Category Archives: Republicans

Democratic standoff as progressives object to Pelosi infrastructure vote plan – as it happened

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Joe Biden noted that he would soon be returning to the Oval Office to keep making calls to House members, encouraging them to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the reconciliation package today.

“I want to say very clearly: if your number one issue is the cost of living, the number one priority should be seeing Congress pass these bills,” Biden said.

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House Democrats aim for new votes on Biden agenda after Virginia loss – live

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Majority leader Steny Hoyer says House may vote on bipartisan infrastructure bill and $1.75tn reconciliation package as soon as today

• Giuliani investigators home in on 2019 plan to advance Ukraine interests

House speaker Nancy Pelosi would not provide any additional details about when the chamber might vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the reconciliation package.

“I’ll let you know as soon as I wish to,” the Democratic speaker told reporters at her weekly press conference.

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How did Republicans turn critical race theory into a winning electoral issue?

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Glenn Youngkin won the race to be Virginia’s governor having exploited concerns over teaching about race in schools

What is critical race theory?

Developed by the former Harvard Law professor Derrick Bell and other scholars in the 1970s and 80s, critical race theory, or CRT, examines the ways in which racism was embedded into American law and other modern institutions, maintaining the dominance of white people.

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Democrats’ stinging Virginia defeat raises stark questions for Biden’s tenure

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Analysis: Glenn Youngkin’s victory comes as the president’s agenda has stalled and danger looms for the party in Congress

Joe Biden exuded confidence. “We’re going to win,” the US president told reporters before departing Cop26 in Glasgow. “I think we’re going to win in Virginia.”

But as Biden returns to Washington, he faces questions about why his prediction was so wrong – and whether Democrats’ loss in the most important election of the year will send his presidency into a downward spiral.

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House Democrats push for twin votes despite Manchin doubts over spending bill – live

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Senator Joe Manchin said it would take “quite a while” to pass the reconciliation package, even as the House looks to hold votes on that proposal and the bipartisan infrastructure bill by the end of the week.

“You’re talking about overhauling the entire tax code. That is tremendous. And there needs to be input. We need to know what the effect’s going to be,” the West Virginia senator told CNN on Capitol Hill.

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Tucker Carlson condemned over ‘false flag’ claim about deadly Capitol attack

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Congresswoman Liz Cheney and Anti-Defamation League president denounce Fox News host’s ‘lies’ as he plugs new series

The conservative Republican Liz Cheney and the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League led condemnation of Fox News and Tucker Carlson, after the primetime host announced a series about the supposed “true story” of the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January.

They denounced Carlson for spreading dangerous conspiracy theories in the latest scandal to engulf a man whose popularity belies his record of racist and untrue statements on issues from immigration to racial justice.

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Biden’s agenda remains unrealized as Democrats fail to close deal again

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Pelosi forced to postpone infrastructure vote on Thursday ahead of Biden’s meeting with world leaders in Rome

Joe Biden’s nearly $3tn domestic agenda remains unrealized after an 11th-hour push to rally Democrats around a pared-down package that he framed as historic, failed to close the deal in time for his meeting with world leaders in Rome at the G20 summit.

But after a dramatic Thursday of bold promises and dashed hopes, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, was forced to postpone a vote on a $1tn infrastructure bill for a second time in a month, as progressives demanded more assurances that a compromise $1.75tn social policy plan would also pass.

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Reconciliation bill ‘almost there’ after Manchin’s demands to scale it back – live

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Another reporter pressed Jen Psaki on whether Joe Biden will be able to push for significant climate policies at the Cop26 conference if he has not yet reached a deal on the reconciliation package.

The press secretary acknowledged that it would be Biden’s “preference” to go to the United Nations conference with a deal on the reconciliation bill, which is expected to include a number of climate provisions, although some of them have been scaled back due to demands from Joe Manchin.

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Outrage over stalled US voting rights bill continues as activists say ‘we need action’ – live

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Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have arrived at the memorial for Dr Martin Luther King at the Tidal Basin in Washington.

The president and the vice-president will soon deliver remarks to mark the tenth anniversary of the dedication of the memorial. Stay tuned.

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Biden visits home town of Scranton to pitch huge investment agenda – as it happened

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Climate activists have gathered on Capitol Hill to demand that Democrats’ reconciliation package effectively address the climate crisis.

One protester with Greenpeace carried cutouts of Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and moderate Democratic senator Joe Manchin, portraying Schumer as Manchin’s puppet.

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FBI ‘conducting activity’ at home of sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska – live

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Democratic senator Jon Tester has also voiced criticism of progressives’ suggestion to add a carbon tax to the reconciliation package.

“You might have problems with me on a carbon tax,” Tester said, per Politico.

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Colin Powell: the man who might have been America’s first Black president

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The ex-general seriously considered running in 1995 but later felt himself increasingly out of step with the Republican party

Colin Powell wrote a speech in November 1995 announcing a run for US president. He wrote another speech announcing a decision not to run.

When he faced reporters in a hotel in Alexandria, Virginia, Powell delivered the second speech.

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Washington mourns death of ‘trailblazer’ Colin Powell as tributes pour in – live

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Joe Biden reflected on Colin Powell’s legacy of service and offered condolences to his family following the former US secretary of state’s passing.

“Jill and I are deeply saddened by the passing of our dear friend and a patriot of unmatched honor and dignity, General Colin Powell,” said Biden in a newly released statement.

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Steve Scalise, No 2 House Republican, refuses to say election was not stolen

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Party whip asked three times by Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace to disavow Donald Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ about electoral fraud

The second-ranking House Republican, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, repeatedly refused to say on Sunday that the 2020 election was not stolen, standing by Donald Trump’s lie that Democrat Joe Biden won the White House because of voter fraud.

More than 11 months after Americans picked their president and almost nine months after Biden was inaugurated, Scalise was unwilling to say the vote was legitimate.

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Schumer ‘poisoned the well’ over debt limit, McConnell says in insult-laden letter

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Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, sought to fight his way out of a corner on Friday by releasing an angry letter in which he blamed Democrats for the impasse over the debt ceiling he broke by ending a refusal to co-operate he had said was absolute.

In the letter to Joe Biden, McConnell complained about a speech in which the Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, attacked Republicans for their behaviour.

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Trump’s Washington DC hotel lost $74m during presidency, documents reveal – live

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Steve Bannon has informed the House committee investigating the 6 January attack on the US Capitol that he will not be cooperating with their subpoena to provide related documents.

This comes after Politico reported yesterday that Donald Trump has directed Bannon and three other former aides - former social media czar Dan Scavino, former defense department official Kash Patel and former chief of staff Mark Meadows - to ignore the subpoena, likely because he will attempt to block their testimony in court.

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Biden talks up vaccine mandates and says unvaccinated have ‘put our economy at risk’ – as it happened

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Now almost a full year later, Republicans in several states are still continuing their partisan reviews of the 2020 election results

“They have slight differences tactically, but they all share the same strategic goals, which are primarily to continue to sow doubt about the integrity of American elections overall,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, and an election administration expert who has denounced the reviews. “I don’t know that there’s a word to describe how concerning it is.”

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Senator urges more Facebook whistleblowers to come forward – live

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• Richard Blumenthal also calls on Mark Zuckerberg to testify

• Senator Chris Coons says there may be 50 votes for filibuster reform

• Senate to vote on raising debt ceiling

So now that the Democrats don’t have the 50 votes needed to make a change to the filibuster rules ahead of the debt ceiling vote today, they could always appeal to the Republicans...by not calling it a filibuster, or a change to filibuster rules with the debt ceiling, etc.

However, that route doesn’t look promising either, according to Republican senator Josh Hawley:

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Biden says debt limit must be raised because of ‘reckless’ policies under Trump – live

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Another piece to the whole debt ceiling todo is the infrastructure bill and the $3.5tn reconciliation bill (also known as the Build Back Better Act).

Republicans have long balked at the amount of spending proposed by the Democrats in each of these key pieces of legislation for the Biden administration and are using them to justify voting against raising the debt limit - they’re saying the Democrats are spending too much domestically.

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Congress passes stopgap bill to avert government shutdown – live

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Bill passed by Senate and House will extend funding until 3 December as Democrats continue to wrangle over Biden’s economic agenda

House speaker Nancy Pelosi left her press conference by urging reporters to “think positively” about the negotiations over the infrastructure bill and the reconciliation package.

And yet, as Pelosi was making her comments, House majority leader Steny Hoyer said he was not confident that the infrastructure bill would pass today, as Democratic leadership had previously hoped.

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