Category Archives: Republicans

Biden says ‘I stand squarely behind my decision’ after insurgents take Afghan capital – as it happened

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President acknowledges his decision would be criticized by many but says he would not ‘shrink from my share of responsibility’

– Joan E Greve and Maanvi Singh

The South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham called Joe Biden after his victory over Donald Trump to tell the president he only joined attacks on his son, Hunter Biden, as a “bare minimum” to satisfy Trump supporters.

The detail was included in a lengthy profile of Graham and his Washington manoeuvres published by the New York Times. It said the call, intended to “revive a friendship damaged by [Graham’s] call for a special prosecutor to investigate the overseas business dealings” of Hunter Biden, was “short, and not especially sweet”.

Related: ‘Short and not especially sweet’: Lindsey Graham called Biden over Trump support

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Republican leaders fiddle while Covid burns through their own supporters

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Governors of states such as Florida and Texas, where the Delta variant is surging, have made masks and vaccines a partisan issue, in a lethal mix of ignorance, irrationality and nihilism

The crowd gathered under a tent at the water’s edge, their tables decorated with the Stars and Stripes and checked tablecloths. In their midst in Austin county, Texas, last Saturday was the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, laughing with delight and playing the fiddle.

With the coronavirus roaring through the state and hospitals near breaking point, comparisons with Nero fiddling while Rome burned were irresistible, although journalist Alisha Grauso pointed out on Twitter: “Nero actually enacted sweeping relief efforts to try to quell the fire and also offer his people aid in the aftermath, particularly the lower class, so Abbott is somehow worse than a Roman emperor known today as being a psychotic tyrant.”

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Joe Manchin voices ‘serious concerns’ about $3.5tn budget after Senate approval – live

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Joe Biden held a virtual meeting today with business, university and healthcare leaders to discuss strategies to get more Americans vaccinated against coronavirus.

The meeting included the CEOs of Kaiser Permanente, United Airlines and DESA, Inc., as well as the president of Howard University. All four have already announced vaccine requirements for their employees or students.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention said on Wednesday that pregnant women should get vaccinated after an analysis of data that showed no increased risk of miscarriage among women who received it.

The advice comes as hospitals in hot spots around the US are see disturbing numbers of unvaccinated mothers-to-be seriously ill with the virus, the Associated Press reports.

Related: CDC urges pregnant women to get Covid vaccine, finding no increased risk of miscarriage

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Senate approves $3.5tn budget plan in crucial step on economic package

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Lawmakers approve Democrats’ budget resolution on party-line 50-49 vote hours after passing $1tn infrastructure bill

Democrats pushed a $3.5tn framework for bolstering family services, health and environment programs through the Senate early Wednesday.

The overnight vote advances Joe Biden’s plans for reshaping federal priorities, and came hours after passing a $1tn infrastructure package.

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Biden predicts ‘infrastructure decade’ as Senate passes bipartisan bill – live

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The $1tn infrastructure bill that passed the Senate takes some steps toward addressing the climate crisis and building resiliency – through environmental activists and progressive Democrats say it falls short. In California, where global heating has helped fuel extreme wildfires, Dani Anguiano reports on the devastation of the Dixie fire:

After weeks of fire, smoke and warnings, Kimberly Price’s beloved hometown had run out of time.

With wind driving the Dixie fire directly into Greenville, Price’s longtime partner, John Hunter, told her she needed to leave. Price, 58, had spent most of her life in the close-knit Sierra Nevada community. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving, but the flames were everywhere.

Related: ‘I still feel it isn’t real’: Gold Rush town residents reckon with wildfire devastation

White House press secretary Jen Psaki clarified the president’s earlier comments praising Andrew Cuomo’s legacy as governor.

Earlier, a reporter had asked Joe Biden to assess Cuomo’s decade-long career as governor. “I thought he’s done a hell of a job – and both on everything from access to voting to infrastructure to a whole range of things. That’s why it’s so sad,” Biden responded.

@potus responded to a specific question today about @NYGovCuomo work on infrastructure. He also made clear it was right for @NYGovCuomo to step down, reiterated his support for women who come forward, and made clear you can’t separate personal behavior from other work.

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Pentagon to mandate vaccines for US military – live

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Joe Biden applauded defense secretary Lloyd Austin for taking steps to make coronavirus vaccines mandatory for members of the US military starting next month.

“I strongly support Secretary Austin’s message to the Force today on the Department of Defense’s plan to add the COVID-19 vaccine to the list of required vaccinations for our service members not later than mid-September,” the president said in a new statement.

Defense secretary Lloyd Austin is seeking the president’s approval to make coronavirus vaccines mandatory for all members of the US military by next month.

In a message to service members today, Austin noted that Joe Biden had asked him to consider how and when coronavirus vaccines might be added to the military’s list of mandatory vaccinations. The defense secretary has since been consulting with senior Pentagon leaders and health experts about the best timeline for the new policy.

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The infrastructure bill is being lauded as a victory for bipartisanship – but is it?

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The truth of how the bill – which is not yet finished – has come to be is a little more self-interest than national interest

The Biden administration’s infrastructure proposal is still making its way through the congressional sausage-making process but it has already been lauded as a rare victory for bipartisanship in a divided America.

Pledging to unify America after his 2020 election win, Biden and his top supporters see the roughly $1tn package not just as a chance to repair America’s tattered and torn infrastructure but also as a model for reaching across the US’s political divide and getting things done.

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Senate resumes infrastructure debate as Trump threatens Republicans who back bill

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Trump says it ‘will be very hard for me to endorse anyone foolish enough to vote in favor of this deal’ as session to resume at noon

Senators resumed a weekend session toward passage of a $1tn bipartisan infrastructure package on Sunday amid threats from former president Donald Trump who raged against any Republicans who support the measure.

Majority leader Chuck Schumer stressed to colleagues that they could proceed the “easy way or the hard way”, while a few Republican senators appeared determined to run out the clock for days. “We’ll keep proceeding until we get this bill done,” Schumer said.

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Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO union president, dies aged 72 – as it happened

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We’re wrapping up today’s live politics coverage. Here’s an updated summary of the day’s key political news:

Los Angeles County public health officials argue indoor mask policy is working

New numbers from the Los Angeles public health department suggest the county’s requirement that people once again wear masks indoors is working, the public health director argued today.

LA County public health director Barbara Ferrer cites these numbers as evidence that LA's mask law is working.

While cases in LA have increased 22%, they increased in the rest of CA by 57% in the same time frame. pic.twitter.com/NHt9wVXi3l

Ferrer also said that the rate of increase in cases in LA has slowed since the mask order went into effect.

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Top Republicans move to protect Trump from Capitol attack fallout

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Some party leaders blamed the former president in the charged moments after the insurrection – but are now embarking on a campaign of revisionism

Top Republicans in Congress are embarking on a new campaign of revisionism seven months after the attack on the Capitol, absolving Donald Trump of responsibility and blaming the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, for the 6 January insurrection perpetrated by a mob of Trump supporters.

Related: A Trump bombshell quietly dropped last week. And it should shock us all | Robert Reich

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Fauci backs new masks guidance as Florida reports highest one-day Covid case total

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Florida’s ban on mask mandates came under increasing scrutiny from public health officials on Sunday as the surging Delta variant pushed new daily cases of Covid-19 in the state to a record high.

Related: US vaccinations rise but White House frustrated with media ‘alarmism’

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Tunisia shows that democracy will struggle if it can’t deliver prosperity

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Political liberty has been overturned – with majority support. That will delight authoritarians everywhere

Implicit in US and western support for pro-democracy movements and transitions around the world is an assumption that, given a free choice, a system of elected, representative government is what people will always naturally prefer. But what if this assumption is wrong? What if a majority believes democracy doesn’t work for them?

Emerging testimony from Tunisia, the latest country to face a crisis over how it is run, suggests many citizens welcomed the forceful suspension of a democratically elected parliament that had failed to address people’s problems and was widely reviled as a self-serving oligarchy.
Mohammed Ali, 33, from Ben Guerdane, seems to typify this view. “I think what happened is good. I think that’s what all the people want,” he told the Guardian after last week’s surprise move by Kais Saied, Tunisia’s president, to seize power and impose a state of emergency. Local politicians and western critics called it a coup.

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Senate convenes for rare weekend session over infrastructure deal

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  • Schumer: ‘We’re going to get the job done’
  • Republican Cornyn predicts a long ‘grind’

The Senate convened for a rare weekend session on Saturday with the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, encouraging the authors of a bipartisan infrastructure plan to finish writing their bill.

Related: Trump tries to defend ‘just say the election was corrupt’ demand to DoJ

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Biden calls on Congress to extend pandemic moratorium on evictions – live

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House speaker Nancy Pelosi noted in a letter to colleagues that only $3bn of $46bn allocated for rental aid in the American Rescue Plan had been spent

Here’s where the day stands so far:

Democratic congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, the chair of the House oversight committee, said the notes painted a damning picture of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the presidential election.

“These handwritten notes show that President Trump directly instructed our nation’s top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency,” Maloney said in a statement.

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Biden praises infrastructure bill: ‘Deal signals to world our democracy can function’ – live

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The Federal Reserve chair said today that the Delta variant poses little threat to the economy, so far. At a news conference, chair Jerome Powell said:

What we’ve seen is with successive waves of COVID over the past year and some months now, there has tended to be less in the way of economic implications from each wave. We will see whether that is the case with the delta variety, but it’s certainly not an unreasonable expectation.”

Dining out, traveling, some schools might not reopen. We may see economic effects from some of that or it might weigh on the return to the labor market. We don’t have a strong sense of how that will work out, so we’ll be monitoring it carefully.”

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has said he will vote to move forward with the infrastructure bill:

Based on a commitment from Leader Schumer to Senators Portman and Sinema that the Portman-Sinema amendment to be filed will be the substitute amendment, I will vote to proceed to the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

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‘Such a moron’: Pelosi heaps disdain on McCarthy for criticizing mask guidance

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  • Kevin McCarthy: mask policy a political decision by Democrats
  • Capitol physician reimposes mask requirement for the House

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, on Wednesday heaped disdain on the Republican minority leader’s criticism of Congress’s new mask requirement – a reversal of policy that reflected growing number of cases and fears about the highly-transmissible Covid-19 Delta variant at the Capitol.

Related: Bipartisan group reaches agreement on ‘major issues’ of infrastructure bill, Republican says – live

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‘This is how I’m going to die’: officers recount Capitol attack ordeal – live

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  • Police officer Aquilino Gonell describes violence at Capitol
  • Select committee hears witness testimony from 6 January

Jamie Raskin of Maryland is next. A law professor, his descriptions of his experiences during the attack and management of the impeachment of Donald Trump that followed brought him to particular national attention:

Related: 'The moral centre': how Jamie Raskin dominated the stage at Trump's trial

Related: ‘I need a drink’ after Republican talks, says officer beaten in Capitol attack

Now we have Stephanie Murphy, a Florida Democrat, and more video, this time from Officer Hodges’ body camera.

There are clouds of smoke, police in riot gear, shouting, pushing. Hodges curls his lip as he looks up at the screen. One burly police officer is seen dousing his eyes with water, walking back through the police line. Now we have Officer Hodges stuck in a door, screaming. It is tough to watch.

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Covid vaccines mandated for employees of a US federal agency for the first time – as it happened

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In a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation vaccine monitor, 23% of Republicans said they definitely won’t get vaccinated, while 16% of independents and 2% of Democrats said the same.

White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said local leaders, particularly in areas with low rates of vaccination, needed to lead outreach efforts to get people vaccinated.

Related: Fauci says health officials considering mask guidance revision for vaccinated

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Pelosi will ask anti-Trump Republican Kinzinger to join 6 January panel

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The speaker of the US House, Nancy Pelosi, intends to appoint a second anti-Trump Republican to the select committee which will investigate the deadly 6 January assault on the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump.

Related: Can Pelosi’s power play on Capitol attack panel thwart wrecking tactics?

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Arizona secretary of state tells Trump before election lie rally: get over it

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Democrat Katie Hobbs says ‘this is nothing more than being a sore loser’ as ex-president heads to Phoenix for event

Arizona’s secretary of state had a message for Donald Trump before he appeared in Phoenix on Saturday: “Take your loss and accept it and move on.”

Related: Fox News backs Covid vaccination – a pity no one told Tucker Carlson

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