Category Archives: House of Representatives

Democrats condemn McCarthy for handing Capitol attack footage to Tucker Carlson – as it happened

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The derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio has become a political football, but now we have an idea of what may have caused it: an overheating wheel bearing. Here’s more from the National Transportation Safety Board’s just-released interim report:

Crew members on the freight train that derailed in Ohio earlier this month, unleashing a huge blaze and spreading dangerous chemicals, tried to slow and stop the train after seeing an alert about an overheating wheel bearing, but it came off the tracks, according to an interim report released on Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

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Trump’s Ohio train derailment visit prompts questions on his environmental record – live

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Former president heading to East Palestine, Ohio, after loosening safety regulations for rail operators

Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg will visit East Palestine, Ohio on Thursday, Politico reports.

He’ll receive an update from the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the freight derailment that spilled toxic chemicals in the community, according to the report, which cites a person familiar with his plans.

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Alarms raised as McCarthy gives Tucker Carlson access to January 6 footage

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Democrats condemn House speaker’s move and warn Capitol security could be endangered if Fox News host airs footage

Thousands of hours of surveillance footage from the January 6 attack on the US Capitol are being made available to the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a stunning level of access granted by the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, that Democrats condemned as a “grave” breach of security.

The hard-right host said his team was spending the week at the Capitol, preparing to reveal their findings.

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US congresswoman poured coffee over attacker to deter him, chief of staff says

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Man, 26, arrested after attack in elevator in Angie Craig’s Washington apartment building early on Thursday morning

Angie Craig, a Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota who was assaulted in her Washington apartment, reportedly deterred her attacker by pouring hot coffee over him, it emerged on Friday.

“Representative Craig defended herself from the attacker and suffered bruising, but is otherwise physically OK,” her chief of staff, Nick Coe, said in a statement on Thursday.

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George Santos: puppy theft charge news follows Romney’s ‘sick puppy’ barb

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Republican at centre of string of scandals was charged in Pennsylvania with theft over purchase of puppies in 2017

The New York Republican congressman George Santos, who is at the centre of a bizarre string of scandals and who the Utah senator Mitt Romney this week called a “sick puppy”, was charged with theft in Pennsylvania in 2017 – over a purchase of “puppies”.

The scandal, reported by Politico, is not Santos’s first involving dogs and his charity, Friends of Pets United. A New Jersey veteran alleges Santos raised money for an operation for his dog, then absconded with the money.

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Republicans grill ex-Twitter executives over handling of Hunter Biden story

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Company temporarily restricted New York Post article in 2020 about contents of the abandoned computer of Joe Biden’s son

US lawmakers held a combative hearing on Wednesday with former senior staffers at Twitter over the social media platform’s handling of reporting on Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden.

The proceedings set the stage for the agenda of a newly Republican-controlled House, underscoring its intention to hone in on longstanding and unsubstantiated allegations that big tech platforms have an anti-conservative bias.

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‘Hot air’: Marjorie Taylor Greene in State of the Union balloon stunt

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Republican extremist appears to reference Chinese surveillance dirigible by parading halls of Congress with white balloon

Marjorie Taylor Greene appeared to tee up a State of the Union stunt on Tuesday, patrolling the halls of Congress with a large white balloon in reference to Republican criticism of Joe Biden over his handling of a flight over US territory by a Chinese surveillance dirigible.

“Just an innocent white balloon everybody,” the Georgia extremist said, hours before Biden’s address to Congress, attempting to keep aloft the balloon saga which ended when it was shot down off the Carolinas on Saturday.

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McCarthy calls on Biden to accept spending cuts in debt ceiling fight

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White House has said Biden will discuss issue after ceiling is lifted, while Republicans insist on cuts first

Kevin McCarthy, the House speaker, called on Joe Biden to agree to compromises and spending cuts, as the two remain deadlocked over raising the nation’s $31.4tn debt ceiling.

McCarthy spoke on Monday before Biden gives the annual State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, aiming to get ahead of the president and reinforce his role as the leading congressional negotiator.

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Trump documents: Congress offered briefing on records kept at Mar-a-Lago

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Closed-door session could provide insight into the sensitivity of the documents Trump retained and possibility of indictments

US officials have offered to provide a closed-door briefing to congressional leaders about their review of about 300 classified-marked documents retrieved from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort last year, sources familiar with the matter said.

The precise nature of the briefing remains unclear. The offer from the justice department and the Office of the Director for National Intelligence (ODNI) was described as unofficial on Sunday and no date had yet been set, though the briefing could come as soon as this week.

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Trump campaign promised to ‘fan the flame’ of 2020 election lie, audio reveals – as it happened

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Senior state officials have commented on the postponement of Blinken’s trip to China after a Chinese spy balloon was discovered over the US yesterday, noting that conditions were no longer right for Blinken’s travel.

From Reuters’ reporter Hümeyra Pamuk:

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Republicans remove Ilhan Omar from House foreign affairs committee – as it happened

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The House voted along party lines as it ousted Democratic representative Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee while Democrats defended her.

The vote was divided 218 to 211, CBS reports. One GOP member voted “present.”

“This debate today, it’s about who gets to be an American? What opinions do we get to have, do we have to have to be counted as American?… That is what this debate is about, Madam Speaker. There is this idea that you are suspect if you are an immigrant. Or if you are from a certain part of the world, of a certain skin tone or a Muslim.

Well, I am Muslim. I am an immigrant, and interestingly, from Africa. Is anyone surprised that I’m being targeted? Is anyone surprised that I am somehow deemed unworthy to speak about American foreign policy?” she said.

“A blatant double standard is being applied here. Something just doesn’t add up. And what is the difference between Rep. Omar and these members? Could it be the way that she looks? Could it be her religious practices?” he said.

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Ilhan Omar defiant as Republicans oust her from key House committee

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Minnesota Democrat accuses Republicans of trying to silence her because she is Muslim and vows to ‘advocate for a better world’

Republicans voted to expel Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar from the House foreign affairs committee on Thursday as punishment for her past remarks on Israel. Democrats objected, saying the move was about revenge after Democrats removed far-right extremists in the last Congress.

A majority of 218 GOP lawmakers supported Omar’s expulsion from the committee, which is tasked with handling legislation and holding hearings affecting America’s diplomatic relations. One Republican lawmaker voted “present”.

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FBI searches Biden’s Delaware beach home in documents investigation – live updates

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President’s personal attorney reveals justice department ‘planned search’ of home in Rehoboth

Meanwhile in the Senate, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are frustrated that they have not been briefed on the national security implications of all the classified documents that have turned up in Joe Biden, Donald Trump and Mike Pence’s hands.

The sentiment expressed by Democrat Jon Tester today, according to NBC News, is a common one:

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Trump says in video ‘anyone in my position not taking the fifth would be an absolute fool’ – live

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FBI agents conducted a voluntary search of an office formerly used by Joe Biden in Washington DC after classified materials were discovered there, CBS News reports.

The search of the Penn Biden Center was carried out with Biden’s agreement in November of last year, after the secret documents dating from Biden’s time as vice president under Barack Obama were first discovered. The search was not publicly announced, and CBS News cited two sources familiar with the investigation in reporting it.

Santos hired Charles Lovett as his chief of staff. Lovett served as Santos’s campaign manager and worked for six months as a field organizer for the Ohio Republican Party, according to LegiStorm. He also served as political director for Ohio Republican Josh Mandel’s unsuccessful primary bid for Senate. He has not worked on the Hill previously. Viswanag Burra, Santos’s operations director, spent less than a year as special operations director for Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and recently worked as executive secretary for the New York Young Republican Club.

His communications director, Naysa Woomer, appears to have the most Hill experience. She worked for three Republican members between 2014 and 2018 before moving to Massachusetts to be the communications director for the state Republican Party and then as a communications specialist for the state Department of Revenue.

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George Santos withdraws from House committees amid spiraling scandal

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New York Republican congressman under investigation over his largely made-up résumé and current campaign finance filings

The Republican congressman George Santos has temporarily withdrawn from two House committees to which he was appointed by party leaders despite a spiraling scandal over his largely made-up résumé and investigations of his bizarre past behavior and current campaign finance filings.

Santos told fellow Republicans of his decision at a closed-door party meeting on Capitol Hill on Tuesday morning.

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Protests after video of fatal Memphis police beating is released – as it happened

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Attorney Ben Crump is holding a press conference alongside Tyre Nichols’s family, where he has compared the swift indictment and arrest of five Black police officers for Nichols’s death to the comparatively slow response to other high-profile killings of Black men.

“This is not the first time that we saw police officers committing crime and engaging in excessive brutal force against Black people in America who were unarmed, but yet we have never seen swift justice like this,” Crump said.

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Pence documents discovery sparks scrutiny on US classification system – live

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Some lawmakers on both sides now asking if discoveries mean it’s time to look at how government manages its secrets

Joe Biden will at 12 pm eastern time speak about the United State’s support for Ukraine, amid reports that Washington plans to send its Abrams tanks to help Kyiv defend against the Russian invasion.

Earlier in the day, the White House announced the American president had spoken to president Emmanuel Macron of France, Britain’s prime minister Rishi Sunak, chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany and prime minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy “as part of our close coordination on support for Ukraine.”

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McCarthy vows to block Schiff and Swalwell from House intel panel

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Move seen as retribution against House Democrats who booted Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar from their committees

Speaker Kevin McCarthy reiterated Tuesday that he will block Democratic Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell of California from serving on the House committee that oversees national intelligence, saying the decision was not based on political payback but because “integrity matters, and they have failed in that place”.

In the previous Congress, Democrats booted Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona from their committee assignments for incendiary commentary that they said incited potential violence against colleagues.

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Biden honors Roe v Wade’s 50th anniversary as anti-abortionists rally in Washington – as it happeend

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Top Republicans are welcoming the annual March for Life to Washington DC, including Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell:

As well as speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy:

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George Santos denies reports that he competed as drag queen in Brazil

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New York Republican under pressure over fabrications about his career, past and alleged criminal behaviour

George Santos on Thursday tweeted an angry denial that he competed as a drag queen in Brazilian beauty pageants 15 years ago, claims made by acquaintances that have highlighted the contrast between the Republican congressman’s past actions and now staunchly conservative views.

The New Yorker, who says he is gay, dismissed the story as an “obsession” by the media, which he insisted, without irony, “continues to make outrageous claims about my life”.

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