US congressional delegation visits Taiwan on heels of Pelosi trip

Five-member group including a senator will meet president and attend banquet hosted by foreign minister

A US congressional delegation has arrived in Taiwan, days after China held military drills around the island in retaliation for the House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit.

The five-member delegation, led by Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, will meet President Tsai Ing-wen and attend a banquet hosted by the foreign minister, Joseph Wu, during the visit, according to Taiwan’s foreign ministry.

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Trump under criminal investigation for potential violations of Espionage Act – live

FBI was seeking evidence about whether the mishandling of documents violated three criminal statutes, search warrant shows

Further evidence that things are looking up for Democrats: Joe Biden’s approval rating is above 40 percent for the first time since early June, per RealClearPolitics’ polling average:

Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi condemned attacks by Donald Trump and other Republicans on the FBI following their search this week of the former president’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

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Congressman and Trump ally Scott Perry says FBI seized his cellphone

Republican’s phone could be relevant to bid to overturn 2020 election and mishandling of official records

Federal investigators seized the cellphone of the Republican congressman Scott Perry on Tuesday, his office said, suggesting the justice department is examining the communications of a close ally of Donald Trump and person of interest to the House January 6 select committee.

The move by the FBI to take Perry’s phone came a day after federal agents executed a search warrant on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and seized boxes of documents, though it was not clear whether the two events were connected.

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Senate Democrats given green light to vote on $430bn climate and tax bill

Senate arbiter rules bill can bypass filibuster and be passed with simple majority, setting stage for ‘vote-a-rama’ next week

US Senate Democrats on Saturday were set to push ahead on a bill that would address key elements of President Joe Biden’s agenda, tackling climate change, lowering the cost of energy and senior citizens’ drugs and forcing the wealthy to pay more taxes.

A Senate rulemaker determined that the lion’s share of the $430bn bill could be passed with only a simple majority, bypassing a filibuster rule requiring 60 votes in the 100-seat chamber to advance most legislation and enabling Democrats to pass it over Republican objections, majority leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.

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Democrats reach deal to pass major climate bill after Sinema says yes – as it happened

Amy Weirich, a Memphis prosecutor with a checkered record who is best known for cracking down on a woman just for trying to register to vote, has lost her re-election bid. As Sam Levine reports:

Amy Weirich, the Memphis prosecutor who stirred national outrage for bringing criminal charges against a Black woman for trying to register to vote, has lost her re-election bid.

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US Senate overwhelmingly approves Nato membership for Finland and Sweden

In 95-1 vote, body supports ‘slam-dunk for national security’ after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

The US Senate delivered near-unanimous bipartisan approval to Nato membership for Finland and Sweden on Wednesday, calling expansion of the western defensive bloc a “slam-dunk” for US national security and a day of reckoning for Vladimir Putin.

The 95-1 vote for the candidacy of two European countries that, until Russia’s war against Ukraine, had long avoided military alliances took a crucial step toward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its 73-year-old pact of mutual defense among the United States and democratic allies in Europe.

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Indiana congresswoman Jackie Walorski dies in car crash

Republican, 58, elected to Congress in 2012, killed along with two members of her staff in head-on collision in Indiana, police say

The US congresswoman Jackie Walorski and two members of her staff were killed in a head-on vehicle collision in Indiana on Wednesday, her office and local police said.

Walorski, a Republican who represented Indiana’s second congressional district in the US House of Representatives, was traveling in a vehicle with the two others when another car veered into their lane, the Elkhart county sheriff’s office said.

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Democrats prepare for showdown over key spending and climate bill – as it happened

Antony Blinken, secretary of state, said at global nonproliferation discussions at the United Nations today that a return to the 2015 nuclear deal remains the best outcome for the United States, Iran and the world.

Reuters is reporting that Blinken made a point to repeat a warning from the US that North Korea is preparing to conduct its seventh nuclear test.

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Lucas Kunce: ‘Populism is about everyday people coming together’

Former US Marine with a progressive take on identity and masculinity hopes Missouri Democrats will pick him as their nominee for US Senate

Lucas Kunce thinks populism has been given a bad name. “It’s outrageous,” he says, “that people call the Josh Hawleys, the Eric Greitens, the Donald Trumps of the world populist. Populism is about everyday people coming together to have power in a system that’s not working for them. So do that, Josh Hawley. I mean, good Lord, what a charlatan.”

Kunce is running for the Democratic nomination for US Senate in Missouri, in the fight to take the state’s second seat in Washington, alongside Hawley. The primary is on Tuesday.

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DoJ reportedly preparing court fight to get Trump insiders to testify – live

Prosectors expect former president to try to invoke executive privilege to prevent his ex-officials from speaking

An impassioned plea from a 12-year-old girl has gone viral after she spoke to West Virginia Republican lawmakers during a public hearing for an abortion bill that would prohibit the procedure in nearly all cases.

On Wednesday, Addison Gardner of Buffalo middle school in Kenova, West Virginia, was among several people who spoke out against a bill that would not only ban abortions in most cases but also allow for physicians who perform abortions to be prosecuted.

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Manchin announces deal with Democrats on major tax and climate bill

News of agreement breaks deadlock two weeks after conservative Democrat had appeared to kill off Biden’s climate agenda

Democrat Joe Manchin announced on Wednesday afternoon that he has reached a deal with the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, on a domestic policy bill that would pay down national debt, cut energy costs and lower the cost of health insurance and prescription drugs, while supporting a “realistic” climate policy.

The development came almost two weeks after the West Virginia conservative senator had appeared essentially to kill off flagship climate action legislation when he came out against raising taxes on wealth Americans and refused to support more funding for climate action.

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Gun executives tell Congress: don’t blame us for deadly shootings

CEOs face aggressive questioning from lawmakers at hearing about their companies’ responsibility for recent attacks

Executives from large American gun companies appeared before a House committee on Wednesday, facing aggressive questioning from lawmakers about their organizations’ responsibility for recent devastating mass shootings in the US.

The hearing marked the first time in nearly two decades that the CEOs of leading gun manufacturers testified before Congress and comes after a wave of deadly attacks including at a Fourth of July parade in Illinois, a school in Texas and the racist massacre of Black shoppers at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.

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‘Nancy, I’ll go with you’: Trump allies back Pelosi’s proposed Taiwan visit

Mike Pompeo and Mark Esper support visit to ‘freedom-loving Taiwan’ but Biden concerned any trip would antagonise Beijing

Plans for Nancy Pelosi, the US House speaker, to visit Taiwan have prompted opposition from China and the American military but support from Republicans in Washington, including former members of the Trump administration.

Trump’s second secretary of defense, Mark Esper, told CNN: “I think if the speaker wants to go, she should go.”

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Trump speaks in Washington DC for first visit since leaving office – as it happened

Joe Biden’s daily health bulletin is a good one, as he continues to recover from the Covid-19 infection announced last week.

The president has improved enough to be able to resume his regular exercise routine, according to a Tuesday morning update from physician Dr Kevin O’Connor, reported by the Associated Press.

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Six staffers arrested after climate sit-in at Chuck Schumer’s office

On Monday, 17 people sat in the Senate majority leader’s office to demand he reopen climate negotiations

Six staffers were reportedly arrested in Congress on Monday afternoon for staging a sit-in at Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer’s office and protesting about a lack of legislative action on the environment.

The congressional staffers and activists had started the demonstration earlier Monday, with 17 staffers sitting in Schumer’s office to demand that he reopen climate negotiations, according to Saul Levin, a policy adviser for progressive congresswoman Cori Bush.

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Judge blocks Georgia DA from investigating ‘fake elector’ in setback for Trump inquiry – as it happened

Dan Cox, an extremist pro-Trump Republican, won his party’s nomination for governor in Maryland last week thanks to “collusion between Trump and the national Democrats”, the current Republican governor said.

“I don’t think there’s any chance that [Cox] can win,” Larry Hogan added, speaking to CNN’s State of the Union.

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Pete Buttigieg urges Republicans to back same-sex marriage bill

Senate Democrats hope at least 10 Republicans will support Respect for Marriage Act after 157 in House voted against it

The US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, has delivered an emotional appeal for Republicans to support a law protecting same-sex marriage as it heads for the Senate.

Democrats who control Congress aim to protect same-sex marriage amid uncertainty over which privacy based rights the conservative-dominated supreme court might target next, having overturned the right to abortion last month.

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January 6 panel says Bannon conviction is a ‘victory for the rule of law’ – as it happened

The former Trump adviser was charged with two counts of criminal contempt for refusing to appear before the House committee

If voters were to elect Donald Trump to another term in the 2024 presidential election, he is considering using bureaucratic maneuvers to remove potentially tens of thousands of civil servants across the US government and replace them with people who adhere to his ideology, according to a report from Axios.

That Trump expects his deputies to be unfailingly loyal to him is no secret, but during his time in the White House, they didn’t always do what he wanted. He intends to change that dramatically in a second term, according to the report, appointing staunch cabinet members and changing civil service regulations to allow him to dismiss up to 50,000 employees. He would replace these bureaucrats, who typically hold onto their jobs through presidential administrations, with people handpicked to support his “America first” ideology.

Trump signed an executive order, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” in October 2020, which established a new employment category for federal employees. It received wide media coverage for a short period, then was largely forgotten in the mayhem and aftermath of Jan. 6 — and quickly was rescinded by President Biden.

Sources close to Trump say that if he were elected to a second term, he would immediately reimpose it.

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‘The world is counting on us’: Biden vows to tackle climate ‘emergency’ – as it happened

Zelenska concluded her remarks by describing the Russian invasion as terrorism, and linking it to America’s experiences with such attacks.

America unfortunately knows from its own experience what terrorist attacks are and has always sought to defeat terrorism. Help us to stop this terror against Ukrainians, and this will be our joint great victory in the name of life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness of every person, every family,” Zelenska said.

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Ukraine’s first lady pleads with US for more weapons: ‘Help us stop this terror’

Olena Zelenska makes emotional appeal to Congress and asks for weapons to claim ‘joint great victory’ in war against Russia

The Ukrainian first lady, Olena Zelenska, appealed to US lawmakers on Tuesday to provide more help to her country as it struggles against a five-month-long Russian invasion she called “Russia’s Hunger Games”, saying US weapons could help assure a “joint great victory”.

“We remain completely broken when our world is destroyed by war. Tens of thousands of such worlds have been destroyed in Ukraine,” she said, through a translator, in an emotional 15-minute speech to members of the House and Senate.

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