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      The US supreme court appears ready to nullify the Voting Rights Act | Moira Donegan

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      The last remaining piece of the 1965 Voting Rights Act – section 2, which empowers the federal government to protect voters from racial gerrymandering meant to dilute Black political power – appears headed for an untimely end. At oral arguments in Louisiana v Callais on Wednesday, the US supreme court appeared ready to strike down section 2, effectively completing the gradual nullification of the Voting Rights Act that it has pursued for over a decade.The case stems from new congressional districting maps that were drawn in Louisiana after the 2020 census, which found both that the state was eligible for six seats in the House of Representatives and that its population was about one-third Black. The state initially drew maps that featured only one majority-Black congressional district, rejecting seven more racially fair maps; voters sued, and federal courts ordered Louisiana to comply with the Voting Rights Act by drawing new maps in which Black voters would be a majority in a second district, thereby reflecting their share of the population and giving Black Louisianans an equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice.But now, a group of people identifying themselves as “non-African-American voters” have sued to get those racially proportionate maps thrown out, arguing that enforcement of the VRA violates their own rights under the 14th and 15th amendments. They claim the maps drawn to remedy racial discrimination against Black people in fact constitute racial discrimination against non-Black (read: white) people. The court seems likely to side with them.If they do, it will mark the end of the Voting Rights Act, widely considered the crowning achievement of the civil right movement, which the supreme court, under John Roberts, has been dismantling for years. In 2013’s Shelby county v Holder, the court struck down much of section 5, which had required jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination in voting to get federal preclearance for changes to its voting laws.In subsequent cases, the court has repeatedly narrowed the conditions under which litigants can bring voting rights claims and expanded states’ leeway to make voting laws that would have previously been deemed discriminatory. Writing for the majority in Shelby, Chief Justice Roberts claimed that racial animus and inequality had diminished enough that such a regime was not necessary, and indeed violated the rights of states. As states imposed a slew of new voting restrictions in the aftermath, the gap between Black and white voter participation rates grew dramatically. It expanded twice as much in districts that had previously been subjected to the section 5 preclearance regime.On Wednesday, the court seemed determined to apply the same logic that it used in Shelby county to section 2, demanding that Janai Nelson, the head of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, justify why section 2 should still be efficacious and should not be considered to have somehow expired. Justices Kavanaugh and Alito asserted that the racial gerrymander was justified if it was intended as a partisan gerrymander – that is, that the lawmakers’ stated or professed intentions was what mattered, and not the racially discriminatory impact of the gerrymander.Previous supreme court precedent, as well as ample evidence from the congressional record, has said that discriminatory impact, rather than intent, is sufficient to constitute illegal racial discrimination – but at oral argument, the Republicans on the court, along with those representing the litigants, did not seem to think that this should matter. As she rebutted these arguments in the guise of asking questions from the bench, one could hear the exhaustion in Ketanji Brown Jackson’s voice. The remedies, she sputtered, “are so tied up with race, because race is the initial problem!” Jackson has been the court’s most passionate and articulate advocate for the Reconstruction amendments and for the legacy of the civil rights movement, but she seemed to know that her colleagues were not listening to her.The case reflects two major trends of the Roberts court: hostility to racial justice claims brought by minorities, and a willingness to invert civil rights law and the Reconstruction amendments alike to create interpretations in which these legal traditions function to entrench, rather than challenge, historical hierarchies of race and gender. Louisiana’s attorney general – who has switched sides in the case since it was initially argued last year, joining an opposition to the Voting Rights Act – claimed that to assume that Black voters would vote differently than white voters – which in Louisiana, they overwhelmingly do – would be to unconstitutionally impose a racial stereotype. This facile fiction elicited exasperation from Justice Kagan.But the attorney general knew his audience. Roberts has long been an enemy of practices that attempt to remedy historical and ongoing racial discrimination, claiming that the law mandates that state and private actors alike take no interest in such projects and attempt facially race-blind policies in everything from voting rights enforcement to college admissions – no matter how racially discriminatory against Black Americans such practices prove to be in reality. “The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” he once memorably said, “is to stop discriminating on the basis of race” – that is, to stop trying to account for or combat racism with official policy. The result will be that if the court rules in Louisiana’s favor, it will no longer be illegal, in practice, to racially gerrymander congressional districts to minimize and dilute Black voter power. But it will be illegal to use race to redistrict in such a way that restores Black voter power.It is apparently through this fanciful and motivated reasoning that Roberts and his colleagues have decided that any move to secure Black Americans’ voting rights and equality in fact violates the very constitutional amendments that were meant to secure their voting rights and equality. The Voting Rights Act does not violate the 15th amendment; it enforces it, and gave the United States, during the 60 years or so of its enactment, its only plausible claim to being a real democracy. To say that the VRA contradicts the 15th amendment is more than just bad reasoning. It is bad faith. But bad faith, increasingly, is what the supreme court operates under.If the supreme court rules in favor of the “non-African-American” voters and vacates what is left of the Voting Rights Act, as they are expected to, then a decision will probably come down sometime in June, just a few months before the November 2026 midterms. The resulting racial gerrymanders are expected to net Republicans 19 House seats.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      US Capitol police investigating flag with swastika in Republican representative’s office – report

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      US Capitol police are reportedly investigating after a US flag bearing a swastika was discovered inside the office of Republican House member Dave Taylor of Ohio.The image, obtained by Politico, shows a modified flag featuring red and white stripes arranged in the form of a swastika – which is virtually synonymous with the Nazis’ genocidal regime. The flag was displayed on what appears to be a cubicle wall behind Angelo Elia, one of Taylor’s staff members, during a virtual meeting.Other items pinned nearby include a pocket constitution and a congressional calendar. It remains unclear whether Elia had any connection to the display.“I am aware of an image that appears to depict a vile and deeply inappropriate symbol near an employee in my office,” Taylor said in a statement to the Cincinnati Enquirer.“The content of that image does not reflect the values or standards of this office, my staff, or myself, and I condemn it in the strongest terms. Upon learning of this matter, I immediately directed a thorough investigation alongside Capitol Police, which remains ongoing. No further comment will be provided until it has been completed.”According to his office, the flag was discovered on Tuesday afternoon inside Taylor’s suite in the Cannon building on Capitol Hill, Politico reported. The congressman suspects the act was “foul play or vandalism”, his spokesperson said.When contacted by the Guardian for comment, an automatic response from the US Capitol police public information office was sent that said the office is “closed for routine business” during the funding-related federal government shutdown that began on 1 October. “The office will reopen when the federal government is funded,” the response said.The discovery follows a report from Politico published on Tuesday detailing a Telegram chat in which Young Republican leaders exchanged racist comments and slurs, mocked the Holocaust, and expressed admiration for Nazi ruler Adolf Hitler.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe exposed chat has since been met with major backlash throughout the US, with some who participated being called to resign and at least one member having a job offer revoked. More

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      Johnson says ‘I don’t have anything to negotiate’ as US shutdown drags on

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      The top House Republican said he won’t negotiate with Senate Democrats as the government shutdown dragged into its 14th day on Tuesday, while defending the Trump administration’s decision to shuffle Pentagon funds to make sure military personnel get their paychecks.Speaking to reporters, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, claimed: “I don’t have anything to negotiate” and accused Democrats of playing games ahead of the Senate’s scheduled eighth vote Tuesday evening on a House-passed measure to fund the government.He also dismissed Democratic concerns about the legality of the Pentagon’s decision to use unspent research and development funds to pay service members during the shutdown, starting with a paycheck on Wednesday.“If the Democrats want to go to court and challenge troops being paid, bring it,” Johnson said. “I’m grateful for a commander in chief who understands the priorities of the country.”The payment arrangement came after Donald Trump ordered his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to find money for military salaries over the weekend. Trump said in a post on TruthSocial that he wouldn’t let Democrats “hold our military, and the entire security of our nation, HOSTAGE” during the shutdown.The Pentagon and Office of Management and Budget announced that troops will receive their scheduled 15 October paycheck using reallocated funds, eliminating the immediate need for a separate US military pay bill.Johnson has said the Trump administration has “every right” to redirect the appropriated defense department funds, though Democratic lawmakers have questioned whether the action is legal.The speaker continued to blame the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, for the impasse, accusing him of blocking the House-passed “clean” continuing resolution to appease his party’s progressive wing.“We’re certainly not going to allow the American people to be taken hostage for his political gain,” Johnson said, adding that he had “no strategy” beyond “doing the right thing, the clearly obvious thing, the traditional thing”.Johnson claimed the Republican stopgap funding bill contains no partisan priorities, telling reporters on Tuesday: “I don’t have anything that I can take off of that document to make it more palatable for them.”The Republican speaker has kept the House in extended recess and scrapped scheduled votes as he attempts to pressure Senate Democrats into accepting the Republican proposal without modifications. Playing hardball has drawn praise from the rightwing House Freedom Caucus but criticism from some Republicans who argue the House should negotiate.According to a court filing by the country’s largest federal workers union, the American Federation of Government Employees, more than 4,000 government employees have been laid off during the shutdown. Senate Democrats representing Maryland and Virginia, states with high concentrations of federal workers, condemned the dismissals on Tuesday.“This is all part of the Trump 2025 playbook,” said Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland senator. “Stop attacking employees, stop attacking the American people, and start negotiating to reopen the federal government.” More

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      White House announces federal worker layoffs as shutdown nears third week

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      The White House announced layoffs of federal workers on Friday, making good on a threat it had made in response to the US government shutdown, which now appears set to stretch into a third straight week.Russell Vought, the director of the White House office of management and budget, wrote on social media that “RIFs have begun”, referring to the government’s reduction-in-force procedure to let employees go.While Vought provided no details on the departments and agencies at which the layoffs were taking place, a treasury spokesperson said notices had been distributed within the department. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told the Guardian that layoffs would also happen at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. And a union representing federal workers confirmed that members at the Department of Education would also be affected by the reduction in force.Union leaders warned the layoffs would have “devastating effects” on services relied upon by millions of Americans, and pledged to challenge the moves in court.“It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country,” said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents 800,000 federal and DC government workers.Vought had warned that federal agencies could slash jobs if the government shuts down, but the Trump administration largely held off after funding lapsed last week. Asked at a press conference before Vought’s announcement why no layoffs had occurred, the top Senate Republican, John Thune, signaled they would happen soon.“The White House has now for 10 days laid off doing anything in hopes that enough Senate Democrats would come to their senses and do the right thing and fund the government,” he said.View image in fullscreen“My expectation is, yes, they’re going to start making some decisions about how to move money around, which agencies and departments are going to be impacted, which programs are going to be impacted, which employees are going to be impacted. That’s what a shutdown does.”The AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, responded to Vought’s post on Friday, saying: “America’s unions will see you in court.”Last week, the AFGE and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) filed for a temporary restraining order to block the Trump administration from carrying out any reductions in force (RIFs) during the shutdown. The unions filed an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order on Friday, following Vought’s post.Lee Saunders, president of the AFSCME, said: “These mass firings are illegal and will have devastating effects on the services millions of Americans rely on every day. Whether it’s food inspectors, public safety workers, or the countless other public service workers who keep America running, federal employees should not be bargaining chips in this administration’s political games.“By illegally firing these workers, the administration isn’t just targeting federal employees, it’s hurting their families and the communities they serve every day. We will pursue every available legal avenue to stop this administration’s unlawful attacks on public service workers’ freedoms and jobs.”Congressional Democrats have refused to vote for a Republican-backed bill to restore funding unless it includes an array of healthcare-centered concessions. After holding seven unsuccessful votes on the parties’ spending bills, the Senate’s Republican leaders have put the chamber in recess until next Tuesday, meaning the standoff is unlikely to be resolved before then.The layoffs came on the same day government employees received only a partial paycheck covering the final days of September but not the beginning of October, since appropriations lapsed at the start of the month.At a Friday-morning press conference, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, blasted Senate Democrats for not supporting the GOP’s bill, which passed his chamber on a near party-line vote.If the government is not reopened by next Wednesday, US military personnel are set to miss a paycheck.“This is the last paycheck that 700,000 federal workers will see until Washington Democrats decide to do their job and reopen the government,” Johnson said.View image in fullscreen“Starting next week, American service members, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, are going to miss a full paycheck. If Democrats don’t end this shutdown by Monday, then that October 15 date will pass us by.”Johnson has kept the House out of session throughout the shutdown in an effort to pressure Senate Democrats into supporting the Republican funding proposal. Earlier this week, a group of House Democrats sent the speaker a letter asking him to allow a vote on legislation that would ensure US troops get paid during a shutdown, but Johnson has refused to bring lawmakers back to Washington.The Senate has become a chokepoint in the funding battle because any legislation needs at least 60 votes to advance in the chamber. In exchange for their support, Democratic senators are demanding that premium tax credits for Affordable Care Act health plans be extended beyond their end-of-the-year expiration date.They are also seeking safeguards against Donald Trump’s rescissions of congressionally approved funding, a restoration of money for public media outlets, and an undoing of cuts to the Medicaid healthcare program for poor and disabled Americans.Max Stier, the president and CEO of the non-profit Partnership for Public Service, condemned the gridlock’s impact on government workers.“It is wrong to make federal employees suffer because our leaders in Congress and the White House have failed to keep our government open and operational,” Stier said.“Our air traffic controllers, VA nurses, smoke jumpers and food inspectors are not responsible for this government shutdown, and they shouldn’t bear the financial burden created by the failures of our elected officials. The irony is that members of Congress and senior White House leaders are continuing to be paid.”Earlier this week, on 7 October, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to provide specifics on the status of any layoff plans, the affected agencies and whether any federal employees have been recalled back to work to carry out layoffs, by Friday, 10 October.A report by the Center for American Progress on 30 September argued that a government shutdown limits the ability of the Trump administration to carry out firings, citing guidance from the office of management and budget that admitted any permanent layoffs need to have been initiated before the shutdown began.“Constraints on permanently firing federal employees during a shutdown largely exist because of the Antideficiency Act and the distinction between ‘shutdown furloughs’ that happen during a lapse in congressional appropriations and ‘administrative furloughs’, which are department and agency procedures on how to permanently let staff go, including – for example – through a RIF,” the report, authored by Greta Bedekovics, associate director of democracy policy at the Center for American Progress, states. “The Trump administration’s threats to layoff federal employees should be understood as a goal of the administration that will be pursued with or without a government shutdown and should not drive lawmakers’ decisions on whether to support government funding bills.”Shrai Popat contributed additional reporting More

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      Why is the US House speaker refusing to seat an elected Democrat? | Moira Donegan

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      The people of Arizona’s seventh congressional district – a vast territory extending across the state’s south, along the Mexican border – have been denied representation in Congress for weeks. That’s because Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, has refused to swear in Adelita Grijalva, their representative-elect, who won a special election to fill the seat vacated by her father, the late Raúl Grijalva, in a landslide late last month. Grijalva, a Democrat, has been largely ignored by the speaker. Unlike sworn representatives, she has to go around the Capitol with an escort. There’s an office with her name on the door, but she hasn’t been allowed inside, and has worked instead out of a conference room on another floor.It is an unprecedented abuse of procedural power on the part of the speaker, one that has had the effect of silencing a political opponent and denying representation to the citizens of her district. In refusing to seat Grijalva, Johnson has defied the will of Arizona’s voters, and effectively nullified, at least for the time being, a legitimate congressional election. He has persisted in this even in defiance of his own promises, after saying on Friday he would seat her this week once the House returned to session – and then telling lawmakers they wouldn’t reconvene this week after all. Last week, Grijalva showed up to a three-and-a-half-minute pro forma session, hoping to be sworn in then. (Johnson has sworn in other representatives at pro forma sessions in the past.) But the Republican presiding over the session, Morgan Griffith, ignored the effort. On a weekend talkshow, Grijalva said she had heard “absolutely nothing” from the speaker about the timing of her swearing in.Grijalva thinks she knows why. There is no political calculation that could justify Mike Johnson’s refusal to seat a duly elected member of the House: Grijalva won her race, and both his oath to the constitution and his responsibilities to the body that he leads require Johnson to seat her. But in lieu of deference to these higher aims, Grijalva suspects that Johnson is pursuing a much more cynical one: in refusing to swear her in and allow her to take up the office to which she has been elected, Johnson, Grijalva thinks, is aiming to stop her becoming the final member of Congress whose signature is needed to force a vote on the release of confidential files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Currently, the petition has 217 signatures; it needs only 218. Grijalva has pledged to support it. “Why the rules are different for me – the only thing that I can think of is the Epstein files,” Grijalva told the New York Times.The Epstein scandal, and the ensuing fallout from new and resurfaced revelations about Donald Trump’s deep and longstanding friendship with the deceased child sex trafficker and financier, has long plagued the Trump administration. One of the few genuine threats to Trump’s grip over his coalition came a few months ago, when his justice department refused to release files relating to the case, causing outrage among a group of rightwing podcasters, media personalities and conspiracy theorists who had long traded on speculation about the case and accusations that powerful Democrats were involved in a cover-up.The discharge petition, if passed, would not be likely to result in the actual release of the documents. The move has little support in the Republican-backed Senate; there is no chance that Donald Trump, who has opposed the release of the Epstein files, calling them a “waste” of “time and energy”, would sign a bill into law making them public. But what the move would accomplish is forcing a full chamber vote on the matter, requiring every member of the Republican caucus to go on the record either endorsing the release of the files – and thereby displeasing Trump – or opposing it – thereby displeasing their voters. The Times has reported that Johnson’s delay is giving the White House more time to pressure Republicans who have already signed on to the discharge petition to remove their signatures before the Grijalva is sworn in.And so it seems that Johnson is ignoring the constitution and subverting the will of the voters in order to buy time, in an effort to spare his party embarrassment over their president’s one-time close confidence with a pedophile.But the refusal to seat Grijalva has broader implications. In using his procedural control over the functioning of Congress to deny a seat to an elected Democrat, Johnson is setting a dangerous precedent and raising questions about future transfers of power. If a Democratic majority is elected in 2026, will the outgoing Republican speaker duly swear in its members? Or will he use his procedural powers to delay one, several or many of them from taking their oaths of office – either under the pretext of election fraud or personal ineligibility, or out of sheer, bald unwillingness to hand over power to members of a party that the president and his allies have repeatedly described as illegitimate?These are no longer fanciful questions; they are ones that must be asked. The Republicans who refused to subvert the law for Trump’s benefit on January 6 are now largely gone; the ones who have replaced them appear much more willing to place party before country. Every day that Grijalva is not sworn in, the shadow they cast over 2026 darkens.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      US shutdown deadlock deepens as senators reject competing bills

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      The deadlock over ending the US government shutdown deepened on Wednesday, with senators once again rejecting competing bills to restart funding as Democrats and Republicans remain dug in on their demands for reopening federal agencies.The funding lapse has forced offices, national parks and other federal government operations to close or curtail operations, while employees have been furloughed. Signs of strain have mounted in recent days in the parts of the federal government that remained operational, with staffing shortages reported at airports across the US as well as air traffic control centers. Further disruptions may come next week, when US military personnel and other federal workers who remain on the job will not receive paychecks, unless the government reopens.When the Senate met on Wednesday afternoon, it became clear that sentiment had not shifted in the eight days since the shutdown began. For the sixth time, Democratic and Republican proposals to restart funding both failed to receive enough support to advance, and no senators changed their votes from recent days.Democrats are demanding that any bill to fund the government be paired with an array of healthcare-centered provisions, including an extension of premium tax credits for Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans. Those expire at the end of the year, and costs are set to rise for the plans’ roughly 20 million enrollees if they are not renewed.Donald Trump has sought to pressure the Democrats to accept the GOP’s proposal, which would only extend funding through 21 November. On Tuesday, the White House office of management and budget released a memo arguing that federal workers were not entitled to back pay, despite a 2019 law saying they should be.The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, poured cold water on that prospect at a press conference the following day, saying: “I think it is statutory law that federal employees be paid. And that’s my position. I think they should be.”Both parties otherwise remained unmoved in their demands. The House of Representatives passed the GOP’s bill on a near party-line vote last month, and Johnson has kept the chamber out of session ever since in a bid to force Senate Democrats to approve it.At his press conference, the speaker alleged that top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer was opposing the Republican bill out of fear from a primary challenge by the “communists” in his party.“They are worried about the Marxist flank in their Democrat party,” Johnson said.“He’s terrified that he’s going to get a challenge from his far left. I’ve noted that Chuck Schumer is a very far-left politician, but he is not far enough left for the communists, and they’re coming for him, and so he has to put up his dukes and show a fight.”In a speech on the Senate floor, Schumer once again faulted Republicans for refusing to negotiate on the Democrats’ healthcare demands. The Senate’s majority leader John Thune has said he will discuss the ACA tax credit issue, but only when government funding is restored.“We can do both: fix healthcare and reopen the government. This is not an either-or thing, which Republicans are making it. The American people don’t like it,” Schumer said.While both parties’s rank-and-file lawmakers have appeared united around their leaders’ strategies, the GOP suffered a high-profile defection on Monday when far-right lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene backed negotiations over the tax credits. However in the days since, no other Republicans have publicly joined her.Jen Kiggans, a Virginia Republican congresswoman representing a swing district, has received bipartisan support for legislation that would extend the credits for a year, and is viewed a potential compromise in the funding standoff.At a press conference on Tuesday, top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries called the idea a “nonstarter”.“It was introduced by the same people who just permanently extended massive tax breaks for their billionaire donors,” Jeffries said, referring to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act Republicans passed this year without Democratic votes. More

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      Trump orders approval of 211-mile mining road through Alaska wilderness

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      Donald Trump on Monday ordered the approval of a proposed 211-mile road through an Alaska wilderness to allow mining of copper, cobalt, gold and other minerals.The long-debated Ambler Road project was approved in the US president’s first term, but was later blocked by the Biden administration after an analysis determined the project would threaten caribou and other wildlife and harm Alaska Indigenous tribes that rely on hunting and fishing.In a related development, the White House announced it is taking 10% equity stake in Trilogy Metals, a Canadian company that is seeking to develop the Ambler site along with an Australian partner.The gravel road and mining project, north of Fairbanks, Alaska, “is something that should’ve been long operating and making billions of dollars for our country and supplying a lot of energy and minerals”, Trump said at an Oval Office ceremony. Former president Joe Biden “undid it and wasted a lot of time and a lot of money, a lot of effort. And now we’re starting again. And this time we have plenty of time to get it done,” Trump added.Interior secretary, Doug Burgum, said approval of Ambler Road will unlock access to copper, cobalt and other critical minerals “that we need to win the AI arms race against China”.Supporters, including Alaska’s congressional delegation, have said the road is needed to reach a large copper deposit worth more than $7bn. Copper is used in production of cars, electronics and even renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines.Opponents, including a consortium of 40 federally recognized tribes, worry that development allowed by the road would put subsistence harvests at risk because the lands include important habitat for salmon and caribou.Karmen Monigold, an Inupiaq member of Protect the Kobuk, a Northwest Arctic advocacy group opposed to the access road, said she cried when she first learned of Trump’s actions. “And then I reminded myself of who we are, and who our people are and how far we’ve come,” she said on Monday in a telephone interview. “They tried to assimilate us, to wipe us out and yet we’re still here. We still matter.”Monigold said she hopes Alaska Native groups will file lawsuits, as they’ve done before, to halt the project.The two-lane gravel road includes about 26 miles that would cut through Gates of the Arctic national park and preserve. The road would also cross 11 rivers and thousands of streams before reaching the site of a future mine.The Republican-controlled House approved a bill last month that would pave the way for Trump to expand mining and drilling on public lands in Alaska and other states. The vote, largely along party lines, would repeal land management plans adopted in the closing days of Biden’s administration that restricted development in large areas of Alaska, Montana and North Dakota.Biden’s goal was in part to reduce climate-warming emissions from the burning of fossil fuels extracted from federal land. Under Trump, Republicans are casting aside those concerns as they open more taxpayer-owned land to development, hoping to create more jobs and revenue and boost fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. The administration also has pushed to develop critical minerals, including copper, cobalt, gold and zinc.While Trump has often said, “drill, baby, drill”, he also supports “mine, baby, mine”, Burgum said. “We’ve got to get back in the mining business.”The US government said last week it is taking a minority stake in Lithium Americas, another Canadian company that is developing one of the world’s largest lithium mines in Nevada. The Department of Energy will take a 5% equity stake in the company and a 5% stake in the Thacker Pass lithium mining project, a joint venture with General Motors.Ambler Metals, a joint venture between Trilogy Metals and Australia-based South32, thanked Trump for jump-starting the Ambler project.“This road will help secure the critical minerals our country needs for economic competitiveness and national defense, while also delivering meaningful benefits here at home,” said managing director Kaleb Froehlich. More

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      House speaker says Democrats aren’t serious about shutdown negotiation as Democratic leader blames Republicans

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      The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, accused Democrats of being “not serious” in negotiations to end the federal government shutdown, while the Democratic leader accused Republicans of driving the shutdown, now on its fifth day and expected to last at least through next week.Talks between the opposing political parties stalled over the weekend, with no votes anticipated to end the standoff. A CBS poll found just 28% of Democratic voters and 23% of Republicans consider their party’s positions worth shutting down the government.In his comments to NBC’s Meet the Press, Johnson said his body had done its work in passing a measure to keep the government financed but now it was up to the Senate “to turn the lights back on so that everyone can do their work”. He accused Democrats of failing to engage “in a serious negotiation”.“They’re doing this to get political cover because Chuck Schumer is afraid that he won’t win his next re-election bid in the Senate because he’s going to be challenged by a Marxist in New York, because that’s the new popular thing out there,” he said, referring to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Bronx representative who may be looking to challenge Schumer for his Senate seat next year.But Johnson’s counterpart, minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, told the same show JD Vance lied last week when he claimed Democrats were themselves being dishonest claiming they are not trying to give healthcare benefits to undocumented immigrants.“Republicans are lying because they’re losing in the court of public opinion,” Jeffries said, and added his party was “standing up for the healthcare of hard-working American taxpayers, of working-class Americans, of middle-class Americans”.Jeffries also hit back at comments by Donald Trump in a social media post on Thursday in which he called Democrats the party of “the party of hate, evil, and Satan” alongside pictures of party figures, including Ocasio-Cortez, Schumer, speaker emeritus Nancy Pelosi, and former president and first lady Joe and Jill Biden.Asked if he could still negotiate with Trump, Jeffries said the president’s behavior “is outrageous, it’s unhinged, it’s unreasonable, and it speaks for itself. The American people deserve better than lies, than attacks, than deepfake videos and the president spending all of his time on the golf course.”Leaders of the political leadership have not had formal talks for almost a week as both seek to gain a political edge ahead of renewed discussions.Jeffries said that since that meeting last Monday, “Republicans, including Donald Trump, have gone radio silent” and the Democratic party leadership “will continue to make clear, leader Schumer and myself, that we will sit down any time, any place, with anyone to address this issue with the seriousness that it deserves”.The battle for high political ground continued on Sunday with Johnson claiming that the potential for temporary government job suspensions, known as furloughs, hardening into permanent job layoffs “is a regrettable situation that the president does not want”.White House national economic council director Kevin Hassett increased pressure on Democrats, saying the Trump administration will start mass layoffs of federal workers if Trump decides negotiations with Democrats are “absolutely going nowhere”.Hassett told CNN’s State of the Union that Trump and Vought “are lining things up and getting ready to act if they have to, but hoping that they don’t”. But he predicted it is possible that Democrats could back down.“I think that everybody is still hopeful that when we get a fresh start at the beginning of the week, that we can get the Democrats to see that it’s just common sense to avoid layoffs like that,” Hassett said.But some fear Democrats have walked into a trap. Johnson said on Sunday that Trump had asked the Democratic leadership to keep the government open.“In a situation like this, where the Senate Democrats have decided to turn the keys to the kingdom over to the White House, they have to make tough decisions,” he said, pointing to Russ Vought, the director of the office of management and budget.Vought, Johnson said, “has to now look at all of the federal government, recognizing that the funding streams have been turned off and determine what are essential programs, policies, and personnel. That’s not a job that he relishes. But he’s being required to do it by Chuck Schumer.”The spirit of mutual recrimination continued with Schumer telling CBS Johnson “doesn’t want to discuss the real issue, the healthcare crisis facing the American people. So he puts up all these fake lies to try and divert attention.”But in an interview set to broadcast on Monday, Johnson told MSNBC he considers the issue of expiring healthcare subsidies – that Democrats place central to their negotiating position – as one that can be addressed later.“We have effectively three months to negotiate in the White House and in the hall of Congress, that’s like an eternity,” Johnson said. “We need folks in good faith to come around the table and have that discussion. And we can’t do it when the government is shut down,” he added.Adam Schiff, a California senator also speaking to Meet the Press, was asked if his party delegates in the Senate would stay united after three Democratic senators broke away to vote with Republicans. Schiff said he was confident that “all Democrats understand that millions and millions of their constituents are about to be priced out of their healthcare”.“We need a president who can act like an adult, who can come to the table and negotiate an end to their self-imposed healthcare crisis,” Schiff said. “Right now we don’t see that. We see Trump out on the golf course, we see the speaker telling his House colleagues not to even come to session, that there’s no work for the federal government to do, apparently.” More