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      January 6 officer Michael Fanone warns ‘democracy is still in danger’

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      January 6 officer Michael Fanone warns ‘democracy is still in danger’The former policeman – who sustained injuries during the US Capitol attack – says January 6 was a ‘wake-up call’ Nearly two years after American democracy was nearly derailed by the January 6 insurrection, a survivor of the attack gathered with Democratic lawmakers outside the US Capitol to warn that the Republican party’s paralysis of Congress is a sign that political violence is as much a threat as ever.‘Devoid of shame’: January 6 cop Michael Fanone on Trump’s Republican partyRead more“The events of that day felt like a wake-up call for me – and many others – that political violence is real. The worst part is that our elected leaders allow this to happen. And yet, this week people who encouraged and even attended the insurrection are now taking their places as leaders in the new House majority,” said Michael Fanone, a former Washington DC police officer who sustained grievous injuries while battling supporters of Donald Trump.As the second anniversary of the unprecedented attack neared, the Capitol was again engulfed in chaos, thanks to a revolt by rightwing lawmakers who have promoted Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen. Their target this time was Kevin McCarthy, the party’s leader in the House of Representatives, who was hoping to be elected as speaker when the chamber’s new Republican majority took their seats last Tuesday.But the GOP’s margin of control is thin enough that the objectors have managed to stop him from winning the post, leading to multiple rounds of voting for the first time since 1923. The deadlock has rendered Congress’s lower chamber dysfunctional, with lawmakers unable to even be formally sworn in.Democrats have meanwhile steadfastly supported their leader in the chamber, Hakeem Jeffries, and shown no interest in helping Republicans resolve their differences, instead pointing to the spectacle as evidence the GOP is in the grips of its most radical members.“I see … forces of extremism on the far right, that are ready to tear down our government at whatever cost,” said Chris Deluzio, a newly elected House representative. “And we’ve seen the consequences of that even in the last couple of days, in the chaos around electing a speaker of the House, blocking us from doing the basic work of the people’s business in the House of Representatives.”The legislative standoff may well be ongoing on Friday when Joe Biden will mark January 6 with a White House ceremony for 12 police officers and election workers who fought off the mob and resisted pressure from Republican officials to stop counting the votes after the 2020 election.The group includes Rusty Bowers, former Republican speaker of Arizona’s lower house who Trump personally pressured to disrupt Biden’s election victory in the state, and Brian Sicknick, a Capitol police officer who died during the insurrection, as well as Fanone.Even if they manage to settle their spat in the House, the day will be an awkward one for Republicans. GOP candidates for offices nationwide in the November midterms promoted Trump’s baseless fraud claim, though many of its loudest proclaimers lost their races. It was an outcome cheered by democracy advocates, but it wasn’t enough to put Fanone’s fears to rest.Kevin McCarthy bid for House speaker enters third day after series of defeatsRead more“Many of the … pro-democracy candidates won by only a fraction of a percentage. So what that tells me is that, you know, democracy is still in danger,” Fanone said following Thursday’s event at the Capitol, which was organized by the anti-Trump organization Courage for America and Common Defense, a veterans group.He has become an outspoken critic of the Republicans since the insurrection, including McCarthy, who he once described as a “weasel”.“It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” Fanone said of the Californian’s latest troubles. “That being said, it’s still the legislative body of our government. And as an American, watching this level of dysfunction, is embarrassing.”TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsWashington DCDemocratsRepublicansDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Police quintuple reward for information on pipe bombs planted before Capitol attack

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      Police quintuple reward for information on pipe bombs planted before Capitol attackSuspect who planted bombs outside both Republican and Democratic National Committee headquarters is still at large Two years after explosive devices were planted outside the Democratic and Republican headquarters in Washington DC, authorities have quintupled the reward to $500,000 for information that could lead to the would-be bomber’s capture and conviction. The night before the January 6 Capitol attack, when a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the building in an effort to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s win, the suspect placed one pipe bomb in an alley outside the Republican National Committee headquarters around 8pm ET. They put the other bomb on a park bench near the Democratic National Committee headquarters, according to the FBI.The pipe bombs did not detonate; the suspect has remained at large. They were pictured in surveillance footage wearing a face mask, glasses, gloves, light grey Nike Air Max Speed Turf shoes emblazoned with a yellow insignia, and a gray hooded sweatshirt.The bombs were comprised of “threaded galvanized pipes, end caps, kitchen timers, wires, metal clips and homemade black powder”, the FBI said.The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) are offering up to $490,000 of the reward, and Washington DC’s Metropolitan police department the other $10,000, authorities said.“For two years, a dedicated team of FBI agents, analysts and law enforcement partners have been tirelessly reviewing evidence and digital media related to this case,” said David Sundberg, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, in a press release.As of this week, the FBI and other agencies “have conducted approximately 1,000 interviews, visited more than 1,200 residences and businesses, collected more than 39,000 video files, and assessed nearly 500 tips”, the release said.More than 950 suspects have been arrested in relation to their alleged participation in the Capitol riots, with 284 defendants facing charges involving “resisting, or impeding officers or employees”. Ninety-nine face charges for allegedly “using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury” to a law enforcement officer, the US Department of Justice said.Some 484 of those charged have pleaded guilty to federal charges. Forty people who proceeded to trial were found guilty, justice department officials said.The highest-profile trial related to January 6 started in late December. The former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio and four others involved in the far-right, often violent militia group, are facing charges of seditious conspiracy and other counts related to the attack.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsWashington DCnewsReuse this content More

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      How Far Right Are the 20 Republicans Who Voted Against McCarthy

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      The Republicans who blocked Representative Kevin McCarthy of California from becoming speaker on Tuesday include some of the most hard-right lawmakers in the House; most denied the 2020 election, are members of the Freedom Caucus, or both. Here’s a closer look at the 20 lawmakers. Re-elected representatives Newly elected Andy Biggs Ariz. 5th Dan Bishop […] More

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      John Fetterman Got a New Suit for His Senate Swearing-In

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      The Pennsylvania lawmaker joins the Washington establishment. Sort of.John Fetterman has a new suit. On Jan. 3, the junior senator from Pennsylvania, whose penchant for Carhartt sweatshirts, Dickies and baggy shorts was as much a part of his political brand as any stump speech, was sworn in as part of the 118th Congress wearing a relatively tailored, previously unseen light gray two-button number. This is a big deal, in part because during his time as lieutenant governor, Mr. Fetterman had made a point of stating that he had only one dark suit. On a day notable for the chaos around the election of Speaker of the House, that suit, as well as the light blue striped tie and polished black lace-ups Mr. Fetterman also wore, may have been the biggest political fashion statement of the incoming class. It was more symbolic even than Nancy Pelosi’s bright pink passing-of-the-baton outfit, or the smattering of suffragist white worn by some women in the House, or even J.D. Vance’s Trumpian uniform of navy suit, white shirt and glowing red tie. And it confirms Mr. Fetterman as one of the more unexpected image makers in Washington. It’s not that he dresses particularly well, though the new suit was a step up. It’s that he dresses with purpose.Indeed, Mr. Fetterman’s new suit was as notable as any of the fashion statements made by various members of Congress since clothes began to play a bigger role in electoral communications. To wit: January 2019, when a large group of women of the newly elected 116th Congress wore white to their swearing-in in honor of their suffragist predecessors (and as a counterstrike to the image-making focus of the Trump administration).Or, for that matter, almost every State of the Union and major public event since then — most recently in December, when a number of lawmakers wore yellow and blue to Volodymyr Zelensky’s congressional speech. If there’s a photo op involved, there’s generally a fashion decision aforethought.The silent communication that comes via clothing has become a standard part of the political toolbox. It’s wielded with increasing dexterity by, for example, elected officials like Kyrsten Sinema, who used her kooky wardrobe of sleeveless tops, colored wigs and the occasional denim vest to telegraph her independence from political norms long before she officially became an independent. Also Jim Jordan, who symbolized his willingness to fight during committee hearings by abandoning his jackets and rolling up his shirt sleeves. The Washington wardrobe is so standardized that any deviation from the norm stands out, especially on TV.Unless, of course, your default position is deviation from the norm — in which case a return to business as usual becomes the surprise. As Mr. Fetterman well knows.Before heading off to the Capitol for his swearing-in, he tweeted, “For those of you asking, yes, there will be a Fetterman in shorts today, but it’s not me.” (It was one of his sons, gamely continuing the family campaign to free the knee.) Rather than deny the idea that he thinks about what he wears, or having his staff deny it for him, Mr. Fetterman long ago turned his wardrobe into an asset: the subject of self-deprecating funny asides, social media jokes and pretty potent public appeal.He has blogged that he can’t roll up his sleeves because he only wears short sleeves. He has tweeted that his outfits are “Western PA business casual” and celebrated his new “Formal Hoodie.” (His wife, Gisele, has made fun of him for it; political couples — they’re just like us.) He was never exactly a working man — he was a mayor with a master’s degree from Harvard — but he dressed like one, and it helped humanize him, get him recognized and make a name for himself that resonated beyond the borders of Pennsylvania and into the realm of late-night TV even before he won his election. Arguably it helped win the election.And it meant that when he showed up on Capitol Hill in November for his orientation in a dark suit and blue tie, he got the sort of excited attention not normally bestowed on a senator-elect making a drive-by visit to his new workplace. Rather he resembled some sort of semi-celebrity, even as his willingness to play by Senate dress code rules and fit into the institution can’t have escaped his new colleagues.Nor, probably, could the sleight of hand that managed to make wearing a conservative suit look like a radical move. And they can expect more where this came from: According to his office, the new suit is one of three Mr. Fetterman has purchased, along with six — count ’em — ties. More

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      George Santos Goes to Washington as His Life of Fantasy Comes Into Focus

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      Mr. Santos, under scrutiny for lies about his background, is set to be sworn into Congress on Tuesday even as records, colleagues and friends divulge more about his past.In two years, George Santos went from being a little-known also-ran to a beacon of the Republican Party’s unexpected resurgence in a deep-blue state. But a swirling cloud of suspicion surrounds Mr. Santos, just as he is poised to take the floor of the House of Representatives on Tuesday, to swear to serve Constitution and country.Mr. Santos has admitted that he fabricated key parts of his educational and professional history, after a New York Times investigation uncovered discrepancies in his résumé and questions about his financial dealings. Federal and local prosecutors are investigating whether he committed crimes involving his finances or misleading statements. Now, new reporting shows that his falsehoods began years before he entered politics.Mr. Santos would join Congress facing significant pressure from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.Mr. Santos has been hard to reach. He has not answered telephone calls, text messages or emails asking him to respond to The Times’s reporting. Earlier this week, Mr. Santos’s lawyer responded to an email asking about his campaign’s unusual spending, saying it was “ludicrous” to suggest the funds had been spent irresponsibly. Mr. Santos did not answer an email sent to him and his lawyer on Friday asking for comments about new reporting on the discrepancies in his past.Members of his own party have called for more detailed explanations of his behavior, and Nick LaLota, also a Republican representative-elect from Long Island, has called for a House ethics investigation.Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the incoming Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, told Fox News on Thursday night that he was “pretty confident” that the House Ethics Committee would open an investigation into Mr. Santos. He added, “What Santos has done is a disgrace. He’s lied to the voters.”New York Democrats also made it clear they want to subject Mr. Santos to deeper scrutiny. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the incoming Democratic leader, has said Mr. Santos is “unfit to serve.” Representative Ritchie Torres said he planned to introduce the Stop Another Non-Truthful Office Seeker Act — the SANTOS Act — that would require House candidates to provide details of their backgrounds under oath.The lawmaker who may have the most significant role in his future in the House, Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, has been silent when asked about The Times’s reporting and Mr. Santos’s interviews supporting it.It remains unclear how the controversy might affect Mr. Santos’s debut in Congress, including his committee assignments. Mr. Santos told NY1 last month that he hoped to serve on the House Financial Services or Foreign Affairs committees, based on his “14-year background in capital markets” and a “multicultural background.” He has since admitted to misrepresenting his work in financial services, while aspects of his heritage have been called into question.New reporting by The Times brings a clearer picture of his earlier life into view, including information about the gaps in his personal history, along with discrepancies in how he described his mother’s life.Mr. Santos has said that he grew up in a basement apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens. Until Wednesday, Mr. Santos’s campaign biography said that his mother, Fatima Devolder, worked her way up to become “the first female executive at a major financial institution.” He has also said that she was in the South Tower of the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that she died “a few years later.”In fact, Ms. Devolder died in 2016, and a Brazilian community newspaper at the time described her as a cook. Mr. Santos’s friends and former roommates recalled her as a hardworking, friendly woman who spoke only Portuguese and made her living cleaning homes and selling food. None of those interviewed by The Times could recall any instance of her working in finance, and several chalked the story up to Mr. Santos’s tendency for mythmaking.His apparent fabrications about his own life begin with his claims about his high school. He said he attended Horace Mann School, a prestigious private institution in the Bronx, and said he dropped out in 2006 before graduating and earning an equivalency diploma. A spokesman for Horace Mann said that the school had no record of his attending at all.By 2008, court records show, Mr. Santos and his mother were living in Brazil, just outside Rio de Janeiro in the city of Niterói. Just a month before his 20th birthday, Mr. Santos entered a small clothing store and spent nearly $700 in 2008 dollars using a stolen checkbook and a false name, court records show.Mr. Santos has denied that he committed crimes in the United States or abroad. But the Brazilian record shows that he admitted the fraud to both the police and the shopkeeper.“I know I screwed up, but I want to pay,” he wrote in a message to the store’s owner on Orkut, a popular social media website in Brazil, in August 2009. “It was always my intention to pay, but I messed up.”In November 2010, Mr. Santos and his mother appeared before the police, where they both admitted that he was responsible. On Sept. 13, 2011, a Brazilian judge ordered Mr. Santos to respond to the case. Three months later, a court official tried to subpoena him, but he could not be found.By that time, he was back in New York, working at a Dish Network call center in College Point, Queens, company records show.Interviews with half a dozen former friends and colleagues, several of whom spoke on the condition that they not be identified to avoid being dragged into Mr. Santos’s controversies, suggest that he was reinventing himself when he moved back to New York, and that he would continue to do so in the years to come. They portray Mr. Santos as a striver, whose tendency toward embellishment and one-upsmanship left them with doubts about his many claimed accomplishments.He told some that he had been a journalist at a famous news organization in Brazil, but none could find his name on its website. He said that he was taking classes at Baruch College, but none of his friends remembered him studying. He bragged of Wall Street glory but often seemed to be short on cash, at times borrowing from friends whom he didn’t always repay. When he joined a travel technology company called MetGlobal, Mr. Santos portrayed himself as a man with family money. But two former co-workers said that the pay was modest and the work didn’t square with Mr. Santos’s depiction of himself as a financier passing time after bad bets left him on the outs on Wall Street.Not everything in Mr. Santos’s stated biography was a lie. A LinkBridge document supports his claim that he was a vice president. Several former colleagues confirmed he worked for MetGlobal, for a subsidiary called HotelsPro. And records examined by The Times appeared to corroborate his claim that he received his high school equivalency degree in New York in 2006.In 2016, Mr. Santos left for Florida, public records show, around the time that HotelsPro was opening an office in Orlando. Mr. Santos told Newsday in 2019 that he went there briefly for work. He received a Florida driver’s license and was registered to vote there in the 2016 election.Those who knew him recalled that Mr. Santos had long been a follower of Republican politics, and that he railed against Hillary Clinton and Bill de Blasio, who was then the mayor of New York.One who was close to Mr. Santos was Pedro Vilarva. Mr. Vilarva met Mr. Santos in 2014, when he was 18 and Mr. Santos was 26. Mr. Vilarva found him charming and sweet. They dated for a few months before Mr. Santos suggested they move in together. Mr. Vilarva said he felt on top of the world — even if he said he did find himself footing many of the bills.“He used to say he would get money from Citigroup, he was an investor,” Mr. Vilarva recalled. “One day it’s one thing, one day it’s another thing. He never ever actually went to work,” he said.Things began to unravel between the two men in early 2015, Mr. Vilarva said, after Mr. Santos surprised him with tickets to Hawaii that turned out not to exist. Around the same time, he said he discovered that his cellphone was missing, and believed Mr. Santos had pawned it.The betrayal prompted him to plug Mr. Santos’s name into a search engine, where he found that Mr. Santos was wanted by Brazilian police.“I woke up in the morning, and I packed my stuff all in trash bags, and I called my father and I left,” he said.Looking back, Mr. Vilarva said, he was young and gullible: He wanted to believe Mr. Santos’s many stories and believe in the life that they shared. Today he is worried about the impact Mr. Santos might have as an elected official.“I would be scared to have someone like that in charge — having so much power in his hands,” he said.André Spigariol More

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      More migrants bussed to Kamala Harris’s home on Christmas Eve

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      More migrants bussed to Kamala Harris’s home on Christmas EveThree buses of Central and South American migrants arrived to the vice-president’s home from Texas Three busloads of migrants were dropped off outside the Washington DC home of US vice-president Kamala Harris late on Christmas Eve, the latest episode in an escalating battle between the Joe Biden White House and the governors of southern Republican states over federal immigration policy.‘A storm is coming’: migrants stuck on US-Mexico border as temperatures plummetRead moreThe Central and South American migrants, believed to be sent from Texas, were dropped off in below-freezing temperatures, with some wearing only sweatshirts and shorts.Texas’s far-right governor, Greg Abbott, has previously sent buses to Harris’s Naval Observatory home. An organizer with the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, Amy Fischer, told local news station ABC7 that Abbott orchestrated the drop off as a political stunt.“It really does show the cruelty behind governor Abbott and his insistence on continuing to bus people here without care about people arriving late at night on Christmas Eve when the weather is so cold,” Fischer said.The group took the travelers to the shelter of a local church where they were given warm food and clothes.Tatiana Laborde with Samu First Response, an aid group that was also there to meet the buses, said that similar drops had been made in Washington since April. “Christmas Eve and freezing cold weather is no different,” Laborde told CNN. “We are always here welcoming folks with open arms.”The arrivals were the latest salvo in an effort by Abbott to force the Biden administration to step up immigration controls at the US border with Mexico. Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis and Arizona’s governor Doug Ducey have also transported migrants to cities that are run by Democrats.“You and your administration must stop the lie that the border is secure and instead immediately deploy federal assets to address the dire problems you have caused,” Abbott wrote in a letter to Biden last week.Abbott added: “You must execute the duties that the US constitution mandates you perform and secure the southern border before more innocent lives are lost.”On Friday, US Customs and Border Protection reported that 233,740 migrants were apprehended at the southern border in November, marking the highest number ever recorded for the month. The border agency reported that of 204,000 “unique encounters”, 35% were from Cuba and Nicaragua.‘No money, nowhere to stay’: asylum seekers wait as Trump’s border restrictions drag onRead moreIn a statement released on Saturday, the federal homeland security department said it “continues to fully enforce our immigration and public health laws at the border”.“As temperatures remain dangerously low all along the border, no one should put their lives in the hands of smugglers, or risk life and limb attempting to cross only to be returned,” the Department of Homeland Security added, warning that “anyone attempting to enter without authorization is subject to expulsion” under the policy known as Title 42.Last week, the US supreme court temporarily suspended the expiration of the policy empowering border officials to turn away asylum seekers on public health grounds. The Trump White House imposed it during the early phases of the Covid-19 pandemic.Days before Title 42 was due to expire, the border city of El Paso, Texas, declared a state of emergency after migrant numbers surged. If allowed to expire, Abbott has warned that the number of people entering the US illegally “will only increase”.TopicsUS immigrationUS politicsKamala HarrisBiden administrationWashington DCnewsReuse this content More

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      Republicans lead charge to ban noncitizens from voting in local elections

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      Republicans lead charge to ban noncitizens from voting in local electionsEight states have passed laws against ballot access, even as some progressive cities are extending local voting rights Louisiana voters recently approved a constitutional amendment barring anyone who is not a US citizen from participating in elections, becoming the eighth state to push back against the growing number of progressive cities deciding to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections.Conservative donors pour ‘dark money’ into case that could upend US voting lawRead moreWhile noncitizens are prohibited from voting in federal elections and no states allow noncitizens to vote for statewide office, ambiguous language in constitutions has allowed localities to pass statutes legalizing noncitizen voting in local or school board elections. A short but expanding list of cities include two cities in Vermont, almost a dozen in Maryland, and San Francisco.Other cities are trying to join that list, including Boston and Washington DC, where the latter city’s council in October passed legislation allowing noncitizens who have lived in the city for at least 30 days to vote in local elections. New York City’s council also passed a measure in December to allow close to 900,000 green card holders and those with work authorization to vote in local elections, but a state trial court struck it down in June, finding it violated the state constitution. The ruling is currently being appealed.The potential for major cities like DC and New York to expand their electorates prompted backlash from Republican lawmakers.“This vote sends a clear message that the radical election policies of places like San Francisco, New York City and Washington, DC have no place in Louisiana,” Kyle Ardoin, the Republican secretary of state, said in a statement after the passage of the constitutional amendment, which he said will “ensure the continued integrity of Louisiana’s elections”.Louisiana law already prohibits anyone who is “not a citizen of the state” from voting, so voting rights advocates say the new amendment is an effort by Republicans in the state to limit voting based on false allegations that noncitizens are committing voter fraud by participating in elections.Louisiana’s amendment made it on to the 10 December ballot after it was passed by both chambers of the state legislature. Over 73% of Louisiana voters approved it, making Louisiana the latest in a series of states moving to explicitly write bans into their constitutions.Before 2020, just Arizona and North Dakota specifically prohibited noncitizens from voting in local and state elections, but voters in Alabama, Colorado and Florida all approved constitutional amendments in 2020 and Ohio approved one in November.Ohio’s amendment came after one town in the state, Yellow Springs, passed an initiative in 2019 to allow noncitizens to vote, giving voting rights in local elections to just a few dozen people in the small town. A few years later in 2022, Republican lawmakers proposed what would eventually become the constitutional amendment banning the practice and revoking the right from noncitizens in Yellow Springs.Fulvia Vargas-De Leon, senior counsel at LatinoJustice PRLDEF, a New York-based immigrant rights group, said the movement for ballot amendments is just one way that some lawmakers are trying to restrict voting rights.“It is a response to the expansion of the right to vote, and our concern is that since 2020, we’ve seen such attacks on the right to vote,” she said, adding that the pushback was coming because of an anti-immigrant sentiment “but also a larger effort to try to ban who has access to the ballot”.The United States allowed noncitizens to vote for much of its early history. From the founding of the country through 1926, noncitizens could vote in local, state and federal elections. But anti-immigrant sentiment led to lawmakers in most states to push for an end to the practice.“Resurgent nativism, wartime xenophobia, and corruption concerns pushed lawmakers to curtail noncitizen voting, and citizenship became a voting prerequisite in every state by 1926,” William & Mary professor Alan H Kennedy wrote in a paper published in the Journal of Policy History this year.In 1996, Congress passed a law prohibiting noncitizens from voting in federal elections, making illegal voting punishable by fines, imprisonment and deportation.But on the local level, the subject has re-emerged as a topic for debate in recent decades, as the populations of permanent noncitizen immigrants has grown in many cities.Advocates for noncitizen voting argue that documented immigrants pay taxes and contribute to their local communities and should have their voices heard when it comes to local policy.“We should have a representative democracy, where everyone who is part of the fabric of the community, who is involved, who pays taxes, should have a say in it,” said Vargas-De Leon, whose group intervened in the New York litigation and has filed the appeal.But conservative groups say that allowing noncitizens to vote dilutes the votes of citizens. Republican strategist Christopher Arps started the Missouri-based Americans for Citizen Voting to help states amend their constitutions to explicitly say that only US citizens can vote. He said that people who want to vote should “at least have some skin in the game” by completing the citizenship process.“We’ve been hearing for the past five, six years about foreign interference, Russia and other countries,” he said. “Well to me, this is a type of foreign interference in our elections.”It would also be a “bureaucratic nightmare”, he said, for states to have to maintain two separate voter rolls for federal and local elections, and could lead to illegal voting if noncitizens accidentally vote in a federal election.Though noncitizen voting still has not been signed into law in DC, Republicans in Congress have already introduced legislation to block it. One bill, introduced by the Texas senator Ted Cruz last month, would bar DC from using federal funds to facilitate noncitizen voting.“Allowing noncitizens and illegal immigrants to vote in our elections opens our country up to foreign influence, and allows those who are openly violating US law or even working for hostile foreign governments to take advantage and direct our resources against our will,” Cruz said in a statement.But Vargas-De Leon pointed to the benefits of expanding the electorate to include the country’s 12.9 million legal permanent residents and other documented immigrants.“All we’re trying to do here is ensure that everyone has a say in our government,” she said.TopicsUS newsThe fight for democracyUS politicsLaw (US)LouisianaOhioFloridaVermontfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Zelenskiy due in US to meet Biden and address Congress

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      Zelenskiy due in US to meet Biden and address CongressTrip to Washington is Ukrainian president’s first disclosed foreign visit since Russia invaded in February Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, will arrive in Washington on Wednesday where he will meet President Joe Biden at the White House and address a joint session of Congress.The trip – Zelenskiy’s first known foreign visit since Russia invaded Ukraine – will also see the Ukrainian president meet with congressional leadership and national security committee chiefs from the Republican and Democratic parties.The trip comes as US lawmakers are due to vote on a year-end spending package that includes about $45bn in emergency assistance to Ukraine. The latest tranche of US funding would be the biggest American infusion of assistance yet to Ukraine, above even Biden’s $37bn emergency request.“The visit will underscore the United States’ steadfast commitment to supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes, including through the provision of economic, humanitarian, and military assistance,” said a White House statement announcing the visit.President Zelenskiy confirmed in a tweet that he was on his way to Washington and would be speaking before Congress, as well as conducting a number of bilateral meetings.On my way to the US to strengthen resilience and defense capabilities of 🇺🇦. In particular, @POTUS and I will discuss cooperation between 🇺🇦 and 🇺🇸. I will also have a speech at the Congress and a number of bilateral meetings.— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) December 21, 2022
      In a letter inviting Zelenskiy to address the joint meeting of Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the fight for Ukraine a fight for democracy itself.“In the face of Putin’s horrific atrocities, Ukrainian freedom fighters have inspired the world with an iron will and an unbreakable spirit … your courageous, patriotic, indefatigable leadership has rallied not only your people, but the world, to join the frontlines of the fight for freedom”, Pelosi wrote.In a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, a senior administration official, who did not wish to be named, said Biden and Zelenskiy had discussed a potential visit when they spoke by phone on 11 December and the White House formally extended an invitation last Wednesday. Zelenskiy’s office accepted the invitation last Friday and the visit was confirmed on Sunday.Biden will first welcome Zelenskiy at the White House for bilateral meetings with the US president’s national security team and cabinet. After a press conference, Zelenskiy will go to Capitol Hill and address a joint session of Congress. He will return home after just a few hours on the ground.The official said: “We’re looking forward to having President Zelenskiy back at the White House for his second visit but his first visit since the start of Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine. It’s something we’ve wanted to do for some time and tomorrow is actually the 300th day since Russia brutally invaded Ukraine in an all-out assault with the goal of wiping its neighbour off the map and subjecting the Ukrainian people to Russian dominion.”Biden will announce a new package of nearly $2bn of security assistance including a Patriot missile battery. The US will, in a third country, train Ukrainian forces in how to operate the Patriot system.Despite some Republicans questioning the price of the war, the official predicted Zelenskiy would receive a strong bipartisan show of support. “This isn’t about sending a message to a particular political party. This is about sending a message to Putin and sending a message to the world that America will be there for Ukraine for as long as it takes.“President Putin badly miscalculated the beginning of this conflict when he presumed that the Ukrainian people would yield and that Nato would be disunited. He was wrong on both counts. He remains wrong about our staying power and that’s what this visit will demonstrate.”The senior administration official also denied that Biden will pressure Zelenskiy to seek a diplomatic end to the war. “The president is not coming with a message that is about pushing or prodding or poking Zelenskiy in any way. This is going to be a message of solidarity and support, coordination and alignment and making sure that we are very much putting Ukraine in the best possible position to defend its interests and secure its objectives.”Biden has said from the start that the US will not send forces to Ukraine to directly fight the Russians. No change to that policy is expected on Wednesday.The Associated Press contributed to this reportTopicsVolodymyr ZelenskiyUkraineWashington DCUS CongressUS politicsEuropenewsReuse this content More