Category Archives: Democrats

Pence breaks from Trump and calls bid to reverse election result ‘un-American’ – live

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Vice-president Kamala Harris is visiting the Southern border today amid ongoing criticism from Republicans about Harris’s absence from traveling there yet.

VP Kamala Harris boards AF2 to El Paso for her first visit to the border as VP. She was greeted by Sec. Mayorkas, Sen. Durbin and Rep. Escobar, all of whom are joining her on her trip. pic.twitter.com/GFr44Lw62Y

Vice President Kamala Harris will be in El Paso on Friday, where she will tour a Customs and Border Protection processing facility, meeting with advocates and NGOs. She will also be delivering remarks on her visit.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who has been helping with negotiations on immigration legislation on Capitol Hill, and Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, will be accompanying Harris and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on the trip.

Excerpts from a new book about Donald Trump’s presidency includes details about the 45th president’s increasingly violent language in the oval office.

CNN reports:

...the book reveals new details about how Trump’s language became increasingly violent during Oval Office meetings as protests in Seattle and Portland began to receive attention from cable new outlets. The President would highlight videos that showed law enforcement getting physical with protesters and tell his administration he wanted to see more of that behavior, the excerpts show.

“That’s how you’re supposed to handle these people,” Trump told his top law enforcement and military officials, according to Bender. “Crack their skulls!”

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‘We’ve struck a deal’: Biden says agreement reached on infrastructure plan – live

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  • Republican and Democratic senators have reached deal – president
  • Speaker: ‘It is imperative that we seek the truth as to what happened’
  • Giuliani’s New York law license suspended ‘effectively immediately’
  • Biden urges unvaccinated to get shots as ‘deadlier’ Delta strain spreads

Here’s some more on Rudy Giuliani losing (potentially temporarily) his law licence in New York today, from my colleague Sarah Betancourt:

Giuliani, 77, helped lead Trump’s legal challenge of his election loss as his personal attorney. He argued without evidence that voter fraud was rampant in Georgia, and that voting machines in the state and others were rigged. He urged Georgia’s Republican electors to vote for Trump, despite the state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, and secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, countering there was no evidence of fraud.

Related: Rudy Giuliani barred from practicing law in New York over election lies

Biden has pumped the brakes just a little on the infrastructure bill, saying it must be paired with a larger spending bill, which will likely only be supported by Democrats, if he is to sign it.

“If they don’t [both] come, I’m not signing it. Real simple,” Biden said.

Biden says bipartisan infrastructure deal has to be paired with D-only reconciliation bill.

"If this is the only thing that comes to me I'm not signing. It's in tandem."

Asked about Pelosi plan to hold first bill in House until second bill arrives, says he supports it.

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Kamala Harris to visit US-Mexico border for first time as vice-president – live

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Rising homicide rates and gun violence has become a major issue in local political races, including in the New York mayoral primary elections.

For Joe Biden, rising concern about crime has proved to be a politically convenient opportunity for him to boost gun control reforms he touted as a candidate. But the president’s wide-ranging policy proposals are sure to divide Democrats.

We can't let legitimate concerns about shootings and homicides undermine momentum to overhaul law enforcement. We can't repeat the mistakes of the past and think that we can arrest our way out of rising gun violence. https://t.co/0ifVpEJCFE

Biden is speaking at the White House to explain his administration’s plans to address crime and gun trafficking.

My colleague David Smith is covering the event live:

Joe Biden: “Crime historically rises during the summer.” As we open after the pandemic; the summer spike might be higher than usual. pic.twitter.com/XfWoQ0JGQd

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Democrats seek way forward after voting rights bill hits Senate roadblock

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The White House warned democracy was ‘in peril’ but while key Democrats stay committed to the filibuster, progress looks difficult

After nearly six months of watching Republicans relentlessly make it harder to vote in the US, Democrats suffered a major blow on Tuesday after GOP senators used a legislative maneuver to halt a sweeping voting rights and ethics bill.

The vote doesn’t kill the bill, but it marks one of the most significant setbacks for Democrats in Joe Biden’s presidency so far. Democrats heralded the legislation as their No 1 priority, even knowing they were unlikely to get any Republican votes for it. The bill would amount to the most significant expansion of the right to vote in a generation, requiring early voting and automatic and same-day registration, while prohibiting excessive manipulation of electoral district boundaries, a process often called gerrymandering.

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New York City’s tumultuous mayor’s race closes as voters struggle to choose

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Just 1% of the city’s registered voters have turned out so far in a primary filled with allegations and accusations

New York City will effectively choose its next mayor in the coming days, drawing to a close a tumultuous election race marred by allegations of sexual misconduct, by the staff of one campaign launching a protest against their own candidate, and by accusations that at least one of the mayoral hopefuls doesn’t actually live in the city.

The winner in Tuesday’s Democratic primary will, given the leftward political leanings of the city, almost certainly win the election proper in November, and immediately be tasked with leading New York through its darkest period in several decades.

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Squad goals: Ocasio-Cortez warns Biden patience is wearing thin

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Cold reality intrudes on Biden’s first few months as leftist Democrats frustrated with president’s agenda stalling in Congress

They were pointed questions, not personal criticisms. But they will have conveyed a warning to Joe Biden that the patience of the left of the Democratic party and its leaders in ‘the Squad’ of progressive politicians is not infinite.

“Are we passing the deal that helps working people the most?” asked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the firebrand New York congresswoman and best known member of the squad. “Are we passing the deal that makes the most jobs? Are we passing a deal that brings down the most climate emissions? Are we passing a deal that raises wages and actually improves our infrastructure for the next generation?”

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Covid ‘remains a serious and deadly threat’ for unvaccinated people, Biden says – as it happened

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– Joan E Greve and Maanvi Singh

The history of the race massacre in Elaine, Arkansas, has always been contested.

It is widely accepted that in 1919, a group of white men, with the backing of federal troops, tortured and killed scores of Black residents – the exact number is disputed but assumed to number at least in the hundreds – who were starting to organize against the exploitation of their labor. The massacre came at the tail end of what would become known as the “red summer”, a season of racial terror fueled by white resentment of the strides Black people were making across the country.

Related: ‘We want our land back’: for descendants of the Elaine massacre, history is far from settled

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Joe Biden signs bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday – as it happened

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A Republican congressman “ran as quickly as he could, like a coward” when a police officer injured in the attack on Congress on 6 January saw him and tried to shake his hand, the officer said.

“I was very cordial,” Michael Fanone told CNN on Wednesday of his interaction with Andrew Clyde, in a Capitol elevator earlier that day.

Related: Officer injured in Capitol attack says Republican ran from him ‘like a coward’

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States lift Covid restrictions as US passes 600,000 deaths – live

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– Joan E Greve and Maanvi Singh

The chief executive of Morgan Stanley has become the latest US banking boss to call for an end to remote working, telling his New York staff that anyone who feels safe going out to a restaurant should return to the office.

James Gorman admitted that the bank would take a different approach in countries such as India or the UK – where fewer than 25% of its 5,000 London staff have been going to work in person – due to stricter Covid restrictions.

Related: Morgan Stanley boss tells US staff to be back in office in September

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House Democrats outraged that Trump justice department seized their data – live

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Twelve people, including a minor, were targeted in a leak investigation as Democrats decry ‘weaponization’ of DoJ

• Full story here

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin shared in the outrage over the Justice Department under Donald Trump retrieving data from from the accounts of at least two Democrats on the House intelligence committee, in addition to their aides and family members.

They said Trump’s former attorney generals, William Barr and Jeff Sessions, “must testify before the Senate judiciary committee under oath.”

Schumer/Durbin: "The revelation that the Trump Justice Department secretly subpoenaed metadata of House Intelligence Committee Members and staff and their families, including a minor, is shocking. This is a gross abuse of power and an assault on the separation of powers."

Schumer/Durbin: "This appalling politicization of the Department of Justice by Donald Trump and his sycophants must be investigated immediately by both the DOJ Inspector General and Congress."

Schumer/Durbin:"This issue should not be partisan; under the Constitution, Congress is a co-equal branch of government and must be protected from an overreaching executive, and we expect that our Republican colleagues will join us in getting to the bottom of this serious matter.”

In an attempt to split the Democratic vote in a number of close races, a digital marketing firm closely linked to a pro-Trump youth group ran a series of deceptive Facebook ads promoting Green party candidates during the 2018 US midterm elections.

A new Guardian investigation found that Facebook was aware of the true identity of the advertiser - Rally Forge, a group with ties to Turning Point Action - which used socialist memes and rhetoric to sway leftwing voters toward the Green party.

Related: Revealed: rightwing firm posed as leftist group on Facebook to divide Democrats

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Senators reach agreement on $1tn infrastructure package – as it happened

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Andrew Brown Jr, a Black man who was shot by North Carolina deputies in April, died of a gunshot to the head, a state autopsy confirmed.

An independent autopsy commissioned by Brown’s family had found the same. But a North Carolina prosecutor said Brown’s death at the hands of officers “while tragic, was justified”. The prosecutor also would not release body-camera video of the confrontation.

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Joe Biden arrives in UK as domestic agenda hits a Republican wall – live

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Democratic Florida Representative Val Demings has announced she is running for Senate, challenging Republican Marco Rubio for his seat.

I'm running for U.S. Senate because I will never tire of standing up for what is right. Never tire of serving Florida. Never tire of doing good.

Join my campaign today: https://t.co/rHVPBuSzKU pic.twitter.com/HuWB80Mrxh

https://t.co/kPlysL0aZd pic.twitter.com/06iEZMpmfS

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Joe Manchin to face critics in meeting with Black civil rights leaders on voting – live

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Vice-President Kamala Harris, who has been taking some criticism for her blunt speech in Guatemala to Central American migrants to “do not come” to US, is now getting some backlash from Republicans for an NBC interview she did on this same trip.

Reminder: Joe Biden tasked Harris in March with efforts to stem migration at the US-Mexican border. On her first foreign trip, NBC’s Lester Holt asked if she had any plans to visit the border.

“We have to deal with what's happening at the border.”@VP Kamala Harris spoke exclusively with @LesterHoltNBC on her first trip overseas, how the administration is addressing the immigration crisis, and if she plans to visit the southern border herself. pic.twitter.com/sA4We7peeR

LESTER HOLT: You haven't been to the border.

KAMALA HARRIS: And I haven't been to Europe. pic.twitter.com/Vj6M261Nx3

Vice-President Kamala Harris is in Mexico now, meeting with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

President Lopez Obrador shows Vice President Harris a Diego Rivera mural at the national palace. Asked if he will do more about border enforcement, Lopez Obrador said “We will touch on that subject but always addressing the fundamental root causes” pic.twitter.com/URiJdWaUM9

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Joe Manchin’s hard no on voting bill leaves Democrats seeking new path

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The West Virginia senator has stated, in an op-ed, that he will not back the For the People Act unless it has bipartisan support

For months, Democrats in the US Senate have danced delicately around Joe Manchin, giving him space and holding out hope that the West Virginia Democrat would eventually come around and give his must-win vote to legislation that would amount to the most sweeping voting rights protections in a generation.

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US recovers millions in ransom paid to hackers after pipeline attack – live

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Newly released audio from a 2019 phone call between Rudy Giuliani, US diplomats and a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has added credence to the claims that Trump’s longtime adviser pressured the Ukrainians to help the former president politically.

In the call — which occurred prior to the infamous conversation between Trump and Zelensky that led to his first impeachment — Giuliani pushes the Ukrainians to publicly announce unfounded investigations into Joe Biden.

So @CNN got audio of @RudyGiuliani pressuring Ukrainian officials into announcing a fake investigation into @JoeBiden pic.twitter.com/OJljFCcH6h

Related: Giuliani pressured Ukraine to investigate Biden family, new transcript reveals

The new audio demonstrates how Giuliani aggressively cajoled the Ukrainians to do Trump’s bidding. And it undermines Trump’s oft-repeated assertion that “there was no quid pro quo” where Zelensky could secure US government support if he did political favors for Trump.

The call was one of the opening salvos in the years-long quest by Trump and his allies to damage Biden and subvert the 2020 election process — by soliciting foreign meddling, lying about voter fraud, attempting to overturn the results, and inciting the deadly January 6 assault on the Capitol”.

A Republican representative in Oregon may be ousted from his seat after video footage was published Friday showing he let violent protesters into the state capitol late last year.

On 21 December, far-right rioters descended on the statehouse, attacking police officers and assaulting journalists as lawmakers inside were meeting to discuss how to respond to the Covid crisis. Many of the demonstrators would also be among the mob that attacked the US Capitol on 6 January.

Update: Rep. Mike Nearman "willing to have some consequences for what I did" but says OSP and Salem police also to blame for not keeping armed demonstrators out of the Capitol after Nearman opened a door for the demonstrators. https://t.co/zd68zviL5Z #orleg #orpol

In her resolution, Kotek said personnel who were authorized to be in the Oregon Capitol described the events on Dec. 21 as intense and stressful, terrifying and distressing.

‘Law enforcement officers were visibly injured and shaken due to the demonstrators’ action,’ Kotek added.

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White House says Republicans increased offer on Biden infrastructure deal by $50bn – as it happened

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That’s all from me today. Here’s a rundown of the day’s biggest stories:

At least 10 US states have siphoned millions of dollars from federal block grants, meant to provide aid to their neediest families, to pay for the operations of ideological anti-abortion clinics.

These overwhelmingly Republican-led states used money from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (Tanf), better known as welfare or direct cash aid, to fund the activities of anti-abortion clinics associated with the evangelical right. The clinics work to dissuade women from obtaining abortions.

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Texas Democrats’ late-night walkout scuppers Republican efforts to restrict voting rights

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SB7 bill that would introduce restrictions making it harder to vote fails to pass before midnight deadline after Democrats leave House

Texas Republican have failed in their efforts to push through one of the most restrictive voting measures in the US after Democrats walked out of the House at the last minute, leaving the bill languishing ahead of a midnight deadline.

The exodus came at the instruction of Chris Turner, the House Democratic chairman, who told colleagues at 10.35pm to “take your key and leave the chamber discreetly”, referring to the key that locks the voting mechanism on their desks, the Washington Post reported.

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How Mitch McConnell killed the US Capitol attack commission

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The story of how Republicans undermined the 6 January inquiry is informed by eight House and Senate aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity

Days before the Senate voted down the creation of a 9/11-style commission to investigate the Capitol attack, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, was adamant: he would oppose the bill, regardless of any amendments – and he expected his colleagues to follow suit.

The commission that would have likely found Donald Trump and some Republicans responsible for the insurrection posed an existential threat to the GOP ahead of the midterms, he said, and would complicate efforts to regain the majority in Congress.

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Joe Biden seeks Republican buy-in but how long before patience snaps?

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Talks continue on a compromise over infrastructure but GOP intransigeance on a Capitol riot commission does not bode well

It’s become a familiar process in the Joe Biden era.

Biden and Democrats say they will work with Republicans. Republicans say they want a seat at the negotiating table. Then the prospect of Democrats going alone begins to hover over the negotiations.

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Republicans’ blocking of the Capitol commission shows how deep the rot is

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Analysis: one of America’s two major parties now falls outside the democratic mainstream but are Democrats taking the existential threat seriously?

The question now is not so much whether the Republican party can be saved any time in the foreseeable future. It is what Joe Biden and the Democrats should do when faced with a party determined to subvert democracy through any means necessary, including violence.

On Friday Republicans in the Senate torpedoed an effort to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the deadly insurrection by Donald Trump’s supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January, deploying the procedural move known as the filibuster to stop it even being debated.

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