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      Republicans continue Covid-19 relief talks as Democrat warns of catastrophe

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      The White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and the treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, were on Capitol Hill on Saturday, for talks with aides to Senate Republicans over the next coronavirus relief package.The stakes are high. US unemployment rose again on Friday after months of falls, enhanced benefits are due to run out and Americans unable to pay rent are starting to be evicted. The expanded unemployment benefit officially expires on 31 July, but due to the way states process payments, the cut-off is effectively Saturday.On Friday Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House ways and means committee, said the US was on “the eve of an economic catastrophe”.Nonetheless the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, sent members of his party home, promising a proposal by Monday.Facing re-election this year, McConnell also went home. At an event in Kentucky, he said: “This has been one heck of a challenge for everybody in the country. Hopefully we can come together behind some package we can agree on in the next few weeks.”In a joint statement, the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said: “We call upon Leader McConnell to get serious.”In a tweet referring to the pandemic-inspired unemployment boost of $600 a week, Pelosi added: “The Senate must take up the House-passed Heroes Act and extend this critical lifeline for working families.”The Democratic-held House passed that $3tn relief package in May but the Senate is held by Republicans and has not taken it up.Among other issues, Republicans are debating reducing the special unemployment payments, which they say provide a disincentive to seek work. The White House has suggested cutting the payments to as little as $100.Many regular Americans counter that the funds are vital, not just to meet rent but to buy food and other necessary items.The economy has been battered by the coronavirus pandemic, which is now surging in mainly Republican-run states which reopened from late May. Democrat-run California, an early hotspot, is also seeing a resurgence.More than 4.1m cases have been recorded in the US and more than 145,000 people have died.The Trump White House sees economic recovery as key to the president’s hopes of re-election. But amid protests over police brutality and racism, and confrontations between protesters and federal agents in Portland, Oregon, Trump has also pivoted to law and order.On Friday, Trump added a new priority to the relief package: money to build a new FBI headquarters, across the street in Washington from his own hotel.McConnell’s proposal is expected to include new direct $1,200 cash payments to many Americans, $105bn to help reopen schools and $25bn for virus testing.The Senate leader’s top priority is a liability shield to protect businesses, hospitals and others against Covid-19 lawsuits. Trump is pressing to reopen schools, threatening to withhold funding from those which do not return fully in September.The White House was also pushing a payroll tax cut. Senate Republicans rejected the move, which would pull revenue away from social security and Medicare in the middle of an economic and public health disaster.“This is disarray,” Pelosi said on Friday at the Capitol.Her statement with Schumer said: “We had expected to be working throughout this weekend. It is simply unacceptable that Republicans have had this entire time to reach consensus among themselves and continue to flail.”Amid widespread criticism of his response to the pandemic, Trump trails Joe Biden in most national and battleground state polls. The nonpartisan Cook Report website recently said a “Democratic tsunami” may be on the way.But some observers counter that an election held amid social restrictions due to the pandemic, and subject to Republican voter suppression efforts, could give Trump a chance of a second win in the electoral college. More

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      American carnage: how conservative media amplify Trump's theme of chaos

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      Mayors across the United States have rejected Donald Trump’s election-season depiction of their cities as awash in violence, and media coverage of peaceful protests in Portland and elsewhere has belied the president’s claims of widespread “anarchy”.But for Americans who mainly consume conservative media, Trump’s latest evocation of an “American carnage”, with “a shocking explosion of shootings, killings, murders and heinous crimes of violence” is as plain as the news flashing across the screen.The stars of conservative cable TV programs and the biggest conservative news sites and social media accounts have echoed and amplified Trump since he declared himself “your president of law and order” in an appearance outside the White House in early June.Over the last week, however, alarm over the security of America’s cities has intensified on the conservative airways.“These vicious, violent, hate-filled, anti-American protesters are also attacking federal buildings,” Rush Limbaugh said on his radio show last week. “How many stores and parks and statues and public buildings have been destroyed recently by rioters?” the Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked last month. “Reign of street terrorists”, the conservative radio host Mark Levin tweeted with a story about the removal and defacement of statues and monuments.The Republican senator Tom Cotton, who has been calling for a military crackdown in US cities for two months, found a welcome outlet this week for his message on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program, one of the country’s most-watched.“If federal troops are brought in and then – of course the mayors and the governors, they’re not stopping the anarchists, and there’s chaos in the streets … and then they have to fire to protect themselves or others, who gets the blame for that?” Hannity asked, describing a scenario in which troops fired on protesters.“Well ultimately the blame lies with the criminals,” Cotton replied.Political analysts see Trump’s efforts to create the impression of widespread social unrest which only he can solve as part of a long-shot re-election strategy. Trump trails rival Joe Biden by double digits in polling averages including in key swing states.Conservative media could help Trump to create an impression of chaos – at least for their conservative audience. Media consumption habits have shown strong correlation with basic world outlook. An Axios-Ipsos poll published on Tuesday found that a 62% majority of Fox News watchers believe that statistics tracking US coronavirus cases are overblown, while 48% who reported no main news source thought so. Only 7% of CNN and MSNBC watchers thought so.Trump has blamed Democrats for creating the climate of chaos he relies on conservative media to help him amplify. “I’m going to do something – that, I can tell you,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office this week.“Because we’re not going to let New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit and Baltimore and all of these – Oakland is a mess. We’re not going to let this happen in our country. All run by liberal Democrats.”US mayors have disputed that depiction, urging the Trump administration to stop treating protesters like criminals and accusing the White House of an “abuse of power”.Mayors from 15 of the largest American cities addressed a letter to the attorney general, Bill Barr, and the acting homeland security secretary, Chad Wolf, on Monday.“The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked a national uprising and reckoning,” the letter said. “The majority of the protests have been peaceful and aimed at improving our communities.“Where this is not the case, it still does not justify the use of federal forces. Unilaterally deploying these paramilitary-type forces into our cities is wholly inconsistent with our system of democracy and our most basic values.” More

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      Ocasio-Cortez delivers powerful speech after Republican's sexist remarks

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

      Congresswoman condemned ‘violent language against women’ after Ted Yoho berated her on the House steps on Monday

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      Ocasio-Cortez speaks about ‘culture of violence against women’ after Republican’s insults – video

      Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s outrage over a Republican lawmaker’s verbal assault broadened into an extraordinary moment on the House floor on Thursday as she and other Democrats assailed a sexist culture of “accepting violence and violent language against women” whose adherents include Donald Trump.
      A day after rejecting an offer of contrition from Republican congressman Ted Yoho for his language during this week’s Capitol steps confrontation, Ocasio-Cortez and more than a dozen colleagues cast the incident as all-too-common behavior by men, including the president and other Republicans.
      “This issue is not about one incident. It is cultural,” said Ocasio-Cortez. She called it a culture “of accepting a violence and violent language against women, an entire structure of power that supports that”.
      The remarkable outpouring, with several female lawmakers saying they had routinely encountered such treatment, came in an election year in which polls show women lean decisively against Trump, who has a history of mocking women. Trump was captured in a 2005 tape boasting about physically abusing them, and his disparagement of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has included calling her “crazy”.
      The lawmakers joining Ocasio-Cortez represented a wide range of the chamber’s Democrats, underscoring the party’s unity over an issue that can energize their party’s voters.
      No Republicans spoke. But the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, at a separate appearance defended Yoho, 65, one of his party’s most conservative members and who will retire in January.
      “When someone apologizes they should be forgiven,” McCarthy said. He added later: “I just think in a new world, in a new age, we now determine whether we accept when someone says I’m sorry if it’s a good enough apology.”
      Pelosi herself weighed in during a separate news conference.
      “It’s a manifestation of attitude in our society really. I can tell you that first-hand, they’ve called me names for at least 20 years of leadership, 18 years of leadership,” Pelosi said of Republicans.
      Pelosi, who has five children, recounted that during a debate years ago on women’s reproductive health, GOP lawmakers “said, on the floor of the House, Nancy Pelosi think she knows more about having babies than the pope”.
      In an encounter on Monday witnessed by a reporter from the Hill, Yoho berated Ocasio-Cortez on the House steps for saying that some of the increased crime during the coronavirus pandemic could be traced to rising unemployment and poverty.
      Ocasio-Cortez, a freshman who has made her mark as one of Congress’s most outspoken progressives, described it on the House floor on Thursday. She said Yoho put his finger in her face and called her disgusting, crazy and dangerous.
      She also told the House that in front of reporters, he called her, “and I quote, ‘a fucking bitch’”. That matched the Hill’s version of what Yoho had said. Ocasio-Cortez was not there for that remark.
      Ocasio-Cortez said Yoho’s references to his wife and daughters as he explained his actions during brief remarks on Wednesday actually underscored the problem.
      “Having a daughter does not make a man decent. Having a wife does not make a decent man. Treating people with dignity and respect makes a decent man,” she said.
      She added that a decent man apologizes “not to save face, not to win a vote. He apologizes, and genuinely, to repair and acknowledge the harm done, so that we can all move on.”

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      Ocasio-Cortez speaks about 'culture of violence against women' after Republican's insults – video

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      The New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the insults a Republican colleague was heard saying to her on the steps of the US Capitol on Monday are part of a larger problem faced by all women.
      The Hill reported that Ocasio-Cortez was confronted by the Florida Republican congressman Ted Yoho. He apparently said she was ‘disgusting’ for saying of spiking gun violence in New York this month ‘is a problem of a diseased society, which neglects its marginalized people … policing is not the solution to crime’.
      Speaking on the House floor on Thursday morning, Ocasio-Cortez said: ‘In front of reporters, Representative Yoho called me, and I quote, a “fucking bitch”‘
      ‘Bitches get stuff done’: Ocasio-Cortez hits back after Republican’s tirade

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