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      Biden’s clean electricity program could be dropped from spending bill – report

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      Biden administrationBiden’s clean electricity program could be dropped from spending bill – reportMajor part of the Biden administration’s climate agenda will ‘likely’ be cut from the massive budget bill pending in Congress, New York Times reports Sam Levin in Los Angeles@SamTLevinFri 15 Oct 2021 21.00 EDTLast modified on Fri 15 Oct 2021 21.01 EDTA central component to the Biden administration’s climate agenda could be dropped from the massive budget bill that is pending in Congress due to opposition from Senator Joe Manchin, according to a report in the New York Times on Friday.The White House will “likely” cut from its spending bill a program to replace coal- and gas-fired power plants in the US with wind, solar and nuclear energy, the Times reported, citing congressional staffers and lobbyists familiar with the matter.The Biden administration has previously said that its clean energy plans would swiftly cut planet-heating emissions, and estimates have suggested that it could save hundreds of thousands of lives from deadly air pollution. In August, Biden also set a goal for half of all new vehicle sales in the US to be electric by 2030, and tightened pollution standards for trucks and cars.The climate disaster is here – this is what the future looks likeRead moreThe $150bn program that is in danger of being terminated would incentivize utilities to increase the amount of clean energy that they use and would issue penalties to those that do not switch to renewable energy.The Times reported that Manchin, the centrist Democrat from West Virginia who has been aggressively resisting pieces of Biden’s agenda, has told the administration that he strongly opposes the clean electricity program. The White House is now rewriting a version of the legislation that excludes that climate provision, the paper said. The administration is reportedly trying to come up with other alternative policies that could further cut emissions.Manchin, as the Times noted, has personal financial ties to the coal industry.If Manchin’s opposition does ultimately kill Biden’s clean electricity program, it would be a huge setback for the administration’s efforts to tackle the climate crisis. “He plans to gut Biden’s climate plan, and with it the chances for swift global progress,” tweeted Bill McKibben, the prominent environmentalist.The Times noted that Democrats could attempt to move forward with a clean electricity program as its own bill, but that the window of opportunity is closing.A spokesman for the White House declined to comment to the Times.Sam Runyon, a Manchin spokeswoman, did not directly comment on the report, but told the Guardian in an email, “Senator Manchin has clearly expressed his concerns about using tax payer dollars to pay private companies to do things they’re already doing. He continues to support efforts to combat climate change while protecting American energy independence and ensuring our energy reliability.”In July, a consortium of researchers reported that, out of a range of the Biden administration’s policy proposals to tackle the climate crisis, a clean energy standard would offer the largest net benefits to the US.Manchin and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema have repeatedly clashed with the Biden administration and progressive Democrats, threatening to derail the president’s ambitious economic package.TopicsBiden administrationUS politicsDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Bill Clinton to remain in hospital as he recovers from urological infection

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      Bill ClintonBill Clinton to remain in hospital as he recovers from urological infectionFormer president to remain in California hospital at least another night, his spokesperson said Friday ReutersFri 15 Oct 2021 20.48 EDTThe former US president Bill Clinton’s health is improving but he will remain in a California hospital for at least another night to receive antibiotics intravenously for a urological infection that spread to his bloodstream, his spokesperson said on Friday.The 75-year-old Clinton, who served as president from 1993 to 2001, entered the University of California, Irvine, medical center on Tuesday evening after suffering from fatigue. He spoke with Joe Biden on Friday.Clinton’s spokesperson Angel Ureña said that Clinton’s white blood count has decreased, indicating his health is improving.“All health indicators are trending in the right direction, including his white blood count which was decreased significantly,” Ureña said on Twitter. “In order to receive further IV antibiotics, he will remain in the hospital overnight.”Since his admission to the intensive care unit at the hospital, Clinton has received fluids along with antibiotics, his doctors said.His wife, a former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, was at the hospital on Thursday and Friday, and the two read books and talked about politics, Ureña told Reuters.It remained unclear when Clinton would be released.Biden said Clinton would likely go home soon, though it was not clear whether he would be released on Saturday or later.“He is getting out shortly. … Whether that’s tomorrow or the next day, I don’t know,” Biden told reporters in Connecticut. “He’s doing fine. He really is.”On Thursday, Ureña said Clinton was “up and about, joking and charming the hospital staff”.Clinton has dealt with heart problems in the past, including a 2004 quadruple bypass surgery and a 2010 procedure to open a blocked artery.The Democrat served two terms in the White House, overseeing strong economic growth while engaging in bruising political battles with congressional Republicans.TopicsBill ClintonUS politicsCaliforniaDemocratsReuse this content More

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      Biden to reinstate Trump-era ‘Remain in Mexico’ migrant policy

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      US immigrationBiden to reinstate Trump-era ‘Remain in Mexico’ migrant policyDoJ says reinstatement depends on approval from MexicoCourt overturned Biden’s initial decision to suspend policy Amanda Holpuch@holpuchFri 15 Oct 2021 14.57 EDTLast modified on Fri 15 Oct 2021 15.55 EDTThe Biden administration said on Friday it plans to reinstate the Trump-era border policy known as Remain in Mexico, which forced at least 70,000 asylum seekers to stay in Mexico, many for extended periods and in deprived and dangerous conditions, while they waited for their cases to be considered US courts.Senior state department official calls Biden’s deportation of Haitians illegalRead moreJoe Biden suspended the policy formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) in his first days in office, but a federal judge ordered his administration to put it back into place.In a court filing late on Friday, the US justice department said the program’s reinstatement depended on approval from the Mexican government, which is asking for the asylum cases to be settled in six months and for the US to ensure the people affected have timely and accurate information as well as better access to legal counsel. The program is expected to be back in effect in mid-November.Donald Trump introduced Remain in Mexico in January 2019. From the beginning, advocates criticized the program because it put highly vulnerable migrants, mostly from Central and South America, at serious risk of physical harm and illness as they waited in some of the most dangerous cities in the world. It also fails to address the forces pushing people north to the US-Mexico border and the huge backlogs in US immigration courts.Campaign group Human Rights Watch said in a January report about the policy that affected asylum seekers it interviewed, including children, “described rape or attempted rape and other sexual assault, abduction for ransom, extortion, armed robbery, and other crimes committed against them”.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) immigrants’ rights policy director, Omar Jadwat, said via Twitter that the news was “appalling” and acknowledged the Biden administration was required by a court order to make a “good faith” effort to restart it.“They had a lot of options here, including re-terminating MPP promptly and seeking to vacate the order,” Jadwat said.To restart the program, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to spend $14.1m to reopen temporary courtrooms located in tents in Laredo and Brownsville, Texas, which will cost $10.5m a month to operate, according to a court filing.In June, the DHS secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, formally put an end to the policy and in a memo said: “MPP had mixed effectiveness in achieving several of its central goals and that the program experienced significant challenges.”TopicsUS immigrationMexicoAmericasTrump administrationUS politicsBiden administrationUS-Mexico bordernewsReuse this content More

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      Surprised to see US Republicans cozying up to the European far right? Don’t be | Cas Mudde

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      OpinionUS politicsSurprised to see US Republicans cozying up to the European far right? Don’t beCas MuddeBefore Trump, only relatively fringe American conservatives had open connections to the international far right. Today, the ties have mainstreamed Fri 15 Oct 2021 06.15 EDTLast modified on Fri 15 Oct 2021 07.12 EDTThis weekend Texas senator Ted Cruz spoke about how “we all face the same challenges, including a bold and global left, that seeks to tear down cherished national and religious institutions”. Nothing to see here, you might think – except that he was not addressing a local branch of the Republican party in Texas, or a conservative US media outlet. He was speaking on screen to an audience of thousands in Madrid, at a meeting of the Spanish far-right party Vox. It was one of many recent outreaches to the global far right by US rightwing figures, which seem to have increased since the ouster of Donald Trump.Is the so-called “Populist International”, so often foretold but never realized, finally taking shape? And will the US conservative movement play a leading role in it? Or is this more about domestic politics than global domination?Unsurprisingly, given that the US conservative movement, like the Republican Party, covers a broad range of different shades of often far-right ideology, different people have spoken to different types of far-right groups. There are at least four major strands of far-right international networks in which US “conservatives” of all levels participate.The first and most important is the global Christian right. The US Christian right has long been a global player and has been particularly active in post-communist Europe – as is captured well in the Netflix series The Family. They have found influential supporters in Russian president Vladimir Putin and, more recently, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. It was at the latter’s invitation, at the bi-annual Budapest Demographic Summit in Budapest, that Mike Pence recently spoke, together with a broad variety of academics, church leaders and politicians from around the globe, including the French far-right maybe-presidential candidate Éric Zemmour.Budapest has also been the new promised land for the second strand, the so-called “national conservativism” movement – the brainchild of the Israeli think-tanker Yoram Hazony. National conservatism is a kind of far right for people who read, to put it dismissively – an attempt to merge the already ever-overlapping conservative and far-right ideologies and create a far-right movement fit for the cultural, economic and political elite. Tucker Carlson gave a keynote at a national conservatism summit in Washington DC in 2019 and recently took his Fox News show to Budapest, where he raved about Orbán and his regime. And the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is said to be hosting its 2022 meeting in Budapest too.The third strand is the long-standing connections between some far-right Republicans and the usual suspects of the European far right, like the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) or French National Rally (RN), which are built on a shared ideological core of nativism, authoritarianism and populism. Connections between the European far right and Republican members of Congress go back decades; think of people like Steve King, the Iowa Republican, and Dana Rohrabacher, the California Republican. They were fairly marginalized within the party – and both have, ironically, lost their seats in the Trump era. It was largely with these groups that Steve Bannon created “the Movement”, which never moved beyond media hype.And, finally, we have the party that Cruz sent a supportive video message to, Vox in Spain. Almost completely under the radar, Vox has been building a conservative-far right network in the Spanish-speaking world, partly facilitated by the party’s Dineso foundation. Focused mostly on Latin America – and piggybacking on the Latin American right’s long-standing fight against “communism” and for conservative Christianity – the foundation has published a “Charter of Madrid” signed by more than 100 politicians and political activists from Europe and the Americas, including US conservative activist Daniel Pipes (anti-Islam) and Grover Norquist (anti-tax), as well as a host of Latin American MPs. The particular meeting Cruz spoke to was attended by various European far-right leaders, including Giorgia Meloni of Brothers of Italy (FdI), currently the biggest party in the polls, and André Ventura of Chega in Portugal.Obviously, these international networks overlap on many issues, most notably in their common opposition to the “global left” but also, in different gradations, to immigration, Islam and “gender ideology”. But they also disagree on central issues, from the importance of religious doctrine to the role of Russia, and consequently have very different and shifting memberships. And they differ in the role of the US conservative movement within the network.With the exception of the Christian right, which has long dominated the global movement, the US does not play a leading role in these networks. Even the “national conservatism” network is run by an Israeli and increasingly funded by Hungarians. Moreover, the various US Republicans who have recently participated in these meetings seem to use their international connections more for domestic gains – most notably in the fight for the Republican nomination (should Donald Trump not run) – than for the sake of building a Populist International.This is not to say there is nothing new to recent developments. In the pre-Trump era, only relatively marginal rightwing conservatives and Republicans had open connections to the international far right. Today, the ties between the broader US conservative movement and the global far right have become mainstreamed, from the Republican party to National Review, with fewer and fewer dissenting voices. Still, steeped in US exceptionalism, the US conservative movement remains mostly inward-looking, using international connections and events primarily for national political struggles. And the Populist International is still more media hype than political reality.
      Cas Mudde is Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, the author of The Far Right Today (2019), and host of the podcast Radikaal. He is a Guardian US columnist
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      Why Virginia holds the key to the 2022 US midterms: Politics Weekly Extra podcast

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      This week Jonathan Freedland speaks to Jessica Taylor, of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. The pair discuss what the off-year gubernatorial elections coming up in a few weeks might tell us about Democrat and Republican chances in next year’s midterm elections

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      Archive: ABC News, Fox Business, NBC Washington, CNN Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com. Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts. More

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      Steve Bannon: Capitol attack panel to consider criminal contempt referral

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      Steve BannonSteve Bannon: Capitol attack panel to consider criminal contempt referralHouse 6 January select committee to decide on Trump’s former strategist, who has snubbed subpoena requests, on Tuesday Hugo Lowell in WashingtonThu 14 Oct 2021 14.52 EDTFirst published on Thu 14 Oct 2021 13.54 EDTBennie Thompson, the chairman of the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack on Thursday announced the panel’s intention to consider a criminal contempt referral against Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon for defying a subpoena as part of its 6 January inquiry.The vow to initiate contempt of Congress proceedings against Bannon – one of Donald Trump’s top advisers – puts the select committee on the path to enforce the subpoena issued to uncover what the former president knew in advance of plans to mount an insurrection.House Capitol attack panel issues subpoena to Trump official Jeffrey ClarkRead moreThompson said in a statement that the committee would move to consider prosecuting Bannon for refusing to comply with a subpoena demanding documents and testimony after rejecting his claims that he could not appear for a deposition because of executive privilege.“The select committee will not tolerate defiance of our subpoenas, so we must move forward with proceedings to refer Mr Bannon for criminal contempt,” Thompson said. “Witnesses who try to stonewall the select committee will not succeed.”The select committee will meet on Tuesday to decide whether to recommend the full House authorize a criminal referral for Bannon to the justice department, Thompson said, though with the panel’s members united in their fury, the decision is expected to be unanimous.House select committee investigators had ordered Bannon and Kash Patel, a former Trump defense department aide, to testify on Thursday, with additional closed-door interviews with Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and his deputy, Dan Scavino, on Friday.Neither Bannon nor Patel ultimately appeared on Capitol Hill for the first set of scheduled depositions, after Trump instructed his aides to defy the subpoenas on grounds that any discussions that involved him were protected by executive privilege.The select committee temporarily postponed depositions with Patel and Meadows while their lawyers continued to discuss cooperation, according to a source familiar with the matter. Scavino was also granted a reprieve after having his subpoena served late.But Thompson made clear that he had run out of patience with Bannon, who twice told the select committee that he intended to defy his subpoena in its entirety, abiding by the former president’s instructions first reported by the Guardian.“Mr Bannon has declined to cooperate with the select committee, and is instead hiding behind the former president’s insufficient, blanket, and vague statements regarding privileges,” Thompson said. “We reject his position entirely.”The select committee chairman also rejected Bannon’s executive privilege claim, in part because the protection exists to protect the interests of the country, and not the private, political interests of a former president, the source said.Once the select committee adopts a contempt report, it is referred to the full House for a vote. Should the House approve the report, Congress can then send the request for a criminal referral to the US attorney for the District of Columbia.The earliest the select committee can vote to adopt a contempt report for Bannon is Tuesday, because House rules require Thompson to issue a three-day notice in advance of a business meeting at which members can discharge the report.Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy, a member of the select committee, said on MSNBC that the panel was moving to enforce the subpoenas as soon as it could. “I fully expect this Department of Justice to uphold and enforce that subpoena,” she added.House select committee investigators had expressed optimism when they first issued subpoenas to the four Trump administration officials that they would be able to hear from at least one of their marquee witnesses on the scheduled deposition dates.Yet the initial optimism rapidly turned sour in the weeks that followed, after Trump announced his intention to block the select committee at every turn and the prospects of deposing some of the closest aides to the former president vanished before their eyes.The move to consider launching a criminal referral for Bannon to the justice department sets up a potentially lengthy legal battle that is certain to test Congress’s oversight authority over the executive branch and ability to uncover presidential secrets.And in preparing for the first step to hold Bannon in contempt of Congress, the select committee now faces the prospect of fighting Trump in court on two fronts – over the release of White House records, as well as his power to block his aides’ testimony.The former president, however, faces a steep uphill struggle in both instances after the justice department previously authorized officials from the Trump administration to testify to Congress about the Capitol attack and Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election.TopicsSteve BannonUS Capitol attackUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More