The coronavirus relief bill has finally been signed into law by Donald Trump. Here’s a look at what’s in the 5,000-page package
Donald Trump signed the new Covid-19 stimulus package into law on Sunday night, suddenly giving into pressure from Congress after calling the legislation a “disgrace” days earlier.
Related: Dow hits record high after Trump belatedly signs Covid relief bill
Continue reading...As Donald Trump peddled baseless claims of vote fraud after 3 November, democracy found out who its friends were
In November, Donald Trump became the first president in American history to try to hold on to power that voters had given to someone else in the course of a national election.
Continue reading...Donald Trump went to his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida on Thursday, after claiming to be “working tirelessly for the American people” with a schedule that included “many meetings and calls”. Back in Washington, a Democratic proposal to increase direct payments to Americans under the Covid relief bill, from $600 to $2,000, was blocked.
Related: Donald Trump's latest wave of pardons includes Paul Manafort and Charles Kushner
Continue reading...Donald Trump’s flirtation with declaring martial law in battleground states and appointing a conspiracy theorist as special counsel to help his attempt to overturn defeat by Joe Biden are “really sad” and “nutty and loopy”, Mitt Romney said on Sunday.
Related: Biden mulls punishments for Russia over suspected role in government hack
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The Food and Drug Administration approved Moderna’s vaccine for emergency use. This is the second coronavirus vaccine to gain approval in the US.
The government can now begin to distribute 5.9m doses of the Moderna vaccine across the US.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle said they were optimistic they could reach a deal on a coronavirus stimulus bill this weekend.
The $900bn proposal currently on the table has been held up over an attempt by Republicans to curtail the Federal Reserve’s lending power - limiting its emergency lending efforts amid a deep economic crisis. Democrats said the provision would tie president-elect Joe Biden’s hands as he tries to rein in the economic fallout caused by the coronavirus crisis.
Continue reading...Republican Mitch McConnell on Tuesday congratulated the Democratic president-elect, Joe Biden, and vice president-elect, Kamala Harris, on their election victories, ending his long silence on the outcome of the presidential race. In remarks on the Senate floor on Tuesday morning, the Senate majority leader acknowledged the Democrats' winning the White House following Monday's formal result issued by the electoral college
Continue reading...Democrats lost big in state elections which could cost them when new political maps are drawn
While the world focused on the election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in November, some of the most consequential contests were in state legislative races between candidates many have never heard of.
State lawmakers have the authority to redraw electoral districts in most US states every 10 years. In 2010, Republicans undertook an unprecedented effort – called Project Redmap – to win control of state legislatures across the country and drew congressional and state legislative districts that gave them a significant advantage for the next decade. In 2020, Democrats sought to avoid a repeat of 2010 and poured millions of dollars and other resources into winning key races.
Continue reading...Kelly Loeffler spokesman disavows photo of her posing with white supremacist Chester Doles at campaign event
The campaign of the Georgia Republican senator Kelly Loeffler is disavowing a photo circulating on social media of her posing with a longtime white supremacist at a recent campaign event, with less than a month to go until the runoff elections that will determine the balance of the US Senate.
Loeffler did not know who Chester Doles was when she took a picture with him, her campaign spokesman, Stephen Lawson, said on Sunday. The picture was taken on Friday at a campaign event in Dawsonville, Georgia.
Continue reading...Formality to cement outcome of election takes on real political significance as Trump continues efforts to undermine results
Donald Trump on Monday could suffer a withering blow to his increasingly hopeless effort to overturn the results of the US presidential election when 538 members of the electoral college will cast their ballots and formally send Joe Biden to the White House.
Under the arcane formula which America has followed since the first election in 1789, Monday’s electoral college vote will mark the official moment when Biden becomes the 46th president-in-waiting. Electors, including political celebrities such as both Bill and Hillary Clinton, will gather in state capitols across the country to cement the outcome of this momentous race.
Continue reading...Republicans in 2020 have established what may be a new template for subverting the vote that could haunt elections for years
The decisive rejection by the US supreme court of an attempt by one state, Texas, to throw out election results in four other states might prevent the recurrence of such an effort in future presidential elections.
But the Texas lawsuit was not the only unprecedented attack to be leveled on US democracy during the November presidential election, and other such efforts could escalate in, or echo through, future elections for an unknown time to come.
Continue reading...Donald Trump’s attacks on Republican officials in Georgia and insistence his defeat by Joe Biden must be overturned are disgusting, the Republican lieutenant governor of the southern state said on Sunday.
Related: Just 27 of 249 Republicans in Congress willing to say Trump lost, survey finds
Continue reading...Donald Trump will return to the campaign trail on Saturday – not, notionally at least, in his quixotic and doomed attempt to deny defeat by Joe Biden, but in support of two Republicans who face January run-offs which will decide control of the US Senate.
Related: I beg your pardon? Does Trump really plan to absolve himself and his family?
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Senator Marsha Blackburn invokes Chinese stereotype a racist tweet
Republican senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee received swift backlash Thursday for a racist tweet invoking the history of China to allude to a stereotype of cheating.
China has a 5,000 year history of cheating and stealing. Some things will never change...
While recognizing Republican criticism, Donald Trump still refused to back down from earlier calls to repeal Section 230, a provision of the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that protects tech firms from liability over third-party content. In a tweet, the president called it a “must.”
Looks like certain Republican Senators are getting cold feet with respect to the termination of Big Tech’s Section 230, a National Security and Election Integrity MUST. For years, all talk, no action. Termination must be put in Defense Bill!!!
.@realDonaldTrump I fully support you on this. Please don’t back down. The freedom and future of our country is at stake. https://t.co/A5EPgvAuqX
Continue reading...President makes comments to Republicans at a White House reception, where video shows dozens of people crammed together without masks
Donald Trump has floated the idea of running for president again in 2024 at a holiday reception at the White House on Tuesday evening.
“It’s been an amazing four years,” Trump told the crowd, which included many Republican National Committee members. “We’re trying to do another four years. Otherwise, I’ll see you in four years.”
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What is it about the French Laundry?
Another California politician, San Francisco mayor London Breed, is under fire after it was revealed that she attended a birthday party at the three-star Michelin restaurant in Napa Valley – just one night after governor Gavin Newsom did the same.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to shorten its recommendation for how long individuals should quarantine after being exposed to someone with Covid-19, the AP reports.
Since the pandemic began, the CDC has recommended that individuals quarantine for 14 days after exposure. The new recommendations, which could be released later tonight, will recommend that individuals quarantine for 10 days after exposure, or seven days if they test negative for the disease.
Continue reading...Joe DiGenova condemned for ‘mob attorney’ remark made on podcast shown on conservative Newsmax TV
A former head of US election security who said Donald Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden was not subject to voter fraud should be “taken out at dawn and shot”, a Trump campaign lawyer said.
Related: Trump's fraud claims undermine democracy, ex-US election security chief says
Continue reading...The Morning Joe host, author of a new book on Harry S Truman, sees parallels in the two presidents’ efforts to rebuild
Joe Scarborough had been discussing Joe Biden’s cabinet, Donald Trump’s delusions and America’s battered claim to be the indispensable nation when the conversation took an unexpected turn.
“I knew yesterday morning it was Mika’s and my anniversary and she said nothing and about five o’clock in the afternoon I walked in and I said, ‘Is today a special day for you?’” Scarborough shared with his TV guests last Wednesday. “She goes, ‘Yeah, I guess, whatever.’”
Continue reading...Moving away from a white- and male-dominated party is the only way for it to survive, pollster says
Kat Cammack was raised on a cattle ranch by a working class single mother. She was the third generation of her family to go into business as a sand blaster. And at 32, she is about to become the youngest Republican woman in the US Congress.
“I think a lifetime of experiences has shaped me to be a Republican and a conservative,” said Cammack, elected to an open seat in Florida. “There has been a stereotype about the Republican party, that it was the Grand Old Party, that it was your grandfather’s political party of choice. The election in 2020 has definitely helped push back on that narrative.”
Continue reading...Biden must choose whether to build a post-white America – or to placate the white supremacist project of the Republican party
Shortly after Biden was declared president-elect, he announced that he would reach a hand across the aisle. “We must stop,” he said, “treating our opponents as enemies. We are not enemies. We are Americans.” This is the Biden playbook at work, honed through years of compromises made with the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell: appealing to the Republican elite in office, while trying to appeal to moderate Republicans on the ground.
Having stretched out its hand to the Republicans, the center of the Democratic party then turned to its real enemy – the left that it blames for its poor showing in the election. Virginia congresswoman Abigail Spanberger led the charge, contending that “no one should ever say ‘defund the police’ ever again”. Despite the fact that progressive candidates did well across the ticket, and Biden ran a campaign modelled on Hilary Clinton’s neoliberal program, centrist Democrats blamed the core demand of the Black Lives Matter movement for alienating moderates. In centrist Democrats’ telling, the problem is the left – and the answer is to reach out to that poor soul, the moderate Republican.
Continue reading...Conservatives relish the irony of Trump’s audacious reversal of the truth around rigging – because it distracts attention from their minority rule
The Republican establishment, despite being unfairly advantaged by the skewed composition of the electoral college, by over-representation in the House due to partisan gerrymandering and in the Senate due to equal State suffrage, has been in no hurry to reject Donald Trump’s ludicrous allegation that the American electoral system is rigged to favor Democrats. Sweating the make-or-break Georgia runoffs, the party’s leaders are apparently frightened to cross the mad king, who owns their voters, lest he cause their ratings to plummet as he is doing with Fox News. But Republican complicity with this unprecedented attack on American democracy is not a matter of short-term expediency or fear of reprisals. It is much worse than that. Mitch McConnell and the others are not merely humoring the president until his mania subsides. Trump’s voters are the Republicans’ voters and the Republican party cannot easily cut them, and their deranged conspiracy theories, loose even after 20 January.
Related: How do we avoid future authoritarians? Winning back the working class is key | Bernie Sanders
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