US Congress

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Court upholds Steve Bannon’s January 6 contempt of Congress conviction

      by

      Steve Bannon, the controversial hard-right strategist who has been influential in the thinking of Donald Trump, has lost his appeal against his conviction for contempt of Congress relating to the investigation into the January 6 insurrection.A unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the District of Columbia circuit court of appeals upheld Bannon’s conviction on Friday. The decision brings him closer to a four-month sentence behind bars meted out to Bannon for having resisted the terms of Congress’s subpoena against him.He has one last hope left to avoid a prison term – he could appeal to the full bench of the circuit court.Bannon was convicted of contempt charges at trial in July 2022, having been charged with two federal counts. He was accused of refusing to appear for a deposition and of refusing to provide documents to the committee in response to a subpoena.He was sentenced later that year to four months in prison. The punishment was put on hold after Bannon appealed.Bannon’s lawyers claimed in the appeal that he had not ignored the committee’s subpoena, but was acting out of concern that he might violate executive privilege objections raised by Trump.Bannon worked as Trump’s chief strategist in the White House during the first seven months of his presidency. He left the White House in August 2017 following controversy over Trump’s response to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and now runs a popular podcast called the War Room.The January 6 committee was led by Democrats in the House of Representatives with the participation of some Republican Congress members. It concluded that Trump had engaged in a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and had not prevented a mob of his supporters attacking the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Pro-Israel Pac pours millions into surprise candidate in Maryland primary

      by

      A pro-Israel lobby group has dropped millions into a Maryland congressional race as tensions remain high over the war in Gaza.The primary race in the third congressional district, which will be held on Tuesday, has attracted national interest thanks to the candidacy of one Democrat in particular: Harry Dunn. A former US Capitol police officer, Dunn and his colleagues won praise for their actions defending lawmakers against a violent mob of Donald Trump’s supporters on January 6. In his New York Times bestselling memoir, Standing My Ground, Dunn recounted how the insurrectionists repeatedly used the N-word as they attacked him and other Black officers.Dunn announced his bid to replace retiring Democratic congressman John Sarbanes on the third anniversary of January 6, marking his first formal foray into electoral politics. Despite Dunn’s high name recognition, the group United Democracy Project, a Super Pac affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), has thrown its support behind another primary candidate.According to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission, UDP has spent over $4.2m supporting state senator Sarah Elfreth.UDP’s investment comes after the group spent $4.6m on its failed effort to block the Democratic congressional candidate Dave Min from advancing to the general election in California’s 47th district. But the group notched one of its biggest wins of the election cycle so far on Tuesday, when the former Republican representative John Hostettler lost his primary race in Indiana’s eighth district. UDP had devoted $1.6m to defeating Hostettler because of his voting record on Israel and some of his past comments that were criticized as antisemitic.View image in fullscreenUDP’s decision to wade into the crowded Maryland primary came as somewhat of a surprise, given that neither Dunn nor Elfreth has made a point to highlight their position on Israel in their campaign messaging. A UDP ad for Elfreth does not mention Israel at all and instead focuses on her legislative record, applauding her work in the state senate.“Sarah Elfreth gets things done,” the ad’s narrator says. “With so much at stake – abortion rights, the environment, our democracy – we need a congresswoman who will deliver.”UDP did not respond to a request for comment, but in a statement to HuffPost last month, the group’s spokesperson acknowledged Dunn’s “support for a strong US-Israel relationship” but suggested concern about other candidates in the primary.“There are some serious anti-Israel candidates in this race, who are not Harry Dunn, and we need to make sure that they don’t make it to Congress,” spokesperson Patrick Dorton said.That comment appeared to reference progressive candidate John Morse, a labor lawyer who has received the endorsement of Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and has centered his campaign on his vocal support for a ceasefire in Gaza. In a recent interview with Fox45 Baltimore, Morse said: “I am the most outspoken on a permanent humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza because I think that’s the critical issue that’s going on right now.”Meanwhile, UDP’s investment has helped Elfreth compete against Dunn’s massive fundraising haul, as the first-time candidate has brought in nearly $4.6m since he entered the race. In comparison, Elfreth’s campaign has raised roughly a third as much money, $1.5m, and all 20 other candidates lag even further behind.UDP’s support for Elfreth is not part of this total; federal regulations prohibit Super Pacs from contributing directly to political candidates, but the groups can spend unlimited amounts of money to promote or criticize specific campaigns.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe financial contest could help decide what is widely expected to be a close race. A poll commissioned by Dunn’s campaign showed him leading Elfreth by four points, 22% to 18%, with state senator Clarence Lam trailing in third at 8%. The winner of the primary will almost certainly go on to win a seat in the House of Representatives, given the district’s liberal leanings. In 2022, Sarbanes won re-election by 20 points in the third district, which includes Annapolis and suburbs of Washington and Baltimore.Elfreth has said that she, like her opponents, was surprised by UDP’s support, although she has not rejected the group’s help.“I’m uncomfortable with dark money as well,” Elfreth told Maryland Matters last month. “I don’t like it. But I’m not in a position to say no to people who want to amplify my message.”Despite remaining mostly silent about the war in Gaza, Dunn has now found himself indirectly affected by UDP’s electoral strategy, and he has turned the group’s involvement in the race into a campaign issue. When news of UDP’s investment broke last month, Dunn responded by calling on all candidates to “condemn this dark-money spending bankrolled by Maga [Make America Great Again] Republicans”. In a statement to the Guardian, Dunn framed the Super Pac’s involvement as an insult to the legacy of Sarbanes, who made campaign finance reform one of his top priorities over his nine terms in Congress.“Our grassroots movement won’t be scared off by this dark money spending. I’ve made protecting and strengthening our democracy the center of our campaign,” Dunn said. “We’re going to win this race, and when I get to Congress, I know who I will work for and I will be accountable to – and it won’t be the dark money donors or the special interest groups.”That message seems to be resonating with voters, as Dunn’s team boasts that more than 100,000 people have donated to his campaign. FEC filings show that, of the $4.6m raised by Dunn, nearly $3.7m came in the form of unitemized contributions, meaning they derived from donors who gave less than $200 to the candidate across the election cycle. According to Dunn’s team, the average contribution to the campaign has been $21.64.In comparison, of Elfreth’s $1.5m raised, only $85,000 came from unitemized contributions, indicating that most of her donations came from supporters who gave more than $200. Her FEC filings show that some of her larger contributions came from some well-known Republican donors – including Robert Sarver, former owner of the Phoenix Suns, and Larry Mizel, one of Trump’s campaign finance chairs in 2016. Mizel has also served as a member of the board of directors of Aipac. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      House quashes Marjorie Taylor Greene motion to oust speaker Mike Johnson

      by

      The House easily quashed Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resolution to oust the Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, on Wednesday, as members of both parties came together in a rare moment of bipartisanship to keep the chamber open for business.The vote on the motion to table Greene’s resolution was 359 to 43, as 196 Republicans and 163 Democrats supported killing the proposal.Greene took to the House floor on Wednesday evening to announce her plans, prompting boos from fellow Republicans present in the chamber. Her request triggered a countdown clock, as House rules stipulated that members had to vote on the matter within two legislative days. House Republicans chose to take up the matter immediately, as the resolution was widely expected to fail.House Democratic leaders previously indicated that they would vote to kill Greene’s resolution, and the vast majority of their caucus took the same position on Wednesday. However, 32 Democrats and 11 Republicans opposed the motion to table the resolution, and seven members voted “present”.Speaking to reporters after the vote, Johnson thanked his colleagues for helping him to hold on to a post he has held for six and a half months.“I want to say that I appreciate the show of confidence from my colleagues to defeat this misguided effort. That is certainly what it was,” Johnson said. “As I’ve said from the beginning and I’ve made clear here every day, I intend to do my job. I intend to do what I believe to be the right thing, which is what I was elected to do, and I’ll let the chips fall where they may. In my view, that is leadership.”Greene’s maneuver appeared to catch many Republicans off guard, after the hard-right congresswoman spent much of the past few days meeting with Johnson to address her concerns about his leadership. She has repeatedly criticized Johnson for passing significant bills, including a government funding proposal and a foreign aid package, by relying on Democratic support.Greene had said she would force a vote on the motion to vacate this week, but she appeared to back away from that commitment on Tuesday.“We’ll see. It’s up to Mike Johnson,” Greene told reporters when asked if she still planned to demand the vote. “Obviously, you can’t make things happen instantly, and we all are aware and understanding of that. So now the ball is in his court, and he’s supposed to be reaching out to us – hopefully soon.”Donald Trump, who has voiced support for Johnson in recent weeks, reportedly called Greene over the weekend, but she would not disclose details about the call to reporters.“I have to tell you, I love President Trump. My conversations with him are fantastic,” Greene said. “And again, I’m not going to go into details. You want to know why? I’m not insecure about that.”Even though her motion to vacate overwhelmingly failed, Greene and her allies already appear poised to turn the issue into a litmus test for fellow Republican members. Congressman Thomas Massie, a co-sponsor of Greene’s resolution, shared a picture on X of the 11 Republicans who voted against the motion to table.“It’s a new paradigm in Congress,” Massie said. “[Former Democratic speaker] Nancy Pelosi, and most [Republicans] voted to keep Uniparty Speaker Mike Johnson. These are the eleven, including myself, who voted NOT to save him.”View image in fullscreenThe Republicans who rallied around Johnson returned the fire by accusing Greene and her allies of promoting chaos in the House. The episode came less than a year after the ouster of former Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy, which brought the chamber to a standstill for weeks until Johnson’s election.Congressman Mike Lawler, who faces a tough reelection campaign in New York this November, told reporters on Wednesday: “This type of tantrum is absolutely unacceptable, and it does nothing to further the cause of the conservative movement. The only people who have stymied our ability to govern are the very people that have pulled these types of stunts throughout the course of this Congress to undermine the House Republican majority.”Congressman Sean Casten, an Illinois Democrat, offered a more concise and cutting assessment. Writing on X, he said of Greene: “She is so, so dumb. And yet she keeps talking.” More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Pete McCloskey, Republican who tried to unseat Richard Nixon, dies aged 96

      by

      Pete McCloskey, a pro-environment, anti-war California Republican who co-wrote the Endangered Species Act and co-founded Earth Day, has died. He was 96.A fourth-generation Republican “in the mold of Teddy Roosevelt”, he often said, McCloskey represented the 12th congressional district for 15 years, running for president against an incumbent Richard Nixon in 1972.He battled party leaders while serving seven terms in Congress and went on to publicly disavow the GOP in his later years.Years after leaving Washington, McCloskey made one last bid for elective office in 2006 when he challenged Richard Pombo of northern California’s 11th district in a primary race that McCloskey described as “a battle for the soul of the Republican party”.After losing to Pombo, who had spent most of his tenure in Washington attempting to undo the Endangered Species Act, he threw his support behind Democrat Jerry McNerney, the eventual winner.“It was foolish to run against him [Pombo], but we didn’t have anybody else to do it, and I could not stand what a––– they’d become,” the frank-talking former Marine colonel said of the modern GOP in a 2008 interview with the Associated Press.McCloskey cited disillusionment from influence peddling and ethics scandals under the George W Bush administration as reasons why he switched parties in 2007 at the age of 79.“A pox on them and their values,” he wrote in an open letter explaining the switch to his supporters.Born in Loma Linda, California, on 29 September 1927as Paul Norton McCloskey Jr, he graduated from South Pasadena high school, where the second baseman made the school’s baseball hall of fame, although he self-deprecatingly called himself “perhaps the worst player on the baseball team”.He earned a law degree from Stanford University and founded an environmental law firm in Palo Alto before making the move to public office. In 1967, he defeated fellow Republican Shirley Temple Black and Democrat Roy Archibald in a special election for the San Mateo county congressional seat.The left-leaning McCloskey had a thundering presence in Washington, attempting to get onto the floor of the 1972 Republican national convention during his bid to unseat then president Nixon on an anti-Vietnam War platform. He ultimately was blocked by a rule written by his friend and law school debate partner, John Ehrlichman, that said a candidate could not get to the floor with fewer than 25 delegates. McCloskey had one.Still, McCloskey loved to say he finished second.He would later visit Ehrlichman in prison, where Nixon’s former counsel served 1.5 years for conspiracy, perjury and obstruction of justice in the Watergate break-in that led to the president’s resignation.While in office, McCloskey also was known for befriending Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and criticized Israeli influence on US politics. The congressman was the first to demand Nixon’s impeachment, and the first to demand a repeal of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that allowed the Vietnam war.But his enduring legacy is the Endangered Species Act, which protects species designated as endangered or threatened and conserves the ecosystems on which they depend. McCloskey co-wrote the legislation in 1973, after a campaign by young people empowered by Earth Day activities successfully unseated seven of 12 Congress members known as “the Dirty Dozen” for their anti-environment votes.“On that day, the world changed,” McCloskey recalled in 2008. “Suddenly, everybody was an environmentalist. My Republican colleagues started asking me for copies of old speeches I had given on water and air quality.”After 15 years in the House, he lost his run for a Senate seat to Republican Pete Wilson, who went on to be California’s governor. He moved back to rural Yolo county, relishing the life of a farmer and part-time attorney.“You know, if people call you ‘congressman’ all the time, you’ll end up thinking you’re smarter than you are,” he said.McCloskey is survived by his wife, Helen – his longtime press secretary whom he married in 1978 – and four children by his first wife: Nancy, Peter, John and Kathleen. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      US public school officials push back in congressional hearing on antisemitism

      by

      Some of America’s top school districts rebuffed charges of failing to counteract a surge of antisemitism on Wednesday in combative exchanges with a congressional committee that has been at the centre of high-profile interrogations of elite university chiefs.Having previously grilled the presidents of some of the country’s most prestigious seats of higher learning in politically charged settings, the House of Representatives’ education and workforce subcommittee switched the spotlight to the heads of three predominantly liberal school districts with sizable Jewish populations.The hearing was presented as an investigation into how the authorities were safeguarding Jewish staff and students in an atmosphere of rising bigotry against the backdrop of Israel’s war in Gaza.Calling the need for the hearing “a travesty”, Republican member Aaron Bean from Florida said 246 “very vile” antisemitic acts had been reported in the three districts – in New York City, Montgomery county in Maryland and Berkeley in California – since last October’s attack by Hamas on Israel.“Antisemitism is repugnant in all its forms but the topic of today’s hearing is pretty troubling,” he said. “It’s hard to grasp how antisemitism has become such a force in our kindergarten-through-12 [high] schools.”He cited instances of students marching through corridors chanting “kill the Jews”, a pupil caught on a security camera imitating Hitler and performing the Nazi salute, and Jewish children being told to pick up pennies.The three districts insisted in response that they did not tolerate antisemitism in their schools. They said they had taken educational and disciplinary steps to combat antisemitism following the 7 October attack, which led to an Israeli military offensive in Gaza that has triggered a wave of demonstrations on university campuses and beyond.However, the districts gave divergent answers on whether teachers had been fired for actions deemed antisemitic. Each district has received complaints over their handling of post-7 October allegations of antisemitism.David Banks, the chancellor of the New York City school system, engaged in a testy exchange with Republicans over an episode at Hillcrest high school, whose principal had been removed following a protest against a pro-Israel teacher but had been reassigned to an administrative role rather than fired.The Republican representative, Elise Stefanik – noted for her pointed questioning of three university presidents over free speech at a previous hearing last December – sparred with Banks and accused the school leaders of paying “lip service”.Banks stood his ground and appeared to challenge the committee, saying: “This convening feels like the ultimate ‘gotcha’ moment. It doesn’t sound like people trying to solve for something we actually solve for.”He added: “We cannot simply discipline our way out of this problem. The true antidote to ignorance and bias is to teach.”Banks said his district had “terminated people” over antisemitism.Karla Silvestre, president of Montgomery county public schools in Maryland – which includes schools in suburbs near Washington – said no teacher had been fired, prompting Bean to retort: “So you allow them to continue to teach hate?”Enikia Ford Morthel, superintendent of the Berkeley unified school district in California, said her authority’s adherence to state and federal privacy laws precluded her from giving details on disciplinary measures taken against staff and students.“As a result, some believe we do nothing. This is not true,” she said.“Since October 7, our district has had formal complaints alleging antisemitism arising from nine incidents without our jurisdiction. However, antisemitism is not pervasive in Berkeley unified school district.”Echoing previous hearings that featured the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia, Bean asked all three district heads whether they considered the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” antisemitic.Each said yes, although Silvestre and Morthel qualified this by saying their affirmation was dependent on whether it meant the elimination of the Jewish population in Israel – an interpretation disputed by many pro-Palestinian campaigners. Bean said tersely: “It does.”Responding to the three opening statements, Bean said: “Congratulations. You all have done a remarkable job testifying. But just like some college presidents before you that sat in the very same seat, they also in many instances said the right thing. They said they were protecting students when they were really not.”The subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon, accused Republicans of being selective in their stance against antisemitism, singling out the notorious white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, whose participants chanted “Jews will not replace us”. The then president Donald Trump later said the rally included some “very fine people” .She described one of those who took part, Nick Fuentes, as a “vile antisemite … who denied the scope of the Holocaust”, but noted that Trump hosted him at his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida in November 2022.“I will offer my colleagues on the other side of the aisle the opportunity to condemn these previous comments,” Bonamici said. “ Does anyone have the courage to stand up against this?”When committee members remained silent, she said: “Let the record show that no one spoke at this time.” More

    • 275 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      US says hold on weapons delivery won’t be a one-off if Israel presses ahead with Rafah city offensive – as it happened

      by

      US officials are making clear today that the hold put on a delivery of US-made bombs last week would not be a one-off if Israel presses ahead with an offensive on Rafah city but would be the start of a major pivot in the US-Israel relationship.Arms deliveries that have already been approved could be delayed, and shipments waiting for approval could also face obstacles.The Biden administration refuses to use the phrase “red line”, but it is making clear that the US president was serious when he told Benjamin Netanyahu in a call on 4 April that an attack on Rafah would lead to a major re-evaluation of the relationship.Although the paused shipment included huge 2000lb bombs, administration officials insist that they were not selected because of legal concerns about their use in a densely populated area (as Israel has done frequently over the course of this war) could constitute a war crime. This was a policy decision, they say, not a legal one.Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
      The Republican House judiciary committee has referred Michael Cohen to the Department of Justice for prosecution. In a letter to Merrick Garland, the US attorney general, Jim Jordan and James Comer, chairs of the judiciary committee as well as the oversight and accountability committee, wrote: “Cohen’s testimony is now the basis for a politically motivated prosecution of a former president and current declared candidate for that office.”
      The US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, has confirmed that the US has paused a shipment of weapons to Israel and is “reviewing others”. Miller, at briefing today, cited “the way Israel has conducted its operations in the past” as well as concerns about Israel’s actions in Rafah, Channel 4 News’s Siobhan Kennedy reported.
      US officials are making clear today that the hold put on a delivery of US-made bombs last week would not be a one-off if Israel presses ahead with an offensive on Rafah, but would be the start of a major pivot in the US-Israel relationship. Arms deliveries that have already been approved could be delayed, and shipments waiting for approval could also face obstacles.
      Following the Biden administration’s decision to pause a weapons shipment to Israel over its plans for a Rafah invasion, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said: “Given the unprecedented humanitarian disaster that Netanyahu’s war has created in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of children face starvation, President Biden is absolutely right to halt bomb delivery to this extreme, rightwing Israeli government. But this must be a first step.”
      Georgia’s state court of appeals has granted Donald Trump’s request to consider the disqualification of Fani Willis, the district attorney who brought the 2020 election interference charges against Trump. According to a notice, the court said that it had granted the appeal request and ordered Trump’s legal team to file a notice of appeal in the next 10 days, NBC reports.
      Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell refused to comment on Donald Trump’s ongoing criminal trial surrounding his hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, McConnell said: “I’m not going to be commenting on the presidential election … I’m going to concentrate on trying to turn this job over to the next majority leader of the Senate.”
      Robert F Kennedy Jr, the third-party presidential candidate, said a health problem he experienced in 2010 “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died”, according to a report. In a divorce case deposition from 2012 the New York Times said it obtained, Kennedy said he experienced “memory loss and mental fogginess so severe that a friend grew concerned he might have a brain tumor”.
      That’s it as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and California’s Democratic representative Ro Khanna have revealed a bill aimed at cancelling all medical debt.The Guardian’s Joan Greve reports:The bill, introduced with Oregon senator Jeff Merkley and Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, would create a federal grant program to cancel all existing patient debt and amend the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to block creditors from collecting past medical bills.The legislation would also update billing requirements for medical providers and alter the Consumer Credit Reporting Act to prevent credit agencies from reporting information related to unpaid medical bills, alleviating the risk of such debt damaging patients’ credit histories.Sanders and Khanna described the legislation as vital for many families’ financial security, as millions of Americans struggle with the burden of medical debt. According to a 2022 investigation by NPR and KFF Health News, more than 100 million Americans, including 41% of adults, hold some kind of healthcare debt. A KFF analysis of the Census Bureau’s survey of income and program participation suggests that Americans owe at least $220bn in medical debt.Read the full story here:Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has refused to comment on Donald Trump’s ongoing criminal trial surrounding his hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels.Speaking to reporters on Wednesday in response to whether Trump’s ongoing trial would give him pause over his support for Trump as president, McConnell said:
      I’m not going to be commenting on the presidential election … I’m going to concentrate on trying to turn this job over to the next majority leader of the Senate.”
      Here are further details on the US signaling to Israel potential future pauses in arms shipments over Israel’s planned invasion of Rafah:US officials have signalled to Israel that more arms shipments could be delayed if the Israeli military pushes ahead with an offensive in Rafah, Gaza, in what would mark the start of a major pivot in relations between the two countries.Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, confirmed on Wednesday that the Biden administration had paused the supply of thousands of large bombs to Israel, in opposition to apparent moves by the Israelis to invade the city.“We’ve been very clear … from the very beginning that Israel shouldn’t launch a major attack into Rafah without accounting for and protecting the civilians that are in that battle space,” Austin told a Senate hearing.“And again, as we have assessed the situation, we have paused one shipment of high payload munitions,” he said, adding: “We’ve not made a final determination on how to proceed with that shipment.”Read the full story here:The Republican House judiciary committee has referred Michael Cohen to the Department of Justice for prosecution.In a letter to the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, Jim Jordan and James Comer, chairs of the judiciary committee as well as the oversight and accountability committee, wrote:
      Cohen’s testimony is now the basis for a politically motivated prosecution of a former president and current declared candidate for that office.
      In light of the reliance on the testimony from this repeated liar, we reiterate our concerns and ask what the justice department has done to hold Cohen accountable for his false statements to Congress.
      The referral comes as Cohen, once a personal lawyer and fixer for Donald Trump, is expected to testify in the former president’s hush money criminal trial in New York as the prosecutors’ star witness.The US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, has confirmed that the US has paused a shipment of weapons to Israel and is “reviewing others”.Miller, at briefing today, cited “the way Israel has conducted its operations in the past” as well as concerns about Israel’s actions in Rafah, Channel 4 News’ Siobhan Kennedy reported.Even though Israel has said the Rafah operation is limited in scope, “intent is one thing, results are another”, Miller told reporters, adding:
      The results have been far too many innocent civilians dying … That’s why we have such grave concerns.
      Miller also said the state department will not be delivering its report to Congress on whether Israel has violated international humanitarian law during its war in Gaza, CNN reported. He added:
      We expect to deliver it in the very near future, in the coming days.
      Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley won more than 20% of the votes in Indiana’s Republican presidential primary on Tuesday, months after she dropped out of the race.Haley announced she was suspending her presidential campaign in March after being soundly defeated by Donald Trump on Super Tuesday, but her continued support shows persistent discontent among GOP voters with the former president. Haley has not endorsed Trump.Haley’s support was largest in Indiana’s urban and suburban counties, AP reported. She won 35% of the vote in Indianapolis’s Marion county and more than one-third of the vote in suburban Hamilton county.Robert F Kennedy Jr, the third-party presidential candidate, said a health problem he experienced in 2010 “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died”, according to a report.In a divorce case deposition from 2012 the New York Times said it obtained, Kennedy said he experienced “memory loss and mental fogginess so severe that a friend grew concerned he might have a brain tumour”.Neurologists who treated Kennedy’s uncle, the Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy, before his death aged 77 from brain cancer in 2009, told the younger man he had a dark spot on his brain scans, and concluded he too had a tumor. But, Kennedy reportedly said, a doctor at New York-Presbyterian hospital posited another explanation: a parasite in Kennedy’s brain. In the 2012 deposition, Kennedy reportedly said:
      I have cognitive problems, clearly. I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.
      In his recent interview, the Times said, Kennedy said he had recovered from such problems. The paper also said Kennedy’s spokesperson, Stefanie Spear, responded to a question about whether the candidate’s health problems could compromise his fitness to be president by saying:
      That is a hilarious suggestion, given the competition.
      A growing number of Republican lawmakers are pushing to require a citizenship question on the questionnaire for the census, and exclude non-US citizens from the results that determine each state’s share of House seats and electoral college votes.The GOP-led House is expected to vote today on the Equal Representation Act which calls for leaving out “individuals who are not citizens of the United States.” The bill is unlikely to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate and is opposed by the White House.The proposal has set off alarms among redistricting experts, civil rights groups and Democratic lawmakers, and comes as Republicans make immigration a key campaign issue ahead of the November elections.“It’s taking it closer to reality than it has ever been,” a former census official told AP.
      This is part of a cohesive strategy in the GOP … of getting every single possible advantage when the country is so closely divided.
      The 14th amendment says the “whole number of persons in each state” should be counted during the apportionment process. Besides helping allocate congressional seats and electoral college votes, census figures guide the distribution of $2.8tn in federal money.US officials are making clear today that the hold put on a delivery of US-made bombs last week would not be a one-off if Israel presses ahead with an offensive on Rafah city but would be the start of a major pivot in the US-Israel relationship.Arms deliveries that have already been approved could be delayed, and shipments waiting for approval could also face obstacles.The Biden administration refuses to use the phrase “red line”, but it is making clear that the US president was serious when he told Benjamin Netanyahu in a call on 4 April that an attack on Rafah would lead to a major re-evaluation of the relationship.Although the paused shipment included huge 2000lb bombs, administration officials insist that they were not selected because of legal concerns about their use in a densely populated area (as Israel has done frequently over the course of this war) could constitute a war crime. This was a policy decision, they say, not a legal one. More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Bernie Sanders to run for fourth term in US Senate

      by

      Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent senator and former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, announced on Monday that he will run for a fourth six-year term – at the age of 82.In a video statement, Sanders thanked the people of Vermont “for giving me the opportunity to serve in the United States Senate”, which he said had been “the honor of my life.“Today I am announcing my intention to seek another term. And let me take a few minutes to tell you why.”In his signature clipped New York accent, Sanders did so.Citing his roles as chair of the Senate health, labor and pensions committee, part of Senate Democratic leadership, and as a member of committees on veterans affairs, the budget and the environment, Sanders said: “I have been, and will be if re-elected, in a strong position to provide the kind of help that Vermonters need in these difficult times.”Should Sanders win re-election and serve a full term, he will be 89 years old at the end of those six years. In a decidedly gerontocratic Senate, that would still be younger than the current oldest senator, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who will turn 91 in September. The Republican is due for re-election in 2028 – and has filed to run.Sanders was a mayor and sat in the US House for 16 years before entering the Senate in 2007.In 2016 he surged to worldwide prominence by mounting an unexpectedly strong challenge to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, from the populist left. He ran strongly again in 2020 but lost out to Joe Biden.Announcing another election run, Sanders stressed the need to improve public healthcare, including by defending social security and Medicare and lowering prescription drug prices; to combat climate change that has seen Vermont hit by severe flooding; to properly care for veterans; and to protect abortion and reproductive rights.“We must codify Roe v Wade [which protected federal abortion rights until 2022] into national law and do everything possible to oppose the well-funded rightwing effort to roll back the gains that women have achieved after decades of struggle,” Sanders said. “No more second-class citizenship for the women of Vermont. Or America.”Addressing an issue which threatens to split Democrats in the year of a presidential election, Sanders said: “On October 7, 2023, Hamas, a terrorist organization, began the war in Gaza with a horrific attack on Israel that killed 1,200 innocent men, women and children and took more than 230 hostages, some of whom remain in captivity today. Israel had the absolute right to defend itself against this terrorist attack.”But Sanders, who is Jewish, also said Israel “did not and does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people, which was exactly what it is doing: 34,000 Palestinians have already been killed and 77,000 have been wounded, 70% of whom are women and children. According to humanitarian organizations, famine and starvation are now imminent.“In my view, US tax dollars should not be going to the extremist [Benjamin] Netanyahu government to continue its devastating war against the Palestinian people.”In conclusion, if without mentioning Donald Trump by name, Sanders called the 2024 election “the most consequential election in our lifetimes”.“Will the United States continue to even function as a democracy? Or will we move to an authoritarian form of government? Will we reverse the unprecedented level of income and wealth inequality that now exists? Or will we continue to see billionaires get richer while working families struggle to put food on the table? Can we create a government that works for all of us? Or will our political system continue to be dominated by wealthy campaign contributors?“These are just some of the questions that together we need to answer.” More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Minority Rule review: rich history of America’s undemocratic democracy

      by

      Ari Berman’s new book is a rich history of America’s ambivalent attitude toward majority rule. The founding document declared “all men are created equal”, but by the time a constitution was drafted 11 years later, there was already a severe backlash to that revolutionary assertion.To prevent the union from disintegrating, free states and big states repeatedly gave in to slave states and small states, producing a constitution that would be adopted by the majority.The first and worst decision was to give each state two senators regardless of population. Virginia had 12 times the population of Delaware. Today, the situation is vastly worse: California is 63 times bigger than Wyoming. By 2040, Berman writes, “roughly 70% of Americans will live in 15 states with 30 senators, while the other 30%, who are whiter, older and more rural … will elect 70 senators”.The filibuster, a delaying tactic that led to most legislation requiring 60 votes to pass the Senate – but which has no basis in the constitution – makes the country even more undemocratic. Forty Republican senators representing just 21% of the population have blocked bills on abortion rights, voting rights and gun control supported by big majorities.The House of Representatives was supposed to be closer to the people than the Senate, which wasn’t even elected by voters when first created. But when the free states placated the slave states by allowing them to count every enslaved Black person as three-fifths of a human being, for the purposes of representation, that increased how many representatives slave states sent to the House.To Berman, it was “a fundamental contradiction that the nation’s most important democratic document was intended to make the country less democratic”. As the New Yorker Melancton Smith noted at the time, the constitution represented a “transfer of power from the many to the few”.The national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones, Berman also offers a horrific description of the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent by modern-day oligarchs to make America even more undemocratic. In just six years, the Federalist Society raised an astonishing $580m “through a shadowy network of a dozen dark money nonprofit groups” to put its “preferred judges on the bench”. The society has gotten a huge bang for its buck – more than 500 judges appointed by both Bushes and 226 appointed by Donald Trump were endorsed by the Federalists.The worst results of this hammerlock on judicial appointments are at the very top of the pyramid: “For the first time in US history, five of six conservative justices on the supreme court have been appointed by Republican presidents who initially lost the popular vote and confirmed by senators representing a minority of Americans.”And what is the “signature project” of these justices? The dismantling of the civil rights laws that are the greatest legacy of the 1960s.Federalist Society judges worked in lockstep with the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, whose priority has been to put an end to all effective limits on who can spend how much in every election.“I never would have been able to win my race if there had been a limit on the amount of money I could raise and spend,” McConnell wrote of his first race, in 1984. Eighteen years later, the Republican John McCain and Democrat Russ Feingold managed to ban unlimited donations. Their law survived McConnell’s first lawsuit to undo it, on a 5-4 supreme court vote. But four years later, after the extremist Samuel Alito replaced the moderate Sandra Day O’Connor, the court gutted the law, allowing unlimited corporate expenditure as long as ads “didn’t explicitly” endorse a candidate.“Thus began a trend,” Berman explains. “GOP-appointed judges reliably supported Republican efforts to tilt the rules and institutions of democracy in their favor … which in turn helped Republicans win more elections and appoint more judges, with one undemocratic feature of the system augmenting the other.”As the country’s founders adopted a constitution that disenfranchised all Black people and all women, modern conservatives do all they can to keep the voting rolls as unrepresentative as possible, particularly as people of color become the majority in the US. Racism remains the strongest fuel for efforts to make it as hard as possible for Black and younger voters to exercise their franchise.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe worst recent example of this was the failure of a narrowly Democratic Senate to adopt a voting rights act in 2021. It failed when Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, both Democrats then, refused to alter the filibuster rule. Manchin supported the bill, then reversed with a specious explanation: while the right to vote was “fundamental to American democracy … protecting that right … should never be done in a partisan manner”Berman’s book ends on a more hopeful note, with descriptions of Democratic victories in Michigan and Wisconsin.In Michigan, a 29-year-old activist, Katie Fahey, figured out she could end the gerrymandering which had let the Republicans dominate her state by putting a ballot initiative before the voters. She needed 315,000 signatures. In one of the few good news stories about social media, she was able to use Facebook to gather 410,000 signatures in 110 days without any paid staff. In 2018, the reform won with an amazing 61% of the vote. Another initiative that dramatically expanded voter access through automatic and election-day access passed by 66%.The end of gerrymandering enabled Democrats to flip both houses in Michigan in 2022, “giving them control of state politics for the first time in 40 years”. And in Wisconsin, the election of an additional liberal justice to the state supreme court finally ended Republicans’ domination of the state government.The hopeful message is clear: despite massive Republican efforts to suppress liberal votes, it is still possible for a well-organized grassroots campaign to overcome the millions of dollars spent every year to prevent the triumph of true democracy.
      Minority Rule is published in the US by Farrar, Straus and Giroux More