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      Capitol attack panel moves closer to issuing subpoenas to Republicans

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      Capitol attack panel moves closer to issuing subpoenas to Republicans Refusal to assist the investigation has caused the sentiment to turn towards taking near-unprecedented action, sources say Members on the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack on 6 January are moving closer to issuing subpoenas to Republican members of Congress to compel their cooperation in the inquiry – though it has started to dawn on them that they may be out of time.The panel is expected to make a final decision on the subpoena question over the next couple of weeks, according to sources directly familiar with internal deliberations, with House investigators needing to start wrapping up their work ahead of public hearings in June.While the members on the select committee remain undecided about whether to subpoena Republican members of Congress, their refusal to assist the investigation in any form has caused the sentiment to turn towards taking that near-unprecedented action, the sources said.The shifting view has come as a result of the dismay among the members in January, when House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and others turned down requests for voluntary cooperation, turning to anger after three more of Donald Trump’s allies last week refused to cooperate.What has changed in recent weeks in the select committee’s assessment is that they cannot ignore the deep involvement between some Republican members of Congress and the former president’s unlawful schemes to overturn the results of the 2020 election, the sources said.The recent letters to House Republicans Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs and Ronny Jackson – Trump’s former White House doctor – provided just a snapshot of the entanglement, the sources said, with the Trump White House, and potentially the militia groups that attacked the Capitol.House investigators are particularly interested in any potential connections between Republican members of Congress and the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys militia groups, the sources said, since those groups were actually involved in the riot element of January 6.The select committee wanted to interview Jackson, for instance, to establish how the Oath Keepers came to learn as they stormed the Capitol that he had “critical data to protect” and needed “protection”, according to text messages revealed in court filings.But the panel has been holding off compelling that information with subpoenas, anxious about the inevitable circus that would accompany such a move and, as the Guardian reported in January, embolden Republicans to subpoena Democrats if they take the House in 2022.The select committee told itself, the sources said, it might be able to avoid the issue altogether if it could get the information it needed from other places, like it did with Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows when his aides provided testimony.But that has not happened, and especially not with respect to the issue of potential connections between Republican members of Congress and the militia groups, whose members are now largely unable to talk to the panel having been placed under criminal investigation by the DoJ.The trouble for the select committee is that it may have run out of time to go down the subpoena route.Even if the panel were now to issue a bevy of subpoenas to House Republicans, if their colleagues decide to ignore the subpoenas, the only real option it has to enforce the orders would be to pursue action through the slow-grinding cogs of the judicial system.That enforcement mechanism would likely take months, according to former prosecutors – an exercise potentially of little use to a panel that is seeking to start wrapping up depositions before public hearings in June and expects to publish a final report in September.But some members believe Republicans may just cooperate if they are subpoenaed, the sources said, since Republican subpoenas to Democrats in a future investigation would only have teeth if Republicans don’t defang the very congressional subpoenas first – by defying them.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpJoe BidenUS elections 2020RepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Jill Biden makes unannounced visit to Ukraine and meets first lady

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      Jill Biden makes unannounced visit to Ukraine and meets first ladySurprise trip on Mother’s Day as Biden meets with Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenskiy US first lady Jill Biden made an unannounced visit to western Ukraine on Sunday, holding a surprise Mother’s Day meeting with the nation’s first lady, Olena Zelenskiy, as Russia presses its punishing war in the eastern regions.US president Joe Biden has not visited the country, though he expressed a desire to when he was in Poland this spring, following Russia’s invasion in February, but at that time Russian tanks were advancing on the capital, Kyiv, and he hinted that his security advisers held him back.Jill Biden traveled under the cloak of secrecy, becoming the latest high-profile American to enter Ukraine during its 10-week-old conflict with Russia.Russian forces drew back from Kyiv in the weeks after Biden’s trip to Poland, and the return of a greater level of security in the capital prompted visits by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, days after US secretary of state Antony Blinken and defense secretary Lloyd Austin, and other world leaders, including British prime minister Boris Johnson, had met there with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.“I wanted to come on Mother’s Day,” Jill Biden told Olena Zelenskiy on Sunday.“I thought it was important to show the Ukrainian people that this war has to stop and this war has been brutal and that the people of the United States stand with the people of Ukraine.”The first lady traveled by vehicle to the town of Uzhhorod, about a 10-minute drive from a Slovakian village that borders Ukraine.The two came together in a small classroom, sitting across a table from one another and talking in front of reporters before they met in private. Zelenskiy and her children have been at an undisclosed location for their safety.Zelenskiy thanked Biden for her “courageous act” and said: “We understand what it takes for the US first lady to come here during a war when military actions are taking place every day, where the air sirens are happening every day – even today.”The school where they met has been turned into transitional housing for Ukrainian migrants from elsewhere in the country.The visit allowed Biden to conduct the kind of personal diplomacy that her husband would like to be doing himself.The White House said as recently as last week that the US president “would love to visit” but there were no plans for him to do so at this time.On Sunday, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau also made a surprise visit to Ukraine and was expected to meet with Volodymyr Zelenskiy.Earlier, the meeting between the two first ladies came about after they exchanged correspondence in recent weeks, according to US officials. Jill Biden drove through Uzhhorod and the meeting between the women lasted about an hour.Her visit was limited to western Ukraine. Russia is concentrating its military power in eastern Ukraine, and she was not deemed to be in harm’s way.Earlier, in the Slovakian border village of Vysne Nemecke, she toured its border processing facility, surveying operations set up by the United Nations and other relief organizations to assist Ukrainians seeking refuge. Biden attended a religious service in a tent set up as a chapel, where a priest intoned: “We pray for the people of Ukraine.”Before that, in Kosice, Biden met and offered support to Ukrainian mothers in Slovakia who have been displaced by Russia’s war and assuring them that the “hearts of the American people” are behind them.At a bus station in the city that is now a 24-hour refugee processing center, Biden found herself in an extended conversation with a Ukrainian woman who said she struggles to explain the war to her three children because she cannot understand it herself.“I cannot explain because I don’t know myself and I’m a teacher,” Victorie Kutocha, who had her arms around her 7-year-old daughter, Yulie, told Biden.At one point, Kutocha asked, “Why?” seeming to seek an explanation for Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine on February 24.“It’s so hard to understand,” the first lady replied.Meanwhile, the top American diplomat in Ukraine, acting ambassador Kristina Kvien, temporarily returned to the US embassy in Kyiv, according to an unnamed US official, weeks after it was vacated.TopicsJill BidenUS politicsJoe BidenVolodymyr ZelenskiyUkraineRussiaEuropenewsReuse this content More

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      US unveils new sanctions on Russia, targeting services, media and defense industry

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      US unveils new sanctions on Russia, targeting services, media and defense industryNew measures are primarily intended to close loopholes in existing sanctions and to tighten the noose around Russian economy The US has unveiled a new layer of sanctions on Russia, targeting services, Russia’s propaganda machine and its defence industry on the eve of Vladimir Putin’s planned Victory Day parade.The new measures were announced as leaders from the G7 group of industrialised democracies held a virtual summit with Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a show of solidarity.They are primarily intended to close loopholes in the existing sanctions and to tighten the noose around the Russian economy by another few notches.The new sanctions include:*A ban on sales of US services to Russia, like accountancy and management consultancy*No more US advertising or sales of broadcasting equipment to three Kremlin-controlled television stations*Technology export bans including industrial engines, bulldozers and other items that can be used by Russian defence factories*Visa restrictions on another 2,600 Russian and Belarusian individuals, including military officials, and executives from Sberbank and GazprombankIn imposing a ban on services the US is falling into line with the UK, which made a similar announcement last week. The two countries provide the overwhelming bulk of services like accountancy and management consultancy to Russian corporations.The Biden administration sees US service providers as potential tools Russia could use to sidestep the punitive measures already imposed.“They’ve been asked by Russian companies to help them figure out how to reformulate their business strategies in the wake of sanctions, in some cases how to get around these sanctions, or in the case of accountants how to hide some of their wealth, and we’re shutting that down,” a senior administration official said.Like the UK, the restrictive measures do not apply to lawyers, but the US official said that could change, and that Washington and London are coordinating their moves in that respect.“We made a judgment at least for now, that if there was a desire to seek due process through a US lawyer, we would allow that to continue,” the official said. “But we’re reevaluating the breadth of these services sanctions every day, and depending on how we see behavior change over time, we can certainly broaden the sanctions.”The new media sanctions will target three Kremlin-controlled propaganda outlets: Channel One, Russia-1 and NTV. American companies will no longer be allowed to sell equipment like video cameras or microphones to them, and US advertising on their channels will be banned. Last year, US companies bought $300m in advertising in the Russian market.“A lot of these advertisers have announced since the invasion that they’re going to cut their business activity with these stations, but we want to make sure that decision endures and just send a broader signal that US companies should not be in the business of funding Russian propaganda,” senior a senior administration official briefing the press ahead of the announcement.The new technology export bans on industrial items such as heavy engines and bulldozers are intended to have an impact on Russian war efforts by hitting the supply chain for defence manufacturers. The US claims that Russia two major Russian tank plants, Uralvagonzavod Corporation and Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant, have already been forced to halt production due to a lack of foreign components.The 2,600 new visa restrictions on individuals include military officials and Russian proxies deemed to have played a part in the invasion and there will be a new visa policy which would apply automatically to military or proxy officials involved in human rights abuses.The targeted sanctions will also hit eight executives from Sberbank, Russian’s largest financial institution, and 27 from Gazprombank, owned by Russia’s giant gas industry. Until now Gazprombank has been left untouched because of its role in facilitating European purchases of Russian natural gas.“This is not a full block. We’re not freezing the assets of Gazprom bank or prohibiting any transaction with Gazprombank,” the senior administration official said. “What we’re signaling is that Gazprombank is not a safe haven, so we’re sanctioning some of their top business executives, people who sit at the top of the organization, to create a chilling effect.”TopicsUS foreign policyBiden administrationJoe BidenUS politicsUkraineRussianewsReuse this content More

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      in World Politics

      How Could the US Bring Peace to Ukraine?

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      Texas attorney general says state bar suing him over bid to overturn 2020 election – as it happened

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      US politics liveUS politicsTexas attorney general says state bar suing him over bid to overturn 2020 election – as it happened
      Full story: Ken Paxton says state bar plans to sue him over election lies
      No-exception abortion laws gain traction across US
      Russia-Ukraine war – latest updates
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       Updated 1h agoGloria OladipoFri 6 May 2022 16.22 EDTFirst published on Fri 6 May 2022 09.06 EDT Show key events onlyLive feedShow key events onlyFrom More

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      Biden isn’t serious about forgiving student debt. ‘Means-testing’ is a con | David Sirota

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      Biden isn’t serious about forgiving student debt. ‘Means-testing’ is a conDavid Sirota and Andrew PerezThe Biden administration’s proposal is cynicism masquerading as populism – and it will enrage everyone and hurt the Democrats’ electoral chances During the 2020 Democratic primary, Pete Buttigieg’s personal ambition led him to poison the conversation about education in America. Desperate for a contrast point with his rivals, the son of a private university professor aired ads blasting the idea of tuition-free college because he said it would make higher education “free even for the kids of millionaires.”The attack line, borrowed from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, was cynicism masquerading as populism. It was an attempt to limit the financial and political benefits of a proposal to make college free. Worse, it was disguised as a brave stand against the oligarchs bankrolling Buttigieg’s campaign, even though it actually wasn’t – almost no rich scions would benefit from free college.Buttigieg and copycats like Amy Klobuchar were pushing a larger lie. Call it the means-testing con – the idea that social programs should not be universal, and should instead only be available to those who fall below a certain income level. It is a concept eroding national unity and being carried forward by wealthy pundits and a Democratic party that has discarded the lessons of its own universalist triumphs like social security, Medicare and the GI Bill.This week the Biden administration tore a page from Buttigieg’s book. The White House leaked that it is considering finally following through on Joe Biden’s promise to cancel some student debt – but not the $50,000 pushed by congressional Democrats, and only for those below an income threshold.In trial-ballooning the college debt relief proposal, the president is boosting the media-manufactured fiction that real, universal college debt relief would mostly help rich Ivy League kids – even though data from the Roosevelt Institute conclusively proves that canceling student debt “would provide more benefits to those with fewer economic resources and could play a critical role in addressing the racial wealth gap and building the Black middle class”.As the report points out: “People from wealthy backgrounds (and their parents) rarely use student loans to pay for college.”But setting aside how the media-driven discourse omits those inconvenient facts, what’s noteworthy here is the underlying principle.This latest discussion of means-testing follows Biden and congressional Democrats pushing to substantially limit eligibility for Covid-19 survival checks and the expanded child tax credit. Taken together, it suggests that Democrats’ zeal for means-testing is no anomaly – it is a deeply held ideology that is both dangerous for the party’s electoral prospects and for the country’s fraying social contract.The superficial appeal of means-testing is obvious: it promises to prevent giving even more public money to rich people who don’t need it.But in practice, means-testing is a way to take simple universal programs and make them complicated and inaccessible. Calculating exact income levels and then proving them for eligibility means reams of red tape for both the potential beneficiary and a government bureaucracy that must be created to process that paperwork.Data from the food stamp and Medicaid programs illustrate how means-testing creates brutal time and administrative barriers to benefits, which reduce payouts to eligible populations. In the case of means-testing student debt relief, those barriers may end up wholly excluding large swaths of working-class debtors.This is a feature, not a bug – it is means-testers’ unstated objective. They want to limit benefits for the working class, but not admit that’s their goal.Universal programs like social security and Medicare were what we once defined as “society” or “civilization”. They may be derided as “entitlements”, but the reason they have (so far) survived for so long is because their universality makes them wildly successful in their missions and more difficult to demonize. Their universality also precludes austerians from otherizing and disparaging the programs’ recipients.Means-testing destroys that potential unity. It may initially poll well, but it turns “entitlements” into complicated “welfare” programs only for certain groups, which then makes those programs less popular and makes the beneficiaries easy scapegoats for political opportunists. Think of Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” trope vilifying recipients of means-tested food stamps.Now sure, billionaires are eligible for social security and Medicare, and their kids are eligible for free K-12 education – and that aristocracy doesn’t need that help. But when those programs were created, we accepted that rich people being granted access to those programs along with everyone else was the relatively small price to pay for simplicity, universalism and the attendant national unity that comes with it.Not surprisingly, Democrats’ creation of popular universalist programs coincided with the most electorally successful era in the party’s history.Equally unsurprising: the shift to fake means-test populism has coincided with rising popular hatred of liberal technocrats and the Democratic party they control.What is surprising is that Republicans may be starting to understand all this better than Democrats.For instance, Donald Trump’s signature spending legislation offered direct, non-means-tested aid to small businesses during the pandemic. The former president touted a plan to just pay hospital bills for Covid patients who didn’t have coverage. The programs were hardly perfect, but they were straightforward, universal, relatively successful and extremely popular because they embodied a powerful principle: keep it simple, stupid.When it comes to student debt relief, there’s a rare chance for Democrats to also embrace simplicity – and prevent Republicans from outflanking them.More specifically, they can use the student debt crisis to finally return to their universalist roots – and they don’t have to skimp and provide merely $10,000 worth of relief.Biden could simply send out a one-page letter to every student borrower telling them that their federal student debt is now $0.Yes, Republican lawmakers would try to block it and affluent pundits would tweet-cry about it to each other.But amid all that elite whining and couch-fainting, Democrats would be launching a battle against an immoral system of education debt – and directly helping 40 million voters ahead of a midterm election.It’s so easy and simple – which is probably why they won’t do it.
      David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor-at-large at Jacobin, and the founder of the Lever. He served as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter
      Andrew Perez is a senior editor at The Lever and a co-founder of the Democratic Policy Center
      A version of this piece was first published in the Lever, a reader-supported investigative news outlet
      TopicsUS student debtOpinionUS politicsBiden administrationJoe BidenDemocratsUS CongressUS student financecommentReuse this content More

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      Unless Democrats start fighting like they mean it, they’re going to lose Congress | Steve Phillips

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      Unless Democrats start fighting like they mean it, they’re going to lose CongressSteve PhillipsWe are engaged in an existential battle over the identity of this nation. The Biden administration’s tepid midterm strategy is failing The surest way to lose a battle is to not fight. Despite this fairly obvious logic, President Joe Biden and too many Democrats seem to have adopted a political strategy for the midterm elections of avoiding as many fights as possible. This path-of-least-resistance approach has resulted in plummeting presidential approval numbers and will further plunge the party off the cliff in the midterms if Democrats do not quickly reverse course. To turn things around, Biden should leap into the fundamental fights over what are called “culture wars” – and he should do so with gusto.It is unmistakably clear that we are engaged in an existential battle over the very identity of this nation. Is the United States of America primarily a straight, white, cisgender, male, Christian country, or is it a multiracial and multicultural democracy? The adherents of the former view are waging war with glee and abandon. From rightwing state legislatures to the supreme court, they are holding nothing back in attacking voting by people of color, the rights of the LGBTQ+ community, multicultural education, reproductive freedom and commonsense public health protections during a global pandemic, to name just a few fronts in this fight.With the heartening exception of the attempts to defend Roe v Wade, Democrats, for their part, are shying away from almost all of these fights beyond tepid words of disapproval, hand-wringing, and low-profile and lethargic counter-measures such as lawsuits and investigations. The result is a sharp decline in enthusiasm among the people who put the White House and Congress in Democratic hands, contributing significantly to the drop in polling approval numbers. Support among people of color has dropped 24% from its highs of last year. At this pace, Democrats will in fact lose the midterm elections, but it does not need to be so, and they can absolutely turn things around if they engage the fight.The misguided strategy that got us here results from bad math and electoral myopia by Democratic strategists and advisers. Despite an avalanche of empirical data, Democrats still do not believe that the majority of people are on their side. Yet with one exception (in 2004), the Democratic nominee has won the popular vote in every presidential election since 1992. The progressive trend is only accelerating as more and more young people – the majority of whom are people of color or white progressives – turn 18 every day. Every eight seconds, someone turns 18 and becomes eligible to vote.Democrats are so obsessed with wooing conservative white working-class voters that they fail to see the ever-increasing ranks of people of color who can strengthen their political hand. I call this phenomenon being “blinded by the white”. Fear of alienating an elusive white constituency has paralyzed a party in desperate need of decisive and bold action.The very fact that Democrats control the executive and legislative branches is proof that the worldview that America is and should be a multiracial nation enjoys majority support. In high-turnout elections such as presidential races, the majority usually supports the Democrat. The question for the midterms is how much of that majority will be sufficiently motivated to come back out and vote. The reason that the party that controls the White House typically fares poorly in midterm elections is that that party’s supporters tend to get complacent and do not see the urgent need to turn out and vote again. That is why it’s essential to engage in the fight. The failure to fight is dispiriting to one’s supporters and a significant contributor to falling polling numbers.Biden’s advisers believe that engaging in fights will harm their popularity, but the painful reality is that there is not much popularity left to harm. By throwing himself into the raging battles with gusto, he can reverse his polling descent and save Democratic control of Congress. Here are four examples of how he can send a strong signal to the electorate and inspire his supporters to mobilize to vote this fall.Reproductive freedom summit: The White House should host a strategy summit with leaders in the reproductive rights movement and women’s healthcare field to discuss ways to fight back on restrictive legislation and expand access to healthcare for all women.Say gay conference: Biden should organize a presidential “We Say Gay” conference in Florida as an in-your-face rebuttal to the homophobic legislation by Florida’s governor and legislature. In fact, he could hold the conference in Disneyworld, which is the target of punitive measures by the state government for its gay-friendly policies. That would have the added advantage of engaging the business community in the fight for equality.Read banned books: Biden should go to Texas, where nearly 1 million eligible African Americans didn’t vote in 2020, and hold an event at a school where he reads to students from Toni Morrison’s Bluest Eye, a book about Black identity. Multiple school districts in Texas have banned Morrison’s books, and Biden would send a strong signal by reading from the book and even bringing copies to hand out to students.Go door-to-door with voter registration groups: In the face of all of the voter suppression legislation sweeping the south and south-west, Biden should show his solidarity with groups working to expand democracy and encourage Americans to register to vote. He can go to Phoenix, where the Arizona legislature is trying to make it harder to vote, and go precinct-walking with members of a Latino-led, community-based organization such as Lucha. He could couple that with a speech at a local high school where he encourages senior-year students to come forward and register on the spot.These are just a few examples of how Biden could use his bully pulpit to lead the fight to make America the multiracial democracy that the majority of people want it to be. Such high-profile and, yes, controversial initiatives are both the right thing to do and the smart strategic step. They will inspire and mobilize the base, redefine the nature of the fight so that Democrats are on the offensive, and solidify Biden’s role as a strong and resolute leader. If he can find the courage to take such steps, Biden will reshape the political debate and put the Democrats on the path to victory in the midterms.
      Steve Phillips is a Guardian columnist, host of the Democracy in Color podcast and author of the forthcoming book How We Win the Civil War
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionDemocratsJoe BidenBiden administrationRoe v WadecommentReuse this content More

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      Schumer announces Senate abortion rights vote: ‘America will be watching’ – as it happened

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      US politics liveUS politicsSchumer announces Senate abortion rights vote: ‘America will be watching’ – as it happened
      Measure has next to no chance of passing in divided chamber
      Biden names Karine Jean-Pierre new White House press secretary
      Supreme court justice Alito bails on senior judges’ conference
      ‘Do something’: Democrats struggle to rise to abortion challenge
      Russia-Ukraine war – latest updates
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       Updated 1h agoRichard LuscombeThu 5 May 2022 16.14 EDTFirst published on Thu 5 May 2022 09.26 EDT Show key events onlyLive feedShow key events onlyFrom More