efforts to communicate that Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell may disagree on what the problems are at the root of America’s repeated mass shootings, but the US president can still call the Senate majority leader a “rational Republican” and try to find common ground on gun violence.Kentucky Republican McConnell, and many Republican leaders, including in Texas where the small city of Uvalde is devastated by last week’s school shooting, continually hone in on mental health issues and a need for more school security.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre noted that: “We are the only country that is dealing with gun violence at the rate we are, so what’s the problem here? The problem is with guns and not having legislation to deal with something that’s a pandemic here.”Biden spoke at length yesterday outside the White House, as he returned from Delaware the day after he’d visited Uvalde, about how the idea of 18-year-olds legally being able to buy military-style assault rifles in the US – the weapons used in the Uvalde massacre and the racist attack on a supermarket in a majority-Black neighborhood of Buffalo, New York, days before – made no sense.Jean-Pierre noted that Republicans’ insistence on mental health and “hardening schools” and away from great gun control are “two things he [Biden] does not agree on [with McConnell].”But she added: “But I think there is a way potentially for the Senate to come together and legislation to come together, they need to.”A group of Senate Democrats and Republicans are currently discussing on Capitol Hill the potential for a bipartisan “significant package” of measures, according to Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy.But indications are that any such bill will include a collection of more minor measures, not sweeping change such as an assault weapons ban, freshly urged upon by US vice president Kamala Harris on Saturday when she attended the last funeral for the 10 people killed in Buffalo.‘America is killing itself’: world reacts with horror and incomprehension to Texas shootingRead moreKarine Jean-Pierre says Biden is “considering” more executive actions on gun reforms following the mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, but did not give details of what they might be.She confirmed that the president, and a White House team, is also discussing legislation with lawmakers:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}He’s calling on Congress to act. He’s hopeful, he wants to make sure there’s action.
      The President has done everything he can from from the federal government. We are looking at other executive actions that we could possibly do. But it’s not up to him alone. He cannot do this alone. Congress needs to act.White House economic adviser Brian Deese followed the band to report on Joe Biden’s lunchtime meeting with the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, and treasury secretary, Janet Yellen.“I get to go home and tell my kids that BTS opened for me,” he jokes.Deese says Biden underscored that he respects the independence of the federal reserve and will give the fed the space and independence it needs to tackle inflation.“It’s a global challenge,” Deese says of inflation.“It’s hitting American families and creating anxiety and economic hardship. He [Biden] gets this”.But he says because of Biden’s economic achievements, and US economic strengths including a robust jobs market, few countries are better placed for the challenge ahead.He predicts the recovery moving forward will look different than it has so far. “It’s a marathon and we have to move and shift to stable and resilient growth,” Deese adds, noting that the recovery since the Covid-19 pandemic has been at a furious pace.Soaring gas and food prices remain Biden’s top economic priority, Deese says.“He’s focused on the right policy decisions and choices. We have to address this issue, we need some help working with Congress”. An interpreter has now kindly informed us what the BTS band members were saying.Jungkook, although it might have been J-Hope, said: “Today is the last day of AA and NHPI heritage month (Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander), we join the White House to stand with the AA and HPI community and to celebrate”.The interpreter has raced through the names, and this blogger can’t determine if he said Jimmy or Ji-min, so either Kim Seok-jin (known as Jinny) or Park Ji-min said: “We were devastated by the recent surge of hate crimes, including Asian American hate crimes, [it’s time] to put a stop on this and support the cause. We’d like to take this opportunity to voice ourselves once again”.Another band member who probably was Jungkook said: “We still feel surprised that music created by South Korean artists reaches so many people around the world, transcending languages and cultural barriers. We believe music is always an amazing and wonderful unifier of all things”.The band were hustled out as reporters shouted questions to them in vain.The seven members of K-pop band BTS are flanking White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, wearing black suits and looking more like a security detail than pop stars.“It is a great honor to be invited to the White House to discuss important issues of anti-Asian hate crimes, Asian inclusion and diversity,” the first band member says in perfect English.A second band member steps up and speaks in Korean, as do the others, one by one. There seems to be no interpreter, but they look very earnest in what they’re saying.The English-speaking band member returns:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We thank President Biden and the White House for giving us this important opportunity to speak about these important causes and remind ourselves of what we can do as artists.One of the most extraordinary White House press briefings in recent memory is about to get under way, with South Korean K-pop band BTS set to take the podium with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.The popular music combination is in town to meet with Joe Biden and discuss “the need to come together in solidarity, Asian inclusion and representation, and addressing anti-Asian hate crimes and discrimination”. You can watch it live here.There’s been reaction to the acquittal earlier today of Michael Sussmann, a lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, who was accused of lying to the FBI.Speaking to reporters outside the courthouse in Washington DC, Sussmann said he “told the truth to the FBI, and the jury clearly recognized that with their unanimous verdict today”.Sussmann was accused of concealing from the FBI that he was working for the Clinton campaign when he met with the bureau’s general counsel James Baker in September 2016 and handed over documents purporting to show links between the rival campaign of Donald Trump and Russia.Sussmann added: “Despite being falsely accused, I am relieved that justice ultimately prevailed in this case”.In a statement, special counsel John Durham, who was appointed three years ago to search for government misconduct during the investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s campaign, effectively investigating the investigators, said he and his team were “disappointed” by the verdict.“While we are disappointed in the outcome, we respect the jury’s decision and thank them for their service,” Durham said.“I also want to recognize and thank the investigators and the prosecution team for their dedicated efforts in seeking truth and justice in this case”. Read more:Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer acquitted of lying to the FBIRead moreAs the first of the funerals takes place on Tuesday for the victims of last week’s elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, local media outlets are casting a spotlight on a company that worked with families to create 19 custom-made children’s caskets to honor their lives.Trey Ganem, his son Billy and their team at SoulShine Industries of Edna, Texas, donated, constructed and painted 19 caskets in three days.“We’re creating the last thing that the parents can ever do for their child,” Ganem told NewsNation. And we’re making it with passion and purpose. We put all of our heart and soul into this thing”. Meet the TX man who’s making customized caskets for each of the 19 young victims and two teachers from the school shooting in #Uvalde. Trey Ganem visited with the families last week so each casket is personalized to include each child’s interests.📷: SoulShine Industries pic.twitter.com/eeoOZHcrfF— John-Carlos Estrada (@Mr_JCE) May 31, 2022
      Read more:First funerals of Uvalde school shooting victims to beginRead moreIt’s been a lively morning in US politics news, do stay tuned as we take you through the next hours with fresh updates as they happen.For all the detailed news on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, please consult our global war blog here.Here’s where things stand in the US:
      US supreme court clerks may be required to release their phone records as the investigation into who leaked the Roe v Wade opinion draft widens.
      A lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, Michael Sussmann, was acquitted Tuesday of lying to the FBI when he pushed information meant to cast suspicions on Donald Trump and Russia in the run-up to that election.
      Joe Biden has been speaking at the White House with Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand prime minister, ahead of their mini-summit.
      The US president is meeting with Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, today to discuss the economy in the US and globally, and what steps can be taken to ease inflation and lower prices. Biden is calling the issue his “top domestic priority”.
      An emergency gun reform package, the Protecting Our Kids Act, will be presented to the House judiciary committee on Thursday as politicians grapple with the aftermath of mass shootings in New York and Texas this month that killed 31 people, including 19 elementary school children. More

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      Democrats rush to push gun safety laws after mass shootings as Republicans stall

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      Democrats rush to push gun safety laws after mass shootings as Republicans stallNew York governor seeks to ban people under 21 from buying assault rifles, while California governor intends to sign restrictions, including the right to sue gun manufacturers With Republicans stonewalling for years on any significant federal gun safety legislation, some states are now rushing to take steps themselves following large-scale shootings in New York and Texas this month.Democrats in some blue states are making fresh efforts to reinvigorate proposals toward what gun control advocates call “evidence-based policy interventions”.In New Jersey, Democratic governor Phil Murphy singled out four Republican state lawmakers opposing gun safety and accused them of taking “blood money” while urging them to pass a stalled gun control package that included raising the age to 21 for purchases of long guns, such as assault rifles, and removing laws that shield gun makers from civil lawsuits.Among those Murphy named were state senators John DiMaio, co-sponsor of a bill that would eliminate the statutory prohibition against the possession of “hollow point” ammunition; and Ed Durr, sponsor of a bill to remove magazine capacity limits and repeal a “red flag” law prohibiting guns for people deemed to pose “a significant danger of bodily injury”.“In the face of children being slaughtered to the point where the reports indicate these beautiful children were unrecognizable, I say let these folks come out from behind their press releases and their tweets and cast votes before the residents of this great state,” Murphy said.In New York, where the gunman was charged with first degree murder in the deaths of 10 Black customers and employees of a supermarket in Buffalo two weeks ago, state Democratic governor Kathy Hochul said she would seek – at a “minimum” – to ban people under 21 from purchasing AR-15-style assault rifles.Military-style assault rifles were used in Buffalo and last week in the school shooting in Uvalde, south Texas, by 18-year-olds in both tragedies, Hochul pointed out.“That person’s not old enough to buy a legal drink. I don’t want 18-year-olds to have guns. At least not in the state of New York,” she said.Among the measures Hochul enacted by executive order after the Buffalo massacre was a unit within the state’s office of counterterrorism that would focus exclusively on the rise of domestic terrorism and extremism.As the law stands in New York, a person must be 21 or older to obtain a license to purchase a handgun but the state doesn’t require licenses for long guns, such as shotguns or rifles, and someone can own one at 16. Hochul hopes to get the law through this week.In California – which has experienced a string of mass shootings, including one at a church luncheon two weeks ago – Democratic governor Gavin Newsom has called for tougher gun controls to be fast-tracked through the legislature.“California will not stand by as kids across the country are gunned down,” Newsom said last week.“Guns are now the leading cause of death for kids in America. While the US Senate stands idly by and activist federal judges strike down commonsense gun laws across our nation, California will act with the urgency this crisis demands.”“The Second Amendment [to the US Constitution, on the right to bear arms] is not a suicide pact. We will not let one more day go by without taking action to save lives,” he added.An initial package of bills Newsom has committed to signing include restrictions on advertising of firearms to minors, curbs ghost guns, establish rights of action to limit spread of illegal assault weapons, and the right for governments and victims of gun violence to sue manufacturers and sellers of firearms.However, few Republican-controlled states have followed their lead. Conservative lawmakers in Pennsylvania and Michigan prevented efforts to introduce votes on gun safety legislation, while officials in Texas including the hard-right governor Greg Abbott, have blamed the school massacre there on a gunman with mental health problems, not the fact that he was legally able to buy semi-automatic rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition as soon as he turned 18 earlier this year.“Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge, period,” Abbott said a day after the Uvalde shooting.At the federal level, a group of bipartisan senators have said they would work through the weekend to reach agreement on steps to limit access to guns, although there are no big moves afoot to ban assault weapons, as Vice-President Kamala Harris called for anew on Saturday, or raise the eligibility age to 21.“It’s inconceivable to me that we have not passed significant federal legislation trying to address the tragedy of gun violence in this nation, especially because since Sandy Hook, we’ve seen even worse slaughter, in Las Vegas, in Orlando,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said on ABC on Sunday.Pennsylvania Republican Senator Patrick Toomey said: “Times change. There’s a possibility that might work this time.”TopicsUS gun controlBuffalo shootingTexas school shootingUS politicsNew YorkTexasCalifornianewsReuse this content More

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      Democrats looking for 'common ground' with Republicans on gun control, says Murphy – video

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      Senator Chris Murphy has spoken with confidence on ‘finding that common ground’ with Republicans to support gun laws following the Uvalde school shooting on Tuesday.
      Murphy called for a ‘popular uprising of citizens’ to put pressure Republicans when he attended a Thursday gun safety rally and press conference on Capitol Hill.
      Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer is expected to bring expanded background checks and potentially ‘red flag’ laws to Congress that allow people to petition a court to temporarily take guns away from a person at risk of hurting themselves or others.

      Texas shooting: latest updates
      How the push for US gun control rises and falls with each school shooting More

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      Trump is no kingmaker in the Republican party. That is increasingly clear | Ben Davis

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      Trump is no kingmaker in the Republican party. That is increasingly clearBen DavisThis week’s primaries showed that voters value delivering on priorities above endorsements The most eye-catching result of Tuesday’s suite of midterm primaries is Georgia’s incumbent governor, Brian Kemp, demolishing former senator David Perdue in his re-election primary. Former president Donald Trump has spent the better part of the last two years publicly savaging Kemp for the latter’s refusal to unilaterally overturn President Joe Biden’s Georgia win in the 2020 election. Despite Trump’s public support and universal name recognition, Perdue is losing by landslide margins in every corner of the state. Trump also targeted the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and attorney general, Chris Carr, who are both up over Trump’s endorsees by large margins.Trump still won’t shut up. He’s doing Democrats running for office a huge favor | Robert ReichRead moreThis is a continuation of a trend we have seen in Republican primaries thus far this cycle. Many Trump-endorsed candidates have lost, including Representative Madison Cawthorn, or been held to fairly low percentages, such as the Senate candidates Mehmet Oz and JD Vance. It’s clear that the 2020 election and personal loyalty to Trump have diminishing returns with Republican primary voters.While any Republican would certainly love to have Trump’s endorsement, he’s far from a kingmaker in the party. Fundamentally, most Republican voters vote Republican for the same reasons they always did: lower taxes and imposing conservative culture war policies on others. Elected officials whom Republican voters perceive as governing well and delivering results will be rewarded regardless of whether they tried to “stop the steal”. In the end, Trump’s single-minded fixation on the election, which most voters even in his own party consider a distraction, could do real damage to his prospects in 2024.On the Democratic side, both sides of the party’s civil war seem to have been drawn into a stalemate. The party’s centrist wing has landed on a potent strategy after being punched in the mouth by superior progressive organization and small-dollar fundraising in the last two cycles. Centrists used the OH-11 special election between Nina Turner and Shontel Brown to pioneer waiting until late in the race and then dropping enormous amounts of outside money through pro-Israel Pacs like Democratic Majority for Israel and Aipac to overwhelm progressives and leave them unable to counter. This strategy was used again to rapidly close an enormous lead in PA-12, but progressives were just able to pull out a win for candidate Summer Lee. As of this writing, the TX-28 race between progressive Jessica Cisneros and the conservative incumbent Henry Cuellar remains too close to call.The commonality across Democratic primaries is that voters value loyalty. DMFI and Aipac’s ads do not ever mention Israel. They savage progressive candidates for alleged disloyalty to the party and its agenda (ironically given Aipac’s endorsement of more than 100 Republican lawmakers who supported overturning the 2020 election). Progressive wins, however, have used the same attack. Despite unitary control of government, the Democratic party has no legislative accomplishments of note. Democratic voters understand that this is due primarily to the intransigence of specific lawmakers. The Pennsylvania Senate nominee John Fetterman hammered opponent Conor Lamb on ending the filibuster and his votes against the party’s agenda. The No Labels “unbreakable nine” who stymied Biden’s Build Back Better agenda have been bleeding out, with Kurt Schrader and Carolyn Bourdeaux losing by large margins and Henry Cuellar in serious danger. Democratic voters want more than anything a functional governing majority that is able to deliver clear results.Across both parties, it’s clear that voters value candidates they believe will govern and deliver on their priorities, far more than endorsements. Democrats who have endorsements from Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi but spent the past two years stymying their agenda will be punished, while Republicans that deliver wins will be rewarded even if they anger Donald Trump.
      Ben Davis works in political data in Washington DC. He worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign and is an active member of the Democratic Socialists of America
      TopicsUS midterm elections 2022OpinionUS politicsRepublicansDemocratscommentReuse this content More