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US SenateSenate approves $3.5tn budget plan in crucial step on economic packageLawmakers approve Democrats’ budget resolution on party-line 50-49 vote hours after passing $1tn infrastructure bill G More
US SenateUS Senate passes giant $1tn bipartisan infrastructure bill19 Republicans join Democrats in helping get plan over the finish line as Biden hails key step in progress of bill Joan E Greve in Washington, Rebecca Klein in New York and agencies@ More
US SenateThe infrastructure bill is being lauded as a victory for bipartisanship – but is it?The truth of how the bill – which is not yet finished – has come to be is a little more self-interest than national interest Daniel Strauss@ More
US SenateSenate resumes infrastructure debate as Trump threatens Republicans who back billTrump says it ‘will be very hard for me to endorse anyone foolish enough to vote in favor of this deal’ as session to resume at noon01:21Edward HelmoreSun 8 Aug 2021 13.59 EDTFirst published on Sun 8 Aug 2021 09.09 EDTSenators resumed a weekend session toward passage of a $1tn bipartisan infrastructure package on Sunday amid threats from former president Donald Trump who raged against any Republicans who support the measure.Majority leader Chuck Schumer stressed to colleagues that they could proceed the “easy way or the hard way”, while a few Republican senators appeared determined to run out the clock for days. “We’ll keep proceeding until we get this bill done,” Schumer said.The bill would provide what Joe Biden has called a “historic investment” in public works programs, from roads and bridges to broadband internet access, drinking water and more. It was expected to pass on Saturday – before it heads to the House – but ran into Republican procedural delays, forcing yet another day of debate.Trump, who maintains a strong grip on the party and intense popularity with much of its base, also throw a spanner in the works by attacking any of his party who back the bill.“Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill is a disgrace,” he said in a statement and then added that it “…will be very hard for me to endorse anyone foolish enough to vote in favor of this deal.”In a rare stroke of bipartisanship, Republicans joined Democrats to advance the measure and more votes are expected Sunday. If approved, the bill would go to the House, where it might face changes and – if it does – it could return to the Senate for another vote before heading to Biden’s desk.Despite the overwhelming support, momentum has dragged as a few Republican senators refused to yield 30 hours of required debate before the next set of procedural votes, which could delay swift passage of the package and result in a dayslong slog.Senators were meeting for the second consecutive weekend to work on the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which is the first of Biden’s two infrastructure packages.Once voting wraps up, senators immediately will turn to the next item on Biden’s agenda, the budget outline for a $3.5tn package of child care, elder care and other programs that is a much more partisan undertaking and expected to draw only Democratic support.Schumer has vowed to keep senators in session until they finish up the bipartisan bill and start the initial votes on the next big package.For some Republican senators, the back-to-back voting on Biden’s big priorities is what they are trying to delay, hoping to slow or halt what appears to be a steady march to achieve the president’s infrastructure goals.Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, an ally of Donald Trump and the former president’s ambassador to Japan, was among those leading the effort for the Senate to take as much time as needed to debate and amend the bill.“There’s absolutely no reason to rush,” Hagerty said during a floor speech Saturday. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has so far allowed the bill to progress and backed it, despite the broadsides and name-calling coming from Trump. “This is a compromise,” McConnell said.Senators have spent the past week processing nearly two dozen amendments to the 2,700-page package, but so far none has substantially changed its framework.More amendments could be debated Sunday with senators considering revisions to a section on cryptocurrency, a long-shot effort by defense hawks to add $50bn for defense-related infrastructure and a bipartisan amendment to repurpose a portion of the untapped Covid-19 relief aid that had been sent to the states.TopicsUS SenateBiden administrationJoe BidenDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More
OpinionUS politicsWhile Delta spreads, Republicans deflect and resort to Trump demagogueryRobert ReichTrump Republicans are falling back on their proven method of deflecting attention by blaming immigrants crossing the southern border Sun 8 Aug 2021 08.36 EDTLast modified on Sun 8 Aug 2021 10.03 EDTAs America reaches the milestone of 70% of adults with at least one dose of a vaccine, the highly contagious Delta variant is surging.Public health officials are trying to keep the focus on the urgent need for more vaccinations.But with unvaccinated Americans – notably and conspicuously residents of states and counties that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2020 – succumbing to the Delta strain in large numbers, Trump Republicans are falling back on their proven method of deflecting attention by blaming immigrants crossing the southern border.Last week, Trump issued a characteristic charge: “ICYMI: “Thousands of Covid-positive migrants passing through Texas border city,” linking a New York Post article claiming that “nearly 7,000 immigrants who tested positive for Covid-19 have passed through a Texas city that has become the epicenter of the illegal immigration surge.”Trump has employed this racist-nationalist theme before. For years he fixed his ire on Mexicans and Central Americans from “shitholes”, as he has so delicately put it. He began his 2016 campaign by charging that “criminals, drug dealers and rapists” were surging across America’s southern border, and then spent much of the subsequent four years trying to erect a fence to keep them out.Trump acolytes are adopting the same demagoguery.As hospitalizations in Florida surged past 12,000 this week, exceeding a record already shattered last weekend, Florida governor Ron DeSantis accused Joe Biden of facilitating the virus by not reducing immigration through the southern border.“Why don’t you do your job?” DeSantis snapped after Biden suggested DeSantis stop opposing masks. “Why don’t you get this border secure? And until you do that, I don’t want to hear a blip about Covid from you, thank you.”The Trumpist media is quickly falling in line behind this nativist rubbish. In the last week, Fox News’s Sean Hannity has asserted the “biggest super-spreader” is immigrants streaming over the southern border rather than the lack of vaccinations.The National Review claims “Biden’s border crisis merges with his Covid crisis” and asserts that “the federal government is successfully terrifying people about Covid while it is shrugging at the thousands of infectious illegal aliens who are coming into the country and spreading the virus.”A columnist for the Wall Street Journal insists that “if Biden Is Serious About Covid, He’ll Protect the Border.” The Washington Examiner asserts “Biden hypocrisy endangers American lives on southern border.” Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire warns of “Covid-Positive Illegal Immigrants Flooding Across The Border.”Can we please stop for a moment and look at the actual data? The Delta variant is spreading fastest in interior states like Missouri and Arkansas, far away from the Mexican border.It was first detected in India in December, and then moved directly to the United States in March and April according to the CDC.GISAID, a nonprofit organization that tracks the genetic sequencing of viruses, has shown that each of the four variants now circulating in the United States arrived here before spreading to Mexico and Central America. International travel rather than immigration over the southern border brought the viruses to America.Haven’t we had enough demagoguery and deflection? Haven’t Trump and his ilk done enough damage already?The blame game must stop. Let’s be clear: The best way to contain deaths and hospitalizations from Covid is to get more Americans vaccinated. Period.TopicsUS politicsOpinionRepublicansCoronavirusDonald TrumpFloridacommentReuse this content More
BooksReign of Terror review: from 9/11 to Trump by way of Snowden and IraqSpencer Ackerman, once of the Guardian, displays a masterful command of the facts but sometimes lets his prejudice show Lloyd GreenSun 8 Aug 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 8 Aug 2021 02.01 EDTThis 11 September will be the 20th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the crash of Flight 93. Two wars have left 6,700 Americans dead and more than 53,000 wounded. After the Trump presidency, America roils in a cold civil war. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is on the move again. Saddam Hussein is dead and gone but Iraq remains “not free”.‘A madman with millions of followers’: what the new Trump books tell usRead moreIn other words, the war on terror has produced little for the US to brag about. In an April Pew poll, two-thirds of respondents rated international terror as a “big” problem, albeit one that trailed healthcare, Covid, unemployment and 10 more.Against this bleak backdrop, Spencer Ackerman delivers his first book under the subtitle “How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump”. It is part-chronicle, part-polemic. The author’s anger is understandable, to a point.Ackerman displays a masterful command of facts. No surprise. In 2014, he was part of the Guardian team that won a Pulitzer for reporting on Edward Snowden’s leaks about the National Security Agency.Ackerman stuck with the topic. A contributing editor at the Daily Beast, he has also been its senior national security writer. Ackerman is fluent in discussing the so-called security state, and how it is a creature of both political parties.In the face of Snowden’s revelations, congressional leaders came out for the status quo. According to Harry Reid, then the Democratic Senate majority leader, senators who complained about being left in the dark about the NSA had only themselves to blame. All other Americans were to sit down and shut up.Nancy Pelosi, then House minority leader and a persistent critic of the Patriot Act, a chief vehicle for surveillance powers, declined to criticize Barack Obama or high-tech intrusion in general. Instead, she called for Snowden’s prosecution. He made Russia his home.Ackerman notes that the American Civil Liberties Union and Rand Paul, Kentucky’s junior senator, were notable exceptions to the rule. At the time, Paul remarked: “When you collect it from a billion phone calls a day, even if you say you’re going to keep the name private, the possibility for abuse is enormous.”Ackerman also shines a light on how the far right played an outsized role in domestic terrorism before and after 9/11, reminding us of Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, teasing out McVeigh’s ties to other white nationalists.The attack on the US Capitol on 6 January this year is one more chapter in the story. Trump falsely claimed Antifa, leftwing radicals, were the real culprits. The roster of those under indictment reveals a very different story.In congressional testimony in April, Merrick Garland, the attorney general, and Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, described “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” as the greatest domestic threat. Garland also singled out “those who advocate for the superiority of the white race”.Chad Wolf, Trump’s acting homeland security chief, made a similar point last fall. Of course, his boss wasn’t listening.Ackerman delves meticulously into the blowback resulting from the war on terror. Unfortunately, he downplays how the grudges and enmities of the old country have been magnified by key social forces, immigration chief among them.Joe Biden, then vice-president, condemned the Boston Marathon bombers as “knock-off jihadists”. But Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev had received asylum. The immigrant population stands near a record high and the US fertility rate is in retrograde. On the right, that is a combustible combination. When Tucker Carlson is in Hungary, singing the praises of Viktor Orbán, the past is never too far away.In his effort to draw as straight a line as possible between the war on terror and the rise of Trump, Ackerman can overplay his hand. Racism, nativism and disdain for the other were not the sole drivers of Trump’s win, much as Islamophobia was not the sole cause of the Iraq war, a conflict Ackerman acknowledges he initially supported.Trump’s victory was also about an uneven economic recovery and, when it came to America’s wars, who did the fighting and dying. Overwhelmingly, it wasn’t the offspring of coastal elites. In 2016, there was a notable correlation between battlefield casualties and support for Trump.According to Douglas L Kriner of Boston University and Francis X Shen of the University of Minnesota, “Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan could very well have been winners for [Hillary] Clinton if their war casualties were lower.” Residents of red states are more than 20% more likely to join the military. Denizens of blue America punch way above their weight when it comes to going to college.Ackerman, a graduate of New York’s hyper-meritocratic Bronx High School of Science, bares his own class prejudices much in the way Clinton did at a notorious Wall Street fundraiser. Hillary dunked on the “Deplorables”. Ackerman goes after those he sees as socially undesirable.In his telling, Trump is “an amalgam of no less than four of the worst kinds of New Yorkers”. According to his taxonomy, those are “outer-borough whites”, wealth vampires, dignity-free media strivers and landlords.I Alone Can Fix It: Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker on their Trump bestsellerRead moreThis year, many of those “outer-borough whites” voted for a Black candidate, Eric Adams, in the Democratic mayoral primary. Adams, Brooklyn’s borough president, is a former police captain.The real estate industry is a critical part of the city economy. Strivers have been here since the Dutch came onshore. As for “wealth vampires” – come on, really?The city’s economy reels. Murder is way up. Law and order matters. Ackerman’s disdain is misdirected.Nationally, the security state is not going to just disappear. But not all is gloom and doom. In a break with Obama and Trump, the Biden White House has pledged to no longer go gunning for reporters over leaks.The US is leaving Afghanistan. Unlike Trump, Biden was not dissuaded. And last Wednesday, the Senate foreign relations committee voted to end the 1991 and 2002 authorizations of use of military force in Iraq. Even the leviathan can budge.TopicsBooksSeptember 11 2001Donald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsreviewsReuse this content More
