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      January 6 hearings: Barr ‘not sure at all’ transition would have happened had DoJ not resisted Trump – live

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      The January 6 committee has concluded its hearing for the day, with the next sessions expected later in July, when House lawmakers return to Washington from a recess.In his closing remarks, committee’s chair Bennie Thompson outlined what the committee had found thus far and what it expected to show in the future..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Up to this point, we’ve shown the inner workings of what was essentially a political coup and attempt to use the powers of the government, from the local level all the way up, to overturn the results of the election. Send fake electors, just say the election was corrupt. Along the way, we saw threats of violence, we saw what some people were willing to do. In a service of the nation, the constitution? No. In service of Donald Trump.
      When the Select Committee continues this series of hearings, we’re going to show how Donald Trump tapped into the threat of violence, how he summoned the mob to Washington, and how after corruption and political pressure failed to keep Donald Trump in office, violence became the last option.The testimony of the justice department officials who gave the bulk of the day’s evidence has concluded, but before they did, Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general, told a tale familiar to those who have watched the committee’s hearings closely: he never heard from Trump on the day of the attack.“I spoke to a number of senior White House officials, but not the president,” Rosen said.What Trump was doing during the attack and who he was talking to are both expected to be focuses of later hearings of the committee.The committee has just unveiled evidence of more Republican congressmen requesting pardons from Trump in his final days in office. NEW on PARDONS: Republican congressman Mo Brooks sent an email on 11 January 2021 seeking pardons for “Every Congressman and Senator who voted to reject the electoral college vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania.”— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 23, 2022
      Trump WH aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Brooks and Gaetz pushed for pardons for every Republican lawmaker who participated in Jan. 6 planning meeting — and Reps. Perry, Biggs, Gohmert asked for pardons. Jordan asked whether White House would pardon members.— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 23, 2022
      The testimony adds to the list of pardon requests that have emerged as the January 6 committee aired its evidence.Capitol attack pardon revelations could spell doom for Trump and alliesRead moreJeffrey Clark came very close to be the acting attorney general, a position in which he could have used his authority to disrupt the certification of Biden’s election win in several states, according to evidence the committee is airing.On January 3, three days before the attack on the Capitol, the White House had already begun referring to Clark as acting attorney general, according to Adam Kinzinger, the Illinois Republican leading the committee’s questioning today.The committee then turned to exploring a meeting between Trump and the leaders of the justice department that day in the Oval Office, in which Trump repeated specific claims of fraud that had been debunked and expressed his will to see Clark take over the department.Richard Donoghue said he warned of mass resignations to follow if Clark took over the department. “You’re gonna lose your entire department leadership. Every single (assistant attorney general) will walk out. Your entire department of leadership will walk out within hours. And I don’t know what happens after that. I don’t know what the United States attorneys are going to do,” Donoghue said. “My guess would be that many of them would have resigned.”Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general in the final weeks of the Trump administration, is now recounting Trump’s attempt to replace him with Jeffrey Clark, who was playing a major roles in his efforts to have states that voted for Biden overturn their results.In a meeting on a Sunday, Rosen said Clark “told me that he would be replacing me,” and had made the atypical request to ask to meet him alone, “because he thought it would be appropriate in light of what was happening to at least offer me, that I couldn’t stay on his his deputy.”“I thought that was preposterous. I told him that was nonsensical,” Rosen said. “There’s no universe where I was going to do that, to stay on and support someone else doing things that were not consistent with what I thought should be done.”However, Clark also said he would turn down Trump’s offer to replace Rosen if the acting attorney general signed the letter disputing the validity of Georgia’s electors for Biden. Richard Donoghue recounted that Rosen made the decisions to begin informing other department officials about the quandary, and almost all the assistant attorney generals said they would resign if Trump replaced Rosen with Clark.As this hearing has unfolded, the justice department officials testifying have said they investigated many of the claims of fraud in the 2020 election brought forward by Trump and his allies. The decision to look into these claims in the weeks after polls closed may be more significant than it appears at first glance.In video testimony aired earlier in the hearing, William Barr, Trump’s attorney general during the election, said be believes that the department’s ability to debunk the false claims of fraud as Trump was making them were essential to allowing Joe Biden to assume office.“I felt the responsible thing to do was to be… in a position to have a view as to whether or not there was fraud,” Barr told investigators.“I sort of shudder to think what the situation would have been if the position of the department was, we’re not even looking at this until after Biden’s in office. I’m not sure we would have had a transition at all.”The committee has returned, and is now asking Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general, about a request from Trump to seize voting machines.“We had seen nothing improper with regard to the voting machines,” Rosen said he replied, noting that investigators had looked into allegations the machines gave fraudulent results and found nothing wrong. “And so that was not something that was appropriate to do … I don’t think there was legal authority either.”Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, is recounting a meeting with Trump, in which he pushed him unsuccessfully to seize voting machines. By the end, “The president again was getting very agitated. And he said, ‘People tell me I should just get rid of both of you. I should just remove you and make a change in the leadership with Jeff Clark, and maybe something will finally get done,’” Donoghue said.Donoghue said he responded: “Mr President, you should have the leadership that you want. But understand the United States justice department functions on facts and evidence, and then those are not going to change. So you can have whatever leadership you want, but the department’s position is not going to change.”The committee is now in recess, but before they finished, Richard Donoghue described his reaction when he first learned of Jeffrey Clark’s proposed letter to the Georgia legislature asking them to convene to declare alternate electoral college voters.“I had to read both the email and the attached letter twice to make sure I really understood what he was proposing because it was so extreme to me I had a hard time getting my head around it initially,” Donoghue said. He responded in writing to Clark’s letter, saying that its allegations were “not based on facts,” and, in his view, “for the department to insert itself into the political process this way, I think, would have had grave consequences for the country. It may very well have spiraled us into a constitutional crisis. And I wanted to make sure that he understood the gravity of the situation because he didn’t seem to really appreciate it.”Clark himself made a brief appearance in video testimony the committee played before it took its break, responding to questions by asserting his fifth amendment rights and executive privilege.The committee will reconvene in a few minutes.One name that’s coming up a lot in this hearing is Scott Perry, the Pennsylvania Republican congressman who the committee said took part in Trump’s plan to pressure the justice department, and in particular install Jeff Clark at its helm.The committee just showed text messages between Perry and Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, which showed the lawmaker encouraging Meadows to work on promoting Clark. Richard Donoghue also detailed a phone call from Perry where the congressman claimed fraud in the results in Pennsylvania from the 2020 election – which the justice department determined unfounded.The committee had sought documents and requested an interview with Perry last year, but the Republican refused to comply. Last month, Perry was among a group of congressmen subpoenaed by the committee.Capitol attack panel subpoenas five Republicans in unprecedented stepRead moreRichard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, is outlining his efforts to convince the president that the justice department could not interfere with a state’s election.“States run their elections. We are not quality control for the states,” he recalled explaining to Trump. “The bottom line was, if a state ran their election in such a way that it was defective, that is to the state or Congress to correct, it is not for the justice department to step in.”But Trump wanted something simpler, Donoghue said.“That’s not what I’m asking you to do,” Donoghue told the committee Trump said after he explained the department’s position. “Just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen,” the president said.Today’s hearing is focusing on the inner workings of the justice department, but as in previous sessions, the committee has tried to make sure the insurrection isn’t far from viewers’ minds.Case in point: lawmakers just aired video from the day of the attack showing marchers chanting “Do your job!” outside the justice department — evidence that Trump’s most ardent supporters were well aware of the president’s attempts to push government lawyers to interfere with Joe Biden’s victory.But as justice department officials tell it, they never believed in Trump’s fraud claims. Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, said Trump lawyer Pat Cipollone described the letter Clark wanted to send for Trump as a “murder-suicide pact. It’s going to damage everyone who touches it.”The committee’s top Republican Liz Cheney is offering more details about the actions of justice department official Jeffrey Clark, who had his house raided today by federal investigators.According to Cheney, Clark and another justice department lawyer drafted a letter addressed to the Georgia state legislature, which would have said the department had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states, including the state of Georgia”, and that the legislature should convene and consider approving a new slate of electors. Joe Biden had won Georgia, but Trump made baseless allegations of fraud in the polls, and the new electors would have presumably given him the state’s electoral votes.“In fact, Donald Trump knew this was a lie,” Cheney said. “The Department of Justice had already informed the president of the United States repeatedly that its investigations had found no fraud sufficient to overturn the results of the 2020 election.”Cheney said Clark had met with Trump privately and agreed to help him sway these states’ legislatures without telling his bosses at the justice department. But Cheney said Clark’s superiors – who are the witnesses testifying today – refused to sign it. That was when Trump began considering installing Clark at the helm at the justice department – which he never ended up doing. The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection has started its fifth hearing, which will focus on Donald Trump’s efforts to get the justice department to go along with his plans to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Testifying in the chamber will be:
      Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general for the final weeks of Trump’s term, including during the attack on the Capitol.
      Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, who appeared in a video aired at the conclusion of Tuesday’s hearing threatening to resign if Trump appointed Jeffrey Clark to head the justice department.
      Steven Engel, the former assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel.
      We’re about 10 minutes away from the start of today’s January 6 hearing, which my colleague Lauren Gambino reports will offer new evidence of how Trump pressured the justice department to take part in his plot to overturn the 2020 election:The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection plans to present new evidence on Thursday about Donald Trump’s brazen attempts to pressure the justice department to overturn the 2020 presidential election that he lost, aides said.After exhausting his legal options and being rebuffed by state and local elections officials, the president turned to the justice department to declare the election corrupt despite no evidence of mass voter fraud, the nine-member panel will seek to show in their fifth and final hearing of the month.Testifying from the Cannon Caucus Room on Capitol Hill are Jeffrey Rosen, the former acting attorney general; Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general; and Steven Engel, the former assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel.Capitol attack panel to show how Trump pressured DoJ to overturn electionRead more More

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      A Way Out of No Way review: Raphael Warnock, symbol of hope for America

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      A Way Out of No Way review: Raphael Warnock, symbol of hope for America The Democratic Georgia senator has delivered an inspiring memoir, well-timed as the US tears itself apart We live in an age of miracles but we spend very little time noticing that. After four years of Donald Trump, two years of Covid and four months of vicious war in Ukraine, it’s hardly surprising many feel overwhelmed by seemingly relentless bad news.Seen and Unseen review: George Floyd, Black Twitter and the fight for racial justiceRead moreRaphael Warnock’s inspiring memoir arrives just in time to remind us that even in our darkest days, America offers at least as much hope as despair.Warnock was at the center of the most recent set of miracles, which came about in large part because of the registration and activism of Black voters in key states in 2020. In Georgia it began when a former state house minority leader, Stacey Abrams, identified 800,000 eligible but unregistered voters and formed the New Georgia Project to get as many on the rolls as possible.Warnock joined Abrams’ campaign. Despite the outrageous efforts of then secretary of state (now governor) Brian Kemp, who falsely accused them of voter fraud, by 2019 they had registered 500,000 voters. That made three miracles possible: Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry Georgia in 28 years and Warnock and Jon Ossoff became the first Black and Jewish senators elected from the state, miraculously giving Democrats (tenuous) control of the Senate.Nothing is more filled with hope than the trajectory of Warnock’s life. He was the 11th of 12 children. His father made his living collecting scrap metal and preaching while his mother was a homemaker until she became the preacher in the family.Warnock’s life is proof that the federal government has done important things to level the playing field in crucial ways. Warnock got his first leg-up through Head Start, one of the greatest legacies of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Then he got enrolled in Upward Bound, a federally financed summer college preparatory program that strengthened his confidence “and provided the path for the pursuit of my dreams”. For a kid growing up in a neighborhood where no one had a bachelor’s degree, this “demystified the idea of college and gave me a clear vision of what was possible”.But the advantages he started with were even more important, especially a mom who is “a preacher with a God-given sense of spiritual discernment”, who “could read people and situations better than anyone I’ve ever known”. Warnock grew up in a housing project devastated by crack and Aids, “but in a place where there were too many missing fathers, I had two devoted parents at home, and they kept church at the center of our lives”.His parents never let him forget that while we live in a nation “in need of moral surgery”, with “hope, hard work, and the people by our side anything is possible”.The college he chose was Morehouse, a vital Black institution with alumni justly famous for “world-changing accomplishments” including the former Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson, civil rights leader Julian Bond, Spike Lee, theologian Howard Thurman and of course Martin Luther King Jr.Although Warnock was born a year after King’s assassination, “more than anybody or anything else” it was King who “recruited” him to Morehouse.Warnock is particularly proud that he can trace his own development directly to the greatest American civil rights leader of the 20th century. During college he interned at Sixth Avenue Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, where he was mentored by the Rev John Thomas Porter, who had been a pulpit assistant to Martin Luther King Jr and his father.The civil rights pioneer Jesse Jackson was another role model, one of many “courageous souls” who laid “the groundwork for candidates of color and women to run and win high political offices presumed out of reach”. These pioneers showed Warnock “that to be effective, you have to be willing to put your body in the game – show up, give what you have (your time, your money, your skills), and do what you’re asking of others”.Morehouse was the beginning of Warnock’s introduction to the elite Black establishment nourished by historically Black colleges and universities and Black churches. While greedy, racist born-again Christians get most of our attention, this book reminds us there is another religious network which has been hugely important to America’s progress, strengthening and nurturing the Black community.A brilliant natural preacher who gave his first sermon at 11, a sincere servant of God, Warlock had a meteoritic rise, going from Morehouse to Union theological seminary in New York and then to Manhattan’s most famous Black house of worship, the Abyssinian Baptist church, where he quickly became an intern minister. There he had another crucial mentor, the Rev Dr Calvin O Butts III, an alumnus of both schools Warnock attended.Race at the Top: white and Asian Americans and the push for equity in educationRead moreAt 31, Warnock became senior pastor at Douglas Memorial Community church in Baltimore, where he demonstrated remarkable courage by starting with an attack on church homophobia. He built his installation ceremony around activities designed to heighten HIV/Aids awareness, “to signal to my church … the kind of ministry we would build together”.Just a couple of years later, in 2005, he got the greatest honor of all when King’s Ebenezer Baptist church elected him senior pastor, by the vote of 90% of the congregation. Sixteen years later, he was a United States senator.May Warnock’s unlikely success and irrepressible optimism be enough to remind all of us that the only thing needed to rescue our beleaguered democracy is a genuine willingness by the enlightened citizens who are still a majority to put our bodies back in the game. If the rest of us can be half as courageous as Warnock is, he reminds us, we can still “build a future that honors the sacrifices of those who came before us and is worthy of the promise that lives in all our children”.
      A Way Out of No Way: A Memoir of Truth, Transformation and the New American Story is published in the US by Penguin
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      Ex-Trump adviser Peter Navarro pleads not guilty to contempt charges in January 6 case – as it happened

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      Then there are those who refuse to cooperate with the January 6 committee, such as Peter Navarro, a former top adviser on trade to Trump. He’s just pleaded not guilty to two charges of contempt of Congress over his refusal to provide documents or testify to the House panel, Reuters reports.Navarro was indicted and taken into custody earlier this month on the charges, despite his insistence that executive privilege protected him from cooperating with the probe.As The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has reported:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Navarro was referred to the justice department for criminal contempt of Congress by the full House of Representatives in April after he entirely ignored a subpoena issued to him in February demanding that he produce documents and appear for a deposition.
      The top White House trade adviser to Trump was deeply involved in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election from the very start, the Guardian has previously reported, deputizing his aides to help produce reports on largely debunked claims of election fraud.
      Navarro was also in touch with Trump’s legal team led by Rudy Giuliani and operatives working from a Trump “war room” at the Willard hotel in Washington to stop Biden’s election certification from taking place on January 6 – a plan he christened the “Green Bay Sweep”.Trump aide Peter Navarro ordered to testify before grand jury over January 6Read moreThanks for joining the US politics blog for another day of news from Washington and across the United States. The ongoing January 6 hearings were a major story this week as were the Senate negotiations over gun control, both of which will continue next week.Here’s a recap of what happened today:
      Ex-Trump advisor Peter Navarro pled not guilty to two charges of contempt of Congress in relation to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by extremist supporters of the former president who were trying, in vain, to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.
      Trump told his own version of his interactions with vice-president Mike Pence in the run-up to January 6, denying that he’d insulted his running mate or pressured him to overturn the 2020 election.
      Speaking of Pence, he gave an interview to The Wall Street Journal and hinted he was considering a run for president in 2024 — which Trump has said he’s thinking of doing as well.
      John Cornyn, the Republican senator trying to reach a gun control compromise with Democrats, was booed when he went back home to Texas to speak at a state party convention. Many in the state are apparently not a fan of his negotiations on firearms legislation.
      The Food and Drug administration approved Covid-19 vaccines for the youngest Americans, a development Biden cheered.
      Monday is the Juneteenth federal holiday and thus, the blog will return on Tuesday, with the supreme court set to release another batch of decisions at 10 am eastern time, and the January 6 committee meeting later in the day.Legendary journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein reunited today to mark the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, the event that came to define their careers and resulted in President Richard Nixon’s eventual resignation.But much of today’s discussion at the DC headquarters of The Washington Post, the newspaper that published Woodward and Bernstein’s history-making scoops 50 years ago, focused on more recent events.Bernstein drew a direct comparison between Nixon and Donald Trump, who he described as “a seditious, criminal president”.Pointing to the January 6 insurrection, Bernstein said Trump “staged an attempted coup, such as you would see in a junta [or] in a banana republic”.“But one of the things that’s developing that’s very different than in Watergate is that the wife of a supreme court justice is now part of the story,” Bernstein said, referring to Ginni Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of Justice Clarence Thomas.The January 6 committee has obtained messages showing Thomas communicated with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and conservative lawyer John Eastman about efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.“It looks very much like — and certainly is the opinion of a number of people on that committee — that she is caught up in the conspiracy and very likely is a co-conspirator,” Bernstein said.Noting that Thomas has indicated she will cooperate with the committee’s requests for information, Woodward said of the committee members, “They’re treading very carefully, and I think wisely.”Texas senator John Cornyn has the attention of Democrats in Washington for being willing to negotiate over a gun control compromise, but those efforts have apparently earned him the ire of some of his fellow Republicans back home.Here’s a clip of how his speech went at the state party’s convention:US Sen John Cornyn gets viciously booed during much of his speech here at the Republican Party of Texas Convention. Here’s his closing remarks and the cascade of boos. pic.twitter.com/m2Hua9WdrV— Jeremy Wallace (@JeremySWallace) June 17, 2022
      Cornyn is the lead Republican negotiator on the gun control compromise, which Democrats have acknowledged is nowhere near as strong as they would like it to be, but better than nothing when it comes to responding to the mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo New York.The Houston Chronicle has a look at the stakes for Cornyn back home, where his detractors accuse him of violating their “God given rights.”In the telling of the January 6 committee’s witnesses, Trump reasoned with, pressured and finally berated Mike Pence in the lead-up to the certification of the 2020 election, all in a failed effort to stop Joe Biden from taking the White House.Speaking in Nashville, the former president has offered his take on what happened between him and Pence in the closing weeks of their term:Trump: “I never called Mike Pence a wimp. I never called him a wimp. Mike Pence had a chance to be great. He had a chance to be frankly historic… But Mike did not have the courage to act… Mike was afraid of whatever he was afraid of.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      Trump: They said I told Pence to decide the election. “I never said that. It’s not true. I wanted him to send it up to the legislatures, so it goes back to Pennsylvania, state legislatures.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      Trump has long insisted, with no evidence, that he won the electoral college in 2020, but here he is now claiming that he also won the popular vote. In reality, he was defeated by an even bigger margin than in 2016.Trump: “We did much better in the second election than the first. Millions and millions more votes… They say we lost. Don’t believe it.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      The committee aired testimony yesterday that on the morning of January 6, Trump called Pence and used harsh language — including what one witness said was the “p word” — to get him to go along with his plot to prevent the certification of the 2020 vote. Trump has a different take:Trump: “I said to Mike, ‘If you do this, you could be Thomas Jefferson’. And after all it went down I looked at him one day and said, ‘Mike, you’re not Thomas Jefferson’.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      On stage now at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s event in Nashville, Trump has condemned the January 6 committee in language that’s familiar to anyone who remembers his time in the White House.The Guardian’s David Smith is there:Trump on investigations: “It’s the same people with the same words. If you just insert the same words with ‘January 6’ instead of ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      Trump on January 6 committee: “Every one of them is a radical left hater. Hates all of you. Hates me even more but I’m just trying to help you out.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      Trump: “They’re knowingly spinning a fake and phony narrative in a chilling attempt” to hurt opponents. “Video that’s been deceptively edited.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      Trump: “What you’re seeing is a complete and total lie. It’s a complete and total fraud.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      Trump: “They have their narrative and they know we’re leading in every single poll.. Crazy Liz Cheney.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      Republican Cheney’s opposition to Trump has particularly high stakes for her continued career as the lone House representative for Wyoming. She faces a primary challenger endorsed by the former president who appears to be beating her in opinion polls.The Wall Street Journal has secured an interview with Trump’s vice-president Mike Pence, the star of yesterday’s January 6 hearing, though he himself didn’t attend.The interview contains a bit of news: Pence is thinking about running for the Republican nomination in 2024 — which would likely put him up against Trump, whom he hasn’t spoken to in “about a year”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Mr. Pence said his own decision on whether to mount another campaign, likely to come in early 2023, will be based on prayer with his wife and conversations with friends, not on whether Mr. Trump decides to run.
      “We’ll go where we’re called,” Mr. Pence said. “But I won’t let anybody else make that decision for me.”The article shows Pence is otherwise returning to his mainstream Republican roots, stumping for candidates such as Ohio governor Mike DeWine, Georgia governor Brian Kemp and Arizona governor Doug Ducey — all of whom clashed with Trump. On Monday, Pence will be in Chicago for a speech on economic policy, a potent attack line against president Joe Biden, given how high inflation is in the United States.As we await Trump’s speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s event in Nashville, take a look at this report from Hugo Lowell on tension between the January 6 committee and federal prosecutors, who would like to take a look at what the congressional probe has found:Tensions between the US justice department and the House of Representatives January 6 select committee have escalated after federal prosecutors complained that their inability to access witness transcripts was hampering criminal investigations into rioters who stormed the Capitol.The complaint that came from the heads of the justice department’s national security and criminal divisions and the US attorney for Washington Matthew Graves showed a likely collision course for the parallel congressional and criminal probes into the Capitol attack.“The interviews the select committee conducted are not just potentially relevant to our overall criminal investigations, but are likely relevant to specific prosecutions,” Graves wrote, alongside assistant attorneys general Kenneth Polite and Matthew Olsen.“The select committee’s failure to grant the department access to these transcripts complicates the department’s ability to investigate and prosecute those who engaged in criminal conduct in relation to the January 6 attack on the Capitol.”Capitol attack prosecutors press January 6 committee for transcripts Read moreIt looks like the gun control negotiations aren’t going as smoothly as expected in the Senate.GOP source familiar with gun talks says “it’s going to be a “long time before bill text is released.” Source blames D staff “for trying to relitigate and reopen issues in the bill text that have already been agreed to in principle at the member level.” Dem source disputes that— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 17, 2022
      Dems believe they are still making progress, and the Dem source they are still going through the back-and-forth of translating principles they agreed upon into detailed legislative text. Talks between members and at the staff level are expected to continue over the weekend,— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 17, 2022
      But even if negotiators reach an agreement on bill text over the weekend, the Senate has very little time to process a guns package by the end of the week. The chamber is not in session until Tuesday and the Senate is expected to begin a two-week recess at week’s end.— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 17, 2022
      Senators want a bill passed before the July 4th recess because they are worried that allowing it to hang over two weeks while members are back home will halt any momentum the talks have enjoyed.Boyfriend loophole and funding for states on red flag laws need to be resolved— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 17, 2022
      Recall that the week began with news of a compromise reached between Democrats and Republicans to pass legislation in response to the mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York.It appeared to have momentum. The Senate’s Democratic leader said he would put the legislation up for a vote as soon as it was written, while the chamber’s top Republican Mitch McConnell said he would support it, boosting its chances of passage since it will need the support of at least 10 of his party’s lawmakers to pass. But now it’s Friday, and here we are.The January 6 committee has announced it will hold its fourth hearing next Tuesday at 1 pm eastern time.New: Jan. 6 committee formally announces fourth hearing will take place on June 21 at 1p ET— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 17, 2022
      At the third hearing held on Thursday, committee members detailed the efforts by Trump to pressure his vice-president Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election at the joint sitting of Congress set for January 6, 2021.‘System nearly failed’: US democracy was left hanging by the thread of Pence’s defianceRead moreAs communities across the state grapple with a historic bout of flooding that has imperiled the water supply of its largest city, many in Montana are wondering: where is the governor?State officials have only said that Greg Gianforte was on a planned trip abroad, but wouldn’t mention the location. The answer appears to be Italy’s Tuscany region, according to Newsy: .css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Newsy obtained a photo of Gianforte and the first lady at a restaurant in Casole d’Elsa, which is a small village in the Tuscany region of Italy. The photo is time-stamped at 9:31 p.m. local time Wednesday.
      A source that wishes to remain anonymous sent us a photo of the couple dining with multiple other people. The governor’s office confirmed Gianforte was out of the country when it was noticed his lieutenant governor signed a statewide emergency declaration as acting governor.
      A spokesperson said he and the first lady left late last week on a long-planned personal trip, but details about the timeline and the destination were left out.The Montana Free Press reports on how cagey the state has been about the whereabouts of Gianforte, a Republican elected in 2020:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} A spokesperson for the governor’s office has said only that Gianforte left the country last week, before the Yellowstone River rose to take out massive chunks of infrastructure and isolate entire communities in Park, Carbon and Stillwater counties, on a “long-scheduled personal trip” with his wife, Susan Gianforte. But the office has declined to say what country Gianforte is visiting and specifically when the governor will be back in Montana.
      “The governor is returning early and as quickly as possible,” gubernatorial spokesperson Brooke Strokye said in a statement Wednesday afternoon in response to repeated questions from the media.
      The governor’s whereabouts have been an increasing topic of speculation on social media after Lt. Gov. Kristen Juras signed a declaration of disaster Tuesday in response to the flooding in southern Montana.
      “The fact that [the flooding] is so extreme and his office has just been pretty recalcitrant about where he is and what’s going on is not great,” said Eric Austin, a public administration professor at Montana State University who teaches a class on government leadership and ethics.
      There are legitimate reasons why a public official would not share their location during international travel, Austin said, but during a natural disaster, “perceptually, that doesn’t really help.”According to NBC Montana, Gianforte was supposed to return to the state on Thursday.Our David Smith is at the Faith and Freedom Road to Majority conference in Nashville, Tennessee, a fascinating gathering of parts of the Republican party.Donald Trump is speaking there a day after he was accused on Capitol Hill of endangering his own vice president’s life, calling Mike Pence the p-word (about which Stephen Colbert cogitates) and “setting the mob” on him, per the House select committee.Senator Rick Scott, formerly Florida governor, is there and speaking. here’s Smith on the spot reporting via Twitter. He’ll have a dispatch later.Scott: “The American people are going to give a complete butt kicking to the Democrats this November. But after we win, then what?”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      That’s mild.Scott: The Biden administration has done something new. “They’ve figured out how to merge radical leftwing policies with gross incompetence… We want our freedom back. It’s time to rescue America… It’s time to take this country back.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      At Faith & Freedom Road to Majority conference in Nashville. Senator Rick Scott: The woke left have an agenda to end the American experiment. “They want to replace freedom with control… They’re the modern day version of book burners.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      Rick Scott earlier this week.Smith on Pence:Pence the ‘hero’ who foiled Trump’s plot – could it lead to a 2024 run?Read moreAnd Colbert:Ivanka’s former chief of staff revealed that T**** called his VP Mike Pence “the P word.” pic.twitter.com/6IZ1r0m4EG— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) June 17, 2022
      It’s been a busy morning in US political news, though not as frenzied as some. There’s more to come and Donald Trump is due to speak at the top of the hour at the extraordinarily-named Faith & Freedom Road to Majority conference in Nashville, Tennessee. A day after he was repeatedly accused of breaking the law from both right and left at the third January 6 hearing into the 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol.Here’s where things stand:
      Joe Biden has cheered the Food and Drug Administration’s decision today to authorize Covid-19 vaccines for children younger than five years old, the last group of Americans that didn’t have access to the jabs.
      The Iowa supreme court issued a ruling that would make it easier for the state to curtail or ban abortion procedures outright, days before the US Supreme Court is set to rule in a pivotal abortion case out of Mississippi that includes a request to overturn Roe v Wade.
      Ex-Trump advisor Peter Navarro pleads not guilty to two charges of contempt of Congress in relation to the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by extremist supporters of Donald Trump trying, in vain, to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.
      The US president gives a rare one-on-one interview, to the Associated Press and talks about the climate crisis, Americans’ low morale in a sea of coronavirus and division, says a recession is not inevitable and, essentially, stakes his presidency on continued support for Ukraine’s against-the-odds resistance to the Russian invasion, warning: “If we let Russia roll and Putin roll, he wouldn’t stop.” More

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      ‘I’m through talking’: top Republican negotiator walks out of Senate gun talks

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      ‘I’m through talking’: top Republican negotiator walks out of Senate gun talksJohn Cornyn says he is heading back to Texas, dimming hope of vote on bipartisan gun safety bill before July recess The lead Republican negotiator in US Senate dialogue toward a bipartisan gun safety bill walked out of the talks on Thursday, dimming the likelihood of a vote on the legislation before senators leave for a two-week July 4 recess.Trump a ‘clear and present danger to US democracy’, conservative judge warnsRead moreSenator John Cornyn told reporters that he had not abandoned the negotiations, but he was returning to Texas amid difficulty reaching agreement.“It’s fish or cut bait,” he said. “I don’t know what they have in mind, but I’m through talking.” Other senators in the huddle remained inside the room.The bipartisan group has been working on a deal to curb gun violence since a gunman killed 19 school children and two adults in the small city of Uvalde, south Texas, just 10 days after a separate gunman killed 10 people in an act of stated racist violence against Black people in Buffalo, New York.The group of lawmakers, gathered by Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy, announced a framework on measures to curb gun violence on Sunday. It did not go as far as Democrats, including US president Joe Biden, had sought, but would still be the most significant federal action to combat gun violence to emerge from Congress in years if passed.But in the days since, the talks have become bogged down in disagreements over two main provisions: how to provide incentives to states to create so-called red flag laws, in which guns can be temporarily taken away from people deemed dangerous, and the “boyfriend loophole,” allowing authorities to block abusive spouses from buying firearms, but does not cover people who aren’t married.Cornyn, whose home state of Texas does not have a red-flag law and is considered unlikely to enact one, wants the funding for that provision to cover other efforts towards tackling mental illness issues, such as “crisis intervention programs.”Cornyn said earlier on Thursday negotiators would need to reach agreement that day to have legislation ready in time for a vote next week.Midterm elections that decide which party controls the congressional chambers are in November, making the time window to pass any new legislation ever narrower.TopicsUS gun controlUS politicsRepublicansUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

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      Fauci tests positive for Covid with mild symptoms – as it happened

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      Steve Bannon, former president Donald Trump’s one-time campaign manager and senior White House strategist, will face trial on contempt of Congress charges, a federal judge has ruled.BREAKING: Judge Carl Nichols DENIES Steve Bannon’s motion to dismiss the indictment against him for contempt of Congress. Trial set for July 18. Story to come.— Jordan Fischer (@JordanOnRecord) June 15, 2022
      Bannon was indicted for the offense last year after he refused to cooperate with a subpoena from the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. He pled not guilty to the charges, which are rarely used and punishable by up to a year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.Following the ruling, Bannon vowed to call the committee members to testify at his trial.BANNON used the post-ruling avail to say he expects his lawyer to call members of the Jan. 6 select committee to testify at his trial. That seems…highly unlikely. pic.twitter.com/ZG46vPUjrW— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) June 15, 2022
      Steve Bannon pleads not guilty to criminal contempt of CongressRead moreJudges in Washington were busy today. The supreme court started Wednesday off with a slew of rulings that touched on the farthest reaches of federal law, while a federal judge ruled Trump confidante Steve Bannon will have to stand trial on contempt of Congress charges and another judge found two January 6 rioters guilty at a bench trial. Here’s what else happened today:
      The Federal Reserve made its biggest rate hike in nearly 30 years to fight runaway inflation.
      The Biden administration announced another $1 billion in weapons for Ukraine as it tries to defend cities in the east from Russia’s advance.
      The justice department has brought federal hate crimes charges against the alleged shooter at a Buffalo supermarket who killed 10 Black people in a racist attack.
      Questions continue to swirl over the actions of Republican House representative Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, after the January 6 committee released video evidence of a man who accompanied the lawmaker on a tour taking photos of Capitol hallways and a security checkpoint the day before the insurrection.
      A special election in Texas ended with bad news for the Democrats when voters sent a Republican to represent their district for the first time. GOP voters also embraced a number of candidates who endorsed Trump’s “big lie.”
      The US politics live blog returns Thursday at 9 am eastern time, ahead of another hearing of the January 6 committee.The January 6 committee hasn’t publicly said whether they’ll recommend prosecuting Trump, but CNN reports that its members agree the former president committed a crime by acting to stop Joe Biden from entering the White House. The question is, what to do about it?From CNN’s article:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The internal debate, which has heated up in recent weeks, spilled into the open on Monday night when the committee’s chairman, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, repeatedly told a group of reporters at the Capitol that the committee would not be issuing any criminal referrals.
      “No, that’s not our job,” Thompson said when pressed.
      Thompson’s off-the-cuff remarks sparked an immediate response from several of his fellow committee members who rushed to knock down the notion they would not be pursuing criminal charges.
      “The January 6th Select Committee has not issued a conclusion regarding potential criminal referrals. We will announce a decision on that at an appropriate time,” GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the vice chair of the committee, tweeted 15 minutes after Thompson’s comments.
      Sources tell CNN Cheney is a leading voice among those members who believe the committee should issue a criminal referral.
      Committee member Elaine Luria, a Virginia Democrat, took it one step further, tweeting Monday night that the committee has yet to vote on whether it will recommend criminal referrals but made clear she believes “if criminal activity occurred, it is our responsibility to report that activity to the DOJ.”
      In a video released Tuesday, Cheney said that Trump likely violated two criminal statues in his efforts to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count lawful electoral votes.
      The episode Monday night illustrates that after nearly a year of work, the committee remains divided over what is likely the most pressing question it faces: whether to seek criminal charges against Trump based on the evidence it has uncovered.Also under pressure as the committee airs its evidence is attorney general Merrick Garland, who could order the opening of an investigation into Trump. He’s only said that he’s watching the hearings, but Democrats want him to do more than watch.Garland says he is watching January 6 hearings amid pressure to investigate TrumpRead moreTwo more January 6 rioters have been found guilty by a federal judge today, including one who jabbed Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman with a flagpole.Kevin Seefried and his adult son Hunter Seefried opted for a bench trial before judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee who sits in Washington. Goodman, who was hailed for diverting the rioters away from lawmakers, testified at their trial.Reminder:Kevin Seefried === > pic.twitter.com/Igf0bgZzyK— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) June 15, 2022
      Mixed verdict coming here for kevin Seefried’s son Hunter NOT GUILTY – of some destruction charges. Judge says it wasn’t shown Hunter smashed window. But GUILTY – of disorderly and entering restricted building— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) June 15, 2022
      But as for Kevin Seefried .. who carried the Confederate flag …. GUILTY of top charge of obstruction Also guilty of other charges: disorderly, entering restricted building Among many other things, judge cites Seefried jabbing Confederate flag at Capitol officer.— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) June 15, 2022
      Federal courts are working through the many cases of people who participated in the January 6 insurrection, with a former West Virginia city councilmember sentenced yesterday to a brief stint in jail for breaking into the Capitol.The primaries held yesterday in states across the country confirmed that the spirit of Donald Trump is very much still alive in the Republican party. My colleague Lauren Gambino reports that voters embraced candidates who campaigned on the former president’s “big lie” about the 2020 election:In pivotal primary races from Nevada to South Carolina on Tuesday, Republican voters chose candidates who fervently embraced Donald Trump’s lie about a stolen election, prompting warnings from Democrats that US democracy will be at stake in the November elections.Victories of pro-Trump candidates in Nevada set the stage for match-ups between election-deniers and embattled Democrats in a state both parties see as critical in the midterms.In South Carolina, a vote to impeach Trump for inciting the January 6 insurrection proved one Republican’s undoing while another survived the former president’s wrath to win the nomination.Pro-Trump Republicans’ primary wins raise alarm about US democracyRead moreMore than two years after he became the public face of the US government’s response to the world’s largest Covid-19 outbreak, top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci has tested positive for the coronavirus, National Institutes of Health (NIH) said.“He is fully vaccinated and has been boosted twice. He is currently experiencing mild symptoms. Dr. Fauci will isolate and continue to work from his home,” according to the NIH.“He has not recently been in close contact with President Biden or other senior government officials,” the NIH said, noting Fauci will return to the institutes when he tests negative.The 81-year-old is a frequent guest in media outlets and in Congress, and also the target of ire from people opposed to Covid-19 restrictions, particularly Trump supporters. Fauci has, in turn, criticized the former president for his handling of the pandemic’s early months.Fauci says he will resign if Trump retakes the presidency in 2024Read moreOn the complete opposite end of the pay spectrum from the world of Washington politics, The Guardian’s Dani Anguiano has delved into a new American Civil Liberties Union report that has found people who work while imprisoned are often paid literally pennies for their labor, or not at all:Incarcerated workers in the US produce at least $11bn in goods and services annually but receive just pennies an hour in wages for their prison jobs, according to a new report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).Nearly two-thirds of all prisoners in the US, which imprisons more of its population than any other country in the world, have jobs in state and federal prisons. That figure amounts to roughly 800,000 people, researchers estimated in the report, which is based on extensive public records requests, questionnaires and interviews with incarcerated workers.ACLU researchers say the findings outlined in Wednesday’s report raise concerns about the systemic exploitation of prisoners, who are compelled to work sometimes difficult and dangerous jobs without basic labor protections and little or no training while making close to nothing.US prison workers produce $11bn worth of goods and services a year for pittanceRead moreRemember Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager in 2020 who told the January 6 committee he never believed the election was stolen, and implied he had somehow cut ties with the former president? Stepien played a major role in Monday’s hearing of the committee investigating the attack on the Capitol, but HuffPost has discovered that Stepien seems to still have plenty of ties to Trump:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Yet Stepien never really left Trump, with his firm receiving $20,000 in both February and March of 2021, and as much as $30,000 and no less than $10,000 in every month since. His work for Trump to this day, according to an adviser to the former president, is to coordinate Trump’s political strategy, including Trump’s efforts to defeat candidates who challenge his false claim that the election was stolen from him or, worse, voted to impeach him for inciting the Jan. 6 attack.
      Each week, Stepien is on an hourlong call with other top Trump aides, including Dan Scavino, Jason Miller, and Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. The last such call was June 6; Monday’s call was canceled because it conflicted with the Jan. 6 committee hearing.
      “He’s trying to tell the world he quit,” the Trump adviser, who is familiar with Trump’s political operation, said on condition of anonymity. “He has been on every call since Jan. 6. He gets paid every month to do that. … I mean, come on, man.”The article doesn’t say how Stepien’s relationship with Trump is following the airing of the campaign manager’s testimony to the committee.The Federal Reserve has announced its largest increase rate increase in almost 30 years as it looks to tame inflation by reducing demand. Dominic Rushe explains what the central bank’s decision means:With soaring inflation and the shadow of recession hanging over the United States, the Federal Reserve announced a 0.75 percentage-point increase in interest rates on Wednesday – the largest hike since 1994.In a statement after a two-day meeting, the Fed said “overall economic activity appears to have picked up after edging down in the first quarter”.But it warned that “inflation remains elevated”, and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia had created “additional upward pressure on inflation and [is] weighing on global economic activity. In addition, Covid-related lockdowns in China are likely to exacerbate supply-chain disruptions.”It added: “The committee is highly attentive to inflation risks.”Federal Reserve announces biggest interest rate hike since 1994Read moreSteve Bannon, former president Donald Trump’s one-time campaign manager and senior White House strategist, will face trial on contempt of Congress charges, a federal judge has ruled.BREAKING: Judge Carl Nichols DENIES Steve Bannon’s motion to dismiss the indictment against him for contempt of Congress. Trial set for July 18. Story to come.— Jordan Fischer (@JordanOnRecord) June 15, 2022
      Bannon was indicted for the offense last year after he refused to cooperate with a subpoena from the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. He pled not guilty to the charges, which are rarely used and punishable by up to a year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.Following the ruling, Bannon vowed to call the committee members to testify at his trial.BANNON used the post-ruling avail to say he expects his lawyer to call members of the Jan. 6 select committee to testify at his trial. That seems…highly unlikely. pic.twitter.com/ZG46vPUjrW— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) June 15, 2022
      Steve Bannon pleads not guilty to criminal contempt of CongressRead moreJoe Biden’s optimism persists. In fact, he has “never been more optimistic about our future”, he often tells the public.Today on Twitter is no exception and it’s because of America’s trade unions, the perseverance and revival of which was a strong theme during his 2020 election campaign to restore a Democrat to the White House after Donald Trump’s corrosive one-term presidency.Wall Street didn’t build this country.The middle class built this country.And unions built the middle class.— President Biden (@POTUS) June 15, 2022
      Biden was in Philly yesterday with organizers, and is still aglow about it.It was great to be with AFL-CIO yesterday in Philadelphia. These folks are a big reason why I’ve never been more optimistic about our future. Unions have never let this country down, and we’re going to keep building a better America – together. pic.twitter.com/NT1Jqmcd5h— President Biden (@POTUS) June 15, 2022
      Joe Biden has freshly reaffirmed American commitment to Ukraine’s efforts against the Russian invasion as US and NATO allies meet in Europe amid talk of cracks opening in the west’s resolve.The US president announced more aid for Ukraine, $1bn more in military aid and $225m in humanitarian assistance, and back up his defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, who said in Brussels earlier today that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was at a “pivotal” moment and America and its allies “cannot afford to let up and lose steam”.Biden said in a statement just released by the White House that he had spoken with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy this morning:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} To discuss Russia’s brutal and ongoing war against Ukraine. I reaffirmed my commitment that the United States will stand by Ukraine as it defends its democracy and support its sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of unprovoked Russian aggression.He announced more funding for “additional artillery and coastal defense weapons, as well as ammunition for the artillery and advanced rocket systems that the Ukrainians need to support their defensive operations in the Donbas,” the heart of Ukraine’s industrial east where Russia has focused its bombardment to increasingly powerful effect in recent weeks.The pledge came amid clear signs that Zelenskiy is hardening his determination to try to beat back Russia in the east, against the odds, amid fierce combat, and has been urging the west for more weaponry.Biden added:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} We also discussed Secretary Austin’s efforts in Brussels today to coordinate additional international support for the Ukrainian armed forces. We also remain committed to supporting the Ukrainian people whose lives have been ripped apart by this war….The bravery, resilience, and determination of the Ukrainian people continues to inspire the world. And the United States, together with our allies and partners, will not waver in our commitment to the Ukrainian people as they fight for their freedom.The New York Times has reported western unity “seems to be fraying among some Western allies”, with those further east close to Russia hardening their resolve while countries such as Italy, France and Germany were wary of stagnation in Ukraine (and stagflation at home, among other fears), but without a clear path to resolution. Meanwhile, the US continues, for now, to bolster Ukraine’s resistance.The day thus far has been busy, with the supreme court releasing a slew of decisions in cases that touched on the farthest reaches of federal law. In the Senate, signs emerged that the bipartisan compromise on gun control was facing obstacles that could delay its passage.Here’s a rundown of the day’s events:
      The Biden administration is set to announce another $1 billion in weapons for Ukraine as it tries to defend cities in the east from Russia’s advance.
      The justice department has brought federal hate crimes charges against the alleged shooter at a Buffalo supermarket who killed 10 Black people in a racist attack.
      Questions continue to swirl over the actions of Republican House representative Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, after the January 6 committee released video evidence of a man who accompanied the lawmaker on a tour taking photos of Capitol hallways and a security checkpoint the day before the insurrection.
      A special election in Texas ended with bad news for the Democrats when voters sent a Republican to represent their district for the first time.
      June is Pride Month, and President Joe Biden’s administration announced today he had signed an executive order that would counter “legislative attacks” against LGBTQ+ children and adults.“President Biden believes that no one should face discrimination because of who they are or whom they love. Since President Biden took office, he has championed the rights of LGBTQI+ Americans and people around the world, accelerating the march towards full equality,” the White House said.Among the provisions of Biden’s executive order detailed by the White House:
      Addressing discriminatory legislative attacks against LGBTQI+ children and families, directing key agencies to protect families and children;
      Preventing so-called “conversion therapy” with a historic initiative to protect children from the harmful practice;
      Safeguarding health care, and programs designed to prevent youth suicide;
      Supporting LGBTQI+ children and families by launching a new initiative to protect foster youth, prevent homelessness, and improve access to federal programs; and
      Taking new, additional steps to advance LGBTQI+ equality.
      The provision addressing “legislative attacks” is meant to deal with the more than 300 “anti-LGBTQI+ laws” the White House said were introduced in statehouses over the past year, many of which are targeted at transgender youth. The order directs the federal health and human services department to “release new sample policies for states on how to expand access to comprehensive health care for LGBTQI+ patients.” The education department is also directed to release “a sample school policy for achieving full inclusion” of students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer.The alleged gunman who killed 10 people in a racist massacre at a Buffalo, New York supermarket last month could face the death penalty after prosecutors brought hate crimes charges against him.The Associated Press reports:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Payton Gendron already faced a mandatory life sentence without parole if convicted on state charges in the 14 May shooting which also wounded three survivors – one Black, two white.
      The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, was in Buffalo on Wednesday to visit families of the 10 people killed. He was expected to address the federal charges during the visit.
      Gendron’s radical, racist worldview and extensive preparation for the attack at the Tops Friendly Market are laid out in documents he apparently posted online.
      The documents embrace a conspiracy theory about a plot to diminish white Americans’ power and “replace” them with people of color, through immigration and other means.
      The posts detail months of reconnaissance, demographic research and shooting practice for a bloodbath meant to scare anyone not white and Christian into leaving the country.
      Gendron drove more than 200 miles from his home in a nearly all-white town near the New York-Pennsylvania border to a predominantly Black part of Buffalo. There, authorities say, he killed shoppers and workers using an AR-15-style rifle, wearing body armor and livestreaming the carnage from a helmet-mounted camera.
      The 18-year-old surrendered to police as he exited the supermarket.Buffalo mass shooting suspect charged with federal hate crimesRead moreWhile Washington has publicly stated it remains committed to defending Ukraine, Bloomberg News reports that some in the White House worry the sanctions on Russia have worsened the American economy more than expected while doing little to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin.From their story:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Some Biden administration officials are now privately expressing concern that rather than dissuading the Kremlin as intended, the penalties are instead exacerbating inflation, worsening food insecurity and punishing ordinary Russians more than Putin or his allies.
      Officials were initially impressed by the willingness of companies from BP Plc. to McDonald’s Corp. to abruptly “self-sanction,” sometimes selling assets at fire-sale prices. But the administration was caught off-guard by the potential knock-on effects — from supply chain bottlenecks to uninsurable grain exports — due to the companies’ decisions to leave, according to people familiar with internal discussions.
      In some cases, companies have signaled that they are being extra-cautious or want clearer guidance from the US before continuing business with Russia. Until that happens, they are going beyond any legal requirements to ensure they don’t accidentally violate sanctions policies, according to Justine Walker, the head of global sanctions and risk at the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists, an industry group.
      “Because we just have so many changes at once, governments are not able to step in and give precise clarification and we are seeing many, many examples of authorities coming to different positions,” Walker said in an interview. “Companies ask, ‘Should we be applying sanctions to this entity?’ and the government will come back and say, ‘You need to make your own decision.’”The war in Ukraine has played a role in driving inflation higher in the United States, and in particular the price of gas, which has played a major role in the Biden’s deepening unpopularity.According to an article in Politico, the White House is growing frustrated with its ability to respond to the increase in costs across the economy:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Prices keep rising. And the clock keeps ticking.
      So the White House has started to change up its messaging on inflation, even though President Joe Biden has limited tools at his disposal to battle the crisis. The president stepped up efforts to draw contrasts with Republicans, unleashing a series of new attack lines Tuesday in a speech delivered amid a flurry of sobering headlines on rising costs and interest rates.
      “America still has a choice to make. A choice between a government by the few, for the few,” Biden said at an AFL-CIO union convention in Philadelphia. “Or a government for all of us – a democracy for all of us, an economy where all of us have a fair shot.”
      But with the midterms rapidly approaching, voters’ patience appears likely to run out – and the president and party in power stand poised to pay the political price.
      “The political environment is brutal for Democrats. There are few more economic issues more politically painful than high food and high gas prices and we are heading into high stakes midterms,” said Dan Pfeiffer, former senior advisor to President Barack Obama. More

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      US House passes bill to expand supreme court security to justices’ families

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      US House passes bill to expand supreme court security to justices’ familiesThe bill comes after an armed man was arrested outside Brett Kavanaugh’s house as the court is due to rule on an abortion case The US House of Representatives has given final congressional approval to a bill to bolster supreme court security, ahead of an anticipated ruling curtailing abortion rights and in light of the arrest of a man charged with attempting to murder Brett Kavanaugh, a member of the court’s conservative majority.The legislation, which had already cleared the Senate, passed the House on a 396-27 vote. Joe Biden is prepared to sign it into law. It will expand police protection to families of justices and senior court officials.Man arrested near Brett Kavanaugh’s home charged with attempted murderRead moreThe House Republican leader said the bill would protect justices from “leftwing radicals”.A prominent Democrat said family members of court clerks and officials were also under threat, from “rightwing activists”.The court is due to rule in a major abortion case from Mississippi. A leaked draft opinion showed the conservative majority poised to overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that legalized abortion. Protests have ensued outside some justices’ homes.Last week, a California man carrying a handgun, ammunition, a crowbar, pepper spray and zip-tie handcuffs was arrested outside Kavanaugh’s home in Maryland.Republicans have led calls for improved protection but some progressives have contrasted such eagerness to act with many Republicans’ refusal to consider gun reform, even in the wake of a series of mass shootings.On the House floor on Tuesday, Veronica Escobar, a Democrat from El Paso, Texas, said: “It is incredible to stand here and listen to our Republican colleagues talk about the risks and the dangers that exist to the supreme court.“I want to know where they were when the risks and the dangers existed in my community. In El Paso, Texas, where 23 innocent people were slaughtered by a white supremacist with an AK-47 [in 2019]. Where were they then?“How about Uvalde? Where were they then? How about every other mass shooting? Buffalo, you name it.”Ginni Thomas pressed 29 lawmakers in bid to overturn Trump loss, emails showRead moreNineteen children and two teachers were killed in Uvalde last month. Also in May, 10 people died in a racist attack at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.Referring to gun reforms passed by the House but with no chance of passing the Senate, Escobar said: “Last week, we brought to the floor legislation intended to protect millions of Americans, especially including children.“The vast majority of our Republican colleagues voted against those protections for vulnerable people who don’t have access to 24-hour, round-the-clock US marshals protection. Who don’t have access to round-the-clock 24/7 police protection, which supreme court justices have today.“Supreme court justices have far more protection than members of Congress do. But more importantly [they have more protection] than those innocent lives that were taken in innumerable cities across America.”The US justice department is already providing additional support to court police.In the Kavanaugh case, Nicholas John Roske, 26 and from Simi Valley, California, was dressed in black when he arrived by taxi outside Kavanaugh’s home around 1am last Wednesday. According to court documents, he spotted two US marshals guarding the house and walked in the other direction, calling 911 to say he was having suicidal thoughts and planned to kill Kavanaugh.Roske said he had found the address on the internet.On Tuesday the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, greeted passage of the bill by saying: “We are sending a clear message to leftwing radicals: you cannot intimidate supreme court justices.”House Democrats had wanted to add protections for families of clerks and other court employees who, in the words of Ted Lieu, a congressman from California, “are getting threats from rightwing activists”.But Senate Republicans objected.“The security issue is related to supreme court justices, not the nameless staff that no one knows,” the minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said on Monday.Lieu said measures to protect families of clerks and other employees would be considered separately.The federal judiciary is calling for separate legislation to offer more protection for judges. The US marshals service said judges were subject to 4,511 threats and inappropriate communications last year.TopicsUS supreme courtLaw (US)US CongressUS SenateHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Jan 6 updates: Garland says he’s watching hearings as pressure mounts to charge Trump – as it happened

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      Attorney General Merrick Garland said he and his prosecutors are watching the hearings of the January 6 committee as the justice department faces pressure to bring charges against former president Donald Trump.NEW: AG Merrick Garland says he’s watching the Jan. 6 committee hearings, adding “I can assure you the January 6 prosecutors are watching the hearings as well”— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 13, 2022
      Some of the lawmakers on the committee have called for Garland to levy criminal charges against Trump. The former president is at the center of an array of investigations, including an inquiry into his business practices in New York. He will testify under oath in that probe on 15 July, along with his daughter Ivanka Trump and son Donald Trump Jr.Donald Trump to testify in New York investigation into his business practicesRead moreGarland answered reporters questions during a DoJ press conference about gun trafficking.The January 6 committee’s second public hearing was today’s main story, as it aired testimony from several of Donald Trump’s top advisors, all of whom said they told the former president there was no fraud in the 2020 election that would change the result of his loss to Joe Biden.Nonetheless, Trump pressed on with making the claims, which the committee said fueled the violence at the Capitol.Here’s what else happened today:
      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said the chamber will vote on a bipartisan gun control bill as soon as it’s written. The compromise measure doesn’t go as far as Democrats would like, but represents the best chance to pass legislation at the federal level in response to the mass shootings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas.
      The supreme court released five opinions that dealt with a number of aspects of federal law, though none of the verdicts were in any of the major cases touching on abortion, gun rights or other hot-button issues.
      Attorney General Merrick Garland said he is watching the hearings of the January 6 committee, as the justice department comes under pressure to bring charges against Trump.
      Separately, Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, who was hailed for leading rioters away from the senate chamber, testified in the criminal trial of two men facing charges in the attack.
      The blog is wrapping up for the day and will return on Tuesday morning around 9am ET. For updates on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, please tune into our global live blog on the war, here.At the White House daily media briefing, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has reiterated in response to a question that Joe Biden is going to leave the topic of whether Donald Trump will be prosecuted over the January 6 hearing “up to the Department of Justice”.The White House wants “Americans to watch” the January 6 hearings, the second of which occurred this morning, “and remember the horrors of one of the darkest days in our history” but the US president will stay away from commenting on related prosecutions.He chose US attorney general Merrick Garland “because of his loyalty to the law”, Jean-Pierre said, and also “to restore the independence and integrity of the Department of Justice.”That’s a dig at how the DoJ was regarded by Democrats as an extension of Donald Trump’s White House and under his sway instead of staying independent.Meanwhile in New York, an ongoing sell off on Wall Street has pushed the S&P 500 into a bear market, meaning a loss of 20 percent from its most recent high.The stock market’s health and wider economy’s health are generally regarded as two different things, but the S&P 500’s nearly four percent loss in today’s trading is fueled in part by concerns that the United State’s decades-high inflation rate will cause a recession. It’s also more bad news for Joe Biden and his economic policies, overshadowing more positive developments such as the drop in unemployment on his watch.From the Associated Press:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The S&P 500 dropped 3.8% in the first chance for investors to trade after getting the weekend to reflect on the stunning news that inflation is getting worse, not better. The Dow Jones was down 879 points, or 2.8%, at 30,513, as of 11.08am ET, and the Nasdaq composite was 4.5% lower.
      The center of Wall Street’s focus was again on the Federal Reserve, which is scrambling to get inflation under control. Its main method is to raise interest rates in order to slow the economy, a blunt tool that risks a recession if used too aggressively.
      Some traders are even speculating the Fed on Wednesday may raise its key short-term interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point. That’s triple the usual amount and something the Fed hasn’t done since 1994. Traders now see a 34% probability of such a mega-hike, up from just 3% a week ago, according to CME Group.
      No one thinks the Fed will stop there, with markets bracing for a continued series of bigger-than-usual hikes. Those would come on top of some already discouraging signals about the economy and corporate profits, including a record-low preliminary reading on consumer sentiment that was soured by high gasoline prices.S&P 500 sinks into bear-market territory as recession fears pound US stocksRead moreSenate majority leader Chuck Schumer said he’ll bring a recent bipartisan gun control bill to a vote on the chamber’s floor as soon as it’s written.“I will put this bill on the floor as soon as possible, once the text of the final agreement is finalized so the Senate can act quickly to make gun safety reform a reality,” Schumer said in a speech in the Senate. “Yesterday’s agreement does not have everything Democrats wanted but it nevertheless represents the most significant reform to gun safety laws that we have seen in decades.”Democratic and and Republican lawmakers have been trying to find a common ground on the highly controversial topic of gun control following a recent spate of mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York.Attorney General Merrick Garland said he and his prosecutors are watching the hearings of the January 6 committee as the justice department faces pressure to bring charges against former president Donald Trump.NEW: AG Merrick Garland says he’s watching the Jan. 6 committee hearings, adding “I can assure you the January 6 prosecutors are watching the hearings as well”— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 13, 2022
      Some of the lawmakers on the committee have called for Garland to levy criminal charges against Trump. The former president is at the center of an array of investigations, including an inquiry into his business practices in New York. He will testify under oath in that probe on 15 July, along with his daughter Ivanka Trump and son Donald Trump Jr.Donald Trump to testify in New York investigation into his business practicesRead moreGarland answered reporters questions during a DoJ press conference about gun trafficking.Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who was one of Trump’s top attorneys near the end of his term, has denied he was drunk on election night in 2020.Giuliani’s attorney says Giuliani was not drunk on election night. “Giuliani denies all falsehoods by the angry and misguided Ms Cheney,” Robert Costello tells CNN. https://t.co/lsOdoaOgvv— Kara Scannell (@KaraScannell) June 13, 2022
      While the latest report of Giuliani being drunk in public came from today’s hearing of the January 6 committee, such claims are not new.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will soon start her daily briefing to reporters, and there’s a chance she’ll be asked about this story from The New York Times.The piece asks a provocative question: given his low approval ratings, among other issues, should Biden not run in 2024? The president says he will stand again, but the article features a trickle of Democratic voices questioning the wisdom of that idea, or even outright telling him not to.As the Times reported:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}As the challenges facing the nation mount and fatigued base voters show low enthusiasm, Democrats in union meetings, the back rooms of Capitol Hill and party gatherings from coast to coast are quietly worrying about Mr. Biden’s leadership, his age and his capability to take the fight to former President Donald J. Trump a second time.
      Interviews with nearly 50 Democratic officials, from county leaders to members of Congress, as well as with disappointed voters who backed Mr. Biden in 2020, reveal a party alarmed about Republicans’ rising strength and extraordinarily pessimistic about an immediate path forward.
      “To say our country was on the right track would flagrantly depart from reality,” said Steve Simeonidis, a Democratic National Committee member from Miami. Mr. Biden, he said, “should announce his intent not to seek re-election in ’24 right after the midterms.”Democratic stalwart Howard Dean has perhaps the sharpest criticism in the piece, though it’s not aimed at Biden alone:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Howard Dean, the 73-year-old former Vermont governor and Democratic National Committee chairman who ran for president in 2004, has long called for a younger generation of leaders in their 30s and 40s to rise in the party. He said he had voted for Pete Buttigieg, 40, in the 2020 primary after trying to talk Senator Chris Murphy, 48, of Connecticut into running.
      “The generation after me is just a complete trash heap,” Mr. Dean said.The United States is indeed led by elderly people these days, as Axios reports in a closer look at the subject that’s fittingly titled “American gerontocracy”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Diversity and technology are making the workplace, home life and culture unrecognizable for many older leaders. That can leave geriatric leadership of government out of step with everyday life in America — and disconnected from the voters who give them power.
      Washington is run by Biden, 79 … House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 82 … Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a comparatively youthful 71 … and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, age 80.
      Dr. Anthony Fauci, running the U.S. pandemic response, is 81.Separate from the January 6 committee hearing, Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman was in a federal courtroom describing how one of two defendants facing charges over the attacked jabbed him with a Confederate battle flag.Goodman is one of the most prominent defenders of the Capitol that day, credited with diverting the mob away from the Senate chamber and appearing in a well-known photo.He was testifying at the trial of Kevin Seefried and his adult son Hunter Seefried, whom the Associated Press reported face charges including a felony count of obstruction of an official proceeding. According to the AP:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Goodman recalled seeing Kevin Seefried standing alone in an archway and telling him to leave. Instead, Seefried cursed at him and jabbed at the officer with the base end of the flagpole three or four times, Goodman said.
      “He was very angry. Screaming. Talking loudly,” Goodman said. “Complete opposite of pleasant.”
      U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden is hearing testimony without a jury for the Seefrieds’ bench trial, which started Monday. The Seefrieds waived their right to a jury trial, which means McFadden will decide their cases.Today has been dominated by the latest revelations from the January 6 Committee, which aired testimony from a number of former officials in Donald Trump’s campaign and White House, all of whom told the president the same thing: the 2020 election was not stolen. Nonetheless, Trump pressed on with making the claims, which the committee said fueled the violence at the Capitol.Here’s what else happened today:
      The supreme court released five opinions that dealt with a number of aspects of federal law, though none of the verdicts were in any of the major cases touching on abortion, gun rights or other hot-button issues.
      The senate reached a compromise on gun rights legislation that can hopefully win enough support from both Democrats and Republicans to pass the evenly divided chamber. Further negotiations on the bill are expected in the days to come.
      Lawmakers on the January 6 committee continued their calls for the justice department to bring criminal charges against Trump, saying the evidence they uncovered justifies the move.
      Separately, Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, who was hailed for leading rioters away from the senate chamber, testified in the criminal trial of two men facing charges in the attack.
      The US Supreme Court has ruled against immigrants who are seeking their release from long periods of detention while they fight deportation orders, the Associated Press writes.In two cases decided on Monday morning, the court said that the immigrants, who fear persecution if sent back to their native countries, have no right under a federal law to a bond hearing at which they could argue for their freedom no matter how long they are held.The nine justices also ruled 6-3 to limit the immigrants ability to band together in court, an outcome that Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Will leave many vulnerable non-citizens unable to protect their rights.”In recent years, the high court has taken an increasingly limited view of immigrants’ access to the federal court system under immigration measures enacted in the 1990s and 2000s..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} For a while, it seemed like the court was going to push back a bit. In extreme cases, it would interpret a statute to allow for as much judicial review as possible. Clearly now, the court is no longer willing to do that,”said Nicole Hallet, director of the immigrants rights clinic at the University of Chicago law school.The immigrants who sued for a bond hearing are facing being detained for many months, even years, before their cases are resolved.The court ruled in the cases of people from Mexico and El Salvador who persuaded Homeland Security officials that their fears are credible, entitling them to further review.Their lawyers argued that they should have a hearing before an immigration judge to determine if they should be released. The main factors are whether people would pose a danger or are likely to flee if set free.Sotomayor wrote the court’s opinion in one case involving Antonio Arteaga-Martinez, who had previously been deported to Mexico. He was taken into custody four years ago, and won release while his case wound through the federal courts. His hearing on whether he can remain in the United States is scheduled for 2023.But Sotomayor wrote that the provision of immigration law that applies to people like Arteaga-Martinez simply doesn’t require the government to hold a bond hearing.The court, however, left open the issue of the immigrants’ ability to argue that the Constitution does not permit such indefinite detention without a hearing.Justice Samuel Alito wrote the court’s opinion holding that federal judges can only rule in the case of the immigrants before them, not a class of similarly situated people.Sotomayor dissented from that decision, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.She wrote that the ability to join together in a class was especially important for people who have no right to a lawyer and “are disproportionately unlikely to be familiar with the U.S. legal system or fluent in the English language.”The cases are Johnson v Arteaga-Martinez, 19-896, and Garland v Aleman Gonzalez, 20-322.The US Supreme Court issued five opinions this morning, just around the time the January 6 hearing was getting underway. None of them was one of the four big cases being mostly closely watched, on abortion, gun rights, rules on emissions affecting climate change and an immigration issue affecting undocumented people crossing the US-Mexico border in order to claim asylum in the United States, known as Remain in Mexico.In one of the most significant opinions of the day, the nine-judge court ruled that Native Americans prosecuted in certain tribal courts can also be prosecuted based on the same incident in federal court, which can result in longer sentences, the Associated Press writes.The 6-3 ruling is in keeping with an earlier ruling from the 1970s that said the same about a more widely used type of tribal court.The case before the justices involved a Navajo Nation member, Merle Denezpi, accused of rape. He served nearly five months in jail after being charged with assault and battery in what is called a Court of Indian Offenses, a court that deals exclusively with alleged Native American offenders.Under federal law Courts of Indian Offenses can only impose sentences of generally up to a year. Denezpi was later prosecuted in federal court and sentenced to 30 years in prison. He said the Constitution’s “Double Jeopardy” clause should have barred the second prosecution.But the justices disagreed..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Denezpi’s single act led to separate prosecutions for violations of a tribal ordinance and a federal statute. Because the Tribe and the Federal Government are distinct sovereigns, those offenses are not the same. Denezpi’s second prosecution therefore did not offend the Double Jeopardy Clause,” the court decided.Amy Coney Barrett, the ultra conservative leaning associated justice confirmed in the dying days of the Trump administration, wrote the opinion for the majority.The Biden administration had argued for that result as had several states, which said barring federal prosecutions in similar cases could allow defendants to escape harsh sentences.In a dissent, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the case involved the same “defendant, same crime, same prosecuting authority” and said the majority’s reasoning was “at odds with the text and original meaning of the Constitution.” The conservative Gorsuch was joined in dissent by two of the court’s three liberal justices, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan.The case before the justices involves a tribal court system that has become increasingly rare over the last century.Courts of Indian Offenses were created in the late 1800s during a period when the federal government’s policy toward Native Americans was to encourage assimilation. Judges and generally prosecutors are appointed by federal officials.The January 6 committee has ended the day’s testimony by taking viewers back to the scene of the attack and showing how the people who broke in to the Capitol were believers in a conspiracy that many of Trump’s top officials told him was bogus.“I know exactly what’s going on right now. Fake election!” a rioter said in video aired by the committee. The hearing closed with the jarring words of Eric Herschmann, a White House lawyer, who recalled a phone call with John Eastman, another of the president’s lawyers whom a judge has said conspired with Trump to overturn the election. “I said to him, Are you out of your effing mind?” Herschmann recalled. “I said I… only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth for now on: orderly transition.”Before the hearing ended, the committee’s senior investigative counsel Amanda Wick outlined one possible motivation for why Trump stuck with the fraud claims: they were a money-making opportunity.“As the select committee has demonstrated, the Trump campaign knew these claims of voter fraud were false, yet they continue to barrage small dollar donors with emails encouraging them to donate to something called Official Election Defense Fund. The select committee discovered no such fund existed,” she said.Wick goes on to say much of the $250 million raised for the supposed effort was funneled into a political action committee that made donations to pro-Trump organizations, as well as confidantes like his chief of staff Mark Meadows. The barrage of fundraising emails to supporters “continued through January 6, even as President Trump spoke on the ellipse. Thirty minutes after the last fundraising email was sent, the Capitol was breached,” Wick said.The committee said to expect more testimony from Herschmann in the future. It reconvenes on Wednesday at 10 am.The second panel of witnesses for the day has been dismissed, after Lofgren went through the many court rulings against Trump’s claims of fraud.“The rejection of {resident Trump’s litigation efforts was overwhelming. Twenty two federal judges appointed by Republican presidents, including 10 appointed by President Trump himself and at least 24 elected or appointed Republican state judges dismissed the president’s claims,” Lofgren said, noting that 11 lawyers have been referred for disciplinary proceedings due to “due to bad faith and baseless efforts” to undermine the election.Prior to their dismissal, the committee heard from Benjamin Ginsberg, whom Lofgren called, “the most preeminent Republican election lawyer in recent history.” “In no instance did a court find that the charges of fraud were real,” Ginsberg said. He also rejected arguments pushed by the Trump campaign that they didn’t get a fair hearing, noting that of 62 lawsuits filed by the campaign, 61 were dismissed, and the one upheld didn’t affect the outcome. More

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      Jan 6 hearings: Trump ‘lit the fuse that led to horrific violence’, committee chair says – live

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      The January 6 committee is beginning its second hearing into “the conspiracy overseen and directed by Donald Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and block the transfer of power, a scheme unprecedented in American history,” as committee chair Bennie Thompson put it in his opening statement.The Mississippi Democrat is making clear today’s hearing will deal specifically with the former president’s actions.“This morning, we will tell the story of how Donald Trump lost an election and knew he lost an election and as a result of his loss, decided to wage an attack on our democracy and attack on American people, trying to rob you of your voice in our democracy, and in doing so lit the fuse that led to the horrific violence of January 6,” Thompson said.Trump claimed that there was “major fraud” on election night, his former attorney general William Barr told the January 6 committee, according to video the committee aired.“Right out of the box on election night, the president claimed that there was major fraud underway,” Barr said.The commission is discussing the “red mirage” that often occurs on presidential election nights, when Republicans who vote on election day have their votes counted first but Democrats, who often vote early or by mail, sometimes have their votes counted later, creating the impression that Republicans are leading early in the night only to have their share eroded as more Democrats have their votes counted.Barr testifies that though this dynamic was familiar and Trump had been warned about it, the president seized on it to allege fraud.“That seemed to be the basis for this broad claim that there was major fraud. And I didn’t think much of that because people had been talking for weeks and everyone understood for weeks that that was going to be what happened on election night,” Barr said.The committee’s first witness of the day Chris Stirewalt, a former politics editor for Fox News, has been sworn in, and the hearing is now showing a montage of clips from interviews with Trump’s lawyers and other officials.These include Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who became one of Trump’s most notable attorneys. Jason Miller, another former Trump attorney, described Giuliani as being “intoxicated” on election night.Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien testified by video that he did not think the president should declare victory on election night, but said the president disagreed with him.It looks like William Barr, Trump’s final attorney general during the time of the 2020 election, will be playing a major role in the today’s hearing.The committee last Thursday aired video in which he said he thought Trump’s claims of election fraud were “bullshit,” and committee members say he will reappear today to elaborate on his views.“You’ll hear detailed testimony from attorney general Barr describing the various election fraud claims the department of justice investigated. He’ll tell you how he told Mr. Trump repeatedly that there was no merit to those claims. Mr. Barr will tell us that Mr. Trump’s election night claims of fraud were made without regard to the truth, and before it was even possible to look for evidence of fraud,” Democratic representative Zoe Lofgren said as the hearing began.Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair, is showing videos from lawyers who worked for Trump’s campaign that are testifying they never saw evidence that the 2020 election was stolen.“The Trump campaign legal team knew there was no legitimate argument, fraud, irregularities or anything to overturn the election. And yet, President Trump went ahead with his plans for January 6 anyway,” Cheney said.The Wyoming representative accused Trump of using this evidence to deceive his supporters into attacking the Capitol. “As one conservative editorial board put it recently, ‘Mr. Trump betrayed his supporters by conning them on January 6, and he is still doing it,’” she said.The January 6 committee is beginning its second hearing into “the conspiracy overseen and directed by Donald Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and block the transfer of power, a scheme unprecedented in American history,” as committee chair Bennie Thompson put it in his opening statement.The Mississippi Democrat is making clear today’s hearing will deal specifically with the former president’s actions.“This morning, we will tell the story of how Donald Trump lost an election and knew he lost an election and as a result of his loss, decided to wage an attack on our democracy and attack on American people, trying to rob you of your voice in our democracy, and in doing so lit the fuse that led to the horrific violence of January 6,” Thompson said.Meanwhile in the Capitol, we may have more developments today on the gun control compromise reached over the weekend, which could attract enough Republican support to pass. Richard Luscombe has this look at what exactly the measure would do.Joe Biden has urged US lawmakers to get a deal on gun reforms to his desk quickly as a group of senators announced a limited bipartisan framework on Sunday responding to last month’s mass shootings.The proposed deal is a modest breakthrough offering measured gun curbs while bolstering efforts to improve school safety and mental health programs.It falls far short of tougher steps long sought by Biden, many Democrats, gun reform advocates and America citizens. For example, there is no proposal to ban assault weapons, as activists had wanted, or to increase from 18 to 21 the age required to buy them.Even so, if the accord leads to the enactment of legislation, it would signal a turn from years of gun massacres that have yielded little but stalemate in Congress.US senators reach bipartisan gun control deal after recent mass shootings Read moreCould Trump face criminal charges over January 6? As my colleague Richard Luscombe reports, some members of the committee investigating the assault believe the evidence is there.Members of the House committee investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat called on Sunday for the US justice department to consider a criminal indictment for the former president and warned that “the danger is still out there”.Their comments on the eve of the second of the panel’s televised hearings into the January 6 2021 insurrection and deadly Capitol attack will add further pressure on the attorney general, Merrick Garland, who has angered some Democrats by so far taking no action despite growing evidence of Trump’s culpability.“There are certain actions, parts of these different lines of effort to overturn the election, that I don’t see evidence the justice department is investigating,” committee member Adam Schiff, Democratic congressman for California, told ABC’s This Week.Capitol attack panel members urge DoJ to consider criminal charges for TrumpRead moreThe January 6 committee will soon continue building its case against former president Donald Trump, with today’s hearing looking at the motivations behind the attack on the Capitol.However, a wrench has already been thrown into their plans: the ex-president’s former campaign manager has a family emergency, and won’t be able to testify as planned, and the hearing has been pushed back to 10:30 am eastern time.The second hearing of the committee will have some important differences from the first, held last Thursday. First of all, it’s taking place during work hours, not during the primetime TV hour, as in the case of last week’s hearing. Committee member Zoe Lofgren is also set to question witnesses, rather than the body’s counsel.As for the goal of these hearings, my colleague Joan E Greve describes it in the words of committee chair Bennie Thompson:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}If the committee is successful in building its case against Trump, the hearings could deliver a devastating blow to the former president’s hopes of making a political comeback in the 2024 presidential election. But if Americans are unmoved by the committee’s findings, the country faces the specter of another attempted coup, Thompson warned.
      “Our democracy remains in danger. The conspiracy to thwart the will of the people is not over,” Thompson said on Thursday. “January 6 and the lies that led to insurrection have put two and a half centuries of constitutional democracy at risk. The world is watching what we do here.”Protesters are gathering outside the supreme court, with the justices less than a half hour away from releasing rulings in which the conservative majority could make major changes to abortion access, gun rights and environmental regulation.Opposing protestors face to face right now. pic.twitter.com/epObAVwJnp— Whitney Wild (@WhitneyWReports) June 13, 2022
      Scene outside the Supreme Court this morning. Two small groups of protesters have gathered with a group of police on bicycles separating the two groups. T-minutes 40 minutes until opinions. ⁦I’m standing by with ⁦@fox5dc⁩. Join us live on ⁦@SCOTUSblog⁩ TikTok. pic.twitter.com/PNPQifGuD2— Katie Barlow (@katieleebarlow) June 13, 2022
      Last month, the court was rocked by the unprecedented leak of a draft opinion showing conservatives were poised to strike down Roe v Wade and end abortion rights nationwide. Those same justices may also opt to expand the ability to carry concealed weapons and curb the government’s regulatory powers.Bill Stepien, the former campaign manager for Donald Trump who was to be a main witness in today’s hearing of the January 6 committee, will not attend due to an emergency.The hearing is now delayed by 30 minutes to 10.30am, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports:Just in: Former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien is no longer appearing at the second Jan. 6 committee hearing this morning due to a family emergency — and hearing has been delayed to around 10:30a ET— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 13, 2022
      The development throws a wrench into the plans for the committee’s second hearing, which was to look deeper into the conspiracy theories that fueled the attack on the Capitol.Lies are going to be the subject of this morning’s January 6 committee hearing, specifically those that motivated Donald Trump’s supporters to attack the Capitol, the Guardian’s Joan E Greve reports:The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection in 2021 will reconvene Monday to scrutinize the conspiracy theories that led a group of Donald Trump’s supporters to attack the US Capitol.The Democratic chair of the committee, Mississippi congressman Bennie Thompson, has said the second hearing will focus on “the lies that convinced those men and others to storm the Capitol to try to stop the transfer of power”.“We’re going to take a close look at the first part of Trump’s attack on the rule of law, when he lit the fuse that ultimately resulted in the violence of January 6,” Thompson said on Thursday.House panel to scrutinize conspiracy theories that led to Capitol attackRead moreGood morning, everybody. Today could be a very big day in Washington, with the inquiry into the January 6 insurrection continuing, the supreme court releasing opinions and the Senate considering a proposal to restrict gun access following a spate of mass shootings.Here’s a rundown of what to expect:
      Senators have reached a deal on a framework for gun control legislation meant to respond to recent mass shootings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas, which looks like it could get the support of enough Republicans and Democrats to pass the chamber.
      The supreme court will release another batch of decisions at 10 am eastern time. There’s no telling what the court will opt to release, but major rulings on abortion rights, gun control and environmental regulation are expected before the term is out.
      At the same time, the January 6 committee will begin its second hearing following last Thursday’s blockbuster look into what happened at the Capitol that day. Today’s hearing will look deeper at the conspiracy theories that motivated the attack.
      Democratic senator Bernie Sanders and Republican senator Lindsey Graham will take part in a one-hour debate organized by The Senate Project, intended to build bridges between the two parties while also allowing the lawmakers to air their (very different) perspectives on politics. The event begins at 12 pm eastern time, and will be streamed on Fox Nation. More