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Democrats reach deal to pass major climate bill after Sinema says yes – as it happened
by Evelyn Reynolds 5 August 2022, 20:08
For the past week, just about everybody in Washington politics has been asking the same question: will Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema vote for her party’s plan to fight climate change and lower health care costs?The Arizona lawmaker is known for her opposition to changing the tax code, as the bill – known was the Inflation Reduction Act – does to fund its programs. In the end, she did demand changes to how the legislation is paid for, but they weren’t especially big.With her support, Democrats have all 50 votes they need to get the bill through the evenly divided Senate. There’s not much Republicans themselves can do to stop them, so, instead, they’re hoping that Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough intervenes. The Democrats hope to pass the legislation via the reconciliation procedure, which requires only a simple majority of votes, but there are only certain types of changes to the law they can make that way. MacDonough is to decide whether they followed proper procedure, and as Politico reports, Republicans hope she’ll strike certain provisions from the bill – which could upend the delicate compromise Democrats have forged among themselves, and jeopardize the bill entirely.The pieces have been set in motion for the Senate to convene this weekend and begin voting on Democrats’ plan to fight climate change and lower inflation, which the party appears to have the support necessary to pass. At the White House, Joe Biden cheered yet another month of healthy job growth as he looks for ways to revitalize his dismal approval ratings.Here’s a look back at what happened today:
Republicans plan to frustrate Democrats in the Senate during votes on amendments to the spending plan, known as the Inflation Reduction Act.
Donald Trump is reportedly negotiating with the justice department amid the ongoing criminal probe into the January 6 insurrection.
United Nations chief António Guterres warned that there is “no way to solve the most pressing problems of all the world without an effective dialogue and cooperation” between the United States and China – which are currently feuding over US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit this week to Taiwan.
Scientists are warning that climate change is driving increased lightning strikes, after two were killed and two critically injured during storms near the White House yesterday.
Biden’s recent string of political victories has generated a meme: “Dark Brandon”.
China is furious over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan earlier this week, and today, Beijing cut off cooperating with the United States on fighting climate change, and some military communication.But at a briefing, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said China and the United States’ military leaders still have some ways of communicating:.@WHNSC’s John Kirby says China did _not_ cut all mil-mil-mil comms: “These channels they took down don’t eliminate the opportunity for senior members of the military to communicate.” Translation: Chairman/Minister level channels still open.— Nick Schifrin (@nickschifrin) August 5, 2022
He did, however, condemn Beijing’s decision to stop collaborating on ways to lower emissions:.@WHNSC’s John Kirby on Beijing pausing climate change dialogue: “We believe this is fundamentally irresponsible. China is not punishing just the US. It’s punishing the whole world.”— Nick Schifrin (@nickschifrin) August 5, 2022
Kirby later adds: “One of the areas that was ripe for collaboration was climate. They think they are punishing us. They are punishing the whole world.”— Nick Schifrin (@nickschifrin) August 5, 2022
United Nations chief António Guterres had said much the same earlier in the day.China halts US cooperation on range of issues after Pelosi’s Taiwan visitRead moreReuters reports that the White House will soon send $1 billion in aid to Ukraine, including armored medical transports and the types of long-range weapons that have allowed Ukraine to regain momentum recently against the Russian invaders.Citing three sources familiar with the matter, Reuters says president Joe Biden hasn’t authorized the weapons yet, but could do so as soon as Monday. The package would be one of the biggest aid packages since the war began and is expected to include more munitions for the Himars rocket system Ukraine has deployed to great effect recently, as well as Nasams surface-to-air missiles.The weapons could be used in Ukraine’s expected offensive to recapture Kherson, a southern city that’s one of the largest under the control of the Russians.Can Ukrainian forces recapture Kherson from Russia?Read moreDoug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, is threatening to back out of testifying before the January 6 committee unless he can record the interaction, Politico reports.Mastriano “has legitimate concerns that your committee may attempt to influence the outcome of the Pennsylvania state elections through the dissemination of disinformation,” his lawyer told the House panel investigating the insurrection, according to Politico.His resistance could lead to a court fight between the lawmakers and Mastriano, a state senator and 2020 election denier whom Donald Trump backed in the Pennsylvania gubernatorial primary. While some acolytes of the former president have spoken to the committee, others have resisted – to their peril. Top Trump adviser Steve Bannon was found guilty of contempt of Congress last month for defying subpoenas from the panel, and former trade adviser Peter Navarro is facing similar charges.Threatening Washington’s top public health official has real consequences, as a West Virginia man found out today:A federal judge sentenced a West Virginia man to three years in prison by for sending intimidating emails to public health chief Anthony Fauci, including threats to kill the US’s top infectious disease official over his handling of the Covid pandemic.US district judge Paula Xinis in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Thursday sentenced Thomas Connally, 56, of Snowshoe, West Virginia, to 37 months in federal prison and another three years of supervised release after he pleaded guilty in May to a federal charge of making threats against a federal official.In one email, Connally threatened that Fauci and his family would be “dragged into the street, beaten to death, and set on fire,” prosecutors said.Man who threatened to kill Anthony Fauci given three-year prison termRead moreCNN has a bit more detail on the Inflation Reduction Act’s path to enactment in Congress: the House won’t be back in session until next Friday, giving the Senate plenty of time to approve the bill.House will return August 12th to give final passage to the Senate reconciliation bill, per Hoyer— Manu Raju (@mkraju) August 5, 2022
Senators will convene on Saturday to vote on the bill, which is a major priority for the Biden administration and allocates money to fighting climate change and lowering health care costs.A day after ordering Alex Jones to pay $4.1 million in compensatory damages for spreading conspiracy theories about 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, CNN reports a Texas jury has begun deliberating over how much to make Jones pay in punitive damages – which could greatly enhance the financial pain resulting from his defamation trial:The jury in the Sandy Hook trial is now deliberating on punitive damages.— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) August 5, 2022
The Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas has the latest on the trial, which has been more dramatic than most:A financial expert testifying for the parents of a child killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting has estimated that Alex Jones and his media company are worth between $135m and $240m as they seek punitive damages beyond the $4.1m they secured a day ago for the US conspiracy theorist’s falsehoods about the massacre.The expert, Bernard Pettingill, said from the witness stand in an Austin courtroom that Jones and his Free Speech Systems company earned more than $50m annually between 2016 to 2021 – even as popular social media companies banned him from promoting himself through them – due to his “rabid following” of millions.Pettingill added that it was difficult to get an exact read of Jones’s financial outlook because he used a web of shell companies that own nothing and employ no one to move money belonging to him around.Alex Jones worth up to $240m, expert says, as family seeks punitive damagesRead moreJoe Biden’s been on something of a roll lately, and the internet appears to have noticed, gifting the 79-year-old president with a meme: “Dark Brandon”. While its origins are on the right, the moniker has been reclaimed by Biden’s supporters and spread on Twitter just as the Democratic president wracked up a number of wins in Congress and elsewhere.For example: Cutting the deficit, reducing prescription drug prices, investing in domestic energy production. pic.twitter.com/e0XQCP5hQv— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) August 5, 2022
Or perhaps:Our hero in the shadows… #DarkBrandon pic.twitter.com/ChDLenuIMB— JumboPosterInChief (@ChiefJumbo) August 2, 2022
Like many meme origin stories, that of “Dark Brandon” is lengthy and packed with references to other memes and internet trends. One of them is “Let’s Go Brandon”, the sanitized version of “Fuck Joe Biden” that became popular among his detractors last year. On Twitter, Biden’s supporters are using it to refer to several recent success stories for the White House, including the killing of top al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri this past weekend, the breakthrough on Democrats’ climate change and health care bill days later and the passage of another measure to spur semiconductor production late last month. Slate has published some thoughts on what Dark Brandon’s arrival heralds:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} The term “Dark Brandon” first surfaced in early 2022 as part of the usual gamut of memes and burns deployed by America’s extremely online socialists—especially those who’ve found themselves feeling euphorically apocalyptic in the face of unchecked climate change, a theocratic Supreme Court, and Joe Manchin’s seemingly insurmountable veto power. For them, “Dark Brandon” was a way to lean into despair. The invaluable resource Know Your Meme delved into the paper trail and uncovered a trove of extremely dark viral tweets from the spring, where Dark Brandon could be found, say, pointing a gun into a woman’s mouth in a Photoshop or overseeing public executions in a Twitter user’s ironic fantasy. The idea here is that Joe Biden was not the fuddy-duddy centrist he appeared to be and instead represented some sort of satanic, Revelations-esque figure, way worse than anyone can imagine.
It’s an aesthetic that mirrors the related Dark MAGA trend, in which alt-right dead-enders and QAnon veterans have adopted an increasingly occultist tone to sheathe their reactionary beliefs. (Here, for instance, is an image of Jordan Peterson with the same facial tattoos as the rapper 6ix9ine.) The difference is that Dark MAGA posters fantasize about the return of an even-more-unhinged, gloves-off Trump, out for revenge. Dark Brandon, on the other hand, was the creation of people without much hope at all.
We can debate over whether it’s foolish to assign any intellectual significance to the tweets made by weirdos on the internet, but I do think that both Dark Brandon and DarkMAGA were interesting artifacts of America’s superheated political environment. The country does feel like it’s perched on the precipice of some sort of prophetic rebirth, and perhaps, as our institutions erode into the sea, Dark Brandon is the harbinger of that final judgment. Meanwhile, because Trump does feel like he might come back, more vengeful than before, DarkMAGA’s attempts to speak that into existence feel like a warning.In a speech at the White House, Joe Biden praised the July jobs numbers, which came in much better than expected. He also hailed the Inflation Reduction Act that’s making progress in the US Senate and is on what Democrats hope is the final stretch before making it into law.“We are on the cusp of the most important step we can take to help Congress lower inflation,” he said, speaking outside and sporting his trademark aviator sunglasses because he was still isolating due to his Covid-19 diagnosis.He talked of the ongoing decrease in gas prices over the past month-and-a-half, noting fuel was available for “less than $3.99 a gallon at more than half the gas stations in North America”, Biden also touted the speed of the labor market’s recovery, after more than 20 million people lost their job when Covid-19 broke out.“That’s why the strength and the pace job of the recovery is so important. In the past, it’s taking years for Americans to recover from an economic crisis. When that’s happened, millions of people suffer from years and years just trying to get back to where they were before, just trying to get back on their feet. And that didn’t happen this time”, Biden said.Joe Biden is about to sign a couple of bills at the White House and we’ll have an ear out for any relevant remarks. It’s a relatively lively Friday, given that the House and Senate are out, and we’ll have more, so stay tuned.Here’s where things stand.
There is “no way to solve the most pressing problems of all the world without an effective dialogue and cooperation” between the United States and China, a spokesman for United Nations chief António Guterres said.
Scientists are warning that climate change is driving increased lightning strikes, after two were killed and two critically injured during storms near the White House yesterday.
Joe Biden cheered the better-than-expected employment data released by the Labor Department this morning, saying it shows the success of his administration’s plan to help Americans.
Kyrsten Sinema, conservative Democratic US Senator of Arizona, is on board with the Inflation Reduction Act legislation now pending at the door of the Senate, in another breakthrough for Democrats and Joe Biden’s domestic agenda.
Meanwhile, if you want some up-to-the-minute international developments, follow either of our global live blogs, on the geopolitical fall-out from Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, and on the war in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February.Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz is busy entertaining the peanut gallery at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event in his home state.Cruz was revving himself and the crowd up now by roundly mocking everything Democrat, also masks against the spread of coronavirus, presidential health adviser Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, “communist, woke professors”, etc, etc.He just promised that in November, south Texas “will turn red” and elect Republican members of congress in Rio Grande Valley on the US-Mexico border.And, nationally, Cruz is forecasting “not just a red wave but a tsunami” of GOP victories at the midterm elections.On the subject of the polite modern habit of specifying one’s preferred pronouns, Cruz shrieked to whoops: “My pronouns are ‘kiss my ass’.” “We are on the cusp of something amazing in this country,” Cruz tells the crowd. Alarming might be more accurate.The right-winger is exiting the stage now, to soaring rock music.Well my name is Ted Cruz And my pronouns are kiss my ass pic.twitter.com/M0wVzR7ZRv— 🔥⭐️Edwin⭐️🔥 (@Edwin07011) August 5, 2022
There is “no way to solve the most pressing problems of all the world without an effective dialogue and cooperation” between the United States and China, a spokesman for United Nations chief António Guterres said today, Reuters writes.This followed the Chinese government in Beijing halting climate talks with Washington, Reuters writes.Tackling climate change has been a key area of cooperation between the two superpowers.But China has suspended talks as part of its escalating retaliation over House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan earlier this week.If you want to read our global live blog on all the developments in geopolitics as a result of Pelosi’s visit to the Taiwanese capital, Taipei, you can do so here.Guterres last month warned that wildfires and heatwaves wreaking havoc across swathes of the globe show humanity facing is “collective suicide”, as governments around the world scramble to protect people from the impacts of extreme heat.Pelosi is currently on the Japan leg of her Asia tour, which would not have been especially controversial if it had not been for her insistence on visiting Taiwan, the independent island nation over which the People’s Republic of China has claimed sovereignty since nationalists fled there to escape the communist mainland takeover in 1949.President Joe Biden remains positive for Covid-19, but is otherwise doing almost fine, the White House announced.According to a letter from his doctor Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s “cough has almost completely resolved”, though his continued positive test means he will have to “continue his strict isolation measures”.You can read the full update here.The REPEAT Project, a Princeton University and Dartmouth College initiative to evaluate federal policies’ impact on emissions and climate change, has done a quick analysis of the climate change provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act.It’s a dense read, but it confirms the potency of the proposal, which would get the United States close, but not all the way, to meeting its targets for lowering emissions. Here’s a summary of its findings:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The Senate Inflation Reduction Act would:
• cut annual emissions in 2030 by an additional ~1 billion metric tons below current policy (including the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law)
• close two-thirds of the remaining emissions gap between current policy and the nation’s 2030 climate target (50% below 2005)
• get the U.S. to within ~0.5 billion tons of the 2030 climate target
• reduce cumulative GHG emissions by about 6.3 billion tons over the next decade (through 2032).Republican state treasurers are coordinating efforts to retaliate against financial institutions that have taken steps to mitigate climate change, according to an investigation published today by The New York Times.While they still do plenty of business with oil companies, major asset managers like BlackRock and banks like Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase have signaled a desire to support the transition from fossil fuels. But Republican officials are trying to use their states’ financial heft to get the financial institutions to change course.Here’s more from the Times’ report:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Last week, Riley Moore, the treasurer of West Virginia, announced that several major banks — including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo — would be barred from government contracts with his state because they are reducing their investments in coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.
Mr. Moore and the treasurers of Louisiana and Arkansas have pulled more than $700 million out of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, over objections that the firm is too focused on environmental issues. At the same time, the treasurers of Utah and Idaho are pressuring the private sector to drop climate action and other causes they label as “woke.”
And treasurers from Pennsylvania, Arizona and Oklahoma joined a larger campaign to thwart the nominations of federal regulators who wanted to require that banks, funds and companies disclose the financial risks posed by a warming planet.
At the nexus of these efforts is the State Financial Officers Foundation, a little-known nonprofit organization based in Shawnee, Kan., that once focused on cybersecurity, borrowing costs and managing debt loads, among other routine issues.
Then President Biden took office, promising to speed the country’s transition away from oil, gas and coal, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet.
The foundation began pushing Republican state treasurers, who are mostly elected officials and who are responsible for managing their state’s finances, to use their power to promote oil and gas interests and to stymie Mr. Biden’s climate agenda, records show.President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will travel to Kentucky on Monday, August 8, to survey damage caused by catastrophic flooding in the eastern part of the state, the White House announced.The death toll from the floods has hit 37, while hundreds remains missing. Scientists have linked the severity of the storm to climate change.Kentucky grapples with effect of climate crisis as floods leave trail of devastationRead moreRepublicans are on the defensive in Congress after Democrats coalesced around the Inflation Reduction Act and announced plans to begin voting on the marquee spending measure over the weekend.That doesn’t mean they don’t have a plan to try to stop it. Senators will get to offer amendments to the bill and CNN reports Republicans Lindsey Graham and John Thune have signaled they want to make that process, known as “vote-a-rama” as painful for Democrats as possible:“What will vote-a-rama be like? It will be hell” Graham told me of the marathon voting session on reconciliation. Thune promises “hard” votes. Goal for Republicans: Try to win a vote on the floor that will change the bill and convince Manchin and Sinema to tank it— Manu Raju (@mkraju) August 5, 2022 More
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Democrats secure breakthrough with Kyrsten Sinema on climate bill
by Evelyn Reynolds 5 August 2022, 12:53
Democrats secure breakthrough with Kyrsten Sinema on climate billThe Arizona senator said she had agreed to last-minute changes on the measure’s tax and energy provisions Senate Democratic leaders say they have reached an agreement on the party’s major $739bn climate and economic bill with Kyrsten Sinema – the centrist Democrat whose opposition remained a major hurdle to passing the most ambitious US climate legislation yet. Democrat apologises for saying Biden won’t run in 2024 – then says it againRead moreThe support of Sinema, a former member of the Green party who has evolved into one of Congress’s most conservative Democrats, was crucial to the passage of the bill, which tackles energy, environment, health and tax measures. Its success is seen as the Democratic party’s most substantive chance to deliver domestic policy progress before the midterm elections.Backing from all 50 Democratic senators will be needed to pass any legislation in the evenly divided Senate given the party’s narrow majority and Republican resistance to acting on the climate crisis.The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said lawmakers had achieved a compromise “that I believe will receive the support” of all Democrats in the chamber. His party needs unanimity to move the measure through the 50-50 Senate, along with Vice-President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote.Sinema, the Arizona senator seen as the pivotal vote, said in a statement that she had agreed to 11th-hour changes in the measure’s tax and energy provisions and was ready to “move forward” on the bill.She said Democrats had agreed to remove a provision raising taxes on “carried interest”, or profits that go to executives of private equity firms. That’s been a proposal she has long opposed, though it is a favorite of other Democrats, including the conservative West Virginia Democratic senator Joe Manchin, an architect of the overall bill.The carried interest provision was estimated to produce $13bn for the government over the coming decade, a small portion of the measure’s $739bn in total revenue.Securing Sinema’s support was the next challenge for Democrats after Manchin, the centrist Democrat famed for thwarting his own party’s climate goals, surprised Washington last week by backing the plan.Manchin, who has made millions of dollars from his ownership of a coal-trading firm, made an abrupt U-turn last week and announced support for $369bn in spending to support renewable energy and reduce emissions.Schumer has said he hopes the Senate can begin voting on the bill – known as the Inflation Reduction Act – on Saturday. Passage by the House, which Democrats control narrowly, could come next week.Final congressional approval of the election-year measure would be a marquee achievement for Joe Biden and his party, notching an accomplishment they could tout to voters as November approaches.The Senate and the House of Representatives are not in session on Friday but Schumer has indicated that he intends to move the bill forward this weekend and warned his Capitol Hill colleagues of some long days and nights of debate and votes ahead.Sinema agreed to the legislation in principle on Thursday night but added that before she can confirm, she needs it signed off by the Senate parliamentarian, the official who will check whether the spending bill complies with the rules to allow it to be passed using the reconciliation process that allows a simple majority vote, rather than being subject to the 60-vote majority filibuster rule.Schumer said that the deal first with Manchin and now with Sinema produced a bill that was now one step closer to becoming law.“The agreement preserves the major components of the Inflation Reduction Act, including reducing prescription drug costs, fighting climate change, closing tax loopholes exploited by big corporations and the wealthy, and reducing the deficit,” he said.Joe Biden urged the Senate to pass the bill swiftly. It must then return to the House for another vote before it can make its way to the US president’s desk.Bernie Sanders had been a big backer of the original $3.5tn Build Back Better bill, which was wide-ranging but has now shrunk down, after being blocked repeatedly by Manchin and Sinema, to the Inflation Reduction Act. The Vermont senator called the shrunken $739bn bill “better than nothing”, the Washington Post reported on Friday.Oliver Milman contributed reportingTopicsUS politicsDemocratsArizonaUS SenateUS domestic policyClimate crisisnewsReuse this content More
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US Senate overwhelmingly approves Nato membership for Finland and Sweden
by Evelyn Reynolds 4 August 2022, 00:02
US Senate overwhelmingly approves Nato membership for Finland and SwedenIn 95-1 vote, body supports ‘slam-dunk for national security’ after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine The US Senate delivered near-unanimous bipartisan approval to Nato membership for Finland and Sweden on Wednesday, calling expansion of the western defensive bloc a “slam-dunk” for US national security and a day of reckoning for Vladimir Putin.The 95-1 vote for the candidacy of two European countries that, until Russia’s war against Ukraine, had long avoided military alliances took a crucial step toward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its 73-year-old pact of mutual defense among the United States and democratic allies in Europe.Joe Biden, who has been the principal player rallying global economic and material support for Ukraine, has sought quick entry for the two previously non-militarily aligned northern European countries.Approval from all member countries – currently, 30 – is required. The candidacies of Finland and Sweden have won ratification from more than half of the Nato member countries in the roughly three months since the two applied.“It sends a warning shot to tyrants around the world who believe free democracies are just up for grabs,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, before the vote.“Russia’s unprovoked invasion has changed the way we think about world security,” she added.In Taiwan, as in Ukraine, the west is flirting with disaster | Simon JenkinsRead moreThe Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, who visited Kyiv earlier this year, urged unanimous approval. Speaking to the Senate, McConnell cited Finland’s and Sweden’s well-funded, modernizing militaries and their experience working with US forces and weapons systems, calling the decision a “slam-dunk for national security” of the United States.“Their accession will make Nato stronger and America more secure. If any senator is looking for a defensible excuse to vote no, I wish them good luck,” McConnell said.Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican who often aligns his positions with those of the most ardent supporters of Donald Trump, has been one of the few to speak in opposition. Hawley took the Senate floor to call European security alliances a distraction from what he called the United States’ chief rival – China, not Russia.“We can do more in Europe … devote more resources, more firepower … or do what we need to do to deter Asia and China. We cannot do both,” Hawley said, calling his a “classic nationalist approach” to foreign policy.US state and defense department officials consider the two countries net “security providers”, strengthening Nato’s defense posture in the Baltics in particular. Finland is expected to exceed Nato’s 2% GDP defense spending target in 2022, and Sweden has committed to meet the 2% goal.Sweden and Finland applied in May, setting aside their longtime stance of military non-alignment. It was a major shift of security arrangements for the two countries after neighboring Russia launched its war on Ukraine in late February. Biden encouraged their joining and welcomed the two countries’ government heads to the White House in May.The US and its European allies have rallied with newfound partnership in the face of the Russian president’s aggression, strengthening the alliance formed after the second world war.“Enlarging Nato is exactly the opposite of what Putin envisioned when he ordered his tanks to invade Ukraine,” Senator Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat and chairman of the Senate Foreign relations committee, said on Wednesday, adding that the west could not allow Russia to “launch invasions of countries”.Biden sent the protocols to the Senate for review in July, launching a notably speedy process in the typically divided and slower-moving chamber.Each member government in Nato must give its approval for any new member to join. The process ran into unexpected trouble when Turkey raised concerns over adding Sweden and Finland, accusing the two of being soft on banned Turkish Kurdish exile groups. Turkey’s objections still threaten the two countries’ membership.TopicsNatoUS SenateUS CongressUS politicsSwedenFinlandEuropenewsReuse this content More
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Jon Stewart celebrates after Senate passes bill to assist veterans exposed to toxins
by Evelyn Reynolds 3 August 2022, 14:34
Jon Stewart celebrates after Senate passes bill to assist veterans exposed to toxinsBill passed after weeks of criticism from veterans’ groups and advocates including the former Daily Show host After a week of anger and criticism from veterans groups and advocates, including the comedian Jon Stewart, Senate Republicans finally agreed to pass a bill that expands healthcare and benefits to veterans exposed to toxins.“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this situation where people who have already given so much had to fight so hard to get so little,” said Stewart, who joined veterans to push for the bill. “I hope we learned a lesson.”Known as the Pact Act, the bill passed in the Senate on Tuesday night in an 86-11 vote.It will provide assistance to veterans who were exposed to harmful chemicals during their service, such as Agent Orange during the Vietnam war, or toxins from pits used to burn military waste in Iraq and Afghanistan.The Department of Defense estimates that about 3.5 million service members could have been exposed to burn pits in the Middle East. Such chemicals can cause respiratory illnesses and cancer to those exposed, medical experts said.Currently veterans have had to prove that illnesses were connected to their service, and the Department of Veterans Affairs did not consider exposure to toxins a service-related condition. The department has denied about 75% of veterans’ burn pit claims.The Pact Act passed the House last month and had support from a majority of Republican senators until last week, when a coalition of them held up the bill’s passage. The senators said they no longer supported the bill after Democrats announced they reached a deal on a major tax and climate bill on Wednesday.Veteran advocates sharply denounced the Republicans’ U-turn. Stewart called them “stab-vets-in-the-back senators”. Protests erupted outside the Capitol.On Tuesday night, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, announced that he and his Republican counterpart, the minority leader, Mitch McConnell, had reached a deal on the bill. At a news conference, McConnell said Republicans’ objections were part of the “legislative process”.“These kind of back and forths happen all the time in the legislative process, you’ve observed that over the years,” he said. “I think in the end, the veterans service organizations will be pleased with the final result.”Joe Biden praised the bill’s passage, saying: “We should all take pride in this moment.” In his most recent State of the Union address earlier this year, the US president mentioned that his son Beau, who served a year-long tour of Iraq and later died of brain cancer, could have been a victim of burn pit toxins.“The Pact Act will be the biggest expansion of [veterans affairs] healthcare in decades,” Biden tweeted. “We’ll never be able to repay the debt we owe to those who have worn the uniform, but today, Congress delivered on a promise to our veterans and their families.”TopicsUS SenateRepublicansDemocratsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More
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Democrats prepare for showdown over key spending and climate bill – as it happened
by Evelyn Reynolds 1 August 2022, 20:16
Senate Democrats are working to face off on the reconciliation bill – officially known as the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Moderate Democratic senator Joe Manchin made the rounds on all the talk shows touting the $740bn legislative package that the senate parliamentarian will go over later this week.
Meanwhile, John Cornyn, the Republican senator from Texas, tested positive for Covid-19. He vowed to continue fighting the reconciliation bill while in quarantine.
Joe Biden also remains in quarantine after testing positive again for Covid-19. Though his physician reports that he has minimal symptoms, he still continues to test positive, as expected.
House speaker Nancy Pelosi is in Asia and multiple news outlets are reporting that she will be including Taiwan in her itinerary. It would mark the first visit to Taiwan by a house speaker in a quarter of a century, but the White House spent the press briefing talking it down as not a big deal. “The speaker has the right to visit Taiwan, and the speaker of the House as visited Taiwan before, without any incident, as have many members of Congress, including this year,” said White House national security spokesman John Kirby. Kirby said if Pelosi does choose to visit Taiwan, her decision would have no standing on the US stance on the One China Policy that does not support Taiwan’s independence.
Kirby had strong words for China’s threats that its military would “not sit idly by” if the visit happened. “There is no reason for Beijing to turn a potential visit consistent with long-standing US policy into some kind of crisis or conflict or use it as a pretext to increase aggressive military activity in or around the Taiwan strait,” he said.
The Biden administration will authorize today a $550m security assistance package for Ukraine, bringing the total aid to $8bn.
Guy Reffitt, the first of the horde of Donald Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 to be convicted, has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison. 🚨 SENTENCE: U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich orders Guy Reffitt to serve 87 months in prison, to be followed by 3 years of supervised release. Warns if he violates terms she will send him back to prison for up to maximum term. $2,000 in restitution. pic.twitter.com/IGZjxFqoXb— Jordan Fischer (@JordanOnRecord) August 1, 2022
While it is the harshest sentence for any of the individuals involved in the attack on the US Capitol, it is considerably less than the 15 years the justice department had sought with the terrorism enhancement. JUST NOW: Judge Friedrich DENIES prosecutors’ request to impose a terrorism enhancement and other upward departures at the sentencing of Guy Reffitt. His recommended sentencing range will be 87-108 months in prison.— Jordan Fischer (@JordanOnRecord) August 1, 2022
Senators Tim Kaine and Kyrsten Sinema – Democrats – joined with Republicans Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to introduce the Reproductive Freedom for All Act today, legislation to codify Roe v Wade, which was recently overturned by the supreme court. Senate Democrats Kaine & Sinema and Republicans Collins & Murkowski introduced the Reproductive Freedom For All Act today,bipartisan legislation to codify the Roe v. Wade decision recently overturned by the Supreme Court. House passed their version of the bill earlier this month. https://t.co/EIRl7ChQMP— Craig Caplan (@CraigCaplan) August 1, 2022
All close contacts Joe Biden had when he tested positive for Covid-19 have tested negative, said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. He is not experiencing any reoccurring symptoms. “He’s feeling fine,” Jean-Pierre said. “There’s no reason for this to escalate,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said of House speaker Nancy Pelosi and her purported Taiwan trip. While House speaker Nancy Pelosi “has not confirmed any travel plans” regarding a decision to visit Taiwan on her trip to Asia, “we have been clear from the very beginning that she will make her own decisions and that Congress is an independent branch of government,” said White House national security spokesman John Kirby “Our Constitution embeds a separation of powers,” Kirby said. “This is well known to the (People’s Republic of China), given our more than four decades of diplomatic relations. The speaker has the right to visit Taiwan, and the speaker of the House as visited Taiwan before, without any incident, as have many members of Congress, including this year.”Pelosi visiting Taiwan on this trip won’t change anything, Kirby said. “Nothing has changed about our One China Policy,” Kirby said. “We have repeatedly said that we oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side. We do not support Taiwan independence and that we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.”Kirby had strong words for China’s threats that its military would “not sit idly by” if the visit happened. Even before Pelosi arrived in the region, China conducted a live-fire exercise, and Kirby said that China appears to be positioning itself to potentiallhy take further steps in the coming days, be they military provocations, air or naval activities or military exercises. “There is no reason for Beijing to turn a potential visit consistent with long-standing US policy into some kind of crisis or conflict or use it as a pretext to increase aggressive military activity in or around the Taiwan strait,” he said. “We will not take the bait or engage in sabre rattling. At the same time, we will not be intimidated. We will keep operating in the seas and the skies in the western Pacific, as we have for decades. We will continue to support cross-strait peace, stability, support Taiwan, defend a free and open Indo-Pacific, and we’re still going to seek to maintain lines of communication with Beijing. All of that is important and all of that is preserving the status quo.”White House national security spokesman John Kirby kicked off today’s press briefing by celebrating the first ship to successfully leave the port of Odessa in Ukraine carrying agricultural exports and announcing a $550m security assistance package for Ukraine. The ship was allowed out under a recent deal brokered between the United Nations, Turkey, Ukraine and Russia to allow for Ukraine, Europe’s breadbasket, to export some of its agricultural products as a way to ease the world’s food insecurity crisis. Previously, Russia had a blockade on Ukraine’s ports since the start of its invasion. . “We urge Russia to meet its commitments under this new arrangement, including by facilitating unimpeded exports of agriculture products from Black Sea ports in order to ease the food insecurity around the world,” Kirby said. “We will be watching that closely.”The $550m security assistance package stems from the president’s drawdown authority, bringing the total to $8bn that Joe Biden has drawn down for Ukraine since the Russia invasion began, Kirby said. The Associated Press is reporting that the North Carolina state board of elections voted unanimously today to recognize the Green Party as a new political party, reversing a previous decision to reject the party’s petition while the board investigated the signature sheets for fraud.The North Carolina Green Party has submitted more than enough signatures validated by both the state and county elections boards to earn immediate recognition, Katelyn Love, the board’s legal counsel, said. But Green Party candidates still face an ongoing legal battle to appear on the November ballot after the state board’s initial rejection of the petition led the party to miss the 1 July deadline.The elections board’s Democratic majority previously rejected the Green Party petition in a 3-2 vote on 30 June, citing petition sheets with nearly identical handwriting as well as incomplete personal information, duplicate names and deceased signatories.The Green Party sued the board on 14 July, alleging Democratic interference in the petitioning process and asking the court to reverse the board’s decision. The board filed a response to the lawsuit on Friday, opposing the Green Party’s demand that a judge order the board to include its candidates on the ballot. The board agreed the court should extend the candidate filing deadline should the party earn official recognition at Monday’s board meeting, the brief states.Democrats have warned that Green Party certification could divide progressive voters and clear a path for Republican victories in key races — particularly the tight US senate race between Democrat Cheri Beasley and Trump-endorsed Republican congressman Ted Budd. Prior to the board’s initial vote, the Democratic senatorial campaign committee acknowledged contacting signers of the Green Party’s petition to request they remove their names.K Ryan Parker, a plaintiff in the Green Party lawsuit, called the board’s decision “a welcome surprise and a huge win for democracy,” which he believes was prompted by the recent onslaught of media attention and a desire to settle the matter outside federal court.“It doesn’t change the fact that the Democratic party attempted to disenfranchise North Carolina voters like me by hiring operatives to call, text and visit voters in their home, attempting to compel them to remove their signatures from the petition,” Parker said in an interview Monday. “And it doesn’t change the fact that this two-party system, this duopoly, has failed us at every turn and continues to force voters into a dilemma every four years of voting for a lesser evil.”Tomorrow’s a big primary day in a lot of states, and one big race to watch is the Missouri senate Republican primary. With Republican senator Roy Blunt retiring, basically everybody and their neighbor has come out to vie for his seat. Eric Greitens, the former governor of Missouri, initially held the lead, but he has been dogged by scandal after scandal, with his ex-wife alleging that he abused her and their child and a woman accusing him of sexually and physically abusing her and then threatening to release nude photos of her if she told anyone.Trump posts that he plans to endorse today in #mosen ahead of primary tomorrow. Many Rs had long been concerned he could endorse Greitens— Manu Raju (@mkraju) August 1, 2022
John Cornyn, the Republican senator from Texas, has tested positive for Covid-19. After dodging it for 2+ years I’ve tested positive for COVID-19. I’m fully vaccinated and boosted, and doing fine. While quarantining I’ll continue to fight Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin’s massive tax increase on working families remotely, consistent with CDC guidelines.— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) August 1, 2022
Cornyn will be quarantining during a very crucial week for Senate Democrats. They want to pass the reconciliation bill – officially known as the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 – and once it gets past the senate parliamentarian, they need just a narrow majority to do so. With Cornyn being out due to COVID, this means Dems could potentially pass Manchin bill without VP Harris breaking the tie if all 50 Dems are healthy & are yeas— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) August 1, 2022 More
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Lucas Kunce: ‘Populism is about everyday people coming together’
by Evelyn Reynolds 31 July 2022, 09:00
InterviewLucas Kunce: ‘Populism is about everyday people coming together’Martin Pengelly Former US Marine with a progressive take on identity and masculinity hopes Missouri Democrats will pick him as their nominee for US Senate Lucas Kunce thinks populism has been given a bad name. “It’s outrageous,” he says, “that people call the Josh Hawleys, the Eric Greitens, the Donald Trumps of the world populist. Populism is about everyday people coming together to have power in a system that’s not working for them. So do that, Josh Hawley. I mean, good Lord, what a charlatan.”Josh Hawley, senator who ran from Capitol mob, mocked by home paperRead moreKunce is running for the Democratic nomination for US Senate in Missouri, in the fight to take the state’s second seat in Washington, alongside Hawley. The primary is on Tuesday.Kunce’s main challenger is Trudy Busch Valentine, a prominent donor from the Anheuser-Busch brewing dynasty. Kunce’s fundraising has been hugely successful but polling is tight.Kunce has attacked Busch Valentine for representing the donor class, but in conversation he focuses more on attacking Republicans. Hawley, he says, is “always talking about masculinity – this, that, the other – meanwhile, he skitters out of the Capitol from a riot he essentially started. The guy votes for every corporate judge that comes up in front of him. He doesn’t do anything that would actually empower everyday people.“And Donald Trump, I mean, he put the president of Goldman Sachs, Gary Cohn, in charge of our economy. That’s not populism. What they do is divide people based on race, religion, where you come from, in a way that doesn’t give everyday people power. They make sure folks are divided so that they don’t have power as a whole against the system that’s not working.“And so I just think it’s a tragedy that we give sort of any sort of populist label to these guys because they don’t want to change the system.”Now 39, Kunce is a Yale law grad who joined the US marines, went to Iraq and Afghanistan and worked in international arms control. He’s a persuasive speaker, even over Google Meet, laptop camera on the fritz.He is for gun control but he is running in gun country. That in part explains an ad in which Kunce holds an AR-15-style assault rifle, makes as if to fire it and then says that unlike potential Republican opponents including Mark McCloskey, the lawyer who infamously pointed such a gun at protesters for racial justice, he doesn’t need to indulge in such macho posturing.Kunce is also for abortion rights, in a state with a post-Roe v Wade trigger law.He grew up in Jefferson City, “in what would be considered a pro-life house and pro-life neighbourhood. That’s what I knew. And then I joined the Marine Corps. I went out and saw what it was like for these countries where they have oppressive Big Brother governments, where women have no rights. I saw what it was like to live in countries where there’s this two-tiered system of rights, where if you have wealth, access and power, the world’s literally your oyster.“And then I see what they did in Missouri here, how these country club Republicans passed the country’s first trigger law, saying abortion is not even available in cases of rape or incest. It’s like they’re willing to do that because they know it’s not going to affect them. Because they’re gonna go out of state, they have the wealth and the means. And so I think that’s messed up. People in my old neighborhood, that’s who’s not gonna have access. We’re gonna have a two-tier system here.The dystopian American reality one month after the Roe v Wade reversalRead more“And I’ve seen people from from my life go through very hard pregnancies I don’t think they should ever have to be forced to go through. People should be able to have that right and opportunity … And so my position is that I will vote to end the [Senate] filibuster and codify Roe v Wade. I think we need to make that happen.”The Republican primary in Missouri is certainly messy, an all-in scrap in which Greitens, a pro-Trump ex-governor who quit in disgrace and is accused of sexual and physical abuse, could yet come out on top.Polling suggests a Missouri US Senate seat remains a stretch for any Democrat. All the same, Kunce has attracted national attention. He says that was a surprise.“I had no expectations going into this. I was a guy nobody knew. I wanted to run a campaign where I rejected corporate Pac money, federal lobbyists’ money, big farm executive money, big fossil fuel executive money. People basically said that wasn’t possible and that was stupid.“And we just decided we’d do it the right way anyway. To actually stand for something and to win and to make sure you only represent people like the ones who took care of me growing up, rather than these folks who are buying off politicians and using them to strip our communities for parts.“I’m thrilled we’ve gotten the attention that we’ve gotten for what we’re doing and how Democrats can win in the midwest again – if they take a real straightforward populist message.”Kunce talks of “big, bold investment” in the midwest, of spending the sort of billions previously spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on building “the next generation of energy technology right here, to build out manufacturing, research and development, we’re talking wind and solar but we’re also talking hydrogen, distributed nuclear or modular nuclear, battery technology [and] good union jobs”.Independence, Missouri: tribalism, the flag and 4 July in the age of TrumpRead moreSuch aims are part of the Green New Deal and Build Back Better, progressive and Democratic plans fiercely opposed by big business and the right. Kunce’s description of a “Marshall plan for the midwest”, a reference to US aid for postwar Europe under a Missourian Democratic president, Harry Truman, seems in part a repackaging. He isn’t big on progressive labels. Asked about identity politics, he prefers to talk about class.“My focus is on top-bottom, as far as identity politics go. There are a lot of people who are being used as targets, usually the most vulnerable people in our society, by the shareholder class, these massive corporations who are funding campaigns against trans youth, against gay people, against minority communities. They do whatever they can to fund divisive campaigns in order to make it so we don’t have a top-bottom race.“This is what I was talking about earlier with these charlatans who pretend to be populist but they’re actually dividing people as much as they can. I’m absolutely for protecting communities that are vulnerable. I just don’t want to lose sight of this top-bottom dynamic that’s really killing us and making it so everybody is fighting for crumbs underneath the table rather than actually having to sit at it.”Kunce has been presented as a representative of progressive masculinity, a type of Democrat who might appeal away from the coasts. He connects the issue back to Republican posturing.“It’s crazy. I mean, Mark McCloskey on his AR-15, frightening people who are walking by his house. You don’t even hold it right. He would have burned himself up with hot brass if he’d shot a round. The fakeness here is just incredible. Josh Hawley’s right there too.“Real men aren’t a bunch of posers. They are people like my dad who sacrifice for their family, sacrifice for their community, stay in the first job they ever took out of school for their entire life, even when they’re miserable, because they needed their little girl to have health insurance so that she would survive. People that invest in their community, in their families.“It’s like the guy who inspired me to join the marines. This guy named Al. When I was a kid, we always volunteered at the church soup kitchen. Twice a month we’d go down there … and this guy who ran the kitchen, he was always like, ‘OK, what chores do all the kids want to do?’ And my little sister and I were always like, ‘Oh, we want to do the dishes.’ And Al was always confused about why two kids wanted to do the dishes.‘If I’d not got help, I’d probably be dead’: Jason Kander on PTSD, politics and advice from ObamaRead more“But at my house with a big family, doing the dishes, man, it was like 40 minutes of standing at the sink, hurting your back, scrubbing hard and drying. Well, the church kitchen had a dishwasher. So doing the dishes was a scam there. You just threw a bunch of stuff in and walked away. I was like, ‘This guy’s an idiot, he thinks we’re doing a chore.’ And so Al figured that out.“And two years later, when he renovated the kitchen in his house, he took his old dishwasher, put it in his pickup truck, drove it to our house and installed it for us, because he remembered that and he wanted to do something for somebody.“That’s what a real man does. That’s masculinity. Al was a marines officer in Vietnam. Never talked about it. Just, you know, quiet fortitude. That’s what I think being a man is and it’s why I joined the Marine Corps and it’s why I think these [Republican] guys are just a bunch of posturing peacocks.”My last question is in part prompted by Kunce’s mention of “quiet fortitude”. Kunce is a fan of Clint Eastwood movies. Which is his favorite?“Unforgiven. Because Unforgiven was such a comeback for the western brand. It brought it back in the early 90s. And I thought that was really cool. I mean, I watch all the old ones. Pale Rider, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly … but I think Unforgiven was just, it was a real comeback story for the genre which I love.”I’m for In the Line of Fire. If Kunce wins on Tuesday, the Republicans will be too.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022DemocratsMissouriUS politicsUS SenateUS CongressinterviewsReuse this content More
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House-passed assault weapons ban appears to be doomed in the Senate
by Evelyn Reynolds 30 July 2022, 14:33
House-passed assault weapons ban appears to be doomed in the SenateBill would require support from at least 10 Senate Republicans, and it isn’t certain that all 50 Democratic senators are onboard The assault weapons ban in America passed by the House appears set to be doomed in the Senate amid implacable Republican opposition to gun reform, even in the wake of a series of mass shootings in the US.The legislation in the House, which would ban assault weapons for the first time since 2004, is interpreted as a sign that Democrats plan more aggressive gun violence prevention after a series of mass shootings using the military-derived weapons, including in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas.It was passed 217-213, with two Republicans voting in favor and five Democrats opposing. The legislation would criminalize the knowing sale, manufacture, transfer, possession or importation of many types of semi-automatic weapons and large-capacity magazines.“Our nation has watched in unspeakable horror as assault weapons have been used in massacre after massacre in communities across the country,” the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said on Friday before the vote. “We know that an assault weapons ban can work because it has worked before.”The Democrat-controlled House judiciary committee estimated last week that the five major gun manufacturers have collected more than $1bn from the sale of assault rifles in the past decade.New York Democrat Carolyn Maloney said that gun manufacturers use “dangerous selling tactics to sell assault weapons to the public”, including “marketing to children, preying on young men’s insecurities and even appealing to violent white supremacists.”.Cogressman Brad Schneider, who represents Highland Park in Illinois where a mass shooter recently disrupted a Fourth of July parade with a hail of gunfire, killing seven, said at the hearing that “the shooter was able to fire off his bullets so fast that they couldn’t even identify where they were coming from”.But in the 50-50 evenly-split Senate, the bill is unlikely to pass despite a political breakthrough last month in bringing the bill forward. In that chamber, it would require support from at least 10 Republicans. Nor is it certain that all 50 Democrat senators are on board.Congressional Republicans argue that the legislation is unconstitutional and would result in the confiscation of firearms. “Today, they’re coming for your guns,” said rightwing Ohio congressman Jim Jordan, a senior member of the judiciary committee. “They want to take all guns from all people.”The last time the legislature passed an assault weapons ban was in 1994. A 2019 study in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery showed the number of mass shooting deaths declined while the law, which expired in 2004, was in effect.Since then, the number of assault-style weapons in private hands has proliferated to 19.8m, according to a November 2020 statement by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, with mass-shooting growing in frequency alongside.The legislation has not yet been scheduled in the senate for before or after the August recess. On Friday, Joe Biden said he welcomed the House vote, saying a majority of Americans “agree with this common sense action”.“There can be no greater responsibility than to do all we can to ensure the safety of our families, our children, our homes, our communities and our nation”, he added in a statement issued by the White House.TopicsUS SenateUS gun controlHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More
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DoJ reportedly preparing court fight to get Trump insiders to testify – as it happened
by Evelyn Reynolds 29 July 2022, 20:03
Prosecutors at the justice department are gearing up for a courtroom battle to force the testimony of Donald Trump’s former White House officials, as they pursue their criminal inquiry into his insurrection, a report published Friday by CNN says.The former president is expected to try to invoke executive privilege to prevent his closest associates telling what they know about his conduct and actions following his 2020 election defeat, and efforts to prevent Joe Biden taking office, according to the network.But the department, which has taken a much more aggressive stance in recent weeks, is readying for that fight, CNN says, “the clearest sign yet” that the inquiry has become more narrowly focused on Trump’s conversations and interactions.This week attorney general Merrick Garland promised “justice without fear or favor” for anyone caught up in insurrection efforts and would not rule out charging Trump criminally if that’s where the evidence led.He told NBC’s Lester Holt:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We intend to hold everyone, anyone who was criminally responsible for events surrounding January 6, or any attempt to interfere with the lawful transfer of power from one administration to another, accountable.
That’s what we do. We don’t pay any attention to other issues with respect to that.CNN’s story suggests that prosecutors are acutely aware that Trumpworld insiders who are initially reluctant to testify will be more inclined to do so with a judge’s order compelling it.The network also says Trump’s attempt to maintain secrecy came up over recent federal grand jury testimony of two of former vice-president Mike Pence’s aides, Marc Short and Greg Jacob.Questioning reportedly skirted around issues likely to be covered by executive privilege, with prosecutors having an expectation they could return to those subjects at a later date, CNN’s sources said.The development is set to add more legal pressure on Trump following the announcement of an evidence-sharing “partnership” between the justice department and the parallel House January 6 inquiry, in which transcripts of testimony from at least 20 witnesses are passing to Garland’s investigation.We’re closing the blog now at the end of a momentous week in US politics, with the landmark climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act set to become a big win for Joe Biden ahead of the midterm elections.Here’s what else we followed:
The US will not allow any further Russian annexation in Ukraine to go “unchallenged or unpunished”, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, following secretary of state Antony Blinken’s conversation with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov earlier in which he pressed his Kremlin counterpart over negotiations to release jailed Americans Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan.
Justice department prosecutors are readying for a likely court fight to get testimony from Donald Trump’s former White House officials over his illegitimate actions to overturn his 2020 election defeat. CNN reports they are preparing arguments if Trump invokes executive privilege to prevent those close to his Oval Office revealing what they know.
Text messages of two of Trump’s chief homeland security officials, Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli, are missing for “a key period” surrounding the January 6 insurrection, the Washington Post reported.
Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer had secret basement meetings in the Capitol building as they negotiated the Inflation Reduction Act, the AP said. The size and scope of the climate concessions Manchin, the rebel West Virginia Democrat, agreed to surprised the Senate majority leader.
The treasury department has imposed sanctions on two Russian individuals and four entities that support the Kremlin’s “global malign influence and election interference operations”. They “attempted to destabilize the US and its allies and partners, including Ukraine,” the department said.
Nancy Pelosi said it was “sick” that children are learning to use assault weapons, amid a surge of deadly gun violence and mass shootings in the US. The House speaker announced a vote in the chamber this afternoon on gun controls, including an assault weapons ban.
Joe Biden has nominated a lawyer who represented the Mississippi clinic at the heart of the supreme court’s decision to overturn abortion rights last month to become a federal appeals court judge, Reuters reports.Julie Rikelman, an abortion rights lawyer with the center for reproductive rights, was picked to serve on the Boston-based first circuit court of appeals, one of nine new judicial nominees announced by the president today.Rikelman argued for the Jackson women’s health organization – Mississippi’s only abortion clinic – in challenging a Republican-backed law that banned the procedure after 15 weeks. Republicans are likely to oppose her elevation in the equally divided Senate. Russian government officials asked that Vadim Krasikov, a spy and former army colonel convicted of murder in Germany last year, be added to the proposed prisoner swap for Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, CNN reports. “Multiple sources” familiar with the situation told the network that Russia communicated the request to the US earlier this month through an informal backchannel used by the spy agency, known as the FSB.The request was problematic because Krasikov remains in German custody, the sources said, and because the request was not communicated formally the US government did not view it as a legitimate counter to its initial offer of arms dealer Viktor Bout.Secretary of state Antony Blinken spoke with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov earlier today and pressed for the release of Griner and Whelan, whom the US considers “wrongfully detained”. It is not certain if Russia’s reported request over Krasikov featured in the conversation.We promised you news of the Biden administration’s changing position on Covid-19 boosters as the Omicron variant BA.5 continues to grip the nation. Here’s my colleague Sam Levine’s report:Instead of expanding eligibility for a fourth Covid-19 booster shot now, the Biden administration will push this fall to get Americans to take another booster vaccination that is predicted to better protect against the Omicron BA.5 subvariant of the coronavirus.Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna are expected to start rolling out the reformulated boosters, which are expected to be authorized for anyone 12 and older, in September.The decision comes amid a surge in cases of the virus across the US – and Biden himself recently recovered from an infection.Some of the administration’s top health experts, including presidential adviser Anthony Fauci and White House Covid coordinator Ashish Jha, had advocated for expanding eligibility for a second dose of the current booster because of the latest spread.But public health officials worried that administering two different booster shots so close together could blunt their effectiveness.“You can’t get a vaccine shot August 1 and get another vaccine shot September 15 and expect the second shot to do anything,” Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, told the New York Times.“You’ve got so much antibody around, if you get another dose, it won’t do anything.”The decision means that adults over 50 and those who are immunocompromised remain the only ones authorized for a second booster, ie their fourth shot since the vaccine began being administered widely in 2021. Fewer than a third of people 50 and older who are eligible have gotten one, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).Read the full story:US to hold push for Covid boosters until fall in order to better protect against BA.5Read moreA third candidate in a week has dropped out of the Wisconsin Democratic Senate primary, leaving Mandela Barnes, the state’s lieutenant governor, a clear favorite to challenge Republican incumbent Ron Johnson in November.Wisconsin treasurer Sarah Godlewski’s withdrawal followed those of former state assemblyman Tom Nelson on Monday and Barnes’ top rival, Alex Lasry, two days later.Democrats are hopeful of seizing Johnson’s seat in the fall in a state Joe Biden won narrowly in the 2020 presidential election, reversing Donald Trump’s victory there in 2016.Johsnon was quick to comment on Godlewski’s announcement. “Showing their lack of respect for voters and the democratic process, the power brokers of the Democrat party have now cleared the field for their most radical left candidate,” Johnson tweeted.Barnes, 35, would be the first Black senator from Wisconsin if elected. The US will not allow any further Russian annexation in Ukraine to go “unchallenged or unpunished,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has said at an afternoon briefing.She is answering reporters’ questions about secretary of state Antony Blinken’s conversation with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov earlier, in which he pressed his Kremlin counterpart over negotiations to release jailed Americans Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan.Blinken “thought it was it was important to make clear where we and our global partners stand on several key issues,” Jean-Pierre said:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}He spoke about the importance of Russia allowing ships to depart Odessa and to adhere to their grain deals. He also emphasized how Russia’s plan to annex parts of Ukraine by force, which we warned about from here at the podium, would be a gross violation of the UN charter and we would not allow it to go unchallenged or unpunished.
We are under no illusions that Moscow is prepared to engage meaningfully and constructively yet, so Secretary Blinken made clear that this was not about a return to business as usual.Joe Biden has “no plans” to call Russian president Vladimir Putin over that or any other issue, Jean-Pierre said.As for Griner and Whelan, she added: .css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}What the president is doing, the secretary and his national security team, is to make sure we keep our promise and [are] doing everything that we can in bringing home US nationals that are wrongfully detained.
This is top of [Biden’s] mind, this is a priority. We are doing everything we can to bring Paul home, to bring Britney home. Mick Mulvaney, Donald Trump’s former acting chief of staff, testified on Thursday before the House select committee investigating the insurrection on January 6, 2021, and the-then US president’s role in inciting it. And on Friday, Mulvaney spoke about it.He was asked questions by “four or five” lawyers for the committee, who interviewed him for about 2.5 hours behind closed doors, he told CNN on Friday morning.He said they were courteous and there was “no animosity”. he said the questions were “designed to find out stuff that might make President Trump look bad” and pointed out there was no-one there asking “the other side of the questions” [note: it is a bipartisan committee co-chaired by Republican Liz Cheney] “that might have made President Trump look good”, but he added that that was “fine” and it was not a fight, it was a free-flowing discussion.“I would have given the exact same answers, obviously, if there had been folks there from the other side of the political spectrum, so it just reaffirms in my mind that the committee is politically-biased, there is no question about that, the structure is politically biased.“But the information that you are getting is from Republicans, like myself, who are testifying – you are not under oath but you still can’t lie to Congress anyway, that’s still a crime, and I think the information they are getting is good and sound information.”Mulvaney said the lawyers were at the meeting in person while some members of the committee, who are all members of Congress, attended remotely, and Cheney questioned him.He also acknowledged that the separate Department of Justice investigation into events surrounding January 6 last year, when supporters of Trump stormed the US Capitol to try to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory over him, was now “moving closer and closer to the [Trump] White House”. CNN reported that federal prosecutors want to force Trump officials to testify.“They are starting to talk to people inside the Trump orbit as opposed to just the rioters themselves, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers,” he said.It’s lunchtime, so time to take stock of where we’re at today in US politics:
Justice department prosecutors are readying for a likely court fight to get testimony from Donald Trump’s former White House officials over his illegitimate actions to overturn his 2020 election defeat. CNN reports they are preparing arguments if Trump invokes executive privilege to prevent those close to his Oval Office revealing what they know.
Text messages of two of Trump’s chief homeland security officials, Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli, are missing for “a key period” surrounding the January 6 insurrection, the Washington Post reported.
Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer had secret basement meetings in the Capitol building as they negotiated the Inflation Reduction Act, the AP said. The size and scope of the climate concessions Manchin, the rebel West Virginia Democrat, agreed to surprised the Senate majority leader.
The treasury department has imposed sanctions on two Russian individuals and four entities that support the Kremlin’s “global malign influence and election interference operations”. They “attempted to destabilize the US and its allies and partners, including Ukraine,” the department said.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he pressed Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov to accept a US proposal for the release of detained Americans Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan. Blinken said he had a “frank and direct” conversation with Lavrov earlier today.
Nancy Pelosi said it was “sick” that children are learning to use assault weapons, amid a surge of deadly gun violence and mass shootings in the US. The House speaker announced a vote in the chamber this afternoon on gun controls, including an assault weapons ban.
Please stick with us. There’s more to come this afternoon, including White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s daily briefing.Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday he pressed Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov to accept a US proposal for the release of detained Americans Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan.Blinken said he had a “frank and direct” conversation with Lavrov earlier on Friday, and told his counterpart that Russia must fulfill commitments it made as part of deal on the export of grain from Ukraine, brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, and that the world would not accept Russian annexation of Ukrainian territory.Blinken and Lavrov spoke on the phone a few hours after Lavrov indicated some interest in Blinken’s offer.Griner’s trial resumes in Moscow on Monday.The White House has issued a statement encouraging the House to pass an assault weapons ban later today.The statement reminds the public that 40,000 Americans die from gunshot wounds every year and guns have “become the top killer of children” in the US.It notes that Joe Biden played a leading role when he was a US senator in the 1994 assault weapons ban, which stood for 10 years before the administration of George W Bush declined to extend it.The White House further notes that “when the ban expired, mass shootings tripled”.White House issues statement in support of assault weapons bill to be voted on later today in the House. pic.twitter.com/f7coJRwcXh— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) July 29, 2022
Earlier this month, the US president called once again for a ban on such rifles, saying the US was “awash in weapons of war” and decrying how such weapons have become more and more powerful so that when hitting human flesh, people are ripped apart and parents have to supply DNA samples after school shootings, such as in Uvalde, Texas, recently, because their children are so damaged from the bullets that they cannot otherwise be certainly identified.Buffalo, in upstate New York, is still grieving mightily after a racist mass shooting there, as well as the less-documented, everyday urban gun violence blighting life in many American neighborhoods, and the valiant attempts by some community leaders to tamp it.Meanwhile, ICYMI, here’s our Joanie Greve on what gun executives had to say at a congressional hearing earlier this week.Gun executives tell Congress: don’t blame us for deadly shootingsRead moreAnd here’s our Abené Clayton’s reporting as part of the Guardian’s Guns and Lies series.Can lessons of community violence interrupters prevent mass shootings?Read moreNancy Pelosi says it’s “sick” that children are learning to use assault weapons, amid a surge of deadly gun violence in the US that has claimed numerous lives in recent weeks in a series of mass shootings.The House speaker was talking at a lunchtime press briefing at which she announced a vote in the chamber this afternoon on gun controls, including an assault weapons ban:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}When I talk about it on the floor this afternoon I’m going to show a presentation of what some totally irresponsible people are putting out there about little children, toddlers, learning how to use an assault weapon.
Smaller assault weapons, but a gun like mommy and daddy’s, small assault weapons for getting their muscles ready to be able to use it. Is that sick?Pelosi said there was an “outcry” for an assault weapons ban:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’re hopeful [over the] vote for the assault weapons ban. I think the best, most important thing to do is to have background checks, that probably saves the most lives on the ongoing.
But with that it’s very important is to reinstate [the assault weapons ban], we like to say reinstate because we did pass this before. And it did save lives.Even if passed by the House, an assault weapons ban faces next to no chance of clearing the 50-50 divided Senate, where 60 votes would be needed for its passage.Such a measure would be unlikely to attract any Republican support.The treasury department said Friday it had imposed sanctions on two Russian individuals and four entities that support the Kremlin’s “global malign influence and election interference operations”, according to Reuters.“The individuals and entities designated today played various roles in Russia’s attempts to manipulate and destabilize the United States and its allies and partners, including Ukraine,” the department said in a statement.Brian E Nelson, undersecretary of the treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, said: “Free and fair elections form a pillar of American democracy that must be protected from outside influence.“The Kremlin has repeatedly sought to threaten and undermine our democratic processes and institutions. The US will continue our extensive work to counter these efforts and safeguard our democracy from Russia’s interference.” The Russian citizens sanctioned are Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov and Natalya Valeryevna Burlinova .Nancy Pelosi has scheduled a press conference for noon, at which we’re likely to learn of her plans for a House vote on the landmark Inflation Reduction Act announced yesterday, and whether she’s heading to Taiwan as early as tonight on a controversial trip.We’ll bring you her comments when she speaks. You can watch the speaker’s press conference on her YouTube channel here:Secret meetings in a dingy Capitol building basement, a “virtual handshake” across the miles to seal the deal… the Associated Press has published an extraordinary account of how the climate bill agreement between Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer that has set Washington abuzz this week came to be.The size and scope of what Manchin, the rebel West Virginia Democrat who had stalled almost the entirety of Joe Biden’s ambitious first term agenda, was willing to accept to form the Inflation Reduction Act surprised Schumer, the Senate majority leader, the AP says.The news agency account suggests it was partly Manchin’s fears about losing his gavel as chair of the Senate energy committee (he has made millions from the coal industry) that led to his reversal, and willingness to accept climate change provisions he had previously fiercely resisted.“The coal state conservative was being publicly singled out, shamed even, as the sole figure stopping help for a planet in peril,” the AP said, noting the barrage of criticism directed at Manchin from progressive Democrats and climate crisis activists after he blocked Biden’s flagship Build Back Better project. According to the report, compiled with the help several people familiar with private conversations, and granted anonymity to discuss them, Manchin met Schumer secretly in a Capitol basement to get the conversation going.“What a beautiful office,” Schumer reportedly said. “Is it mine?”Over several sessions, the two men and their staffs thrashed out the details of what would become the $739bn Inflation Reduction Act, hailed yesterday by Biden as “the most significant legislation in history to tackle the climate crisis.”They sealed the deal on Wednesday afternoon with a “virtual handshake” on a Zoom call, with Manchin isolating after testing positive for Covid-19.Whether the bill becomes law remains to be seen. Democrats will need every one of their votes in the 50-50 divided Senate, while there will also be Republican opposition in the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she’ll bring members back from their summer break to vote on the bill next week.Regardless of the outcome, just getting to this point was a remarkable achievement in itself, the AP says.Meanwhile, Fortune has this intriguing account of the role of former treasury secretary and Biden critic Larry Summers in the saga, suggesting he may just have “saved Biden’s presidency”.Read more:What’s in the climate bill that Joe Manchin supports – and what isn’t Read moreAn impassioned plea from a 12-year-old girl has gone viral after she spoke to West Virginia Republican lawmakers during a public hearing for an abortion bill that would prohibit the procedure in nearly all cases.On Wednesday, Addison Gardner of Buffalo middle school in Kenova, West Virginia, was among several people who spoke out against a bill that would not only ban abortions in most cases but also allow for physicians who perform abortions to be prosecuted.Addressing the West Virginia house of delegates, Gardner, among about 90 other speakers, was given 45 seconds to plead her case.“My education is very important to me and I plan on doing great things in life. If a man decides that I’m an object and does unspeakable and tragic things to me, am I, a child, supposed to carry and birth another child?” Gardner said.Read more here:‘What about my life?’ West Virginia girl, 12, speaks out against anti-abortion bill Read moreText messages of two of Donald Trump’s chief homeland security officials, Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli, are missing for “a key period” surrounding the former president’s January 6 insurrection, the Washington Post reported Friday.It follows news that secret service texts from about the same time had been mysteriously erased, hampering the House panel’s inquiry into the deadly Capitol riot and Trump’s illegitimate efforts to remain in office.The previously unreported discovery of missing records for the most senior homeland security officials increases the volume of potential evidence that has vanished regarding the time around the Capitol attack, the Post says.🚨🔎🚨BREAKING POGO INVESTIGATION: yet another story of missing text messages at #DHS. This time, text messages to and from three top Trump-era officials at the dept. from early January 2021 are missing. Read the investigation now: https://t.co/AkWxoUu65Z— Project On Government Oversight (@POGOwatchdog) July 29, 2022
The homeland security department told the agency’s inspector general in February that texts of Wolf and Cuccinelli were lost in a “reset” of their government phones when they left their jobs in January 2021 in preparation for the new Biden administration, the newspaper adds.The Post says its source is an internal record obtained by the Project on Government Oversight, whose own report on the disappearance of the messages can be found here.Messages of a third senior department official, the undersecretary of management Randolph “Tex” Alles, a former Secret Service director, are also no longer available because of the reset, according to the Post.In his forthcoming memoir, the former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort describes his travels through the US prison system after being convicted on tax charges – including a stay in a Manhattan facility alongside the financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the Mexican drug baron Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.Manafort also writes that during one transfer between facilities, at a private airfield “somewhere in Ohio”, the sight of “prisoners … being herded in long lines and then separated into other buses and on to … transport planes … reminded me of movies about the Holocaust”.Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced, will be published in the US next month. The Guardian obtained a copy.Manafort’s book is not all quite so startling. But he does make the surprise admission that in 2020, he indirectly advised Trump’s campaign while in home confinement as part of a seven-year sentence – advice he kept secret as he hoped for a presidential pardon.“I didn’t want anything to get in the way of the president’s re-election or, importantly, a potential pardon,” Manafort writes.He got the pardon.Here’s more:Paul Manafort admits indirectly advising Trump in 2020 but keeping it secret in wait for pardon Read moreProsecutors at the justice department are gearing up for a courtroom battle to force the testimony of Donald Trump’s former White House officials, as they pursue their criminal inquiry into his insurrection, a report published Friday by CNN says.The former president is expected to try to invoke executive privilege to prevent his closest associates telling what they know about his conduct and actions following his 2020 election defeat, and efforts to prevent Joe Biden taking office, according to the network.But the department, which has taken a much more aggressive stance in recent weeks, is readying for that fight, CNN says, “the clearest sign yet” that the inquiry has become more narrowly focused on Trump’s conversations and interactions.This week attorney general Merrick Garland promised “justice without fear or favor” for anyone caught up in insurrection efforts and would not rule out charging Trump criminally if that’s where the evidence led.He told NBC’s Lester Holt:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We intend to hold everyone, anyone who was criminally responsible for events surrounding January 6, or any attempt to interfere with the lawful transfer of power from one administration to another, accountable.
That’s what we do. We don’t pay any attention to other issues with respect to that.CNN’s story suggests that prosecutors are acutely aware that Trumpworld insiders who are initially reluctant to testify will be more inclined to do so with a judge’s order compelling it.The network also says Trump’s attempt to maintain secrecy came up over recent federal grand jury testimony of two of former vice-president Mike Pence’s aides, Marc Short and Greg Jacob.Questioning reportedly skirted around issues likely to be covered by executive privilege, with prosecutors having an expectation they could return to those subjects at a later date, CNN’s sources said.The development is set to add more legal pressure on Trump following the announcement of an evidence-sharing “partnership” between the justice department and the parallel House January 6 inquiry, in which transcripts of testimony from at least 20 witnesses are passing to Garland’s investigation.Good morning blog readers, we’ve made it to the end of an extraordinary week in US politics, but we’re not through quite yet. There’s news today of more legal peril for Donald Trump over his efforts to illegitimately reverse his 2020 election defeat.Justice department prosecutors, according to CNN, are preparing a court fight to force Trump insiders to testify over the former president’s conversations and actions around January 6. They expect Trump to try to invoke executive privilege to prevent his former White House officials telling what they know.We’ll have more on that coming up, and will also be looking at the following:
Washington is still abuzz with Senator Joe Manchin’s stunning reversal, leading to the surprise announcement of the Inflation Reduction Act and the chance for Joe Biden to achieve some of his signature climate policy goals.
Text messages around the time of the January 6 Capitol riot “vanished” from the the phones of Trump’s senior homeland security officials Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli, the Washington Post reports.
The Biden administration reportedly has a new plan for Covid-19 boosters, scrapping advice for a summer shot and concentrating instead on pushing next-generation vaccines in the fall.
It could be a busy day in the House with possible votes on gun controls and police funding, before members head off for a six-week break. But the speaker, Nancy Pelosi, could call them back next week for a vote on the Inflation Reduction Act.
The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, has her daily briefing scheduled for 1.30pm. Joe Biden has no public events listed. More

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