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    Mitch McConnell in hospital after fall in Washington DC

    Mitch McConnell in hospital after fall in Washington DCRepublican senate leader ‘tripped at a hotel during a private dinner’ and is receiving treatment, according to a spokespersonSenate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was taken to hospital in Washington DC after he tripped and fell at a hotel, a spokesperson for the senator said.“This evening, Leader McConnell tripped at a local hotel during a private dinner. He has been admitted to the hospital where he is receiving treatment,” David Popp, communications director for McConnell said in a statement.In 2019, McConnell, who is 81 and a survivor of childhood polio, tripped and fell at his home in Kentucky, suffering a shoulder fracture.The Senate has been without several members recently due to illness.The office of Senator Dianne Feinstein, 90, said she was taken to hospital last week to be treated for shingles.Senator John Fetterman, 53, who suffered a stroke during his campaign last year, was expected to remain out for some weeks as he received care for clinical depression.The Democratic absences have proven a challenge for Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, who is already navigating a very narrow 51-49 majority.The Republicans, as the minority party, have had an easier time with intermittent absences. It is unclear if McConnell will be out on Thursday and if that would have an effect on scheduled votes. South Dakota Senator John Thune is the Senate’s No 2 Republican.McConnell was first elected to the US Senate in 1984. He served as the Senate majority leader from 2015 to 2021, and the Senate minority leader since then.Before his election to the Senate, he served as judge-executive of Jefferson County, Kentucky from 1978.TopicsUS newsRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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    Lawmaker who gave tours of Capitol will lead inquiry of January 6 panel

    Lawmaker who gave tours of Capitol will lead inquiry of January 6 panelGeorgia Republican Barry Loudermilk denied giving tours related to the January 6 riots until video was releasedBarry Loudermilk, the Republican representative from Georgia who has been accused of giving tours of the Capitol building days before the January 6 insurrection, will lead a new House committee that will investigate the Democratic-controlled January 6 select committee.George Santos a ‘bludgeoning tool’ for Democrats, New York Republican saysRead moreOn Tuesday, Loudermilk criticized the select committee, saying: “The J6 committee chose to ignore the facts and pursue a particular political narrative. I will not do this.”“As chairman of the subcommittee on oversight, I’m focused on finding out what really happened on J6 to ensure it never happens again.”Loudermilk is expected to focus on what he considers “security failure” that led up to the riots two years ago, CNN reports.In an interview with the outlet, Loudermilk said: “I’m spending some time over there getting my hands wrapped around what we have. We’re going to be looking at what happened in the Capitol. What happened leading up to it? How did we have such a security failure?”“The January 6 committee, they didn’t take that approach. That should have been something that they looked it. I think they looked more on the political side of it,” he said.The launch of the new committee comes a week after Republicans established a portal to collect tips from the public regarding the events connected to the riots.Last year, the Democratic-led January 6 select committee released video footage revealing Loudermilk showing a group of individuals around House office buildings on an unofficial tour at a time when official tours were banned due to Covid-19. The video showed a man who took photos of the various tunnel entrances and the Capitol police checkpoints.According to the select committee, some of the individuals on the tour went on to attend the Save America rally on Capitol Hill on 6 January, where then president Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol.Loudermilk has previously denied that he led a tour that was related to the January 6 riots. The Republican congressman then said that he only gave a tour to families with young children before saying that he gave a tour to about 16 people.In a letter addressed to Loudermilk by the January 6 select committee, chairman and Mississippi Democratic representative Bennie Thompson wrote: “Individuals on the tour photographed and recorded areas of the complex not typically of interest to tourists.”“The January 5, 2021 tour raises concerns about their activity and intent,” it added.Earlier this week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson released exclusive January 6 security footage provided to him by House speaker Kevin McCarthy during a segment in which he minimized the gravity of the riots.“The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress,” the conservative host said. “Instead it shows police escorting people through the building, including the now infamous ‘QAnon Shaman’.”“More than 44,000 hours of surveillance footage from in and around the Capitol have been withheld from the public, and once you see the video, you’ll understand why. Taken as a whole, the video does not support the claim that January 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim,” Carlson added, without airing footage of the more incriminating moments during the riots in which protesters and police fought violently.TopicsRepublicansJanuary 6 hearingsHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsWashington DCnewsReuse this content More

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    White House calls Tucker Carlson ‘shameful’ for misrepresenting January 6 footage – as it happened

    The White House has just slammed Fox News show host Tucker Carlson, calling the right-wing television star “shameful” for the way he is misrepresenting the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol as extremist supporters of Donald Trump tried to overturn his defeat in the presidential election.The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, criticized the security footage of the riot at the Capitol that Carlson has played on his show for the last two nights heavily edited so that it gives the impression of depicting what he described as “peaceful chaos”.Many hours of footage was handed over to him by the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy.“To have said what he said when we saw police officers lose their lives is just shameful,” Jean-Pierre just said at the daily briefing in the west wing, when asked about Carlson’s latest actions.00:47She said that the White House agrees with the chief of the Capitol police, Tom Manger (who said in an internal memo Carlson’s broadcast was “filled with offensive and misleading conclusions) and the “rage of bipartisan lawmakers”.“We have condemned this false depiction of the unprecedented, violent attack on our constitution and the rule of law, which cost police officers their lives…on a very dark day in our democracy,” Jean-Pierre said.She added that in various legal battles, the White House agrees with Fox’s own attorneys and executives who “have repeatedly stressed in courts of law that Tucker Carlson is not credible when it comes to this issue in particular”.She cited this September 2020 piece from National Public Radio (NPR) on which the headline was: “You literally can’t believe the facts Tucker Carlson tells you. So say Fox’s lawyers.”This blog is wrapping up for the day but will be back with all the US politics news tomorrow, covering developments as they happen.Here’s how the day went:
    Top US intelligence official Avril Haines said that American intelligence does not believe Russia can make “major territorial gains” in Ukraine this year because of heavy casualties and the Kremlin’s inability to replenish weapons and ammunition.
    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has just slammed Fox News show host Tucker Carlson, calling the right-wing television star “shameful” for the way he is misrepresenting the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol as extremist supporters of Donald Trump tried to overturn his defeat in the presidential election.
    House Republicans convened their first hearing on what the committee chairman called the Biden’s administration’s “disastrous” withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.
    Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Department of Justice (DoJ) will conduct a federal review of the Memphis police department after the killing of Tyre Nichols earlier this year and also look into the use of specialized police units nationwide.
    The Department of Justice has issued its review, concluding that it found racist and unlawful conduct by police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, following their investigation into the city’s law enforcement after the killing of Breonna Taylor during a botched police raid in 2020.
    Fox News has been broadsided by the latest court motions revealing that people from top executives down to reporters knew that Donald Trump’s claims that victory in the 2020 election had been stolen from him because of fraud were bogus – but star commentary hosts boosted those claims anyway.
    The top intelligence official in the US said earlier today that American intelligence does not believe Russia can make “major territorial gains” in Ukraine this year because of heavy casualties and the Kremlin’s inability to replenish weapons and ammunition.Speaking to a Senate committee, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines also cited other constraints on the Russian military, including dysfunction in leadership and declining troop morale, the Associated Press reports.Meanwhile, despite recent sharp criticism of the US by Chinese president Xi Jinping, Haines said: “We assess that Beijing still believes it benefits most by preventing a spiraling of tensions and by preserving stability in its relationship with the United States.”China is challenging the US around the world economically, technologically, politically and militarily around the world and “remains our unparalleled priority,” Haines said and NBC reported.Georgia extremist congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene took the gavel today as the temporary speaker of the House of Representatives.For a long time, the hard-right Republican prone to conspiracy theories could be kept at arm’s length as a fringe character but her influence has grown since she shimmied up to Kevin McCarthy as a crucial ally during his extraordinary multi-round effort to finally get voted into the speakership in January, after the GOP scraped into control of the House during the 2022 midterm elections.McCarthy not only sold his soul for the speakership, he sold the House, too.Shameful day: Today, Kevin McCarthy appointed Marjorie Taylor Greene to act as speaker pro tempore https://t.co/Wa5utLYuXq— Linus Fan 💉💉💉💉💉 (@LinusAlso) March 8, 2023
    She’s very pleased about it.The House will be in order. pic.twitter.com/8154CGMQqQ— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) March 8, 2023
    Others less so.Kevin McCarthy has announced Marjorie Taylor Greene as Speaker Pro Tempore….meaning she will fill the role of presiding officer of the House in the absence of the Speaker of the House. Absolutely insane.— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) March 8, 2023
    As my colleague Adam Gabbatt reminds us, Greene has suggested Jewish space lasers are responsible for wildfires, speculated whether 9/11 was a hoax and supported the QAnon conspiracy theory, was part of a new wave of Trumpian Republicans and was mocked, ridiculed and reviled in equal measure – including by some in her own party.The Atlantic’s “Why is Marjorie Taylor Greene like this?” is also an illuminating read, describing how prosperous but aimless suburbanites can fall down the rabbit hole.Last month, Greene again proposed a “national divorce” so that states can secede along political lines, something that is unequivocally unconstitutional in the United States.The testimony in today’s House hearing on the Afghanistan withdrawal has brought witnesses, lawmakers and audience members to tears.In another gripping account, Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a US Marines sergeant grievously injured in a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport, was asked to tell the panel about the girl he saved during the evacuation.Stationed at the airport, Vargas-Andrews said he was helping to push back the crowds outside of the airport, he noticed a little girl, roughly about 7 or 8 years old, who had managed to squeeze past, holding the hand of her younger brother and a baby in her arms.“In this chaos, I had tunnel-vision and saw her and I was like, I need to help them,” Vargas-Andrews said, recalling that their faces were “dirty and bruised” and streaked with tears.When he reached the children, he noticed that the baby’s face was blue and didn’t appear to be breathing. He took the youngest children in his arms and together they fought their way through the crush of people. Not knowing if the baby was alive, they searched frantically for a medic who could perform CPR on the baby.They found one, administered aid, and the baby’s face “flushed pink” and the infant began to breathe, as the little girl sobbed. She tugged on his uniform and begged for abba, father.He climbed onto an SUV overlooking the razor wire fence erected around the airport and hoisted the girl into the air to survey the scene below. After a few minutes, amid the hundreds of people desperately waving documents and flinging luggage, she pointed to a man with his hands on his head staring back at her, tears streaming down his face.“I was like that is her dad,” Vargas-Andrews said. He quickly reunited the family and together they were able to leave the country.“For me, that was a moment that my personal injury was worth it,” said Vargas-Andrews, who has since undergone 44 surgeries for the extensive injuries he suffered during the bombing. “I know those three little kids will have a life of freedom and opportunity now because of that.”The former Maryland governor Larry Hogan has ruled out a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 – but not ruled out a third-party tilt.Hogan told ABC on Tuesday: “I haven’t ruled that out. But it’s not something I’m really working toward or thinking about” even though “the question keeps popping up more and more”.Hogan flirted with a run for the nomination as a moderate but pulled back on Sunday, saying: “To once again be a successful governing party, we must move on from Donald Trump.“There are several competent Republican leaders who have the potential to step up and lead. But the stakes are too high for me to risk being part of another multi-car pile-up that could potentially help Mr Trump recapture the nomination.”Polling has shown the potential for opponents to Trump (including the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and most likely the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis) to divide the vote and give him the nomination without needing a majority, as happened in 2016.Polling has also shown vanishingly small interest in Hogan among voters in a party dominated by Trump and DeSantis.Hogan told ABC: “Trump has to stumble, which is hard. And he’s been diminishing. But still, he’s the 800lb gorilla. And then if he doesn’t make it, it goes to DeSantis, and then DeSantis has to stumble. And then you have to consolidate everyone else and overcome that.”He said No Labels, a centrist group of which he is an honorary co-chair, had “raised about $50m to get [ballot] access in all 50 states as kind of an insurance policy” for an “in case of emergency break glass” scenario.“They’re not trying to start a third party,” he said. “They’re not committed to doing that. But in case the country is burning down, you may have to have an alternative.”Hogan said a Biden-Trump matchup would be such a scenario.“I think that would be the trigger. I think that’s what they’re talking about. I’m not sure we’re gonna get to that point … Frankly, I’m hopeful that Donald Trump is not going to be the Republican nominee. And I’m going to work toward that goal. And I’m assuming Joe Biden may be the nominee, but who knows? I mean, he’s 80 years old. And we got a long ways to go.”Biden, who would be 86 a the end of a second term, has not confirmed a run for re-election. All signs, however, suggest he will soon take the plunge.Hogan said he was “not sure if it’s feasible” he could be a No Labels candidate.“And it’s also just not something I’m working toward. But, I mean, look, if you got to an election when the nominees were Biden and Trump and 70% of America didn’t want that, you wouldn’t rule it out, right?”The White House chimed in on the Department of Justice finding racist, unlawful conduct by the Memphis Police Department as a result of its investigation following the police killing of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman shot dead almost three years ago during a botched raid.First noting that the DoJ is independent from the White House, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre added that: “The president has said repeatedly that a key part of building trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve is ensuring there is accountability when we see an officer violate the law.”Jean-Pierre noted Joe Biden’s executive order last spring that sought to rein in police excesses and improve safety and trust, and once again lamented that Congress has failed to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.“The president has said himself, Breonna Taylor’s death was a tragedy, a blow to her family, to her community and also to America more broadly.”She added that Biden notes that “Black women experience a disproportionate share of violence in this country and he will continue to fight for legislation that advances police reform and makes sure that we keep the Black community safe.”KJP, who is the first Black woman to be White House press secretary, was wearing white in a nod to the battle for women’s suffrage, pointing out to the assembled journalists that it is International Women’s Day. She is also the first openly gay White House press sec.She also spent quality minutes at the briefing today excoriating Tucker Carlson.00:47In his forthcoming budget proposal, Joe Biden will propose to cut the US deficit by nearly $3tn, the Associated Press reports.The AP adds:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}That deficit reduction goal is significantly higher than the $2tn Biden had promised in his State of the Union address last month. It also is a sharp contrast with House Republicans, who have called for a path to a balanced budget but have yet to offer a blueprint.White House officials have been briefing on the proposal, which Biden is due to discuss in Philadelphia tomorrow, Thursday.A proposal it will almost certainly remain, of course, given Congress has the power of the purse, and given that control of Congress is shared between Democrats who hold the Senate and Republicans who hold the House.It’s been a lively day in US politics so far and there is much more to come. The White House has just called Fox’s Tucker Carlson shameful and the Department of Justice is looking into special police divisions across the country, especially in the wake of high-profile killings of Black Americans amid accusations of racial bias in incidents of brutality and misconduct.Here where things stand:
    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has just slammed Fox News show host Tucker Carlson, calling the right-wing television star “shameful” for the way he is misrepresenting the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol as extremist supporters of Donald Trump tried to overturn his defeat in the presidential election.
    House Republicans convened their first hearing on what the committee chairman called the Biden’s administration’s “disastrous” withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.
    Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Department of Justice (DoJ) will conduct a federal review of the Memphis police department after the killing of Tyre Nichols earlier this year and also look into the use of specialized police units nationwide.
    The Department of Justice has issued its review, concluding that it found racist and unlawful conduct by police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, following their investigation into the city’s law enforcement after the killing of Breonna Taylor during a botched police raid in 2020.
    Fox News has been broadsided by the latest court motions revealing that people from top executives down to reporters knew that Donald Trump’s claims that victory in the 2020 election had been stolen from him because of fraud were bogus – but star commentary hosts boosted those claims anyway.
    The White House has just slammed Fox News show host Tucker Carlson, calling the right-wing television star “shameful” for the way he is misrepresenting the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol as extremist supporters of Donald Trump tried to overturn his defeat in the presidential election.The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, criticized the security footage of the riot at the Capitol that Carlson has played on his show for the last two nights heavily edited so that it gives the impression of depicting what he described as “peaceful chaos”.Many hours of footage was handed over to him by the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy.“To have said what he said when we saw police officers lose their lives is just shameful,” Jean-Pierre just said at the daily briefing in the west wing, when asked about Carlson’s latest actions.00:47She said that the White House agrees with the chief of the Capitol police, Tom Manger (who said in an internal memo Carlson’s broadcast was “filled with offensive and misleading conclusions) and the “rage of bipartisan lawmakers”.“We have condemned this false depiction of the unprecedented, violent attack on our constitution and the rule of law, which cost police officers their lives…on a very dark day in our democracy,” Jean-Pierre said.She added that in various legal battles, the White House agrees with Fox’s own attorneys and executives who “have repeatedly stressed in courts of law that Tucker Carlson is not credible when it comes to this issue in particular”.She cited this September 2020 piece from National Public Radio (NPR) on which the headline was: “You literally can’t believe the facts Tucker Carlson tells you. So say Fox’s lawyers.”In emotional testimony to the House foreign affairs committee this morning, two US service members recounted harrowing scenes at the Kabul airport, where they were stationed when a suicide bomber attacked on 26 August 2021.“It was complete chaos,” said Aidan Gunderson, a former army specialist who left active duty in July.Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a US Marines sergeant who lost an organ and two limbs in the attack, offered some of the most startling testimony of the morning, recalling mothers desperately handing over children while some Afghans chose to take their own lives rather than face the brutality of the Taliban.Speaking under oath, Vargas-Andrews told the panel he identified the suicide bomber among the crush trying to enter the airport but was not given approval to shoot the suspect dead.The attack killed 13 US service members and injured at least 20.“My body was catastrophically wounded with 100 to 150 ball bearings,” Vargas-Andrews said, pausing to fight tears. “Almost immediately we started taking fire from the neighborhood and I saw how injured I was with my right arm completely shredded and unusable. I saw my lower abdomen soaked in blood.”“The withdrawal was a catastrophe in my opinion and there was an inexcusable lack of accountability and negligence,” said Vargas-Andrews, who has undergone 44 surgeries.Vargas-Andrews stated that he was appearing in his personal capacity. His account, detailed in the Washington Post, disputes aspects of the Pentagon’s account of the incident.“This is not the story of a Biden failure or a Trump failure. This is the story of an American failure and the effect it has had and continues to have on Afghans who served alongside myself and so many others,” Peter Lucier, a veteran of the Afghanistan war who helped evacuate allied Afghans with Team America Relief, told the panel.“The failures that led to this point are owned and shared by four administrations, by Congress and by 320,000,000 Americans. This was our war.” More

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    Larry Hogan doesn’t rule out third-party 2024 campaign in bid to stop Trump

    Larry Hogan doesn’t rule out third-party 2024 campaign in bid to stop TrumpEx-governor pulls back from running for Republican nomination but says question of third-party run ‘keeps popping up’Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor of Maryland, has ruled out a run for his party’s presidential nomination in 2024 – but not ruled out running as a third-party candidate in an attempt to stop Donald Trump’s return to the White House.Tucker Carlson, who ‘passionately hates’ Trump, shows more Capitol footageRead moreHogan told ABC: “I haven’t ruled that out. But it’s not something I’m really working toward or thinking about” even though “the question keeps popping up more and more”.Hogan flirted with a run for the Republican nomination as a moderate but pulled back last Sunday, saying: “To once again be a successful governing party, we must move on from Trump.“There are several competent Republican leaders who have the potential to step up and lead. But the stakes are too high for me to risk being part of another multi-car pile-up that could potentially help Mr Trump recapture the nomination.”Trump is running for the Republican nomination for a third time, regardless of legal jeopardy arising from the January 6 insurrection, his retention of classified records, his financial affairs including a hush money payment to a porn star and a defamation case arising from a writer’s allegation of rape which he denies.Polling has shown the potential for opponents to Trump, including the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and most likely the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, to divide the vote and give him the nomination without a majority, as happened in 2016.Polling has also shown vanishingly small interest in Hogan among voters in a Republican party dominated by Trump and DeSantis.Hogan told ABC: “Trump has to stumble, which is hard. And he’s been diminishing. But still, he’s the 800lb gorilla. And then if he doesn’t make it, it goes to DeSantis, and then DeSantis has to stumble. And then you have to consolidate everyone else and overcome that.”He said No Labels, a centrist group of which he is an honorary co-chair, had “raised about $50m to get [ballot] access in all 50 states as kind of an insurance policy” for an “in case of emergency break glass” scenario.“They’re not trying to start a third party,” he said. “They’re not committed to doing that. But in case the country is burning down, you may have to have an alternative.”Hogan said a Biden-Trump match-up would be such a scenario.“I think that would be the trigger. I think that’s what they’re talking about. I’m not sure we’re gonna get to that point … Frankly, I’m hopeful that Donald Trump is not going to be the Republican nominee. And I’m going to work toward that goal. And I’m assuming Joe Biden may be the nominee, but who knows? I mean, he’s 80 years old. And we got a long ways to go.”Biden, who would be 86 a the end of a second term, has not confirmed a run for re-election. All signs, however, suggest he will soon take the plunge.Hogan said he was “not sure if it’s feasible” he could be a No Labels candidate.“And it’s also just not something I’m working toward. But, I mean, look, if you got to an election when the nominees were Biden and Trump and 70% of America didn’t want that, you wouldn’t rule it out, right?”TopicsRepublicansUS elections 2024Donald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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    Republican states pull out of voter rolls program amid false claims of bias

    Republican states pull out of voter rolls program amid false claims of biasThree states announce end of Eric membership citing unfounded concerns over security and political leaning of organizationThree Republican states announced this week that they would be terminating their membership with a prominent, multi-state consortium that shares voter rolls data to keep their lists up to date. The moves come amid unfounded rightwing conspiracies about the security and partisan leaning of the organization.Florida, West Virginia and Missouri said this week that they are leaving the Electronic Registration Information Center (Eric), a group of roughly 30 states on both sides of the aisle that assist one another in voter roll maintenance. The group matches member states’ voter rolls to each other to flag registrations of duplicate voters or people who have moved or died. The more states that are involved, the more accurate Eric’s services can be.Georgia Republicans race to pass laws to restrict and challenge votesRead moreIn a statement announcing its decision on Monday, Florida’s Republican secretary of state, Cord Byrd, said he is withdrawing to protect the data privacy of state residents.“As secretary of state, I have an obligation to protect the personal information of Florida’s citizens, which the Eric agreement requires us to share,” he said. “Florida has tried to back reforms to increase protections, but these protections were refused. Therefore, we have lost confidence in Eric.”Earlier this year, Alabama and Louisiana also pulled out of Eric, citing similar concerns. Alabama’s new secretary of state has denied the results of the 2020 election and supported a lawsuit brought by Texas against four other states for election “irregularities” that allegedly caused Trump’s loss.Eric has been supported by its member states, including many GOP-controlled states, since it launched in 2012 as a way to supplement the insufficient national voter registration database. It was not until last year, when rightwing conspiracy theories began to spread, that the organization began to be viewed as partisan and states began to question their membership.Far-right groups and websites, which were already actively spreading election misinformation and sowing doubt in election administration, began describing Eric as left-leaning and falsely tied the organization to liberal billionaire George Soros. The rightwing website Gateway Pundit published a series of baseless blog posts claiming that Eric was a liberal plot to inflate voter rolls and that it could allow private voter data to become public.Republican states have also begun to take issue with the governance of the organization. In his statement announcing West Virginia’s departure, the secretary of state, Mac Warner, said the Eric board of directors rejected recommended changes during a recent meeting which he claimed would have prevented partisan, non-state actors from having influence over the organization.“It truly is a shame that an organization founded on the principle of nonpartisanship would allow the opportunity for partisanship to stray the organization from the equally important principle of upholding the public’s confidence,” he said.Politico reported that the withdrawing secretaries of state also took issue with Eric’s requirement that state election officials contact eligible but unregistered voters at least every two years to see if they would like to register.Top state officials push to make spread of US election misinformation illegalRead moreIn his letter announcing Missouri’s withdrawal, the secretary of state, Jay Ashcroft, wrote that “Eric focuses on adding names to voters rolls by requiring a solicitation to individuals who already had an opportunity to register to vote and made the conscious decision not to be registered.”Trump has called for more Republican states to withdraw, falsely claiming that Eric is inflating the rolls for Democrats.Tammy Patrick, chief executive officer for programs with the Election Center, said that Eric had benefited for more than a decade from state and local officials from both sides of the aisle working together to serve the electorate.“The weaponizing of any election administration function is problematic – particularly when it is not based on factual evidence to appease a particular faction or is done under partisan pressures,” she said. “Voter list maintenance and registering voters in as efficient a manner as possible should not be viewed as partisan when done properly.”TopicsUS politicsThe fight for democracyRepublicansFloridaWest VirginiaMissourinewsReuse this content More

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    Chuck Schumer attacks ‘shameful’ Fox News over use of January 6 footage – as it happened

    Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, has delivered a scathing rebuke of Fox News and its rightwing host Tucker Carlson for “manipulating” selected footage of the January 6 riot aired on his show last night.On the chamber floor this morning, he accused the network and its star presenter of disdain towards politicians who were at the Capitol when it was overrun by a violent mob of Trump supporters, and the law enforcement officers who tried to defend it:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Last night, millions of Americans tuned into one of the most shameful hours we have ever seen on cable television.
    With contempt for the facts, disregard of the risks, and knowing full well he was lying to his audience, Fox News host Tucker Carlson ran a lengthy segment arguing the January 6 Capitol attack was not a violent insurrection.
    By diving deep into the waters of conspiracy, and cherry picking from thousands of hours of security footage, Mr Carlson told the bald faced lie that the Capitol attack,which we also with their own eyes, somehow, not an attack at all.Schumer: Last night, millions of Americans tuned into one of the most shameful hours we’ve seen on cable television. By diving deep into the waters of conspiracy and cherry-picking from thousands of hours of security footage, Mr. Carlson told the bold-faced lie… pic.twitter.com/dKEw2tJVKw— Acyn (@Acyn) March 7, 2023
    .css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}He tried to argue it was nothing more than a peaceful sightseeing tour. Can you imagine, a non-violent demonstration,a perfectly fine and appropriate instance of people expressing their opinion? I so many others who were here in the Capitol, and millions and millions of Americans are just furious with Tucker Carlson and Kevin McCarthy today.
    Many of my staff were here at the Capitol on January 6, their lives were put in danger, as were the lives of many of my colleagues, as well as police, maintenance staff, reporters, countless others.
    To say January 6 was not violent is a lie. A lie pure and simple. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a primetime cable news anchor manipulate his viewers the way Mr Carlson did last night.
    I don’t think I’ve ever seen an anchor treat the American people and American democracy with such disdain.A military veteran accused of telling an undercover FBI agent about a plan to “wipe out” the nation’s Jewish population was convicted on Tuesday of storming the Capitol during the January 6 riot.The Associated Press reports that Virginia resident Hatchet Speed, a former navy reservist assigned to an agency that operates spy satellites, will be sentenced on 8 May. He was convicted by US district court judge Trevor McFadden in a trial without a jury.NOW: U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden has convicted Navy Reservist Hatchet Speed on all counts for joining the mob that stormed and occupied the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6. https://t.co/mvfXfpl5Tc— Jordan Fischer (@JordanOnRecord) March 7, 2023
    Speed was found guilty on all five charges, including a felony count of obstructing an official proceeding, namely the 6 January 2021 joint session of Congress to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.The FBI recorded Speed’s conversations with an undercover agent more than a year after the riot, the AP reported. Speed told the agent that he marched to the Capitol with members of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group.We’re closing the US politics blog now, after a day in which Tucker Carlson’s ears must have been ringing loudly.The rightwing Fox News host copped a barrage of criticism, from Democrats, the White House, the family of a fallen law enforcement officer, and even Republican senate minority leader Mitch McConnell for his skewed presentation of footage of the January 6 Capitol riot.The videos were controversially gifted to Carlson by a generous congressional benefactor in the form of Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy, and he aired some of them on Monday night, portraying a violent mob of Donald Trump-incited rioters as “peaceful, orderly and meek” sightseers.Here’s what else we followed today:
    The White House lambasted Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis over the introduction on Tuesday of a bill that would further restrict the state’s abortion ban, from 15 to six weeks.
    Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, denounced as “a rumor” a report that the administration was considering reinstating a Trump-era immigration policy that would detain families at the southern border. But a number of Democrats say they are concerned.
    Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, made an unannounced trip to Iraq, promising to keep US military forces in the country, almost exactly two weeks before the 20th anniversary of the 2003 Iraq war that toppled Saddam Hussein.
    A report claimed Democrats are growing fearful that a third-party candidate could take votes away from Joe Biden during the 2024 presidential election and hand Republican favorite and former president Trump a ticket back to the White House.
    Biden laid out some of his budget plans in a guest opinion piece for the New York Times, highlighting the preservation of Medicare as a priority and bashing Republicans over benefits for future generations. The president will unveil his full budget on Thursday.
    Please join us again tomorrow.Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the US Senate, has criticised Fox News for misrepresenting the January 6 riot after his counterpart in the House gave Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of security footage.Asked by reporters if Kevin McCarthy had made a mistake, McConnell said: “My concern is how it was depicted, which was a different issue. Clearly the chief of the Capitol police, in my view, correctly describes what most of us witnessed firsthand on January 6.”Carlson made first use of the footage on Monday night, seeking to portray the Capitol rioters as peaceful protesters.In fact, on 6 January 2021 supporters of Donald Trump stormed the Capitol after he told them to “fight like hell” in service of his lie that his defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud.The riot was an attempt to stop certification of that result. It failed, but nine deaths have been linked to the attack, including suicides among law enforcement.Carlson’s broadcast stoked outrage among Democrats and those who survived the attack or lost family members through it.Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, blasted Carlson for creating “one of the most shameful hours we have ever seen on cable television” and showing “contempt for the facts, disregard of the risks, and knowing full well he was lying to his audience”.Carlson, Schumer said, “told the bald-faced lie that the Capitol attack, which we all saw with our own eyes, somehow was not an attack at all”.In what counted for strong remarks from a very cautious, not to say ruthlessly partisan operator, McConnell added: “It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict this in a way that is completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks.”More:‘Sleaze-slinging’ Fox News denounced by family of January 6 officer who diedRead moreHere’s some more on Fox News’ troubles by my colleague Martin Pengelly, who has news of another complaint affecting Rupert Murdoch’s rightwing empire:A US Federal Election Commission complaint over the collusion of Fox News with the Trump campaign in 2020 could be the first of many, the complainant said, amid continued fallout from dramatic court filings in Dominion Voter Systems’ $1.6bn defamation suit against the network.Media Matters for America, a liberal watchdog, filed its FEC complaint last week, over the revelation that Rupert Murdoch personally gave Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, confidential information about a Biden campaign ad.A progressive political action committee, End Citizens United, also filed a complaint.As defined by the Harvard Law Review, FEC “campaign finance restrictions do not apply to costs associated with producing news”.Media Matters alleges that “press exemption” does not apply to Murdoch’s decision to give the Biden ad to Kushner.Saying the move was “diametrically opposed to Fox Corporation’s regular press activity”, the complaint says: “Fox Corporation, through Murdoch, appears to have engaged in the exact type of campaign activity to which the commission has repeatedly affirmed the press exemption does not apply.“Therefore, Fox Corporation cannot try to exploit the press exemption to avoid the consequences of making an illegal corporate in-kind contribution.”The complaint seeks the maximum fine permitted and “appropriate remedial action”.Read the full story:Fox News hit with election complaint after Biden ad given to Trump son-in-lawRead moreThe White House is adding its voice to a barrage of criticism aimed at Fox News and Tucker Carlson for “sanitizing” the January 6 Capitol riot by airing selected footage on Monday night.Earlier Tuesday, Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer branded the rightwing network, and its star host, “shameful” for their skewed presentation of the attack, which attempted to portray the violent Donald Trump supporters who overran the Capitol as tourists.Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, was equally dismissive at her Tuesday briefing to reporters of Carlson’s claims the mob was merely “sightseeing”:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Anybody who watched that video with their own eyes, in a real way, and saw what happened on that day, would disagree. The president has been very clear January 6 was the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.
    We should be focused on making sure that never happens again. We hope that keeping the Capitol and Congress safe and secure remains congressional leaders’ number one goal.
    All you have to do is watch those videos and see how horrific it was, see how sad it was. It was an attack on our democracy.Her mention of congressional leaders and their priorities was presumably directed at Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy, who caused outrage by handing over about 44,000 hours of footage from the attack exclusively to Carlson.The primetime Fox host is a Trump loyalist who repeatedly pushed the big lie of a stolen 2020 election on air, despite revelations that he and other Fox presenters and executives who also promoted it knew it was false.Read more:‘Sleaze-slinging’ Fox News denounced by family of January 6 officer who diedRead moreKarine Jean-Pierre says the White House “won’t comment on rumors that are out there” about the Biden administration potentially reinstating a Trump-era rule of detaining immigrant families at the southern border.The New York Times first reported that the move was under consideration to stem an expected migrant surge once Title 42, a policy stemming from the Covid pandemic that allowed the swift deportation of migrants, is ended.“I’m not saying it is, I’m not saying it isn’t,” Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said at her Tuesday afternoon briefing.“The department of homeland security is working through ways on how to go forward once Title 42 is lifted. I’m going to let them do their work. [The president] is going to use the tools that he has before him to make… the immigration system safe, orderly and humane.”The report angered congressional Democrats. New Mexico senator Ben Ray Luján told Punchbowl he was frustrated it didn’t come up when he and other Hispanic senators met with homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last month.“It was a time to have honest conversations with one another,” Luján said. “And this is another one of those surprises – if it’s true – that was covered by the media. Fortunately for the media, we continue to find out decisions that are being made.”Mayorkas will hold a virtual meeting with congressional Hispanic caucus members at 5pm ET to discuss the uproar over the Times report, Punchbowl says.More on this subject:Biden’s ‘carrot and stick’ approach to deter migrants met with angerRead moreThe Biden administration has expressed its “deep condolences” to the families of US citizens who were killed in Mexico by members of a suspected drugs cartel.Speaking at her daily briefing at the White House, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’re still working with Mexican officials to learn more and to have all Americans returned to the United States.
    President Biden has been kept updated on this incident. Senior members of the White House has have also been engaged. We extend our deepest condolences to their families and friends.She added that US investigators were working with Mexican authorities to establish details of the incident.Read more:Two Americans kidnapped in Mexico found dead, officials sayRead moreTalking of abortion bans in Republican strongholds, Kamala Harris is backing five Texas women who are suing the state, having been denied the procedure.A statement from the vice-president’s office at the White House on Tuesday blasted Texas legislators for passing near-total block on abortions:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}When I convened health care providers at the White House in September 2021 in wake of Texas SB 8, we discussed the harm that doctors and nurses feared their patients would experience as a result of Texas’ extreme laws. Now, multiple women impacted by these abortion bans announced a joint lawsuit against the state of Texas, showing those fears have turned into reality. The lawsuit includes devastating, first-hand accounts of women’s lives almost lost after they were denied the health care they needed, because of extreme efforts by Republican officials to control women’s bodies.
    Many extremist ‘so-called’ leaders espouse ‘freedom for all,’ while directly attacking the freedom to make one’s own health care decisions. Like the overwhelming majority of Americans, the President and I believe women – in consultation with their doctors – should be in charge of their reproductive health care, not politicians.We’re about to hear from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre at the daily White House briefing, but she’s already made clear the Biden administration’s feelings on Florida’s six-week abortion ban proposal, introduced to the state’s legislature this morning.In a statement to the Miami Herald, Jean-Pierre says the move would “ban abortion before many women know if they are pregnant”:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Politicians like Governor DeSantis espouse ‘freedom for all,’ while directly attacking the freedom to make one’s own healthcare decisions. This proposal is wrong and out of touch with the overwhelming majority of Americans, including Floridians, who support a woman’s right to choose.
    This ban would prevent not just the nearly four million Florida women of reproductive age from accessing abortion care after six weeks, but would also impact the nearly 15m women of reproductive age who live in states across the South with abortion bans and would no longer be able to rely on Florida as an option to access care.It’s been a furiously busy day so far in US politics, and we still have the daily White House press briefing to come.Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, blasted Fox News, and its star rightwing host Tucker Carlson, for their “shameless manipulation” of footage of the January 6 Capitol riot aired on Monday.Carlson attempted to portray a violent mob Donald Trump supporters who carried out the deadly insurrection as peaceful sightseers enjoying a day out, and the backlash has been swift and strong.Here’s what else we’ve been following:
    Florida’s loyalist Republican legislature handed extremist governor and probable White House hopeful Ron DeSantis a key policy objective by proposing a six-week abortion ban.
    Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, made an unannounced trip to Iraq, promising to keep US military forces in the country, almost exactly two weeks before the 20th anniversary of the 2003 Iraq war that toppled Saddam Hussein.
    Democrats are growing fearful that a third-party candidate could take votes away from Joe Biden during the 2024 presidential election and hand Republican favorite and former president Donald Trump a ticket back to the White House. More

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    ‘Sleaze-slinging’ Fox News denounced by family of January 6 officer who died

    ‘Sleaze-slinging’ Fox News denounced by family of January 6 officer who diedCondemnation of ‘so-called new network’ comes after Tucker Carlson shares footage from attack courtesy of Kevin McCarthyThe family of Brian Sicknick, the US Capitol police officer who died the day after the January 6 attack on Congress, condemned Tucker Carlson and Fox News as “unscrupulous and outright sleazy”, after the primetime host made first use of security footage from the riot bestowed by Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker.Fox News hit with election complaint after Biden ad given to Trump son-in-lawRead moreA statement on Tuesday said: “The Sicknick family is outraged at the ongoing attack on our family by the unscrupulous and outright sleazy so-called news network of Fox News.”Fox and Carlson, the family said, “will do the bidding of [Donald] Trump or any of his sycophant followers, no matter what damage is done to the families of the fallen, the officers who put their lives on the line and all who suffered on January 6, due to the lie started by Trump and spread by sleaze-slinging outlets like Fox”.Nine deaths have been linked to the attack on the Capitol by supporters Trump told to “fight like hell” in service of his lie that his defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud.Trump aimed to stop certification of Biden’s win. The process was only delayed but lawmakers including the vice-president, Mike Pence, were sent running for their lives.More than 1,000 people have been charged and hundreds convicted on charges including seditious conspiracy. Hundreds remain wanted by authorities.Trump was impeached for inciting the attack but acquitted when enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal. The House January 6 committee made four criminal referrals regarding Trump to the Department of Justice.Last month, to protests from Democrats and media groups, McCarthy made 41,000 hours of security footage available to Carlson and Fox News.Carlson had already claimed January 6 was a “false flag” attack, staged by authorities to entrap Trump supporters. On Monday night, he tried to portray those who stormed the Capitol as peaceful protesters.Saying the tapes showed “mostly peaceful chaos”, Carlson said: “Taken as a whole the video record does not support the claim that January 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim.”In return, the Sicknick family lambasted Carlson and Fox News.Fox News, they said, “has shown time and time again that [it is] little more than the propaganda arm of the Republican party, and like Pravda will do whatever [it is] told to keep the hatred and the lies flowing while suppressing anything resembling the truth.“Fox does this not for any sense of morality as they have none but for the quest for every penny of advertising money they can get from those who buy airtime from them.”Recent revelations from filings in a $1.6n defamation suit from Dominion Voter Systems include Rupert Murdoch, Fox News’ owner, indicating he knew Trump’s claims were false but saying his motivation for accommodating election deniers was to stop viewers deserting.The Sicknick family also called McCarthy a “disgusting excuse for a House speaker”. Later on Tuesday, the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, was asked if McCarthy had made a mistake in giving Carlson the tapes.He said: “My concern is how [the riot] was depicted, which was a different issue. Clearly the chief of the Capitol police, in my view, correctly describes what most of us witnessed first-hand on January 6.”McConnell’s Democratic counterpart, Chuck Schumer, lamented “one of the most shameful hours we have ever seen on cable television” and said Carlson had shown “contempt for the facts [and] disregard of the risks [while] knowing full well he was lying to his audience”.Carlson, Schumer said, “told the bald-faced lie that the Capitol attack, which we all saw with our own eyes, somehow was not an attack at all”.Decrying efforts to make a martyr out of Ashley Babbitt, a Trump supporter shot dead by a police officer on January 6, the Sicknick family said Carlson was “downplaying the horrid situation faced by US Capitol police and DC Metro police who were incredibly outnumbered and were literally fighting for their very lives”.Sicknick, 42, was sprayed with chemicals, for which his attacker was jailed for nearly seven years. Sicknick died the day after the riot, after suffering two strokes. A medical examiner said he died of natural causes but his name remains linked to January 6. His body lay in state at the Capitol.Sicknick’s family said “his sense of duty and incredible work ethic were the driving force which sent him back in spite of his injuries and no doubt contributed to his succumbing to his injuries the following day.Stunning Rupert Murdoch deposition leaves Fox News in a world of troubleRead more“What will it take to silence the lies from people like Carlson? What will it take to convince people that the January 6 insurrection was very real, it was very violent, and that the event was orchestrated by a man [Trump] who is every bit as corrupt and evil as Vladimir Putin.“The Sicknick family would love nothing more than to have Brian back with us and to resume our normal lives. Fictitious news outlets like Fox and its rabid followers will not allow that. Every time the pain of that day seems to have ebbed a bit organisations like Fox rip our wounds wide open again and we are frankly sick of it.“Leave us the hell alone and instead of spreading more lies from Supreme Leader Trump, why don’t you focus on real news?”Fox News did not comment.TopicsUS Capitol attackFox NewsUS television industryTelevision industryWashington DCRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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    Republican congressman ‘unaware’ he was posing for photo with neo-Nazis

    Republican congressman ‘unaware’ he was posing for photo with neo-NazisMatt Rosendale of Montana says he unwittingly posed for picture: ‘I absolutely condemn and have zero tolerance for hate groups’A Republican congressman from Montana said a photo of him in front of the US Capitol with two neo-Nazis was a mistake, claiming he unwittingly posed with the men, one of whom appeared to be wearing a trench coat of a style worn by German soldiers in the second world war.Matt Rosendale told the Billings Gazette: “I absolutely condemn and have zero tolerance for hate groups, hate speech and violence. I did not take a meeting with these individuals.“I was asked for a photo while walking between hearings, accommodating as I do for all photo requests, and was not aware of the individuals’ identity or affiliation with these hate groups that stand in stark contrast to my personal beliefs.”Rosendale, 62, was elected to the US House in 2020. A member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, in the aftermath of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol he was one of 147 Republicans in Congress who voted to overturn election results in Donald Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden.Republican under fire for using ‘Voltaire’ quote actually coined by neo-NaziRead moreThe picture of Rosendale with the neo-Nazis spread on social media last week.The Gazette identified two of three men posing with Rosendale as “Ryan Sanchez, formerly of the white supremacist street-fighting gang Rise Above Movement, and Greyson Arnold, a Nazi sympathiser and podcaster present at the January 6 insurrection”.Sanchez, a former US marine, was wearing the German army-style coat. Arnold is a far-right blogger and commentator who the Gazette said has called Adolf Hitler a “complicated historical figure”.Rosendale is not the first Republican to have been linked to Arnold.In November 2021, Kari Lake, the Trump-endorsed candidate for governor in Arizona, posed with Arnold and another far-right activist at a campaign event.In October 2022, meanwhile, Arnold was revealed to have been paid a little more than $800 by the Washington state Republican party.The picture with Rosendale appeared to have been taken on Wednesday 1 March. Other pictures tweeted by anti-fascist activists that day appeared to show the same men inside the Capitol.Examination of the congressional schedule for 1 March appeared to cast doubt on Rosendale’s claim to have been walking between hearings when he posed for the picture.Rosendale sits on the House veterans affairs and natural resources committees. The schedule for 1 March lists one joint House-Senate hearing on veterans affairs and one hearing of the House natural resources subcommittee on Indigenous peoples.Rosendale sits on the natural resources subcommittees for energy and mineral resources and oversight and investigations.The House subcommittee hearing was in the Longworth House Office Building at 9am and the joint veterans’ affairs session was in the Dirksen Senate Office Building an hour later.The Longworth Building is south of the Capitol, Dirksen to the north-east. Lawmakers moving between buildings mostly make use of tunnels and subways connected to the Capitol itself.Rosendale’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.TopicsRepublicansUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More