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.
Continue reading...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media coverage for a short period, then was largely forgotten in the mayhem and aftermath of Jan. 6 — and quickly was rescinded by President Biden.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.
Continue reading...Panel lays out its case that the 45th president orchestrated a plot to keep himself in office, but its work is not done
During the course of its landmark summer of hearings, the House select committee investigating the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol has sought to show that Donald Trump was at the center of a multi-layer conspiracy to seize a second term in office, accusing him of having “summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack”.
In a dramatic capstone on Thursday, the panel argued that Trump betrayed his oath of office and was derelict in his duty when he refused to act for 187 minutes on 6 January as rioters carrying poles, bear spray and the banners of his campaign, led a bloody assault on the US Capitol.
Continue reading...House committee wants all communications from day before and day of Capitol attack but agency indicates such messages are lost
The Secret Service turned over just one text message to the House January 6 committee on Tuesday, in response to a subpoena compelling the production of all communications from the day before and the day of the US Capitol attack, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The Secret Service told the panel the single text was the only message responsive to the subpoena, the sources said, and while the agency vowed to conduct a forensic search for any other text or phone records, it indicated such messages were likely to prove irrecoverable.
Continue reading...Vote was largely symbolic as two bills stand all but no chance of overcoming Republican opposition in the evenly-divided Senate
The House of Representatives on Friday approved legislation that would protect abortion access nationwide, the first action by Democrats in Congress to respond to the supreme court decision in late June overturning Roe v Wade.
The vote was largely symbolic – the bills stand all but no chance of overcoming Republican opposition in the evenly divided Senate, where 60 votes are needed to move legislation forward.
Continue reading...Analysis: Viewers learned of an ‘unhinged’ White House meeting and rioters ready for war – but will it close the case against Trump?
“We settle our differences at the ballot box.”
Bennie Thompson, chairman of the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, emphasised this article of faith in his opening remarks on Tuesday.
Continue reading...The Guardian’s Ashifa Kassam and Ramon Antonio Vargas report:
Fifty suspected migrants were found dead and at least a dozen others were hospitalized after being found inside an abandoned tractor-trailer rig on Monday on a remote back road in south-west San Antonio, officials have said.
Continue reading...Former president Barack Obama has condemned the supreme court’s ruling overturning Roe v Wade, calling it an attack on “the essential freedoms of millions of Americans”:
President Joe Biden is expected to address the nation:
Continue reading...Fourteen Republicans vote with majority for first major gun reform legislation in nearly 30 years
The US House on Friday passed a bipartisan bill to strengthen federal gun regulations, bringing an end to decades of congressional inaction and sending the historic legislation to Joe Biden’s desk.
Passage of the bill came a day after the supreme court overturned a New York law regulating handgun ownership, a significant blow for proponents of gun reform.
Continue reading...The two cases had managed to steer clear of each other as the justice department and House panel pursued the same ground
The US justice department’s criminal investigation into the January 6 Capitol attack collided with the parallel congressional investigation, causing federal prosecutors to seek a delay in proceedings in the seditious conspiracy case against the far-right Proud Boys group.
The two January 6 inquiries had largely managed to steer clear of each other even as both the justice department and a House select committee pursued the same ground. But it all came to head on Wednesday.
Continue reading...President Joe Biden has cheered the Food and Drug Administration’s decision today to authorize Covid-19 vaccines for children younger than five years old, the last group of Americans that didn’t have access to the jabs.
“Today is a day of huge relief for parents and families across America. Following a rigorous scientific review, the Food and Drug Administration has authorized the first COVID-19 vaccines for kids under the age of five. As early as next week, pending recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), parents will finally be able to get their youngest kids the protection of a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine,” Biden said in a statement released by the White House.
Continue reading...A special election in south Texas last night ended with bad news for Democrats when the district chose a Republican to represent it in the House of Representatives for the first time. But as Victoria Bekiempis reports, the victor Mayra Flores will face a stiffer challenge in November, when she must stand for her seat once more.
A south Texas congressional district will be represented by a Republican for the first time following a special election Tuesday. The election of Mayra Flores, who bested her Democrat competitor in a 51%-43% vote, comes as Republicans continue to make inroads among Latino voters in south Texas.
Continue reading...Bennie Thompson says second hearing will tell story of how ‘Trump decided to wage an attack on our democracy’
The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection in 2021 reconvened on Monday to scrutinize the conspiracy theories that led a group of Donald Trump’s supporters to attack the US Capitol.
The Democratic chair of the committee, Mississippi congressman Bennie Thompson, has said the second hearing would focus on “the lies that convinced those men and others to storm the Capitol to try to stop the transfer of power”.
Continue reading...Run by former Republican vice-presidential candidate marks first bid since resigning as governor partway through her term in 2009
Former Alaska governor and Republican ex-vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin leads in early results from Saturday’s special primary for the state’s only US House seat in what could be a remarkable political re-emergence.
Voters in the far north-western state are whittling down the list of 48 candidates running for the position that was held for 49 years by the late US Representative Don Young.
Continue reading...The March for Our Lives rallies come after mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York
Rallies for gun reform were held in Washington, New York, other US cities and around the world on Saturday, seeking to increase pressure on Congress to act following a spate of mass shootings.
In Washington, the son of an 86-year-old victim in the Buffalo supermarket shooting said: “Enough is enough. We will not go quietly into the night.”
Continue reading...Did the January 6 committee really cut through the “thick fog of propaganda” around the attack? Not if you watched Fox News, which didn’t broadcast the hearing. My colleague Adam Gabbatt took a look at what they showed in its place:
The millions of people who tuned into America’s main television channels on Thursday heard how the January 6 insurrection was “the culmination of an attempted coup”, a “siege” where violent Trump supporters mercilessly attacked police, causing politicians and staffers to run for their lives.
Continue reading...The House select committee presented their findings that the US Capitol attack was the ‘culmination of an attempted coup’
The first primetime hearing from the House select committee investigating January 6 presented gut-wrenching footage of the insurrection, and a range of testimony to build a case that the attack on the Capitol was a planned coup fomented by Donald Trump.
After a year and half investigation, the committee sought to emphasize the horror of the attack and hold the former president and his allies accountable.
Continue reading...The US Department of Justice has announced a federal civil rights investigation into the Louisiana State Police following a raft of brutality cases and the fatal beating of a Black motorist, Ronald Greene, in 2019.
Greene, an unarmed 49-year-old, was arrested by six white officers with body camera footage of the incident, obtained years later by the Associated Press, revealing he had been punched, tasered and placed in a chokehold and later dragged face down in handcuffs and left prone for over nine minutes.
Continue reading...Relatives of victims urge action while group of over 220 CEOS send joint letter pushing Senate to address gun violence
Pressure is mounting on the US Senate to act on gun safety in the wake of the Uvalde and Buffalo massacres, as Republican intransigence continues to stand in the way of all but modest reforms.
On Wednesday the House of Representatives passed a package of gun safety measures designed to staunch the disaster of mass shootings. The extent of Republican resistance was underlined by the fact that only five out of 208 House Republicans voted for the legislation.
Continue reading...Miah Cerrillo recounts at gun violence hearing how she watched as her teacher and friends were shot and acted quickly to save herself
An 11-year-old survivor of the elementary school massacre in Uvalde, Texas testified before the House oversight committee on Wednesday, as lawmakers continued to try to reach a compromise on gun control legislation after a series of devastating mass shootings.
The House hearing came two weeks after an 18-year-old opened fire at Robb elementary school, killing 19 children and two teachers, and three weeks after 10 people were killed at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
Continue reading...