Former president addresses delegates amid reports Oprah Winfrey is expected to make an appearance
Kamala Harris’s campaign raised four times as much money last month than Donald Trump’s campaign, Reuters is reporting, citing federal disclosures filed late on Tuesday.
The Harris campaign told the Federal Election Commission it raised $204m in July, compared to $48m reported by Trump’s main fundraising group.
Continue reading...Member of progressive ‘Squad’ says her loss has freed her to openly challenge Aipac
Representative Cori Bush has warned the pro-Israel lobby “to be afraid” after it poured millions of dollars into defeating the prominent member of the “Squad” of progressive Democrats in Tuesday’s primary election in St Louis.
Bush said her loss to St Louis county prosecutor Wesley Bell after the hardline American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) targeted her for opposition to Israel’s attack on Gaza had freed her to openly challenge the powerful pressure group, which has vowed to spend $100m to influence US elections this year in favour of Israel.
Continue reading...St Louis prosecutor Wesley Bell defeated Missouri’s first Black female member of Congress with about 51% of the vote
A prominent member of the progressive “Squad” in Congress, Cori Bush, has lost her Democratic primary in St Louis after pro-Israel pressure groups spent millions of dollars to unseat her over criticisms of Israel’s war on Gaza.
St Louis prosecutor Wesley Bell defeated Missouri’s first Black female member of Congress with about 51% of the vote. Bush took about 46%.
Continue reading...Climate denialists – 23 in Senate and 100 in House – are all Republicans and make US an outlier internationally
US politics is an outlier bastion of climate denial with nearly one in four members of Congress dismissing the reality of climate change, even as alarm has grown among the American public over dangerous global heating, an analysis has found.
A total of 123 elected federal representatives – 100 in the House of Representatives and 23 US senators – deny the existence of human-caused climate change, all of them Republicans, according to a recent study of statements made by current members.
Continue reading...Far-right firebrand to face off against Democrat Ruben Gallego for US Senate seat vacated by Kyrsten Sinema
Kari Lake, the far-right firebrand and favorite of Donald Trump, has won Arizona’s Republican Senate primary.
The Associated Press projected the race at 8.44pm Arizona time on Tuesday night. Lake rose to prominence as a gubernatorial candidate in 2022, when she refused to concede the race to her Democratic challenger Katie Hobbs.
Continue reading...Bill passes 416-0 in favor of bipartisan group to look at security failings surrounding Pennsylvania rally shooting
The House voted on Wednesday to form a taskforce to investigate the security failures surrounding the assassination attempt against Donald Trump earlier this month.
The vote underscores the bipartisan outrage over the shooting at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump came within inches of losing his life. One rally-goer was killed and two others severely injured. Lawmakers have responded quickly with hearings and widespread calls for accountability.
Continue reading...We factcheck the Israeli prime minister’s statements about letting aid trucks into Gaza, safeguarding civilians and negotiations with Hamas
Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress was filled with combative remarks, as well as claims about the war in Gaza, now almost in its tenth month.
Israel’s assault on the territory was triggered by the 7 October Hamas attacks on southern Israel, and has so far killed more than 39,000 people, with thousands more believed to be buried underneath the rubble.
Continue reading...Sole Palestinian American in Congress protests as other progressives call for Israel arms embargo and Gaza ceasefire
Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit and address to a joint session of the US Congress on Wednesday was met with a personal protest in the chamber by the sole Palestinian American member of Congress, while some lawmakers gave the Israeli prime minister a standing ovation, others stayed away, and demonstrations by thousands of protesters took place outside.
The Michigan representative Rashida Tlaib, a leading progressive Democrat and fiercely outspoken opponent of Israel’s war in Gaza, held up a sign that said “war criminal” as Netanyahu was speaking. She also wore a Palestinian flag pin and a keffiyeh, the black and white scarf that has been linked with the Palestinian struggle for over half a century.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed. You can read our full story on Biden’s address at the link below:
Kevin McCarthy, the former Republican House speaker, has described attacks by his former colleagues on Kamala Harris claiming that she was hired as part of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are “stupid and dumb”.
McCarthy, speaking to NBC News’ Meet the Press NOW last night, said:
I disagree with DEI, but she is the vice-president of the United States, she is the former US senator. These congressmen saying it, they are wrong in their own instincts.
If President Biden is committed to passing the torch to his vice president, and wants to be able to seed her campaign with the current Biden for President campaign war chest, he’ll first have to become his party’s legal nominee. After shuffling through the Democratic National Committee’s planned roll call vote he’d be free to drop out. Ms Harris could seamlessly slip into the driver’s seat.
Continue reading...Police mount major security operation to seal off US Capitol from protesters before Israeli prime minister to speak
Capitol Hill is on high alert for a day of protest from thousands of demonstrators representing a broad coalition of groups voicing opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, when he addresses a joint session of the US Congress.
With tensions over Israel’s 10-and-half-month war in Gaza running high, police mounted a major security operation to seal off the US Capitol from protesters long before Netanyahu is due to speak at 2pm ET.
Continue reading...Independent senator says in floor speech invitation to Israeli PM, due to give address on Wednesday, is ‘disgrace’
The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has condemned Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming address to the US Congress, calling him a “war criminal” presiding over a “rightwing extremist government”.
Sanders delivered his remarks on the Senate floor on Tuesday as Congress expects Netanyahu to give a speech to Congress on Wednesday afternoon. The speech comes after an underwhelming arrival to the US, just after President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from November’s elections.
Continue reading...Pew finds that Trump has a 4 percentage point lead over Biden among registered voters nationwide
Joe Biden continues to push back against those calling for him to step aside, albeit gently.
Politico reports that the president’s aides have reached out to delegates ahead of the Democratic national convention in August, and asked questions that seem geared towards making sure they remain loyal to the president ahead of his formal re-nomination.
Fearing a floor revolt against his nomination, President Biden’s aides are telephoning individual delegates to next month’s Democratic convention to gauge their loyalty to the president, according to three delegates who received a call this week.
After a round of introductory questions confirming each delegate was still planning on going to Chicago and asking if they had served as delegate before, the Biden aide making the calls got to the point, the Democratic activists recalled to me in separate interviews.
Continue reading...Senator Michael Bennet said Trump may win ‘by a landslide’ while two more senators echoed his concerns
Joe Biden came under renewed moral pressure on Wednesday to abandon his presidential candidacy amid agonised appeals by a succession of senior Democrats for him to consider the broader picture.
Those calls came as the US president dug in his heels to make it hard to supplant him as the nominee.
Continue reading...Party leaders have come out in support of president but rumbling continues as Tennessee Democrat says opinions are so vast they are ‘not even in the same book’
At the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, Senator Josh Hawley endorsed the idea of Christian nationalism.
“Some will say now that I am calling America a Christian nation – so I am,” said Hawley during remarks at the conference on Monday. “And some will say that I am advocating Christian nationalism – so I do.”
Continue reading...The Oklahoman brought a snowball to the Senate floor in 2015 to prove humans couldn’t change the climate
Republican former senator James Inhofe, a climate denier who once brought a snowball to the chamber floor in a stunt attempting to disprove global warming, died on Tuesday at the age of 89.
Inhofe resigned as senator for Oklahoma in January 2023, suffering long-term effects of Covid-19. Elected in 1994, his time as the state’s longest-serving senator was notable for his ultra-conservative positions on numerous issues, including calling the climate emergency “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”.
Continue reading...Ranking Democrat on armed services committee says debate was ‘alarming’ and urges president to stand aside
Joe Biden’s position among congressional Democrats eroded further on Monday when an influential House committee member lent his voice to calls for him to end his presidential campaign following last month’s spectacular debate failure.
Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the armed services committee in the House of Representatives, issued the plea just hours after the president emphatically rejected calls for him to step aside in a letter to the party’s congressional contingent.
Continue reading...House Democratic leader schedules virtual conference for Sunday as several members call for president’s withdrawal
Congressional Democrats are to hold an emergency weekend meeting to discuss Joe Biden’s tottering presidential candidacy, after a primetime television interview failed to dispel doubts triggered by last week’s debate fiasco.
Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrats’ leader in the House of Representatives, scheduled the virtual meeting for Sunday with ranking committee members, according to multiple reports, even as Biden struck a defiant posture in Friday’s interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
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House Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington said that Joe Biden “is going to lose to Trump” following the president’s poor debate performance last week.
In a new interview with KATU News, Gluesenkamp Perez said: “About 50 million Americans tuned in and watched that debate. I was one of them for about five very painful minutes. We all saw what we saw, you can’t undo that, and the truth, I think, is that Biden is going to lose to Trump.”
Continue reading...Notable Israelis add their voices to oppose invite extended by Mike Johnson, which Democrats plan to boycott
A group of prominent Israelis – including a former prime minister and an ex-head of Mossad, the foreign intelligence service – have added their voices to the growing domestic calls in the US for Congress to withdraw its invitation to Benjamin Netanyahu to address it next month, calling the move “a terrible mistake”.
The plea, in an op-ed article in the New York Times, argues that the invitation rewards Netanyahu, Israel’s current prime minister, for “scandalous and destructive conduct”, including intelligence failures that led to last October’s deadly Hamas attack and the ensuing bloody war in Gaza which shows no sign of ending.
Continue reading...Congressman Bowman defeated by George Latimer, backed by pro-Israel groups in most expensive House primary ever
Jamaal Bowman, the progressive Democratic congressman whose criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza made him a target for pro-Israel lobbying groups, lost his primary race on Tuesday night.
The Democratic primary in New York’s 16th district became the most expensive House primary in history after Bowman was challenged by George Latimer, a pro-Israel centrist.
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