Category Archives: Republicans

Trump’s White House counsel Pat Cipollone agrees to testify to January 6 panel – as it happened

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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.

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Gun violence rattles US amid Independence Day celebrations – latest updates

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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:

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Next up: voting rights, as US supreme court set to tear up more protections

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The ideologically driven conservative majority is likely to further weaken key civil rights legislation after a term of radical rulings

The final days of the US supreme court’s term offered a clear look at the way its new 6-3 conservative majority is bluntly using its power to reshape American life, but its next term is also set to hear cases that could prove equally, or even more, consequential.

“This really is the ‘Yolo’ [you only live once] court,” said Leah Litman, a law professor at the University of Michigan who closely follows the court. “I don’t think people fathom just how much more they will do.”

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Incendiary Republican ads boasting of ‘hunting’ rivals raise fears of violence

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Ads like Eric Greitens’, in which he says ‘get a Rino hunting permit’, could lead people to rationalize violence – experts

Before the Capitol attack on 6 January, Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor, had studied political violence around the world but not in the United States because there had not been much to examine, he said.

Pape worries that could soon change because of politicians like Eric Greitens, a former Navy Seal from Missouri running for Senate, who recently released an advertisement in which he racked a shotgun and led a team of armed men as they stormed a house to hunt more moderate members of his own party, know derisively as Rinos, as in “Republicans in name only”.

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Supreme court decisions: court deals blow on climate but Biden wins immigration case – live

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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.

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Kinzinger slams fellow Republican Boebert and warns of ‘Christian Taliban’

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Adam Kinzinger says ‘no difference between this and the Taliban’ after Lauren Boebert’s call to end separation of church and state

A Republican congressman slammed GOP colleague Lauren Boebert’s recent call to end separation of church and state in the US, warning: “There is no difference between this and the Taliban.”

“We must opposed [sic] the Christian Taliban,” Adam Kinzinger, a US representative for Illinois, said on Wednesday. “I say this as a Christian.”

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Election denier Tina Peters loses Colorado primary for top poll official

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The Republican, a county clerk, is facing criminal charges for tampering with election equipment

Tina Peters, a Colorado county clerk who is facing criminal charges for tampering with election equipment, lost the Republican nomination to be the state’s top election official on Tuesday. She was defeated by Pam Anderson, a former county clerk.

The race was among several closely watched contests this year in which Republicans who denied the election results are seeking key roles with oversight of elections.

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Ex-White House aide delivers explosive public testimony to January 6 panel

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Cassidy Hutchinson tells committee Trump knowingly directed armed supporters to march to the Capitol

In explosive public testimony, a former White House aide told the January 6 committee Donald Trump knowingly directed armed supporters to march to the US Capitol in a last-gasp effort to remain in power.

Appearing at a hastily scheduled hearing, Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, painted a devastating portrait of a raging president spiraling out of control and a White House often too ambivalent to constrain him.

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Jan 6 committee hearings: Cheney describes possible witness tampering after ex-aide’s testimony – as it happened

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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.

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January 6 committee focuses on phone calls among Trump’s children and aides

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Footage captured by documentary film-maker understood to show ex-president’s children privately discussing election strategies

The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is closely focused on phone calls and conversations among Donald Trump’s children and top aides captured by a documentary film-maker weeks before the 2020 election, say sources familiar with the matter.

The calls among Trump’s children and top aides took place at an invitation-only event at the Trump International hotel in Washington that took place the night of the first presidential debate on 29 September 2020, the sources said.

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Capitol attack hearings: if Republicans did nothing wrong, why were pardons sought?

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The email from Alabama’s Mo Brooks potentially reveals what conduct by lawmakers he feared might be criminal

When the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack revealed the evidence that showed Republican members of Congress sought preemptive presidential pardons after January 6, one of the most striking requests came from Congressman Mo Brooks.

The request from Brooks to the Trump White House came in an 11 January 2021 email – obtained by the Guardian – that asked for all-purpose, preemptive pardons for lawmakers involved in objecting to the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.

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Protests sweep across nation as supreme court overturns Roe v Wade – follow live

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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:

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‘More to come’: what the January 6 panel has revealed of Trump’s efforts to retain power

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In five hearings, the committee has shown the various paths the ex-president and his team explored to overturn the election

The January 6 select committee held its final hearing for this month on Thursday, sharing new details about Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure top justice department officials to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Across the committee’s five hearings this month, investigators have presented a meticulous account of Trump’s exhaustive efforts to cling to power after losing the election to Joe Biden. The panel has shown how Trump and his allies explored every possible avenue – from pressuring the vice-president, Mike Pence, to leaning on state election officials and justice department leaders – to promote lies about widespread election fraud.

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Republicans who aided coup attempt sought blanket presidential pardons

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Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ted Cruz among those who requested to be let off after attempting to overturn election results

The Republicans Matt Gaetz and Mo Brooks sought a blanket pardon of members of Congress involved in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden through lies about electoral fraud, the House January 6 committee revealed on Thursday.

A witness said Andy Biggs of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania also contacted the White House about securing pardons. The same witness, former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, said she heard Marjorie Taylor Greene, an extremist from Georgia, wanted a pardon too.

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January 6 hearings outlined ‘inner workings of political coup in service of Trump’, panel chair says – as it happened

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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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Barr feared Trump might not have left office had DoJ not debunked fraud claims

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Former attorney general says ‘I am not sure we would have had a transition at all’ if investigation had not immediately taken place

Donald Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, thought Trump might have refused to leave office at all had the Department of Justice not immediately investigated and disproved his lies about electoral fraud in his defeat by Joe Biden.

“I am not sure we would’ve had a transition at all,” Barr said, in startling video testimony played by the January 6 committee on Thursday.

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Republican senator faces backlash for work on gun bill after school shooting

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John Cornyn of Texas, lead negotiator on modest bipartisan reform proposal in Senate, was booed and heckled at party convention

In the aftermath of the Uvalde mass school shooting, the Texas senator John Cornyn is facing backlash from his own Republican party for being a lead negotiator on the bipartisan gun reform bill, the most significant legislation on gun control in America in decades.

At the state’s annual Republican convention recently held in Houston, Cornyn was booed and heckled – a visible sign he is losing support from those within his own party. He dismissed the taunting crowd as a “mob”.

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Panel makes case that Trump campaign knew alternate electors scheme was fraudulent

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Text appears to indicate campaign sought to use certificates it knew were not state-certified to obstruct Biden’s victory

The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack made the case at its fourth hearing on Tuesday that the Trump 2020 campaign tried to obstruct Joe Biden’s election win through a potentially illegal scheme to send fake slates of electors to Congress.

The panel presented a text message sent on 4 January 2021 that appeared to indicate the Trump campaign was seeking to use fraudulent election certificates they would have known were not state-certified to obstruct the congressional certification of Biden’s win.

Note: This post was updated to clarify the former US attorneys’ titles.

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‘There’s nowhere I feel safe’: Georgia elections workers describe how Trump upended their lives

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Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, testified how Trump and his allies fueled harassment and racist threats

In powerful and emotional testimony about the sinister results of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, a mother and daughter who were Georgia elections workers described how Trump and his allies upended their lives, fueling harassment and racist threats by claiming they were involved in voter fraud.

Testifying to the January 6 committee in Washington, Shaye Moss said she received “a lot of threats. Wishing death upon me. Telling me that I’ll be in jail with my mother and saying things like, ‘Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.’”

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Texas Republican party adopts far-right position that homosexuality is ‘abnormal’

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Delegates at biennial convention also approve platform declaring that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected

The Republican party in Texas has officially adopted a series of extreme-right positions that includes claims Joe Biden was not legitimately elected and homosexuality is “abnormal”.

In a platform adopted at its biennial convention in Houston, delegates voted to oppose “all efforts to validate transgender identity”, including the use of taxpayer funds for any “medical gender dysphoria treatments or sex change operations”.

The anti-trans and anti-gay declarations are part of the state party’s new guiding principles, in a section titled homosexuality and gender issues, which contradict claims by some Republicans that the GOP wants to be more inclusive.

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