White House says Republicans have ‘zero credibility’ over Biden documents case – live

House Republicans are seeking to embarrass president over retention of papers from time as vice-president

The Biden administration is calling on House Republicans to “come clean” about the deals Kevin McCarthy made to win election as House speaker, and accusing the party of embracing extreme policies.

“House Republicans have yet to come clean with the American people about the secret agreements Kevin McCarthy made with the most Maga members of their conference in order to end their leadership election debacle,” the White House said in a statement. “But as we learn more about what was hashed out behind closed doors, it has become clear that these hidden agreements could impact the lives of every American.”

An unprecedented tax hike on the middle class and a national abortion ban are just a glimpse of the secret, backroom deals Speaker McCarthy made with extreme MAGA members to end this month’s chaotic elections and claim the gavel. The few agreements we know about would fundamentally reshape our economy in a devastating way for working families and criminalize women for making their own health care decisions. They’re also planning to plunge the economy into chaos and take millions of American jobs and 401k plans hostage unless they can cut Medicare. What other hidden bargains did Speaker McCarthy make behind closed doors with the most extreme, ultra MAGA members of the House Republican conference? The American people have a right to know – now – which is why we are calling on him to make every single one of them public immediately.

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Biden honors Martin Luther King Jr with sermon: ‘His legacy shows us the way’

President gave sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and spoke about the need to protect democracy

Joe Biden marked what would have been Martin Luther King Jr’s 94th birthday with a sermon on Sunday at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, celebrating the legacy of the civil rights leader while speaking about the urgent need to protect US democracy.

Biden said he was “humbled” to become the first sitting president to give the Sunday sermon at King’s church, also describing the experience as “intimidating”.

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Republicans accuse Biden of hypocrisy over classified documents discoveries

House oversight chair requests Delaware visitor logs as Democrats stress difference from Trump classified records case

Republicans pounced on the discovery on Saturday of more classified documents at Joe Biden’s residence, accusing the president of hypocrisy and questioning why the records were not brought to light earlier.

Biden lawyers have discovered at least 20 classified documents at his residence outside Wilmington, Delaware, and at an office in Washington used after he left the Obama administration, in which he was vice-president.

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Democratic lawmakers demand Biden revoke Bolsonaro’s visa after Brazil riot

Former president entered the US after his election loss and is staying in Florida

Dozens of Democratic lawmakers, including some of the top members of the House foreign affairs committee, sent a letter to Joe Biden on Thursday demanding former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s diplomatic visa be canceled in the wake of the rampage in Brazil’s capital by his supporters.

“We request that you reassess his status in the country to ascertain whether there is a legal basis for his stay and revoke any such diplomatic visa he may hold,” said the letter. It continued: “The United States must not provide shelter for him, or any authoritarian who has inspired such violence against democratic institutions.”

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White House pledges to cooperate with special counsel over classified documents – as it happened

Attorney general Merrick Garland may announce the appointment of a special counsel to handle the matter of the classified documents discovered at Joe Biden’s properties, Bloomberg News reports.

Garland is scheduled to make a public address at 1.15pm, though the justice department has not said what the speech will be about. In November, Garland appointed veteran prosecutor Jack Smith to handle the investigation into government secrets found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, as well as his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

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House’s Republican majority gets to work with two abortion measures – as it happened

House to vote on medical protections for ‘babies that survive an attempted abortion’ and ‘attacks on pro-life’ groups and churches

Venture to certain corners of conservative media today and you’ll find lots of discussion of gas stoves. The Guardian’s Alaina Demopoulos explains why:

After Joe Biden’s administration announced it was considering regulating – or banning – gas stoves, Richard Trumka of the US consumer product safety commission (CPSC) offered some words of clarity: “To be clear, CPSC isn’t coming for anyone’s gas stoves,” he tweeted.

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George Santos says he won’t resign as fellow Republicans call on him to quit

Chair of Nassau county committee says Santos ran ‘a campaign of deceit, lies and fabrication’ to win third district

The Republican George Santos said on Wednesday he would not resign from Congress less than a week after being sworn in, despite calls to do so from the chairman of his district committee and a fellow New York representative, amid continuing scrutiny of Santos’s mostly made-up résumé and growing calls for campaign finance investigations.

In a tweet, Santos said: “I was elected to serve the people of the New York third district not the party and politicians, I remain committed to doing that and regret to hear that local officials refuse to work with my office to deliver results to keep our community safe and lower the cost of living.

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Kevin McCarthy faces rocky first day as House speaker – live

California Republican takes reins of Congress’s lower chamber after 15 rounds of voting last week

The Guardian’s Kira Lerner reports that the GOP has been waging a legal assault on voting nationwide, with more lawsuits aimed at restricting ballot box access filed last year than ever before:

The Republican party filed a record number of anti-voting lawsuits in 2022, a sign that they are shifting the battle over voting access and election administration to courtrooms in addition to state legislatures.

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‘One more embarrassment’: McCarthy debacle wearily received in California home town

Bakersfield, in California’s unfashionable Central Valley, has been thrown back into focus by the sorry saga in Congress

Kevin McCarthy’s home town – the hardscrabble city of Bakersfield, in California’s Central Valley – has experienced plenty of bruised feelings over the past week, but not necessarily because people have felt the pain of their congressman’s tortured path to the House speakership.

Many have bristled at being under a national spotlight during what even Fox News has described as a political clown show. Local Republicans appeared increasingly defensive as McCarthy fell short in vote after vote – before finally prevailing in the early hours of Saturday morning. Democrats, meanwhile, expressed growing concern that McCarthy had been taken captive by his party’s far-right wing and, especially, by apologists for the violent insurrection at the US Capitol two years ago.

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McCarthy clinches speaker’s gavel at 15th attempt as Republicans in disarray

With a wafer-thin majority, and few powers, Nancy Pelosi’s successor looks set to be one of the weakest speakers in history

He had nothing to lose but his dignity. Congressman Kevin McCarthy knew the job he had always craved was within his grasp. All he needed was the vote of a 40-year-old Florida man under investigation over sex trafficking allegations.

McCarthy walked over and begged Matt Gaetz to make him speaker of the US House of Representatives. Gaetz stared, pointed a finger and refused. Fellow Republican Mike Rogers stormed towards Gaetz and had to be forcibly restrained.

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Republican McCarthy says he finally has enough votes to win House speaker – as it happened

House party leader says he’s confident he has the votes after losing 13 straight rounds

It’s just after noon and the House is reconvening now to pick up the already tortuous quest to seat a speaker. But two Republicans at least won’t be there.

Congressman-elect Wesley Hunt of Texas is heading home to be with his premature newborn son.

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Republican Kevin McCarthy falls short on 10th ballot for House speaker – live

As president Joe Biden prepares to deliver remarks at the US-Mexico border, some of the topics on his agenda include addressing border enforcement operations, as well as the record numbers of migrants escaping gang violence.

According to administration officials, Biden plans to ask Congress to fund his request for Department of Homeland Security resources and pass immigration reforms, PBS NewsHour’s White House correspondent Laura Barrón-López reports.

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House without a speaker as McCarthy fails to secure majority in six rounds of voting – as it happened

US Capitol police officer Michael Fanone, who testified to the January 6 committee, visited McCarthy’s office today to highlight McCarthy’s failure to secure his House speaker vote.

While posing outside of McCarthy’s office, Fanone said he visited McCarthy to “rub it in”, referring to McCarthy’s election failure.

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House adjourns as speakership evades McCarthy even after sixth vote

Republicans push back deadline of electing new speaker to noon on Thursday, after six failed votes in two days

The House remained paralyzed on Wednesday, after Republican leader Kevin McCarthy failed for the sixth time to capture the speaker’s gavel as his critics stood firm in their opposition to his candidacy. After the House adjourned for a few hours, McCarthy and his allies went into negotiations with the Republican holdouts without a clear path forward to end the standoff, then pushed back a seventh vote on the House leadership until Thursday.

The House held a total of three inconclusive votes in the speakership election on Wednesday, mirroring the three votes held a day earlier. Across all six ballots, no speaker candidate successfully captured the 218 votes expected to be needed for a victory. The stalemate marked the first time in a century that a House speaker was not chosen in the initial vote. After the sixth vote on Wednesday evening, the House moved to adjourn until at least 8pm ET, giving Republicans more time to reach a solution, then pushed back the deadline again, voting to adjourn until noon the following day.

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House adjourns after Kevin McCarthy falls short in three rounds of voting for speaker – as it happened

Leader of slim Republican majority has been negotiating to secure backing of hardliners but voting could go to multiple rounds

A crescendo of bipartisan outrage will accompany the swearing in due today of George Santos, one of the Republican party’s most controversial new Congress members, who has admitted large parts of his biography are a fantasy.

The New York politician, caught in lies over his family background, education and work history, is facing calls to step down from several senior figures within his own party before he even sets foot on the floor of the chamber.

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What Democrats achieved – and didn’t – in two years controlling Congress

From same-sex marriage protections to veterans’ aid, Joe Biden’s party used its thin majority to deliver many campaign promises

In January, Democrats will lose their unified control of Capitol Hill, ending a remarkable legislative streak that saw the party deliver on many of their campaign promises.

While Joe Biden and his party did not accomplish everything they set out to do, Democrats in Congress spent the last two years marshalling their thin majorities to pass consequential legislation that touches nearly every aspect of American life from water quality to marriage equality. Some of the most notable measures even earned Republican support.

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Trump tax returns: key takeaways from the records release

The former president had a bank account in China, failed to donate in 2020 and claims Democrats ‘weaponized’ his taxes

In one of its last acts under Democratic control, the House of Representatives on Friday released six years of Donald Trump’s tax returns, dating to 2015, the year he announced his presidential bid.

The thousands of pages of returns were the subject of a prolonged legal battle after Trump broke precedent by not releasing his tax returns while running for, and then occupying, the White House.

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Trump says tax returns release will ‘lead to horrible things for so many people’ – as it happened

More elections news from Arizona, a swing state where pro-Trump Republicans have of late caused a lot of trouble with claims of electoral fraud in races in which they were beaten.

On Thursday, in a recount triggered by the closeness of the first count, the Democratic candidate for attorney general, Kris Mayes, was declared the winner for a second time, beating the Republican candidate, Abe Hamadeh.

“Outside court, Mayes attorney Dan Barr said the results should give the public confidence in elections, despite the adjustments in vote totals as a result of the recount.

‘They didn’t just do a rubber stamp of what it was,’ Barr said. ‘They did a careful evaluation of the votes and they came up with a different result. And so I think people should have a lot of confidence in the process.’

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Tlaib and MTG among more than 220 House proxy voters on spending bill

Republicans rail against pandemic-era rule as 226 House members from left to far right take chance not to vote in person

Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, one of two Democrats to oppose the $1.7tn spending bill that averted a US government shutdown on Friday, did so by voting “present”. But Tlaib was not present at the Capitol, voting instead by proxy.

Proxy voting was instituted during the Covid pandemic and is due to come to an end on 3 January, in the new Congress with Republicans controlling the House.

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January 6 panel releases transcripts of key witness Cassidy Hutchinson – as it happened

Committee releases closed-door testimony of former White House chief of staff’s aide but full report is still delayed

White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson said she felt she had “Trump himself looking over my shoulder” as she discussed with her attorney her upcoming testimony to the January 6 committee earlier this year.

Hutchinson, an assistant to then-president Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, makes the revelation in a transcript of a deposition to the panel that was released on Thursday morning.

It wasn’t just that I had Stefan sitting next to me; it was almost like I felt like I had Trump looking over my shoulder. Because I knew in some fashion it would get back to him if I said anything that he would find disloyal.

And the prospect of that genuinely scared me. You know, I’d seen this world ruin people’s lives or try to ruin people’s careers. I’d seen how vicious they can be.

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