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RepublicansLindsey Graham repeats impeachment call for former friend Joe Biden
Republican accuses president of ignoring advice on Afghanistan
Biden rebuffed Graham in call explaining Trump support
Opinion: Lindsey Graham, reverse ferret
Martin Pengelly@ More
House of RepresentativesCongressmen criticized over Kabul visit say they were ‘uniquely situated’ for tripThe two congressmen defend ‘fact-finding’ mission after being criticized for taking up resources and space needed for evacuees
Biden meets remains of 13 troops killed in Kabul
Richard Luscombe@ More
US voting rightsWashington voting rights march marks Martin Luther King anniversaryNearly 60 years after the I Have a Dream speech, crowds came to the capital again to protest attacks on minority rights Ankita Rao in WashingtonSat 28 Aug 2021 16.25 EDTLast modified on Sat 28 Aug 2021 16.31 EDTTheodore Dean marched in Washington DC in 1963, somewhere in the crowd behind Martin Luther King Jr. Exactly 58 years later, he decided to drive 16 hours from Alabama to do it again.Will America’s latest redistricting cycle be even worse than the last? Read more“I’m here because I’ve got grandchildren and children,” the 84-year-old told the Guardian as he and his son made their way past the White House.Dean joined thousands for March On for Voting Rights, an event organized by a coalition of civil rights groups and nonprofits. Speakers included Rev Al Sharpton and Cori Bush, a Democratic congresswoman from Missouri.The US Senate will soon vote on the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, a measure passed by the House which would restore protections from the Voting Rights Act of 1965 at a time when minority voters are the target of concerted Republican efforts to restrict access and participation. Furthermore, lawmakers across the US are set to redraw electoral districts, a process open to partisan abuse.In Washington on Saturday, however, it was clear that voting rights was not the only issue on people’s minds. While some marchers carried posters supporting the end of the filibuster and gerrymandering, weapons wielded to great effect by Republicans in state and federal government, others chanted about police violence toward Black people, worker’s rights, the Afghanistan withdrawal and minimum wage.In many ways, the spectrum of issues reflected Dr King’s agenda 58 years ago, when on 28 August 1963 he told a crowd at the Lincoln Memorial: “I have a dream.”“The original march on Washington was not just about Black people and voting rights – it was for jobs and justice,” said Rev William Barber II, a prominent activist and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, after his own speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday, at a “Make Good Trouble Rally”.“It was about brutality, poverty, voting rights. There was unfinished business.”Barber said the US was facing issues that had little to do with Donald Trump, the Republican president beaten by Joe Biden but still an active force in national politics from the far right.“In some ways Trump not being president is forcing the movement to have to understand this was never about a person,” Barber said. “All Americans should be worried, concerned, mad and dissatisfied. We may be a civil oligarchy and not a democracy, and the next step is autocracy.”Barber and the Poor People’s Campaign have held marches and rallies across the US, particularly in states like Texas, where lawmakers passed a sweeping elections bill this week that would curb access to voting, and West Virginia, where both cities and rural areas are seeing high rates of poverty and joblessness.West Virginia is home to Senator Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat who along with Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona has refused to end the filibuster, a procedural rule Republicans have used to block key voting rights legislation.“It doesn’t have to be this way,” said Rev Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, adding that a summer of action had given her hope. While the coronavirus pandemic further exposed deep economic disparities, she said, it also gave rise to temporary legislative solutions, such as an eviction moratorium and stimulus checks.“We can take our experience here and make it work for everybody,” she said.On Saturday, thousands braving 93F (34C) heat were holding on to optimism too.“Our ancestors did these walks and talk so this is something I’m supposed to do,” said Najee Farwell, a student at Bowie State University in Maryland who rode a bus to the march with fellow students.“I feel as though if I don’t stand up, who else is going to?”TopicsUS voting rightsUS politicsCivil rights movementMartin Luther KingRaceUS CongressProtestnewsReuse this content More
The ObserverJoe Biden‘Biden’s worst nightmare’: how Afghanistan shook a president A rapid Taliban takeover, a chaotic evacuation and a deadly terror attack have shaken confidence in the commander-in-chief and US leadershipDavid Smith in Washington@ More
US Capitol attackCapitol attack committee issues sweeping requests for official records House select committee writes to multiple government agencies
Chairman says panel plans to contact ‘several hundred’ people
US politics – follow live Maya YangWed 25 Aug 2021 14.08 EDTLast modified on Wed 25 Aug 2021 17.26 EDTThe House select committee tasked with investigating the 6 January attacks on the Capitol has issued its first round of sweeping demands for records from multiple US government agencies.In a statement released on Wednesday, the committee revealed that it has sent its initial demands to various executive branch agencies including the National Archives and Records Administration, the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Interior and Justice, the FBI, National Counterterrorism Center and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.US Capitol police didn’t properly respond to officers’ calls for help in attack – reportRead moreThe committee chairman, Bennie G Thompson, a congressman from Mississippi, gave the agencies a two-week deadline to produce materials. In a statement, Thompson wrote, “Our Constitution provides for a peaceful transfer of power, and this investigation seeks to evaluate threats to that process, identify lessons learned and recommend laws, policies, procedures, rules, or regulations necessary to protect our republic in the future.”The letters sent to the agencies seek records dealing with a variety of matters related to the 6 January attacks, including intelligence gathering and dissemination before the attack, security preparations around the Capitol, the role agencies played in the Capitol’s defense, event planning and organization in Washington on 5 and 6 January, and how the attacks fit in the continuum of attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.“I’m curious to see if this will lead to any reveal of actionable evidence of a conspiracy,” said Dr Steven Leach, a security fellow at the Truman National Security Project.“These things don’t just happen in a vacuum. The records requests aren’t just for what happened on the sixth but also the fifth, where some members of Congress gave tours [of the Capitol]. The investigation should establish patterns and connections and focus on the bigger picture.”On Monday, Thompson told reporters that the committee plans to request records of several hundred people, including lawmakers, from telecommunication companies. The requests will include phone, email and text records.“We have quite an exhaustive list of people. I won’t tell you who they are, but it’s several hundred people that make up the list of people we are planning to contact,” he said.Wednesday’s announcement comes a month after law enforcement officers delivered harrowing testimonies of their experiences during the 6 January attacks.In July, the Department of Justice declined to assert executive privilege over some of the testimonies, allowing former officials from the Trump administration to testify to Congress about Donald Trump’s role in the deadly attacks.The DoJ’s decision marks a sharp departure from the Trump era, when the department frequently intervened on behalf of top White House officials to assert executive privilege and protect them from congressional investigations into the former president.In an interview with the Guardian in July, Thompson said he was prepared to depose members of Congress and senior Trump administration officials who might have participated in the insurrection that left five dead and nearly 140 injured.“Nothing is off limits,” Thompson said..TopicsUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressnewsReuse this content More
US voting rightsUS House passes voting rights bill, restoring critical provision of landmark lawBill that requires places with history of discrimination to be under federal supervision passes 219-212 – but could fail in the Senate Sam Levine in New YorkTue 24 Aug 2021 19.25 EDTLast modified on Tue 24 Aug 2021 22.25 EDTThe US House of Representatives has passed an update to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, restoring a critical provision of the landmark civil rights law that requires places with a history of voting discrimination to be under federal supervision.The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act passed 219-212 on a party-line vote.Kamala Harris Vietnam trip delayed after two US officials report Havana syndromeRead moreThe bill now faces an uncertain future in the US Senate, where it needs the support of 10 Republican Senators to overcome the filibuster and pass. While Senator Joe Manchin, a key Democratic swing vote, supports the bill, just one Republican, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, has indicated that she does.The House passed a similar version of the legislation in 2019, gaining just one GOP vote, but it never passed the Senate, which was then under GOP control.The legislation is one of two pillars of congressional Democrats’ push to protect voting rights. It sets a 25-year look-back period for assessing voting rights in jurisdictions. If courts have documented at least 15 voting rights violations in a state over that period, the state will have to get any change in voting rules approved by the federal government before it goes into effect (if the violation is committed by the state as a whole only 10 violations are required to trigger federal oversight).The updated formula comes eight years after the US supreme court said the formula in the law that determined which states were subject to pre-clearance was outdated and struck it down. Voting advocates have said that ruling, in a case called Shelby County v Holder, has offered states a green light to discriminate against Black voters.“Old battles have indeed become new again. While literacy tests and poll taxes no longer exist, certain states and local jurisdictions have passed laws that are modern day barriers to voting,” Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat who represents Selma in Congress, said on the floor of the House Tuesday.The states that would have to get election changes approved are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas, Peyton McCrary, a former Justice Department historian, testified earlier this month. Several large counties in the US, including Los Angeles county in California, Cook county in Illinois, Westchester county in New York, Cuyahoga County in Ohio, and Northampton County in Virginia could also be covered, according to McCrary.The law also outlines several procedures that would be subject to federal pre-clearance everywhere in the country, including changes to voter ID laws, reductions in polling locations and changes in policies that determine who gets removed from the voter rolls.Republicans decried the measure as unnecessary, saying it gives the federal government too much power to oversee elections.“If you vote for this legislation, you are voting for a federal takeover of elections,” said congressman Rodney Davis, an Illinois Republican. “I hope my colleagues and the American people will see this bill for what it is, a partisan power-grab.”During debate on the bill, Democrats scoffed at the notion that the bill was not needed. They noted it came as Republican lawmakers across the country have taken up hundreds of bills to enact voting restrictions. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described it as “the worst voter suppression campaign in America since Jim Crow”.While federal pre-clearance is the most touted portion of the bill, the legislation also includes several other new provisions to protect voting rights. It essentially undoes a supreme court decision from earlier this year that makes it extremely difficult to bring challenges to voting laws under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. It also strengthens protections under the Voting Rights Act for minority voters during the redistricting process.The legislation would also address two issues that emerged in the unprecedented slew of litigation during the 2020 election. First, courts could not simply decline to strike down a law because an election is close – something that several courts did in 2020. Second, courts would have to offer an explanation for their reasoning in voting rights cases, a provision designed to take aim at the supreme court’s practice of not issuing explanations in emergency cases on its “shadow docket.”Beyond the John Lewis bill, Democrats are also trying to pass the For The People Act, sweeping legislation that would outlaw severe partisan gerrymandering, set minimum requirements for early voting and require automatic, same-day and online voter registration, among other measures. Voting rights experts say both measures are needed to fully protect voting rights, though Democrats have not unveiled a plan to get either around the filibuster.TopicsUS voting rightsUS politicsDemocratsUS CongressRepublicansnewsReuse this content More
DemocratsTensions flare in Capitol as moderate Democrats hold up Biden budget planHouse leaders offer potential compromise by setting date to consider moderates’ $1tn package of road and public works projects A More
