Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Christopher Wray faces grilling from Democratic lawmakers over lead-up to 6 January insurrection
The FBI director, Christopher Wray, has said that the bureau considers the 6 January Capitol attack an act of “domestic terrorism” and suggested that “serious charges” were still to come in its continuing criminal investigation.
Testifying before Congress on Thursday, the director rubbishedDonald Trump’s claims about a stolen presidential election. “We did not find evidence of fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election,” he told lawmakers on the House judiciary committee.
Democratic Senator Bob Casey signaled this morning that it may be time to move on from negotiating with Republicans and instead pass an infrastructure bill using reconciliation, allowing Democrats to circumvent the Senate filibuster.
Asked whether it was time to focus on setting up a reconciliation pathway for the infrastructure bill, Casey told CNN anchor Jim Sciutto, “I think we’re getting to that point, Jim. It’s an old expression, fish or cut bait.”
Me: “IS IT TIME TO MOVE ON TO RECONCILIATION (on infrastructure)?”@SenBobCasey: “I THINK WE'RE GETTING TO THAT POINT, JIM. IT'S AN OLD EXPRESSION, FISH OR CUT BAIT” pic.twitter.com/T0HLUKygrL
The Guardian’s Sam Levine and Daniel Strauss report:
After six months of aggressive Republican efforts to restrict voting access, Democrats are facing new questions about how they will actually pass voting rights reforms through Congress.
The US House of Representatives has passed a bill that would create a 9/11-style commission to investigate the deadly attack on the Capitol in January. Thirty-five Republicans joined Democrats in passing the measure, with the vote largely falling along party lines. A total of 175 Republicans voted against the bill, with Democrat congressman Tim Ryan saying it was 'slap in the face to every rank and file cop in the United States'. Republicans in leadership have played down the violence of the Capitol riot that left five people dead
The vast majority of House Republicans voted against a bipartisan, 9/11-style panel – no surprise from a party still in thrall to Trump
“Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States.” So begins the report of the 9/11 commission, which investigated the terrorist attacks 20 years ago with bipartisan support.
Will there be a similarly limpid introduction to a similarly weighty (567 pages) study of the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol in Washington on 6 January? Not if Republicans can help it.
Viola Fletcher, the oldest living survivor of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, massacre, was seven when a white mob attacked the city’s 'Black Wall Street' in 1921, killing an estimated 300 African Americans.
For decades, the atrocity on Greenwood Avenue was actively covered up. On Wednesday, Fletcher appeared before a House of Representatives judiciary subcommittee considering legal remedies. Fletcher, who was a domestic worker for most of her life, said she was seeking justice and referred to the 'daily horror' inflicted on black people in the US
Liz Cheney has become the figurehead of the conservative Never Trumpers – but the Wyoming congresswoman was for the former president in the last election.
Lawmakers faced with choice between embarrassing Trump and ignoring insurrection
House Democrats are poised to adopt legislation to create a 9/11-style commission to investigate the Capitol attack, in a move that will force Republicans to either embrace an inquiry that could embarrass Donald Trump – or turn a blind eye to a deadly insurrection.
Lawmakers agree to create bipartisan commission to investigate breach but questions remain over GOP support
The Republican House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, should testify before the commission to investigate the 6 January Capitol attack, the Wyoming representative Liz Cheney said on Friday, because he has “said publicly that he’s got information about the president’s state of mind that day”.
Members of Congress agree to establish 10-person commission
Pro-Trump Elise Stefanik replaces Cheney as GOP conference chair
Here’s a quick summary of what’s happened so far today:
A new New York Times story points out just how influential Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s logo, with its bold, slanted text, was to future progressive candidates who emulated her poster’s style. It’s now seen all over the country in races big and small and was even used by a communist candidate in France.
Gavan Fitzsimons, a business professor at Duke University, told the Times that copycat posters are likely trying to get potential voters to subconsciously associate the candidate with Ocasio-Cortez.
NEW: The iconography of @AOC — my dive into how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s logo has formed a new graphical language for progressivism.
Taking over the White House briefing, Jen Psaki was asked for Joe Biden’s reaction to the ouster of Liz Cheney as House Republican conference chair for her criticism of Donald Trump and the “big lie” that there was widespread fraud in the presidential election.
The White House press secretary noted that more than 80 judges threw out lawsuits challenging the results of the election, confirming the legitimacy of Biden’s victory. She criticized Republicans for punishing Cheney and ignoring the violent fallout from Trump’s false claims, specifically citing the six deaths from the January 6 insurrection.
The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, is now holding her daily briefing with reporters, and she was joined by transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg and EPA administrator Michael Regan.
Buttigieg and Regan provided updates on fallout from the ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline over the weekend, which has caused gasoline supply issues in some east coast states.
The ousting of Cheney snuffs out all doubt – Republicans don’t think they can win next year’s midterm elections without Trump
Lafayette Square, outside the White House, reopened this week to strolling couples, tourists and scampering children. After nearly a year sealed off by eight-foot metal fencing, it was one more sign of life in America getting back to normal.
Then there’s the danger. For more than three months it’s been tempting for many to assume that, with Joe Biden in the White House and Donald Trump off Twitter, democracy survived its near-death experience, recovered and checked out of hospital. But the ousting of Liz Cheney by the Republican party shows that the potential for a relapse is all too real.
Joe Biden will also speak about gun violence during tonight’s speech, according to USAToday. On the presidential campaign trail, Biden pledged to reinstate the assault weapons ban and create a voluntary gun buyback program.
A White House official told the newspaper that Biden will talk about gun violence as an epidemic, which he has done in the past, and urge Congress to reinstate a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines.
The president’s plea appears to echo a similar one made by Obama at the State of the Union in 2013, two months after Sandy Hook, in which he told Congress victims of gun violence — many of whom were seated in the room — “deserve a vote.” Biden presided over the Senate chamber when a gun safety package failed to pass two months later.
Despite the uphill battle, Democrats are heeding the president’s call. Last week Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., reintroduced a bill to remove protections for manufacturers and sellers from consumer negligence lawsuits and allow victims of gun violence to pursue legal recourse. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., a key Democrat leading gun control efforts, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper last week that he’s made calls to almost half the Republican caucus “asking them to keep an open mind.”
The Guardian’s voting rights reporter, Sam Levine, has an alarming story this morning on Republican efforts to make it harder to vote in Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office:
Even as attacks on voting rights have escalated in recent years, the Republican effort since January marks a new, more dangerous phase for American democracy, experts say.
The Democratic representative Maxine Waters has come under criticism from the Republican house minority leader, after she expressed support for protesters against police brutality at a rally on Saturday in Brooklyn Center, the Minneapolis suburb where Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was shot and killed by police last week.
Waters said she would 'continue to fight in every way that I can for justice', prompting the Republican minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, to accuse Waters of 'inciting violence in Minneapolis'
Congressman faces allegations over sex, drugs and nude photos
Women for America First also helped organise 6 January rally
The Florida congressman Matt Gaetz insisted on Friday “the truth will prevail” over allegations of sex trafficking and illegal drug use which have pitched him into the centre of a congressional scandal.
The Florida Republican congressman Matt Gaetz appears increasingly politically isolated amid a spiralling scandal over a federal sex-trafficking investigation. Even for Donald Trump, one Republican political operative said, “a 10ft pole is not long enough”.
Federal prosecutors are reportedly examining whether Gaetz and a political ally facing sex trafficking allegations may have paid underage girls or offered them gifts in exchange for sex.
Republican congressman reportedly under investigation over alleged cash and gifts given to women contacted online
One of Donald Trump’s loudest cheerleaders in the US Congress is under federal investigation over allegations that he paid for sex with women recruited online, according to a media report.
Matt Gaetz, a Republican congressman from Florida, is one of the former president’s most ardent supporters and frequently appeared on TV to promote his lies about a stolen election.
House agriculture committee hearing comes on the heels of $5bn being allocated to farmers of color earlier this month
For the first time in US history, members of the House agriculture committee heard from Black farmers on the impact of systemic discrimination by the department of agriculture (USDA).
Thursday’s hearing came on the heels of $5bn being allocated to socially disadvantaged farmers of color earlier this month as part of the coronavirus relief and economic stimulus package. The funding – $4bn for debt forgiveness, $1bn for other forms of support – is meant to account for generations of mistreatment of farmers of color by the USDA.
The House of Representatives gave final approval on Wednesday to one of the largest economic stimulus measures in US history, a sweeping $1.9tn Covid-19 relief bill that gives Joe Biden his first major victory in office. The measure provides $400bn for $1,400 direct payments to most Americans, $350bn in aid to state and local governments, an expansion of the child tax credit, and increased funding for vaccine distribution. 'This is the most consequential legislation that many of us will ever be a party to,' the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said at a ceremony to sign the bill before it goes to the White House
A deeply divided Congress passeda landmark $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill on Wednesday, delivering the first major legislative victory of Joe Biden’s presidency and a sweeping promise to raise millions of Americans out of poverty.
Sara Fearrington, a North Carolina waitress, joined the Fight for $15 campaign two years ago. A server at a Durham Waffle House, her take-home pay fluctuates between $350 and $450 a week, leaving her struggling to pay bills every month. She voted for Joe Biden, who had pledged to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. It was the first time Fearrington, who is 44, had ever voted in a presidential election.