Nick LaLota is one of a growing number of people from both parties to call on Santos to quit over made-up résumé and investigations
George Santos is a “sociopath” who thrives on negative attention, another New York Republican congressman said.
“He’s a sociopath,” Nick LaLota told CNN on Wednesday, after Santos’s confrontation with Mitt Romney at Joe Biden’s State of the Union address made headlines the night before.
Continue reading...Company temporarily restricted New York Post article in 2020 about contents of the abandoned computer of Joe Biden’s son
US lawmakers held a combative hearing on Wednesday with former senior staffers at Twitter over the social media platform’s handling of reporting on Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden.
The proceedings set the stage for the agenda of a newly Republican-controlled House, underscoring its intention to hone in on longstanding and unsubstantiated allegations that big tech platforms have an anti-conservative bias.
Continue reading...Controversial Republican congressman confronted by senator and former presidential candidate on floor of House
Joe Biden delivered the State of the Union address on Tuesday but the Republican congressman George Santos still managed to grab some headlines, over an apparently tense exchange with Mitt Romney, the senator from Utah and former Republican presidential nominee.
“He shouldn’t be in Congress,” Romney later told reporters.
Continue reading...Republican extremist appears to reference Chinese surveillance dirigible by parading halls of Congress with white balloon
Marjorie Taylor Greene appeared to tee up a State of the Union stunt on Tuesday, patrolling the halls of Congress with a large white balloon in reference to Republican criticism of Joe Biden over his handling of a flight over US territory by a Chinese surveillance dirigible.
“Just an innocent white balloon everybody,” the Georgia extremist said, hours before Biden’s address to Congress, attempting to keep aloft the balloon saga which ended when it was shot down off the Carolinas on Saturday.
Continue reading...How Republicans are responding to the State of the Union address will offer a preview into what message the party will sell to voters in the 2024 presidential election. Republicans are already making media appearances on their chosen conservative news networks.
Elise Stefanik, House Republican Conference chair and rising GOP star from New York state whose staunch defense of Donald Trump helped her get a House seat, set up over 300 House Republican interviews with local media outlets, according to this morning’s Politico Playbook.
Continue reading...Former US vice president Mike Pence was expected to visit South Carolina today, as the signals grow louder that he’ll make his own run for the White House in 2024 as a rival to the former boss he’s essentially fallen out with, Donald Trump. But that visit has been postponed.
Fresh reports say that Pence has decided to delay his trip to the crucial primary state because his oldest daughter, Charlotte Pence Bond, has gone into labor in California. The ex-veep and his wife, Karen Pence, headed for California instead and will reschedule the trip to South Carolina.
Continue reading...Closed-door session could provide insight into the sensitivity of the documents Trump retained and possibility of indictments
US officials have offered to provide a closed-door briefing to congressional leaders about their review of about 300 classified-marked documents retrieved from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort last year, sources familiar with the matter said.
The precise nature of the briefing remains unclear. The offer from the justice department and the Office of the Director for National Intelligence (ODNI) was described as unofficial on Sunday and no date had yet been set, though the briefing could come as soon as this week.
Continue reading...Texas senator says he ‘never said I’m going to unilaterally comply’ with his own proposed restriction
Ted Cruz has introduced a bill to limit US senators to two terms in office, thereby removing from Washington “permanently entrenched politicians … totally unaccountable to the American people”.
On Sunday, however, he said he saw no problem with running for a third term himself.
Continue reading...Poll shows 60% of Democrats want someone else as 2024 nominee and nearly 50% of Republicans want someone other than Trump
Nearly 60% of Democrats and nearly 50% of Republicans want someone other than Joe Biden or Donald Trump to be their party’s nominee for president in 2024, a new poll showed on Sunday.
A key member of Biden’s cabinet, however, insisted Biden’s record in office was more important than any “generational argument” for change.
Continue reading...Party’s criticism of Omar’s Israel position has greased the path for Republicans to oust her from the foreign affairs committee
The resolution that set in motion the removal of the only African immigrant, Muslim and former resident of a refugee camp on the congressional committee overseeing US foreign policy paid scant attention to Ilhan Omar’s views on anything but a single issue: Israel.
“Omar has attempted to undermine the relationship between the United States and Israel,” said the author of the resolution, Republican congressman Max Miller. “She has disqualified herself from serving on the foreign affairs committee.”
Continue reading...Extremist Republican who makes $174,000 annually according to public records says ‘I’ve lost money since I’ve gotten here’
The far-right US congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is facing backlash after complaining that her elected position’s salary is “too low”.
Earlier this week, the Republican representative from Georgia appeared on journalist Glenn Greenwald’s podcast and expressed concern about her congressional salary, which according to public records is $174,000 annually.
Continue reading...Senior state officials have commented on the postponement of Blinken’s trip to China after a Chinese spy balloon was discovered over the US yesterday, noting that conditions were no longer right for Blinken’s travel.
From Reuters’ reporter Hümeyra Pamuk:
Continue reading...The House voted along party lines as it ousted Democratic representative Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee while Democrats defended her.
The vote was divided 218 to 211, CBS reports. One GOP member voted “present.”
“This debate today, it’s about who gets to be an American? What opinions do we get to have, do we have to have to be counted as American?… That is what this debate is about, Madam Speaker. There is this idea that you are suspect if you are an immigrant. Or if you are from a certain part of the world, of a certain skin tone or a Muslim.
Well, I am Muslim. I am an immigrant, and interestingly, from Africa. Is anyone surprised that I’m being targeted? Is anyone surprised that I am somehow deemed unworthy to speak about American foreign policy?” she said.
“A blatant double standard is being applied here. Something just doesn’t add up. And what is the difference between Rep. Omar and these members? Could it be the way that she looks? Could it be her religious practices?” he said.
Continue reading...Minnesota Democrat accuses Republicans of trying to silence her because she is Muslim and vows to ‘advocate for a better world’
Republicans voted to expel Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar from the House foreign affairs committee on Thursday as punishment for her past remarks on Israel. Democrats objected, saying the move was about revenge after Democrats removed far-right extremists in the last Congress.
A majority of 218 GOP lawmakers supported Omar’s expulsion from the committee, which is tasked with handling legislation and holding hearings affecting America’s diplomatic relations. One Republican lawmaker voted “present”.
Continue reading...President’s personal attorney reveals justice department ‘planned search’ of home in Rehoboth
Meanwhile in the Senate, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are frustrated that they have not been briefed on the national security implications of all the classified documents that have turned up in Joe Biden, Donald Trump and Mike Pence’s hands.
The sentiment expressed by Democrat Jon Tester today, according to NBC News, is a common one:
Continue reading...New York Republican congressman under investigation over his largely made-up résumé and current campaign finance filings
The Republican congressman George Santos has temporarily withdrawn from two House committees to which he was appointed by party leaders despite a spiraling scandal over his largely made-up résumé and investigations of his bizarre past behavior and current campaign finance filings.
Santos told fellow Republicans of his decision at a closed-door party meeting on Capitol Hill on Tuesday morning.
Continue reading...The move to end the declarations comes as House Republicans are set to pass a resolution to demand their immediate scrapping
Joe Biden informed Congress on Monday that he will end the twin national emergencies for addressing Covid-19 on 11 May, as most of the world has returned closer to normalcy nearly three years after they were first declared.
The move to end the national emergency and public health emergency declarations would formally restructure the federal coronavirus response to treat the virus as an endemic threat to public health that can be managed through agencies’ normal authorities.
Continue reading...Moves spur Trump into attacking Florida governor during low key events over the weekend in Iowa and New Hampshire
America’s 2024 presidential race is showing signs of kicking into gear amid reports that Florida’s rightwing Republican governor Ron DeSantis is now laying the groundwork for a White House bid as Donald Trump finally hit the campaign trail.
DeSantis’s moves even spurred Trump into attacking him directly as the former US president held relatively low key events over the weekend in the key early voting states of New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Continue reading...Attorney Ben Crump is holding a press conference alongside Tyre Nichols’s family, where he has compared the swift indictment and arrest of five Black police officers for Nichols’s death to the comparatively slow response to other high-profile killings of Black men.
“This is not the first time that we saw police officers committing crime and engaging in excessive brutal force against Black people in America who were unarmed, but yet we have never seen swift justice like this,” Crump said.
Continue reading...Funding for controversial review of state’s vote count in 2020 election can be traced to former president’s Pac
One of the enduring mysteries surrounding the chaotic attempts to overturn Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential battle has been solved: who made a secret $1m donation to the controversial election “audit” in Arizona?
The identity of one of the largest benefactors behind the discredited review of Arizona’s vote count has been shrouded in secrecy. Now the Guardian can reveal that the person who partially bankrolled the failed attempt to prove that the election was stolen from Trump was … Trump.
Continue reading...