Speaking at the gun lobby’s convention, the former US president repeated his call to arm teachers
Donald Trump has said the recent US school shooting is a reason to arm law-abiding citizens not disarm them.
The former US president was a guest speaker at the National Rifle Association, which held its annual convention in Houston on Friday.
Continue reading...Several candidates who supported the ex-president’s big lie of election fraud were defeated but the Maga wing also had successes
Texas Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar was still locked in a tight primary runoff race with progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros on Wednesday, but “the Squad” is already angry, regardless of the result.
New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, among the most prominent of the party’s progressive wing in Congress, called out its leaders for backing the anti-abortion, pro-gun Cuellar over Cisneros.
Continue reading...Races from Georgia to Texas were a litmus test of Donald Trump’s hold on the Republican party with some significant losses
Brian Kemp, the Republican governor of Georgia, defeated former Senator David Perdue, who had been endorsed by Donald Trump. Perdue’s loss marked a significant defeat for Trump’s reputation as a kingmaker in the Republican party, as the former president has used the power of his endorsement to wield influence over candidates and lawmakers.
Continue reading...Poll finds 77% of Americans ‘pessimistic’ about cost of goods and services in coming months
• US would defend Taiwan if attacked by China, says Joe Biden
• Capitol attack panel to hold six public hearings
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The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol is expected to stage six public hearings in June on how Donald Trump and some allies broke the law as they sought to overturn the 2020 election results, according to sources familiar with the inquiry.
The hearings are set to be a pivotal political moment for the country as the panel aims to publicly outline the potentially unlawful schemes that tried to keep the former president in office despite his defeat at the hands of Joe Biden.
Continue reading...Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania governor says if Mastriano wins he could wield power to choose his own slate of electors and overturn presidential election results
Josh Shapiro, who was nominated this week as the Democrats’ candidate for governor in the electorally critical state of Pennsylvania, has accused his Republican rival of intending to override the democratic will of voters and pick his own winners in future elections.
Shapiro launched his attack on Doug Mastriano in an interview on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. He called Mastriano, a far-right state senator, “dangerous and divisive” and warned that were he to become Pennsylvania’s governor he could wield power to choose his own slate of presidential electors as a means of overturning the results of the 2024 presidential election.
Continue reading...Ultra conservative Salvatore Cordileone accuses pro-choice House speaker of failing to ‘understand the grave evil she is perpetrating’
The Roman Catholic archbishop in Nancy Pelosi’s home town of San Francisco has banned her from receiving communion there over her staunch support of abortion rights, which she has strengthened as supreme court justices weigh finalizing a draft ruling outlawing the termination of pregnancies in more than half the county.
In a letter addressed to the US House speaker and posted on his Twitter account, ultra conservative Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone argued that Pelosi’s “position on abortion has become only more extreme over the years, especially in the last few months,” and he had decided to block her from communion after she had ignored his requests to explain her stance to him.
Continue reading...The Washington Post said Friday it had obtained emails showing that Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, pressed Arizona lawmakers to set aside Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state and choose “a clean slate of electors”.
Thomas wrote to two unidentified lawmakers on 9 November 2020, the newspaper says, six days after the general election, arguing they needed to intervene because the vote had been marred by fraud.
Continue reading...Democratic congresswoman confirms engagement to Roberts, whom she met as a student at Boston University
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took a break between visiting Amazon union workers and endorsing progressive candidates to get engaged to her longtime partner Riley Roberts.
Ocasio-Cortez, 32, confirmed to Insider on Thursday that she and Roberts, who met while both were at Boston University, got engaged last month while visiting her parents’ home town in Puerto Rico.
Continue reading...My colleague Ed Helmore is at the site of Saturday’s mass shooting in Buffalo, and sent this dispatch about the importance to the predominantly Black community of the supermarket where it happened:
Tops Friendly on Jefferson Avenue in East Buffalo was more than just a grocery store. It served as community center, a place to hang out, a source of employment – and a spot for healthy sustenance unavailable at bodega stores in an area described as the oasis in a food desert.
Continue reading...A preliminary vote on military, humanitarian and economic aid to Kyiv is expected today, setting up a final vote on Wednesday
• Scrutiny of Republicans who embrace ‘great replacement theory’ after Buffalo massacre
A group of voters who challenged extremist congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s eligibility to run for re-election have filed an appeal of the Georgia secretary of state’s decision that she can appear on the ballot.
The five voters from Greene’s district alleged that the rightwing Republican played a significant role in the 6 January Capitol attack, which they said put her in violation of a 14th amendment clause concerning insurrection and ineligibility for office.
Continue reading...Lieutenant governor and frontrunner in Democratic primary says he’s recovering and insists ‘campaign isn’t slowing down one bit’
John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and frontrunner in the state’s Democratic US Senate primary, suffered a stroke Friday, and is recovering, he said in a statement.
“On Friday, I wasn’t feeling well, so I went to the hospital to get checked out. I didn’t want to go – I didn’t think I had to – but Gisele insisted, and as usual, she was right,” Fetterman said in a statement posted to Twitter, referring to his wife. “I hadn’t been feeling well, but was so focused on the campaign that I ignored the signs and just kept going.”
Continue reading...Final tally was 49-51, with all Republicans and one conservative Democrat, Joe Manchin, voting against the measure
The US Senate on Wednesday failed to advance legislation that would codify the right to an abortion into federal law, after it was blocked by Republicans.
It was a largely symbolic vote by Democrats to mobilize Americans around the issue ahead of a likely supreme court decision striking down the protections enshrined by Roe v Wade.
Continue reading...Majority leader Chuck Schumer says Senate vote is among most important of the century even though it will fail to pass
• Pro-choice states rush to pledge legal shield for out-of-state abortions
• Mitch McConnell says Senate Republicans couldn’t pass abortion ban
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We’ve heard a lot about the “rival” abortion rights bill pushed by Republican senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, and they’ve just released a joint statement explaining why they believe their reproductive rights act is preferable to the Democratic Women’s Health Protection Act they’ll vote against in the Senate this afternoon.
“I support codifying the abortion rights established by Roe v Wade. That’s not what the women’s health protection act would do,” Collins, of Maine, said in the statement.
Continue reading...President says he understands American’s frustration with Democrats, who control all three branches of government: ‘I don’t blame them’
After his remarks, Biden lingered at the podium to take a few questions on the topic of inflation. (He dismissed off-topic questions, including one about abortion rights.)
Asked whether he believed his agenda was to blame or had contributed to rising costs, he said his policies have “helped not hurt” the economy.
Americans have a choice right now between two paths, reflecting two very different sets of values. My plan attacks inflation and grows the economy by lowering the costs for working families, giving workers well-deserved raises, reducing the deficits by historic levels, and making big corporations and the very wealthiest Americans pay their fair share. The other path is the ‘ultra-MAGA’ plan put forward by Congressional republicans to raise taxes on American families , lower the income of American workers, threaten sacred programs Americans count on like social security, medicare and medicaid, and give break after break to big corporations and billionaires just like they did the last time in power when their top priority was the reckless $2tn tax cut the majority of that going to the wealthiest Americans which ballooned the deficit and not a penny of it was paid for,” the president said.
Continue reading...New York Democrat urges her party to stand up to concerted efforts from Republicans seeking to abolish constitutional right
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand on Sunday called the battle over abortion rights in the US the “biggest fight of a generation”.
The New York Democrat urged her party to stand up to Republicans seeking to abolish the constitutional right, and called the draft US supreme court opinion leaked last week, revealing a conservative-leaning super-majority supports overturning the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision, “bone-chilling”.
Continue reading...Here are more pictures from Jill Biden’s trip to Romania and Slovakia, where she will visit with Ukraine refugees over Mother’s Day weekend.
In addition to serving food, Biden also brought ketchup for personnel stationed overseas, as many have run out of different comforts from home like the condiment.
Continue reading...Swing state Democrats are calling for a defense of abortion rights and Republicans doubling down on ending them
As the US waits to see whether the supreme court will follow through on its provisional decision to end the federal right to abortion, Democrats and Republicans are already preparing for how a reversal of Roe v Wade would affect the 2022 midterm elections.
Republicans have been heavily favored to retake control of the House and probably the Senate as well, but the court’s forthcoming final opinion in the crucial Mississippi case now before it, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, could alter those predictions.
Continue reading...Numbers are growing and tempers are fraying outside the supreme court. My colleague David Smith has just sent this video of protestors on both sides of the abortion rights debate facing off:
Celebrities are sharing their abortion stories as the backlash to the supreme court’s draft ruling removing women’s rights to the procedure grows. My colleague Lizzy Davies has this report:
Continue reading...Members of Congress involved in attempt to overturn election have refused to testify voluntarily before June public hearings
The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol will decide “in the next week or two” whether to issue subpoenas trying to force Republican lawmakers to testify about Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, one of two Republicans on the panel said on Sunday.
“If that takes a subpoena, it takes a subpoena,” Adam Kinzinger said.
Continue reading...Kentucky senator who has clashed publicly with Dr Anthony Fauci champions lab leak theory in remarks at rally
The Kentucky senator Rand Paul promised on Saturday to wage a vigorous review into the origins of the coronavirus if Republicans retake the Senate and he lands a committee chairmanship.
Speaking to supporters at a campaign rally, the senator denounced what he sees as government overreach in response to Covid-19. He applauded a recent judge’s order that voided the federal mask mandate on planes and trains and in travel hubs.
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