Category Archives: US Congress

Judge says Fani Willis affair was ‘tremendous lapse in judgment’ but rules she can stay on Trump Georgia case – live

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Scott McAfee rules Willis can continue case on Trump attempts to overturn 2020 election result if deputy steps down but says court cannot condone relationship

House speaker Mike Johnson has acknowledged that it is unclear if House Republican impeachment investigation into Joe Biden will disclose impeachable offenses.

Johnson admitted that “people have gotten frustrated” with the inquiry as he spoke to reporters on Wednesday.

I know that people have gotten frustrated sometimes that it’s [dragged] on too long. But in our constitutional system, that is the way it’s supposed to work.

Does it reach the ‘treason, high crimes and misdemeanor’ standard? Everyone will have to make that evaluation when we pull all the evidence together.

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Vermont senator Bernie Sanders introduces four-day workweek bill

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Independent lawmaker says it’s time for workers to have a better quality of life with a 32-hour workweek without loss of pay

Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, introduced a bill to establish a four-day US working week.

Studies and pilot programmes have shown that four-day workweeks can increase productivity and happiness. Given Republican control of the House and a Senate split 51-49 in favour of Democrats, however, the legislation stands little chance of success.

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Schumer faces backlash after calling for new Israeli elections to oust Netanyahu

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Senate majority leader says Israeli prime minister has ‘lost his way’ and warns that country risks becoming ‘a pariah’

Chuck Schumer, the US Senate leader and a top ally of Joe Biden, on Thursday broke with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over his handling of the invasion of Gaza and called for Israel to hold new elections, in comments that upset its ruling party and allies on Capitol Hill.

The shift by Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader and the highest-ranking Jewish official in the United States, came as he continued to press lawmakers to pass a military assistance package for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, the countries Biden has named as America’s top national security priorities.

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Congress passed a TikTok bill. Will the US really ban the app?

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A bill passed by Congress and signed by Biden requires owner ByteDance to sell or face a US ban – it’s its biggest threat yet

The House of Representatives passed a bill that would require TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a total ban in the United States. The Senate passed it less than a week later. Joe Biden signed it a day after the Senate voted yes.

TikTok is facing its biggest existential threat yet in the US. The app was banned in Montana last year, but courts found that prohibition unconstitutional, and it never went into effect.

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Republican senator renews push to make daylight savings permanent

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James Lankford cites a veteran as partial reason for recommitting to Sunshine Protection Act, which has already passed in Senate

As Americans pushed their clocks forward an hour on Sunday to implement daylight savings, Senator James Lankford doubled down on his commitment to eliminating seasonal time changes, saying he wanted to abandon what he described as an antiquated first world war convention.

The Republican lawmaker from Oklahoma said he was devoted to proverbially locking the clock through his Sunshine Protection Act, which unanimously passed in the Senate but was not taken up by the House. Speaking with CNN State of the Union host Jake Tapper on Sunday, Lankford said he wanted to “start the dialogue” back up partly because of an encounter with a military veteran who seemed to view ending daylight savings time as a dying wish.

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Special counsel says he was doing his job when he criticized Biden’s memory

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Robert Hur, who investigated president over classified files, says at hearing before Congress ‘I had to consider the president’s memory’

Robert Hur, the justice department special counsel assigned to report on Joe Biden’s possession of classified documents, told Congress he was just doing his job when he shook up the US election campaign by criticizing the president’s apparent inability to recall certain events.

In his report released in February, Hur, a former US attorney under Donald Trump, recommended Biden not be charged for possessing classified documents. But he infuriated the president’s Democratic allies by making repeated references to Biden’s age and memory as one reason for not indicting him, saying jurors would see him “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.

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US government avoids shutdown after Senate approves $460bn in spending

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Vote gets lawmakers about halfway home in wrapping up their appropriations work for the 2024 budget year

The US government has narrowly avoided a partial shutdown after senators approved a $460bn package of spending bills before a midnight deadline that would have shuttered many key federal agencies.

The Senate approved the six funding bills, which passed the House on Wednesday in a bipartisan vote of 339-85, on Friday evening, a vote that gets lawmakers about halfway home in wrapping up their appropriations work for the 2024 budget year.

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RNC elects Trump’s daughter-in-law as co-chair, marking his expanding party influence – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed. For more on Lara Trump’s RNC appointment, you can read our full story:

Rightwing commentators have lambasted the Alabama senator who Republicans chose to deliver the rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

Katie Britt delivered the Republican response from what appeared to be her kitchen.

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Joe Biden came out swinging at his State of the Union address – will it be enough?

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The president brought the fight, jousting with Republican hecklers as he attacked Trump without mentioning his name

Would it be a withered old man or a human dynamo? Would it be a rambling, gaffe-prone politician or an inspiring leader touched with fire? Would it be Geriatric Joe or Dark Brandon?

Within the first few minutes of Thursday’s State of the Union address in Washington, millions of Americans had their answer. Joe Biden, 81, had brought the fight.

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Joe Biden delivers feisty State of the Union address with vision for his second term

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The president needed to appeal to voters as he and Donald Trump are neck and neck in the presidential contest

Joe Biden confirmed a new US mission to deliver aid to Gaza and repeatedly took aim at Donald Trump in his State of the Union address on Thursday, offering a pointed preview of the general election in November.

Biden’s most significant announcement came toward the end of his roughly hour-long speech, when he confirmed that the US military would establish a “temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the coast of Gaza” capable of receiving large shipments of water, food and medicine. Biden pledged the mission will not involve deploying American troops on the ground and would facilitate a significant infusion of supplies into Gaza.

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State of the Union address as it happened: Biden spars with Republicans and announces aid pier for Gaza

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US president makes last State of the Union address of this presidential term, with much at stake as he heads into re-election fight against Trump

For some reason, expelled former Republican congressman George Santos has returned to watch the State of the Union from the House floor:

Axios reports he wanted to hang out with the lawmakers who voted to remove him from office last year for being a big-time liar:

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Alabama senator Katie Britt delivers rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union

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Britt, 42, third youngest serving senator, spoke on the heels of her state’s supreme court ruling that frozen embryos are ‘children’

Republicans chose first-term Alabama senator Katie Britt, the youngest Republican woman ever to serve in the Senate, to deliver the rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday.

The 42-year-old presented a counterpoint to the oldest sitting president at her kitchen table in Alabama after his speech.

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George Santos attends State of the Union and announces another run for Congress

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Disgraced ex-congressman chummed about with Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz, and then tweeted his candidacy for New York seat

Disgraced ex-congressman and noted fabulist George Santos announced yet another run for Congress during a surprise appearance at Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday.

Despite currently facing federal criminal charges, Santos wrote on X during the speech that he’s looking to face off against his former colleague Representative Nick LaLota: “Tonight, I want to announce that I will be returning to the arena of politics and challenging Nick for the battle over #NY1. I look forward to debating him on the issues and on his weak record as a Republican. The fight for our majority is imperative for the survival of the country.”

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State of the Union guest list shows reproductive rights in spotlight after Alabama IVF bill signed into law – live

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Guests at Biden address to include Alabama woman whose IVF was cancelled, and Texas women who went through abortion ordeals

More than a quarter of Black female voters describe abortion has their top issue in this year’s presidential election, according to a new poll.

The findings by health policy research firm KFF reveal a significant shift from previous election years, when white, conservative evangelicals were more likely to put abortion as their biggest priority when voting, AP reported. Those voters were highly motivated in recent presidential elections to cast ballots for Donald Trump.

Abortion voters are young, Black women – and not white evangelicals.

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US lawmakers present bill to fund government and avert shutdown

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The bill sets a discretionary spending level of $1.66tn for fiscal 2024 and still faces opposition from hardline House Republicans

US congressional negotiators on Sunday revealed a bill to fund key parts of the government through the rest of the fiscal year that began in October, as lawmakers faced yet another threat of a partial shutdown if they fail to act by Friday.

The legislation sets a discretionary spending level of $1.66tn for fiscal 2024, a spokesperson for Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said. It fills in the details of an agreement that Schumer and Republican House of Representatives speaker Mike Johnson set in early January.

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Senate passes short-term funding bill to avert government shutdown

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Majority leader Chuck Schumer had hailed bipartisan legislation to stop partial shutdown due to occur this weekend

The Senate has passed a short-term funding bill following a House vote on Thursday afternoon, narrowly averting a partial government shutdown that was due to occur this weekend.

Ahead of the Senate vote, the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, addressed the chamber floor, saying that he saw “no reason this should take a very long time”.

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Biden calls for compromise while Trump goes full red meat at US-Mexico border

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Dueling border visits of 2024 contenders 300 miles apart shows that immigration has become a central issue in the White House campaign

It might be seen as the first US presidential debate of 2024. Two candidates and two lecterns but 300 miles – and a political universe – apart.

Joe Biden and Donald Trump spent Thursday at the US-Mexico border, a vivid display of how central the immigration issue has become to the election campaign. Since it is far from certain whether official presidential debates will happen this year, the duelling visits might be as close as it gets.

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Year three of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may be Zelenskiy’s toughest yet

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Political pressure at home, splintering international support and prospect of Trump’s re-election make for existential threats

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has an unenviable task over the coming months. As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters its third year, the Ukrainian president has a very difficult balancing act to manage.

Ukrainian society is exhausted by the war and international support is splintering, leading to a critical shortage of ammunition at the front. At the same time, most Ukrainians are not willing to countenance the idea of a peace deal, given that there would be few mechanisms to force Russia to abide by it, and would risk merely giving Moscow time to replenish its forces and strike Ukraine again.

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Cameron warns failure to supply arms to Ukraine will harm US security

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British foreign secretary argues blockage of $61bn aid package in Congress strengthens China and undermines confidence in US

David Cameron has said that the continued US failure to supply arms to Ukraine would undermine its own security, strengthen China and cast doubt on America’s reliability as an ally around the world.

The UK foreign secretary, who attended the G20 meeting in Brazil earlier in the week, admitted that the effort to rally global support for the Ukrainian cause had been “damaged” by the fact that neither the US nor the UK had voted for a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. But he argued the damage had been mitigated by the UK’s clarification of its position.

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FBI informant charged with lying about Bidens’ role in Ukraine business

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Alexander Smirnov falsely said executives linked to energy firm Burisma paid Joe and Hunter Biden $5m each in 2015 and 2016, prosecutors say

An FBI informant has been charged with lying to his handler about ties between Joe Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company.

Alexander Smirnov falsely told FBI agents in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5m each in 2015 and 2016, prosecutors said on Thursday.

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