President could bypass the political gridlock as nearly 20% population faces 100F and above temperatures
Joe Biden is under pressure to declare a national climate emergency as temperatures soar across the US and Europe.
Facing political gridlock in Washington, the president could make such an announcement – which would unlock federal resources to address the crisis – as soon as this week, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
Continue reading...The legislators were engaged in peaceful civil disobedience against the loss of abortion rights in front of the supreme court
Several prominent Democratic members of Congress were arrested on Wednesday during a protest in support of abortion rights in front of the supreme court, in the aftermath of the historic overturning of Roe v Wade last month.
The politicians gathered in front of the US Capitol before marching to the court building, chanting “our bodies, our choice” and “we won’t go back”.
Continue reading...Maryland is holding its primary elections today, and The Guardian’s Chris McGreal reports on the surprising involvement of pro-Israel lobbying groups in one of the races:
Pro-Israel lobby groups have poured millions of dollars into a Democratic primary for a Maryland congressional seat on Tuesday, in the latest attempt to block an establishment candidate who expressed support for the Palestinians.
Continue reading...Critics say Aipac and its allies are seeking to influence Democratic politics with money from Republican billionaires
Pro-Israel lobby groups have poured millions of dollars into a Democratic primary for a Maryland congressional seat on Tuesday, in the latest attempt to block an establishment candidate who expressed support for the Palestinians.
A surge in political spending by organisations funded by hardline supporters of Israel, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), has reshaped Democratic primaries over recent months even though debate about the country rarely figures as a major issue in the elections.
Continue reading...Jody Hice, a Georgia congressman who believes the baseless theory that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, has been subpoenaed by a grand jury investigating efforts to disrupt the results of the polls in the state, Politico reports:
In May, Hice lost his bid for the Republican nomination for Georgia secretary of state to Brad Raffensperger, who famously rejected Trump’s appeals to swing the state’s election results in his direction.
Continue reading...The centrist Democrat senator has repeatedly stood in the way of the president’s most ambitious legislative aspirations and derailed fragile negotiations
Joe Biden calls him “Jo-Jo”, an affectionate nickname for the West Virginia senator who, at critical moments during his presidency, has been the Joe holding all the cards.
And this week Joe Manchin, a lonely coal state Democrat who has repeatedly stood in the way of the president’s most ambitious legislative aspirations, derailed weeks of negotiations in pursuit of a deal on a scaled-back version of Biden’s economic agenda that would win his support.
Continue reading...Senator Rand Paul announced Friday he would not consent to Chad Meredith’s nomination, vetoing the president’s effort
After weeks of criticism from fellow Democrats and abortion advocacy groups, Joe Biden has deserted plans to nominate an anti-abortion lawyer to be a federal judge in Kentucky.
The White House said on Friday that Republican Kentucky senator Rand Paul would not be consenting to the nomination of Chad Meredith, effectively vetoing Biden’s move to put him on the bench.
Continue reading...West Virginia senator refuses to support funding for climate crisis and says he will not back tax raises for wealthy Americans
Joe Biden has promised executive action on climate change after Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator who has repeatedly thwarted his own party while making millions in the coal industry, refused to support more funding for climate action.
In another blow to Democrats ahead of the midterm elections, the West Virginia senator also came out against tax raises for wealthy Americans.
Continue reading...The Guardian’s Lois Beckett reports on an overlooked aspect of the bipartisan gun safety bill passed last month that will pay for efforts to reduce gun violence in neighborhoods across the country:
In 2013, a month after the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, a group of Black pastors and other activists visited the Obama White House to press the administration to do more to prevent gun violence in communities of color.
Continue reading...Republican senator claims Democrats’ proposal would encourage ‘abortion tourism’
Republican-led states are moving swiftly to ban abortion outright or retaliate against patients seeking the care and the doctors providing it to them. But the message of a new Morning Consult/Politico poll of voters gauging support for these policies might be: not so fast.
The survey found that of 13 state-level proposals, only two weren’t opposed by a majority of voters. Banning all abortions without exception is the most disliked, with 73 percent opposing it, while criminalizing abortion seekers and people who travel out of state for care both came in with 70-percent disapproval. Proposals to fine or criminalize abortion providers also polled poorly, as did the idea to allow people to sue anyone involved in abortions.
Continue reading...A Pew survey found more Americans favor stricter environmental laws and regulations – even at an economic cost
More than 80% of Democrats think the government is not doing enough to tackle the climate crisis, according to a large nationwide survey that found younger voters across both parties are most frustrated with the pace of political action on green issues.
Overall, Americans are largely split along party lines in how they view Joe Biden’s record on pressing climate and environmental challenges like clean water and air quality, according to the Pew Research Center survey of more than 10,000 adults.
Continue reading...The sobering numbers, caused by high energy prices, will be top of the agenda as president visits the Middle East
Another searing inflation report yesterday underscored the deep challenges facing Democrats ahead of this year’s critical midterm elections, with widespread pessimism about the state of the US economy and Joe Biden’s stewardship of it.
Inflation soared 9.1% in June compared with the previous year, a new 40-year high. The rising cost of gas, fuel and rent squeezes American households and puts pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates further.
Continue reading...President urged to act more forcefully to deal with rising inflation, gun violence and dire supreme court rulings
At an Independence Day barbecue, crises cascading around him, Joe Biden declared that he had “never been more optimistic about America than I am today”.
Of course there were challenges, grave ones, the US president told the military families assembled on the south lawn of the White House. And the nation had a troubling history of taking “giant steps forward” and then a “few steps backwards”, he acknowledged.
Continue reading...Top Democrats ‘deeply troubled that gun manufacturers continue to profit from the sale of weapons of war’
Could Donald Trump have had the IRS carry out its most stringent audit on two of his political foes? That’s the question posed by a story published yesterday in The New York Times that says former FBI director James Comey and his deputy Andrew McCabe were both selected for random audits by the tax authority, which is run by an appointee of the former president.
A spokesman for Trump denied knowing anything about the matter, and experts quoted in the story wondered whether it was even possible for a president to order the IRS to carry out such an action. The coincidence is nonetheless abnormal. Here’s how one former IRS official put it to the Times:
“Lightning strikes, and that’s unusual, and that’s what it’s like being picked for one of these audits,” said John A. Koskinen, the I.R.S. commissioner from 2013 to 2017. “The question is: Does lightning then strike again in the same area? Does it happen? Some people may see that in their lives, but most will not — so you don’t need to be an anti-Trumper to look at this and think it’s suspicious.”
Continue reading...Lawyer was subpoenaed last month by the House committee investigating the 2021 assault on the Capitol
A feud appears to be brewing between Biden and the top Democrats in Kentucky, including its governor Andy Beshear.
It began last week when the Courier-Journal reported that Biden intended to nominate an anti-abortion judge to a federal district court, in an apparent deal with Mitch McConnell, the state’s Republican senator who leads the party in Congress’s upper chamber. Now, the Courier-Journal has managed to obtain emails between the White House and Beshear’s office that elaborate on the deal, which the Biden administration has declined to talk about.
The governor’s office also turned over a follow-up email from a White House official sent June 29 — five hours before The Courier Journal first broke the story on the pending nomination of attorney Chad Meredith — clarifying that the original email was “pre-decisional and privileged information.”
White House aide Kathleen M. Marshall, a former lieutenant governor in Nevada who joined the White House in August as senior adviser to governors in the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, sent the June 23 email that stated: “To be nominated tomorrow: … Stephen Chad Meredith: candidate for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.”
Mr. Shapiro, the sitting attorney general, will roll out the endorsements of 10 Republicans on Wednesday as part of a continued effort to label his candidacy a reach-across-the-aisle aficionado who will unify the parties to get things done.
The list includes two former U.S. representatives, Charlie Dent and Jim Greenwood; former state House Speaker Denny O’Brien; former Lt. Gov. and longtime state Sen. Robert Jubelirer; and former state Supreme Court Justice Sandra Schultz Newman.
Continue reading...Suspect pre-planned Highland park attack and wore ‘women’s clothing’, police say
A new poll from Monmouth University has found that President Joe Biden remains unpopular, but for Democrats, that’s not its most troubling finding. The Biden administration has hoped that the supreme court’s recent rulings curtailing abortion access and expanding concealed weapons possession would fire up Democrats ahead of the midterm elections, but the poll instead shows that voters’ biggest issue remains the nation’s high rate of inflation - a trend that Biden has had little success in reversing.
First the bad news about Biden’s approval rating, which Monmouth reports actually worsened last month:
Continue reading...In its second and final decision of the day, the Supreme Court on Thursday said Biden can terminate a controversial Trump-era immigration policy, known as Remain in Mexico. The ruling affirms a president’s broad power to set the nation’s immigration policy.
The ruling concludes the most consequential supreme court term in recent memory.
The case, which was backed by a host of other Republican-led states including Texas and Kentucky, was highly unusual in that it was based upon the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era strategy to cut emissions from coal-fired power plants that never came into effect. The Biden administration sought to have the case dismissed as baseless given the plan was dropped and has not been resurrected.
Not only was this case about a regulation that does not exist, that never took effect, and which would have imposed obligations on the energy sector that it would have met regardless. It also involves two legal doctrines that are not mentioned in the constitution, and that most scholars agree have no basis in any federal statute.
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...Committee ends fifth hearing, with next sessions expected in July
Gun rights have been in the news for weeks following two shocking mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York — a fact that has not escaped the supreme court.
In his concurrence with the majority opinion, conservative justice Samuel Alito connects the latter shooting with the concealed weapons regulation that the court struck down. “Will a person bent on carrying out a mass shooting be stopped if he knows that it is illegal to carry a handgun outside the home? And how does the dissent account for the fact that one of the mass shootings near the top of its list took place in Buffalo? The New York law at issue in this case obviously did not stop that perpetrator,” wrote Alito, who was also the author of the draft opinion overturning abortion rights that leaked in May.
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