Category Archives: US Congress

Far-right US Senate candidate tells crowd to carry guns ahead of election

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Kari Lake of Arizona warned supporters of ‘intense’ election year in which Democrats will come after them ‘with everything’

Republican US Senate candidate Kari Lake has told supporters to “strap on a Glock” ahead of the 2024 elections as she struggles to gain ground against her Democratic rival in Arizona.

In a campaign speech made to a crowd in Arizona’s Mohave county on Sunday, Lake echoed Trump-like terms in calling Washington DC a “swamp” – and used a reference to carrying guns when she told people to prepare for an “intense” election year.

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Alabama chooses candidates for new Black congressional district

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After a contentious redrawing of Alabama’s congressional map, two candidates will compete in November for a seat, and perhaps congressional control

Shomari Figures, an attorney and Obama White House executive from a politically-prominent civil rights family, has won the Democratic nomination to run in Alabama’s redrawn second congressional district Tuesday night, defeating state representative Anthony Daniels.

The runoff election has been closely watched because of its implications for control of Congress in November, and for the effect of supreme court orders requiring southern states to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act and eliminate racial gerrymandering.

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Trump boasts ‘We broke Roe v Wade’ as abortion dogs GOP election hopes

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Republican presumptive nominee struggles to articulate position on divisive issue after meeting with House speaker

Facing the press alongside the House speaker, fellow Republican Mike Johnson, Donald Trump bragged: “We broke Roe v Wade.”

The former president made the stark admission about his dominant role in attacks on abortion rights at the end of a week in which the rightwing Arizona state supreme court ruled that an 1864 law imposing a near-total ban could go back into effect.

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Japanese leader asks US to overcome ‘self-doubt’ about global leadership

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Fumio Kishida warns of risks from China in address to Congress and says Japan determined to do more to share responsibility

Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, on Thursday called on Americans to overcome their “self-doubt” as he offered a paean to US global leadership before a bitterly divided Congress.

Warning of risks from the rise of China, Kishida said that Japan – stripped of its right to a military after the second world war – was determined to do more to share responsibility with its ally the United States.

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Mitt Romney says Alejandro Mayorkas’s actions do not merit impeachment

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Republican senator says homeland security secretary is following position of party and will not vote to remove him if it goes to trial

Alejandro Mayorkas is not guilty of a high crime or misdemeanour, the Republican senator Mitt Romney said, making clear he will not vote to remove the US homeland security secretary from office if his impeachment goes to a trial.

“Secretary Mayorkas is following the position of his party and of the president who was elected,” Romney, from Utah and his party’s nominee for president in 2012, told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday.

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Republican choice for vacated US House seat is surprise boon for Lauren Boebert

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Colorado Republicans chose former mayor Greg Lopez, who plans to step down, leaving no incumbent or favored primary candidate

A Colorado Republican panel made the surprising decision on Thursday night to choose a former mayor, Greg Lopez, to be congressman Ken Buck’s likely replacement until the November general election, a saving grace for Lauren Boebert’s bid for another term in Congress.

Lopez will now run as the Republican candidate in the 25 June special election after Buck’s resignation at the same time GOP primary candidates are vying to be the congressman’s successor.

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Joe Lieberman, former US senator and vice-presidential nominee, dies at 82

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Lieberman, Connecticut senator for four terms, was Al Gore’s Democratic running mate in 2000

The former US senator Joe Lieberman, who ran as the Democratic nominee for vice-president in the 2000 election and became the first Jewish candidate on a major-party ticket for the White House, alongside presidential candidate Al Gore, has died at the age of 82.

Lieberman died in New York due to complications from a fall, according to a statement from his family. He was a Connecticut senator for four terms.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene files motion to remove House speaker Mike Johnson

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Far-right Republican says motion intended as ‘more of a warning than a pink slip’ and stops short of forcing vote to eject him

The far-right Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor-Greene filed a motion to remove Mike Johnson as House speaker on Friday but did not pull the trigger on a move that would probably pitch Congress into a repeat of chaos seen last October, when the right ejected Kevin McCarthy.

Speaking after Johnson relied on Democratic votes to pass a $1.2tn spending bill and avoid a government shutdown, Greene said her motion was meant as “more of a warning than a pink slip” because she did not want to “throw the House into chaos”.

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Republican House majority to shrink as Mike Gallagher steps down

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Congressman once considered a rising Republican star to leave in April, further weakening party’s slim majority

The Republican majority in the US House of Representatives is set to dwindle further with the early exit of Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, once a rising star of the party.

A former US marine who twice deployed to Iraq, Gallagher, 40, is a relatively moderate voice in party at the mercy of the far right.

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Netanyahu addresses Senate Republicans days after Schumer calls for his ouster

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Israeli PM speaks via video link and answers questions after his request to talk to Democrats was turned down

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, virtually addressed Republican senators in Washington on Wednesday, days after the chamber’s majority leader, the Democrat Chuck Schumer, called him an impediment to peace in an unsparing floor speech.

The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, told reporters, shortly after leaving the Senate Republicans’ policy lunch, that Netanyahu joined the gathering via video link, delivered a presentation, and answered questions.

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Trump unable to make $454m bond in civil fraud case, say his lawyers – as it happened

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Donald Trump’s lawyers have asked the appeals court to delay posting the bond to cover the $454m fraud judgment against him until his appeal of the case is over.

The former president’s lawyers filed notices of appeal late last month challenging Judge Arthur Engoron’s 16 February verdict that he lied about his wealth as he grew the real estate empire that launched him to stardom and the presidency.

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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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