For all the supreme court’s pomp and ceremony, a new poll finds Americans increasingly are holding it in low regard.
According to Monmouth University, a majority of Americans find it out of touch with their beliefs:
Continue reading...Biden releases national hunger and nutrition strategy, which includes a slate of goals to help end food insecurity
Biden is going into the main pillars of the national hunger and nutrition strategy released on Tuesday, which includes a slew of goals to help end food insecurity, give people more information and options to eat more healthily, and help folks take up regular physical activity.
Unfortunately, the goals are more a call to action, as Congress has ended Covid-era policies like the universal free school meals program and the expanded child tax credits which had massively reduced food insecurity and child poverty in the US.
Continue reading...Panel cites threat of Hurricane Ian bearing down on parts of Florida, and says the ‘investigation goes forward’
As the January 6 committee enters what is likely to be the home stretch of its investigation, a new poll has found it hasn’t meaningfully shifted beliefs about what happened that day.
Monmouth University finds that around four in 10 Americans hold Donald Trump responsible for the insurrection at the Capitol, slightly less than in late June, while three in 10 believe the election was stolen from him, a figure that’s moved little since November 2020.
Continue reading...Paul Gosar and Louie Gohmert were eager to believe ‘wild, dramatic fantasies’, claims Denver Riggleman in new book
The Republican congressmen Louis Gohmert and Paul Gosar adopted such extreme, conspiracy-tinged positions, even before the US Capitol attack, that a fellow member of the rightwing Freedom Caucus thought they “may have had serious cognitive issues”.
Denver Riggleman, once a US representative from Virginia, reports his impression of his former colleagues from Texas and Arizona in a new book.
Continue reading...Denver Riggleman tells 60 Minutes that texts from Mark Meadows amounted to a ‘roadmap to an attempted coup’
The supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade allowed states to curtail abortion rights completely, potentially transformed the midterms and, as Maya Yang reports, complicated access to other medicines in unexpected ways:
A few weeks after the supreme court’s 24 June decision to overturn the nationwide abortion rights established by Roe v Wade, the pharmacy chain Walgreens sent Annie England Noblin a message, informing her that her monthly prescription of methotrexate was held up.
Continue reading...The state department seems keen to avoid questions about the Palestinian American journalist’s shooting by an Israeli soldier
Israel has declared the case closed. The US state department has done its best to duck difficult questions. But leading members of the US Congress are refusing to drop demands for a proper accounting of the death of the Palestinian American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, four months ago.
The longest-serving member of the US Senate, Patrick Leahy, recently upped the ante by warning that Israel’s failure to fully explain the Al-Jazeera reporter’s killing could jeopardize America’s huge military aid to the Jewish state under a law he sponsored 25 years ago cutting weapons supplies to countries that abuse human rights.
Continue reading...Coalition gathers on Capitol Hill to deliver impassioned demand to improve life for low-income Americans
A coalition of faith leaders gathered on Capitol Hill on Thursday to deliver an impassioned demand for more congressional action to combat poverty, telling lawmakers they have a moral obligation to improve life for low-income Americans.
The faith leaders called on the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate to take at least three votes on major progressive issues before midterm elections in November.
Continue reading...Special master also gives series of deadlines after judges overturn ruling that temporarily blocked DoJ from the material
The judge who had initially blocked the justice department from reviewing the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago and ordered a special master to weed out privileged materials has revised her ruling, Politico reports.
Federal judge Aileen Cannon’s changes come after an appeals court overturned the part of her opinion that had halted the government’s review of the documents taken from Donald Trump’s resort, hampering the investigation into whether the former president took government secrets with him when he left the White House.
Continue reading...National security adviser makes remark while Biden will ‘rebuke Russia’ at UN summit
Joined by his fellow New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, majority leader Chuck Schumer is continuing to call for aid to Puerto Rico at a press conference outside the Capitol.
Here’s the latest from Nexstar media:
Continue reading...Judge appoints special master to weed out documents under legal privilege rules but DoJ is expected to appeal the decision
Speaking of conservative media, Ramon Antonio Vargas tuned into conservative stalwart Fox News to see what their political coverage looks like ahead of the midterms:
With most US voters indicating that the preservation of abortion rights is their chief focus as midterm elections loom, the face of Fox News and Republican politicians appear to be trying to shift attention to crime, a progressive media watchdog has warned.
As a kid, he always knew he wanted to be a doctor (“Fisher Price play kit,” he muses). But it wasn’t until he was an undergraduate at Columbia University that he experienced an epiphany.
He was working on a big display of the AIDS memorial quilt, he says, and was tasked with flying to San Francisco to bring back a “roll of carpet that looked like a body in a shroud.” On the day the exhibit opened for the finished quilt, he watched as men his age — people who should have been enjoying their 20s — walked in, coughing and raging with a disease very likely to kill them.
Continue reading...The commission presented its final report on Confederate-honoring military bases and assets that should be renamed
An independent commission is recommending that the Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery be dismantled and taken down, as part of its final report to Congress on the renaming of military bases and assets that commemorate the Confederacy.
Panel members on Tuesday rolled out the final list of ships, base roads, buildings and other items that they said should be renamed. But unlike the commission’s recommendations earlier this year laying out new names for nine Army bases, there were no suggested names for the roughly 1,100 assets across the military that bear Confederate names.
Continue reading...Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko, former head of security, says ‘any employee could take over the accounts of any senator in this room’
A Twitter whistleblower who accused the company of “egregious” security deficiencies testified in front of Congress on Tuesday, expanding on accusations of corporate failings he filed to federal agencies in August.
Former hacker Peiter “Mudge” Zatko worked as head of security at Twitter from 2020 until he was fired in 2022, and says in that time he witnessed “extreme, egregious deficiencies by Twitter in every area of his mandate”.
Continue reading...Gabriel Debenedetti, author of book on Biden’s relationship with Obama, reports call on night of 2018 midterms
On the night of the 2018 midterm elections, as a wave of anti-Trump sentiment swept Democrats to take control of the House, top Republican Mitt Romney urged Joe Biden to run for president.
“You have to run,” said Romney, the Republican presidential nominee Biden and Barack Obama defeated in 2012, speaking to the former vice-president by phone.
Continue reading...Former president also calls Joe Biden’s Philadelphia address the ‘most vicious, hateful, divisive speech’
Speaking in Pennsylvania on Saturday, at his first rally since the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago for top-secret material taken from the White House and since Joe Biden used a primetime address to warn that Republicans were assaulting US democracy, Donald Trump lashed out.
The former president said: “The FBI and the justice department have become vicious monsters, controlled by radical-left scoundrels, lawyers and the media, who tell them what to do.”
Continue reading...In overnight court filing, DoJ says it was ‘likely’ efforts had been made to move and hide documents
Donald Trump’s former White House counselor, Kellyanne Conway, does not think Republicans should move on from her former boss, despite signs his control of the party could cost it the chance to take Congress in November.
Speaking to Fox News on Tuesday, Conway said: “Those who want to move on from Trump: You go first.”
Continue reading...Ron Klain argues president has made a historic impact and that focus shouldn’t be on inflation or Afghanistan withdrawal
Democratic leaders went on the attack against Mike Pence, as the former vice-president under Donald Trump heads to Iowa today amid increased speculation of a potential 2024 campaign.
Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, sharply criticized Pence’s repeated calls for a national abortion ban in the wake of the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade.
Continue reading...Carl Paladino, a Republican candidate for Congress in New York, recently caused controversy when he praised Adolf Hitler
A Republican candidate for Congress in New York said he was “being facetious” when, in the same interview, he said the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, should be executed for authorising the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Florida home.
The candidate, Carl Paladino, recently caused controversy when he praised Adolf Hitler, as “the kind of leader we need today”.
Continue reading...The vice-chair of the House January 6 panel faced retribution from state voters for going against the former president
Liz Cheney has paid the price for her staunch opposition to Donald Trump’s assault on American democracy by losing her seat in Congress to a challenger backed by the former president.
The vice-chair of the January 6 committee was beaten by a conservative lawyer, Harriet Hageman – who has echoed Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud – in a Republican primary election to decide Wyoming’s lone member in the House of Representatives.
Continue reading...White House hopes climate and healthcare plan will mark turning point for Biden’s presidency and boost Democrats in the midterms
Meanwhile in Kansas, abortion foes have apparently not given up on the state’s ballot initiative to allow lawmakers to restrict the procedure, which voters resoundingly rejected earlier this month.
The Associated Press reports that an anti-abortion activist and an election conspiracy promoter have teamed up to coordinate a recount of the ballots in nine of the state’s counties, which accounted for more than half of the votes cast on the initiative and all but one of which rejected it. According to the report, the abortion foe, Mark Gietzen put almost all of the $120,000 cost on his credit card to pay for the recount.
Continue reading...Polls show congresswoman trailing far behind conservative lawyer Harriet Hageman in Wyoming’s Republican primary
Widely praised for her defence of democracy during the January 6 committee hearings, Liz Cheney looks set to lose her seat in Congress on Tuesday to a rival backed by former US president Donald Trump.
Opinion polls show Cheney trailing far behind conservative lawyer Harriet Hageman – who has echoed Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud – in a Republican primary election to decide Wyoming’s lone member in the House of Representatives.
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