Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The National Archives told to give documents to House committee despite ex-president’s attempt assert executive privilege
Joe Biden has blocked an attempt by former US president Donald Trump to withhold documents from Congress related to the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol.
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said Biden authorized the National Archives, a government agency that holds records from Trump’s time in office, to turn over an initial batch of documents requested by a House of Representatives select committee investigating the riot.
Steve Bannon has informed the House committee investigating the 6 January attack on the US Capitol that he will not be cooperating with their subpoena to provide related documents.
This comes after Politico reported yesterday that Donald Trump has directed Bannon and three other former aides - former social media czar Dan Scavino, former defense department official Kash Patel and former chief of staff Mark Meadows - to ignore the subpoena, likely because he will attempt to block their testimony in court.
Now almost a full year later, Republicans in several states are still continuing their partisan reviews of the 2020 election results
“They have slight differences tactically, but they all share the same strategic goals, which are primarily to continue to sow doubt about the integrity of American elections overall,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, and an election administration expert who has denounced the reviews. “I don’t know that there’s a word to describe how concerning it is.”
So now that the Democrats don’t have the 50 votes needed to make a change to the filibuster rules ahead of the debt ceiling vote today, they could always appeal to the Republicans...by not calling it a filibuster, or a change to filibuster rules with the debt ceiling, etc.
However, that route doesn’t look promising either, according to Republican senator Josh Hawley:
Another piece to the whole debt ceiling todo is the infrastructure bill and the $3.5tn reconciliation bill (also known as the Build Back BetterAct).
Republicans have long balked at the amount of spending proposed by the Democrats in each of these key pieces of legislation for the Biden administration and are using them to justify voting against raising the debt limit - they’re saying the Democrats are spending too much domestically.
Party locked in a bitter struggle over two massive legislative bills that could make or break the Biden presidency
Bernie Sanders, the leftwing firebrand who has drawn the fight against poverty and inequality into the mainstream of American politics, issued a call to arms on Sunday for fellow progressives to stand firm in the intensifying battle over the future of Joe Biden’s economic and social policy agenda.
With the Democratic party locked in a bitter struggle over two massive legislative bills that could make or break the Biden presidency, Sanders said the outcome of the next few weeks would be critical not just for the future of American working families but also for the country’s political future.
Two massive economic and social packages have reached an impasse, threatening to derail Biden’s first term in office
Warring factions of the Democratic party are bracing themselves for a potentially bruising month of negotiations over the two massive economic and social packages that have reached an impasse in Congress threatening to derail Joe Biden’s first term in office.
With Democratic leaders racing against a new 31 October deadline to pass the legislation, and with pressure building on the White House from both centrist and progressive wings of the party, the centerpiece of Biden’s agenda now hangs in the balance. Democratic prospects in next year’s midterm elections are also at stake.
President meets Democrats for talks and insists ‘it doesn’t matter whether it’s six minutes or six weeks – we’re going to get it done’
Democrats returned to the Capitol on Friday deeply divided but determined to make progress on Joe Biden’s ambitious economic vision, after an embarrassing setback delayed a planned vote on a related $1tn measure to improve the nation’s infrastructure.
Biden on Friday made a rare visit to Capitol Hill to meet privately with House Democrats amid a stalemate that has put his sprawling domestic agenda in jeopardy. The visit comes after after the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, delayed a vote on part of his economic agenda, a bipartisan $1tn public works measure, on Thursday night after a frantic day of negotiations failed to produce a deal.
Democratic lawmakers including Missouri representative Cori Bush shared personal stories behind their decisions to have abortions during a House oversight committee meeting about reproductive rights on Thursday.
Representatives Barbara Lee of California and Pramila Jayapal of Washington also shared their stories during the committee hearing
House speaker Nancy Pelosi left her press conference by urging reporters to “think positively” about the negotiations over the infrastructure bill and the reconciliation package.
And yet, as Pelosi was making her comments, House majority leader Steny Hoyer said he was not confident that the infrastructure bill would pass today, as Democratic leadership had previously hoped.
Congress passed a bill to fund the government into December. But questions remain over the debt ceiling and Biden’s agenda
The US government went into Thursday embroiled in a game of three-dimensional chess with time running out and trillions of dollars at stake.
The first dimension was a must-do: fund the government by midnight to avoid it shutting down. In a typical shutdown, hundreds of thousands of federal employees stop getting paid and many stop working; some services are suspended and numerous national attractions and national parks temporarily close.
The southern US state of Alabama, which has the highest death rate from Covid-19 in America, is planning to use Covid relief funds to help construct three large prisons and renovate several others.
As Democrats remain at an impasse over the infrastructure bill and the reconciliation package, some have expressed concern that the American public could have been better informed about what the latter bill actually aims to achieve.
The White House has packaged the wide range of initiatives under the loose slogan of “Build Back Better,” but the bill has more commonly been labelled in the media by its headline price tag - $3.5 trillion - with Democrats also unable to say definitively what would be in it.
The package, now the subject of furious negotiations on Capitol Hill, would fundamentally transform the government’s relationship with its citizens and dramatically expand the social safety net.
It sets out to broaden well-known programs for example, adding dental vision and hearing aid benefits to Medicare and continuing the Obama-era health law’s temporary subsidies that helped people buy insurance during the pandemic [...]
Speaker sends letter to party at mercy of warring factions
One reporter observes: ‘Well, this is raising the stakes’
In a letter to Democrats on Saturday the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, set her sights high, saying Joe Biden’s $3.5tn spending package, a bipartisan infrastructure deal worth $1tn and a measure to expand government funding “must pass” next week.
Mark Meadows, Steve Bannon and Dan Scavino among advisers called to testify over president’s connection to 6 January events
The House select committee scrutinizing the Capitol attack on Thursday sent subpoenas to Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and a cadre of top Trump aides, demanding their testimony to shed light on the former president’s connection to the 6 January riot.
The subpoenas and demands for depositions marked the most aggressive investigative actions the select committee has taken since it made records demands and records preservation requests that formed the groundwork of the inquiry into potential White House involvement.
The president is about to embark on a legislative push with almost no room for error
In what could be the most consequential stretch of his presidency, Joe Biden faces an autumn sprint to advance a once-in-a-generation expansion of the social safety net.
One of the seven Republican senators who voted to convict Donald Trump at his second impeachment trial warned on Sunday that the former president’s “bullying” of the party would lead to electoral defeat in next year’s midterms and beyond.
The Pentagon has responded to the unexpected arrival of two US Congress members in Kabul airport, in what the congressmen claimed was a fact-finding mission but critics have dismissed as grandstanding. “They certainly took time away from what we had planned to do that day,” said John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary.
Seth Moulton, a Democratic representative from Massachusetts, and Peter Meijer, a Republican representative from Michigan, astonished state department and military officials in the Afghan capital when they flew in on Tuesday.