Category Archives: US Congress

White House blasts false claims about Hurricane Helene and relief aid

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Statement comes as president urges Congress to pass disaster-relief package as costs soar amid devastation

The White House moved Saturday to quash claims that government officials control the weather, including a far-fetched rumor circulating on social media that Hurricane Helene was an engineered storm to allow corporations to mine regional lithium deposits.

“We have seen a large increase in false information circulating online related to the federal response to Hurricane Helene,” a statement said, pointing to a “number of scam artists, bad-faith actors, and others who want to sow chaos because they think it helps their political interests are promoting disinformation about the recovery effort.”

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Jamaica welcomes US move to clamp down on gun trafficking to Caribbean

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Horace Chang, deputy PM of country with highest homicide rate, praises US attorneys generals’ support for legislation

Jamaica’s deputy prime minister has welcomed a campaign by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, to push through new measures and legislation to tackle gun trafficking from the US to the Caribbean.

Horace Chang, who is also Jamaica’s minister of security, praised a coalition of 14 US attorneys general, led by James, that is backing the passing of the Caribbean Arms Trafficking Causes Harm Act. Introduced in both houses of the US Congress earlier this year, the act aims to help curb illicit arms trafficking from the United States to the Caribbean.

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Vance-Walz debate live: vice-presidential candidates to square off in key debate

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JD Vance and Tim Walz will go head to head in New York just weeks ahead of the general election

The White House Correspondents’ Association said it has grown “increasingly concerned” about the “lack of media access” inside debate halls.

For tonight’s vice-presidential debate, CBS is allowing only one print representative, one television representative and six still photographers, who will not be permitted to move around to take photos during the event, the group said.

The WHCA’s insistence on having a full pool inside the room isn’t just about reporters being able to witness the debates. This is about the public having multiple sets of eyes and ears to properly record these moments for history.

Jason Miller, senior adviser to Donald Trump

Donald Trump Jr, a son of Donald Trump

Tom Cotton, Arkansas senator

Katie Britt, Alabama senator

Elise Stefanik, New York representative and House Republican conference chair

Byron Donalds, Florida representative

Howard Lutnick, longtime chief executive officer of Cantor Fitzgerald LP

Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota senator

Mark Kelly, Arizona senator

Jared Polis, Colorado governor

JB Pritzker, Illinois governor

Jasmine Crockett, Texas representative

Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee

Ben Ray Luján New Mexico senator

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Donald Trump says he will meet Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday – as it happened

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Here is more from the federal indictment against Eric Adams:

In 2014, Eric Adams, the defendant, became Brooklyn borough president. Thereafter, for nearly a decade, Adams sought and accepted improper valuable benefits, such as luxury international travel, including from wealthy foreign businesspeople and at least one Turkish govermnent official seeking to gain influence over him.

By 2018, Adams – who had by then made known his plans to run for mayor of New York City – not only accepted, but sought illegal campaign contributions to his 2021 mayoral campaign, as well as other things of value, from foreign nationals.

Eric Adams, the defendant, sought and accepted illegal campaign contributions in the form of ‘nominee’ or ‘straw’ contributions, meaning that the true contributors conveyed their money through nominal donors, who falsely certified they were contributing their own money.

By smuggling their contributions to Adams through US-based straw donors, Adams’ overseas contributors defeated federal laws that serve to prevent foreign influence on US elections.

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US Senate votes unanimously to hold hospital CEO in criminal contempt

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Ralph de la Torre, paid at least $250m by Steward Health Care amid facility issues and closures, ignored subpoena

The US Senate has voted unanimously to hold the CEO of Steward Health Care in criminal contempt for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena – marking the first time in more than 50 years that the chamber has moved to hold someone in criminal contempt.

On Wednesday, the Senate voted to hold Ralph de la Torre in contempt of Congress after the 58-year-old head of the Massachusetts-based for-profit healthcare system – which declared bankruptcy earlier this year – ignored a congressional subpoena and failed to appear at a hearing over the hospital chain’s alleged abuse of finances on 12 September.

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US Congress passes government funding package to avert shutdown

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Senate approves bill extending funds until December two hours after House passes it, sending it to Biden’s desk

US Congress passed a three-month government funding package on Wednesday, sending the bill to Joe Biden’s desk and averting a shutdown that was set to begin next Tuesday.

The Senate approved the funding package just two hours after the House passed the bill on Wednesday afternoon, as lawmakers raced to return to their home districts six weeks before election day.

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Man charged with attempted assassination of Donald Trump at Florida golf course – as it happened

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Minutes after Joe Biden finished addressing the UN general assembly, Donald Trump’s campaign released a statement warning, in apocalyptic terms, of the consequences of electing Kamala Harris.

“Under President Donald J Trump, Iran was weak, ISIS was eliminated, Hamas was cut off, historic peace was descending on the Middle East, Russia was under control and there hadn’t been a US service member killed in Afghanistan in 18 months,” the lengthy email read.

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CrowdStrike to apologize for global IT outage in congressional testimony

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Faulty update from cybersecurity company ground hospitals, airports and payment systems to halt in July

A CrowdStrike senior executive will apologize for causing a global software outage that ground the operations of hospitals, airports, payment systems and personal computers around the world to a halt in July.

Adam Meyers, senior vice-president for counter adversary operations at CrowdStrike, is slated to testify before Congress on Tuesday. Meyers will speak to the House homeland security cybersecurity and infrastructure protection subcommittee. In testimony made available before the hearing, he wrote: “I am here today because, just over two months ago, on July 19, we let our customers down … On behalf of everyone at CrowdStrike, I want to apologize.” He will say the company has undertaken “a full review of our systems” to prevent the cascade of errors from occurring again.

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Trump tells supporters at campaign rally ‘if we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole thing’ – as it happened

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Kamala Harris has seen a surge in favorability among voters and is increasingly viewed as the candidate most likely to bring change, a NBC News poll released on Sunday found.

Among registered voters nationwide, the vice-president is ahead by five percentage points, with 49% support against Donald Trump’s 44%. She is also seen as the candidate more likely to bring “change”, a potentially significant finding given that other surveys have found many Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. Among respondents, 47% say Harris represents change, while 38% say the same of Trump.

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US Congress agrees to funding deal to avert shutdown in blow to Trump

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Mike Johnson announces compromise after decoupling government funding from Trump-backed citizenship bill

US congressional leaders have agreed to a short-term funding deal in a move that averts a damaging pre-election government shutdown and also amounts to a snub for Donald Trump.

The prospect of a shutdown at the expiration of the current government funding on 30 September had been looming after Republicans insisted on tying future funding to legislation that would require voters to show proof of US citizenship – known as the Save Act and backed by Trump but opposed by Democrats.

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Civil rights groups condemn senator’s questioning of Arab American witness

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Republican John Kennedy of Louisiana accuses thinktank director of supporting Hamas in heated hate crime hearing

A congressional hearing on hate crimes drew charges of the bigotry it was meant to address after a Republican senator told the female Muslim head of a thinktank to “hide your head in a bag” and accused her of supporting Hamas and Hezbollah.

John Kennedy, the GOP senator for Louisiana, drew condemnation from Democrats as well as Muslim, Jewish and civil liberties groups for the remark, aimed at Maya Berry, the executive director of the Arab American Institute, at a hearing staged by the Senate judiciary committee.

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Harris-Trump debate watched by 15m more than Biden clash – as it happened

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Russia has accused both presidential candidates of using Vladimir Putin’s name as part of a domestic political fights, saying: “we really, really don’t like it”.

Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that the US was hostile and negative towards Russia, Reuters reports, and the Kremlin hoped that candidates would drop such references to Putin.

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DoJ warns states over voter purges – as it happened

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Pew report says 49% of voters would choose Harris, with the same number planning to vote for Trump; justice officials remind states about voting laws

The statement of support for Kamala Harris by a group of retired top military officials comes a day before the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, will host a congressional gold medal ceremony honoring the 13 service members killed in the chaotic 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal.

Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans have tried to blame Harris for the Afghanistan pullout, including in a report by House GOP lawmakers today.

Our investigation reveals the Biden-Harris administration had the information and opportunity to take necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government. At each step of the way, however, the administration picked optics over security.

Without involving the Afghan government, he and his administration negotiated a deal with the Taliban that freed 5,000 Taliban fighters and allowed them to return to the battlefield.

This chaotic approach severely hindered the Biden-Harris administration’s ability to execute the most orderly withdrawal possible and put our service members and our allies at risk.

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Bill Clinton says ‘Trump creates chaos’ and mocks crowd-size obsession in star-studded night at DNC – live

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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.

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Cori Bush warns pro-Israel lobby ‘to be afraid’ after primary loss

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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.

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Cori Bush loses primary after pro-Israel groups spend millions to oust ‘Squad’ member

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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%.

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Climate change deniers make up nearly a quarter of US Congress

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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.

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Trump favorite Kari Lake wins Arizona’s Republican Senate primary

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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.

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House to form taskforce to investigate Trump assassination attempt

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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.

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Were Benjamin Netanyahu’s claims accurate in his speech to US Congress?

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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.

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