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      Top US general to face heated questions in Congress after Woodward revelations

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      US CongressTop US general to face heated questions in Congress after Woodward revelationsMark Milley poised for tense cross-examination after book said he took steps to prevent Trump from starting a war Julian Borger in WashingtonTue 28 Sep 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Tue 28 Sep 2021 02.01 EDTThe top US general will appear before Congress on Tuesday in what is expected to be the most heated cross-examination of a senior US military officer in over a decade.The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley, can expect a hostile interrogation from Republicans on the Senate armed services committee after accounts in a recent book that he carried out acts of insubordination to prevent Donald Trump from starting a war as a diversion from his election defeat last year.In the book, Peril, the Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa report that Milley twice called his Chinese opposite number to reassure him that the US would not conduct a surprise attack, and that the US general would alert Beijing if the president tried to order one.According to the book, Milley also ordered officers assigned to the Pentagon war room to let him know if Trump ordered a nuclear launch, despite the fact that the chairman of the joint chiefs is not in the chain of command.Milley will be facing senior Republican senators who have been calling for his resignation since the book came out this month. Some Democrats, though generally thankful that Milley stepped in to rule out a potentially catastrophic military diversion ordered by a volatile and defeated president, are also concerned about the precedent it sets for the future power balance between elected civilian leaders and US generals and admirals.The formal purpose of the Senate hearing is to hear testimony on “the conclusion of military operations in Afghanistan and plans for future counter-terrorism operations”.Milley, alongside the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, and the head of US central command, Gen Kenneth McKenzie, will face stern questioning from both sides over the chaotic last days of the 20-year US military presence in Afghanistan, and asked why some many Afghans who had been granted special immigrant visas or had visa applications pending were left behind to fend for themselves after Kabul fell to the Taliban.McKenzie will also have to answer questions about a 29 August drone strike that was meant to target an Islamic State car bomb but instead killed 10 members of a family, seven of them children.Milley will be asked why he deemed it a “righteous strike” before all the evidence was available, and all three men will have to respond to concerns that such deadly mistakes could become more concerning as the US resorts to an over-the-horizon approach to counter-terrorist operations in Afghanistan in the future, flying long-distance bombing sorties with little or no human intelligence on the ground to guide attacks.TopicsUS CongressUS militaryUS SenateDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      House committee on Capitol attack subpoenas Trump’s ex-chief of staff and other top aides

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      US Capitol attackHouse committee on Capitol attack subpoenas Trump’s ex-chief of staff and other top aidesMark Meadows, Steve Bannon and Dan Scavino among advisers called to testify over president’s connection to 6 January events Hugo Lowell in Washington DCThu 23 Sep 2021 19.48 EDTLast modified on Thu 23 Sep 2021 20.30 EDTThe House select committee scrutinizing the Capitol attack on Thursday sent subpoenas to Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and a cadre of top Trump aides, demanding their testimony to shed light on the former president’s connection to the 6 January riot.The subpoenas and demands for depositions marked the most aggressive investigative actions the select committee has taken since it made records demands and records preservation requests that formed the groundwork of the inquiry into potential White House involvement.House select committee investigators targeted four of the closest aides to the former president: deputy White House chief of staff Dan Scavino, former Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon, and the former acting defense secretary’s chief of staff Kash Patel as well as Meadows.“The select committee has reason to believe that you have information relevant to understanding important activities that led to and informed events at the Capitol on January 6,” the chairman of the select committee, Bennie Thompson, said in the subpoena letters.“Accordingly, the select committee seeks both documents and your deposition testimony regarding these and other matters that are within the scope of the select committee’s inquiry,” Thompson said.The select committee is expected to authorize further subpoenas and schedule closed-door interviews with key witnesses – as well as the inquiry’s second public hearing – in the coming weeks, according to two sources familiar with internal deliberations.The Trump aides compelled to cooperate with the select committee have some of the most intimate knowledge of what the former president was doing and thinking during the insurrection – and what he knew in advance of plans to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.Several administration officials, such as Meadows and Scavino, remained by Trump’s side for most of the day on 6 January, while campaign aides such as Bannon strategized how to subvert the results of the 2020 election and reinstall Trump in the Oval Office.Meadows also accompanied Trump back to the White House after the conclusion of the “Stop the Steal” rally that swiftly descended into the Capitol attack, from where Trump told Republican senator Ben Sasse he was “delighted” at seeing the images of the insurrection.Patel, who was nearly appointed CIA director in the final weeks of the Trump administration four years after emerging from obscurity as a Hill staffer, may also hold the key to unlocking the full picture of the Capitol attack as one of the former president’s top lieutenants.The subpoena authorizations came after the Guardian first reported on Tuesday that House select committee investigators were considering issuing the orders to Meadows and other Trump aides as the panel ramps up the pace of its investigation.There is no guarantee that the subpoena targets will comply. Trump has suggested he will demand that the Biden administration invoke executive privilege over Trump-era executive branch records requested by the select committee and try to block damaging witness testimony.But it appears unlikely that the White House Office of Legal Counsel would assert the protection in the case of 6 January materials, given it previously allowed Trump DOJ officials to testify to Congress and the protection does not extend to an individual’s private interests.TopicsUS Capitol attackTrump administrationHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressSteve BannonUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Congress has a massive voting rights bill in its grasp. It must pass it, now | Dennis Aftergut

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      OpinionUS politicsCongress has a massive voting rights bill in its grasp. It must pass it, nowDennis AftergutThe Freedom to Vote Act rivals the 1965 Voting Rights Act as the greatest expansion of ballot access in our history Wed 22 Sep 2021 06.25 EDTLast modified on Wed 22 Sep 2021 07.00 EDTImagine it’s November 2020, and you are 59-year-old Laura Roundine, living on tribal lands in Montana. Days before the election, you’re home-bound after open heart surgery. The reservation has no at-home mail delivery.Your right to vote is saved by Renee LaPlante, a Blackfeet community organizer. She drives your ballot to a distant election office as part of her job.In 2021, that no longer works. Montana Republicans’ new voter-suppression law forbids such delivery of ballots.These barriers to voting on reservations are part of a larger Republican power grab. In 2018, the Democratic senator Jon Tester carried seven out of eight Montana counties containing the headquarters of a federally recognized Native American tribe. He won the state by a single point.The constitution’s elections clause points the way to protecting Laura Roundine and millions of other voters in the 18 conservative states with new state laws making it harder to vote. The clause gives Congress authority to override such measures in federal elections.On 14 September, Senator Joe Manchin and colleagues introduced the new Freedom to Vote Act. It rivals the 1965 Voting Rights Act as the greatest expansion of ballot access in our history.If the bill is adopted, 16-year-olds applying for a driver’s license will be automatically registered to vote at 18. That is huge. Similarly, the act guarantees ballot access in federal elections for citizens who were once imprisoned.As a result, 2022 could be the first time a man convicted 20 years ago, at age 18, for selling a bag of marijuana in Birmingham will be able to vote. Alabama is one of 13 states that enacted Jim Crow statutes from 1865 to 1880 disenfranchising former convicts with the aim of keeping black people from the polls. In Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama and Wyoming, more than one in seven African Americans are without a right to vote.The Freedom to Vote Act will transform voting in America. For in-person voters, 15 days of early voting are guaranteed. Election day becomes a holiday. The bill makes it a felony to communicate election lies or to interfere with citizens’ access to the polls.The act also stops Georgia’s inhumane ban on providing food or water to people standing in line to cast ballots. There were 10-hour lines in Georgia last year.Meanwhile, absentee voting will become available universally. States such as Georgia have been reducing the number of drop-box locations, but the bill will set a floor on absentee ballot drop-boxes, more than tripling the number of locations in counties in and around Atlanta – where 51% of the population is black. And to help voters like Laura Roundine, the act allows tribes to designate local buildings where anyone can drop off a ballot.The bill also helps level the campaign finance playing field. It requires disclosures of “dark money” and creates an option for states to implement “small donor” funding for candidates who choose it, with a sixfold match for contributions under $200.There are curbs on gerrymandering and on “fraudits” like the one currently under way in Arizona.To combat Republicans’ attempts to manipulate election results in states such as Georgia by imposing partisan vote-counters, the act allows removals of election officials only for misconduct and gives them a right to sue for wrongful removal. As Tom Stoppard, the Czech-born playwright who escaped from Nazism, once put it: “It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.”The right to vote protects all our other freedoms. Electing responsible public officials helps to free us from Covid-19, to reduce child poverty, to expand infrastructure, to ensure a living wage. The 2020 election of two Georgia senators in January 2021 allowed the Senate to pass bills giving families $1,400 in pandemic relief checks, expanding unemployment payments, and creating temporary protections from eviction.What was the main compromise that Senator Manchin engineered to obtain Republican support? States that already required voters to validate their identities may continue to do so. But now a utility bill, bank statement or school ID will be accepted as ID – rather than only a driver’s license, which some voters don’t have. That is progress.Because Manchin is sponsoring the new Senate compromise, it has the best chance of any bill to secure his critical swing vote to revise Senate filibuster rules. Multiple pathways are on the table, including restoring the “talking filibuster”. If senior senators must stand and deliver for hours, a filibuster would be short-lived.Ultimately, passage of the bill depends on the people. A 15 September poll by ALG Research shows that a whopping 72% of the American public supports policies in the Freedom to Vote Act. Citizens should write, email and phone their representatives in support.As Howard Zinn, the activist and the author of the bestselling People’s History of the United States, put it: “Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power that can transform the world.”Our freedom depends on exercising that power now.
      Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor and chief assistant city attorney who argued an elections law case at the US supreme court. He is currently of counsel at the Renne Public Law Group in San Francisco
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      in US Politics

      Guess what the three Democrats blocking lower medication prices have in common? | David Sirota and Andrew Perez

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      OpinionUS politicsGuess what the three Democrats blocking lower medication prices have in common?David Sirota and Andrew PerezA bill in Congress would allow Medicare to use its bulk-purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices. Big Pharma is not pleased Mon 20 Sep 2021 06.25 EDTLast modified on Mon 20 Sep 2021 11.21 EDTThe three conservative Democratic lawmakers threatening to kill their party’s drug pricing legislation have raked in roughly $1.6m of campaign cash from donors in the pharmaceutical and health products industries. One of the lawmakers is the House’s single largest recipient of pharmaceutical industry campaign cash this election cycle, and another lawmaker’s immediate past chief of staff is now lobbying for drugmakers.The threat from Democratic representatives Kurt Schrader (Oregon), Scott Peters (California) and Kathleen Rice (New York) comes just as the pharmaceutical industry’s top lobbying group announced a seven-figure ad campaign to vilify the Democratic legislation, which aims to lower the cost of medicines for Americans now facing the world’s highest prescription drug prices.At issue is House Democrats’ initiative to let Medicare use its bulk purchasing power to negotiate lower prescription drug prices. That power – which is used by other industrialized countries to protect their citizens from exorbitant prices – has been promised by Democrats for years, and party leaders have been planning to include it as part of their sprawling $3.5tn infrastructure reconciliation effort.On Wednesday, Schrader, Peters and Rice helped vote the measure down in the powerful energy and commerce committee, blocking the legislation before it could come to the House floor for a vote. Even if the bill were to ultimately make it to the floor through another committee – which remains a possibility – Democrats have only a four-seat majority that allows them to pass legislation, so they can’t afford to lose any more votes.“I understand that the pharmaceutical industry owns the Republican party and that no Republican voted for this bill, but there is no excuse for every Democrat not supporting it,” said the Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders after the vote.The trio of Big Pharma Democrats are jeopardizing a plan based on HR 3, the Elijah E Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act. The Congressional Budget Office has said the drug pricing legislation, named for the late Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, would save the government $456bn and “reduce prices by 57% to 75%, relative to current prices” for various medicines.The measure would direct federal health regulators to negotiate prices of 25 high-priced drugs in the first year of implementation and 50 drugs in subsequent years, and the new negotiated prices would be available to both Medicare and private insurers.Polls show that the idea of allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices is wildly popular – to the point where swing-state Republicans and swing-district Democrats, and even former President Donald Trump, have expressed support for it.Schrader and Peters are among the two biggest recent Democratic recipients of pharmaceutical industry donations, according to OpenSecrets. The pharmaceutical and health products industries are collectively the second biggest donor to both lawmakers over the course of their careers, giving them almost $1.5m in total. Peters is the House’s top recipient of pharmaceutical industry donations in the 2022 election cycle.Big Pharma doesn’t want us to expand Medicare. We have to fight them | Bernie SandersRead morePeters and his family were worth an estimated $60m in 2018, making him one of the wealthiest lawmakers in Congress, according to OpenSecrets. His wife is the president and CEO of Cameron Holdings, an investment firm whose portfolio company provides manufacturing and packaging for pharmaceutical companies.Schrader’s net worth, meanwhile, was pegged at nearly $8m. The Oregonian reported in 2008 that he received “a quite large inheritance” from his grandfather, who was “vice president and director of biochemical research and development at Pfizer” – the drugmaker whose political action committee is now Schrader’s third largest career donor.The congressmen on Tuesday offered their own drug pricing proposal, which would allow Medicare to negotiate prices only under limited conditions, such as when a company no longer has exclusive marketing rights on an older drug but there are no competitors. That proposal was also backed by the Democratic representative Stephanie Murphy (Florida), the co-chair of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition, who is the House’s fifth largest recipient of donations from the pharmaceutical and health products industries.Earlier this year, Peters’ campaign saw a surge in donations from pharmaceutical company executives after he organized a letter with nine other Democratic lawmakers informing the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, that they opposed HR 3. Schrader and Rice co-signed the letter.It’s worth noting that Peters, Schrader and Rice all voted in favor of HR 3 in the previous Congress. Politico wrote in May that Peters “said he cast that vote knowing it had no chance of becoming law at the time. He said he supported it only to ‘start a conversation about lowering the cost of prescription drugs’.”Rice, Schrader and Peters have seats on the House energy and commerce committee, which is writing the party’s prescription drug plan, and they used those positions to help block the measure there on Wednesday, preventing it from moving to the floor.Last December, House Democrats’ steering committee voted to put Rice on the energy and commerce panel instead of the progressive New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.On Tuesday, Rice explained that she opposes the drug pricing measure because “I do not support advancing policies that are not fiscally responsible and jeopardize the bill’s final passage.”Schrader’s longtime top aide, Paul Gage, left the congressman’s office earlier this year, according to Legistorm, and quickly started lobbying for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the powerful Washington drug lobby.Gage has been lobbying Congress on drug pricing issues and HR 3, according to ethics records. PhRMA raised more than $500m in 2019, and the organization is one of the top lobbying spenders in DC.On Wednesday, PhRMA announced it is launching an ad campaign against House Democrats’ drug pricing efforts. “Politicians say they want to negotiate medicine prices in Medicare,” one ad warns. “But make no mistake: What politicians mean is they’ll decide which medicines you can and can’t get.”The Blue Dog Coalition’s political action committee has been making monthly payments to a consulting firm led by the coalition’s former communications director, Kristen Hawn.Hawn is also a partner at the bipartisan public affairs firm ROKK Solutions, which has worked for PhRMA.
      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 Daily Poster. He served as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter
      Andrew Perez is a senior editor at the Daily Poster and a cofounder of the Democratic Policy Center
      This article was originally published in the Daily Poster, a grassroots-funded investigative news outlet
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionUS CongressPharmaceuticals industryHealthcare industrycommentReuse this content More