Category Archives: Republicans

Rick Santorum axed by CNN over racist remarks on Native Americans

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  • Ex-Republican senator’s April comments prompted outrage
  • Santorum said he misspoke but did not apologize for remarks

CNN has dropped former Republican US senator Rick Santorum as a senior political commentator after racist remarks he made about Native Americans at an event in April.

News of Santorum’s termination was first reported by HuffPost. A CNN spokesperson confirmed to the Guardian that the network has parted ways with Santorum. No further comment on the firing was provided, though an anonymous CNN executive told HuffPost that “leadership wasn’t particularly satisfied with that appearance. None of the anchors wanted to book him.”

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‘We must unite the country’: Biden signs anti-Asian hate crimes bill – live

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In his remarks before signing the anti-Asian American hate crimes bill, Joe Biden denounced racism as an “ugly poison” that has tarnished the country.

“I believe with every fiber of my being that there are simple core values and beliefs that should bring us together as Americans,” the president said of the bill.

President Biden: "I believe with every fiber of my being that there are simple core values and beliefs that should bring us together as Americans. One of them is standing together against hate, against racism — the ugly poison that has long haunted and plagued our nation." pic.twitter.com/DB1gsTNoen

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell applauded Joe Biden for signing the anti-Asian American hate crimes bill into law moments ago.

“Recent increases in anti-Asian hate crimes are alarming,” the Republican leader said on Twitter. “I’m proud the Senate took bipartisan action — and, as the proud husband of a remarkable Asian-American woman, I am especially glad this effort is now law.”

I applaud @POTUS for signing the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act into law. Recent increases in anti-Asian hate crimes are alarming. I’m proud the Senate took bipartisan action — and, as the proud husband of a remarkable Asian-American woman, I am especially glad this effort is now law.

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Investigate the Capitol attack? Republicans prefer to back the big lie

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The vast majority of House Republicans voted against a bipartisan, 9/11-style panel – no surprise from a party still in thrall to Trump

“Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States.” So begins the report of the 9/11 commission, which investigated the terrorist attacks 20 years ago with bipartisan support.

Will there be a similarly limpid introduction to a similarly weighty (567 pages) study of the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol in Washington on 6 January? Not if Republicans can help it.

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Joe Biden expresses support for ceasefire on call with Netanyahu – live

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White House reported the US president urged Israel ‘to make every effort to ensure the protection of innocent civilians’

Tennessee governor Bill Lee has signed an anti-transgender bathroom ball into law, in the latest attack on trans rights in a Republican-controlled state this year, the AP reports.

The bill would allow students, parents and employees to sue schools “for all psychological, emotional, and physical harm suffered” if the school allows a trans person to use a bathroom or locker room while someone else is suing it.

The Guardian’s voting rights reporter Sam Levine on the latest developments in Arizona’s election audit:

Arizona Republicans are overseeing a “grift disguised as an audit,” the chairman of the Maricopa county board of supervisors said on Monday, just before officials released a blistering letter refuting accusations the county was hiding information from auditors.

Maricopa county says Cyber Ninjas is just straight miscounting ballots https://t.co/riK3xBi6l3 pic.twitter.com/vM5Wa9XjnX

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Liz Cheney defiant over Trump as Republican civil war heats up

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Liz Cheney has become the figurehead of the conservative Never Trumpers – but the Wyoming congresswoman was for the former president in the last election.

Related: Can ‘Never Trump’ Republicans gain party control – or is it a lost cause?

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‘Naughty favours’: Matt Gaetz seeks to ridicule allegations he paid underaged girl for sex

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Embattled Republican congressman compares allegations of sexual misconduct involving a minor to congressional earmarks

The embattled Florida congressman Matt Gaetz has compared allegations of sexual misconduct involving a minor to earmarks, a congressional process by which spending measures beneficial to representatives’ districts are attached to legislation.

“I’m being falsely accused of exchanging money for naughty favors,” he said, speaking to Republicans in Ohio on Saturday.

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Ignore the hype of Republicans threatening to ‘break away’ over Trump | Cas Mudde

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Anti-Trump Republicans get lots of media attention. That doesn’t mean they are relevant within the Republican party

“Over 100 Republicans, including former officials, threaten to split” from the Republican party, the New York Times declared on Tuesday. The next day the Washington Post upped the ante, headlining that the 100 Republicans were vowing “civil war”; the columnist Jennifer Rubin proclaimed the beginning of “the stampede away from the GOP”.

Sounds exciting, but what has really happened?

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Will Republicans back a commission to investigate the Capitol breach?

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Lawmakers faced with choice between embarrassing Trump and ignoring insurrection

House Democrats are poised to adopt legislation to create a 9/11-style commission to investigate the Capitol attack, in a move that will force Republicans to either embrace an inquiry that could embarrass Donald Trump – or turn a blind eye to a deadly insurrection.

Related: Liz Cheney: McCarthy should testify about Trump’s views on Capitol attack

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Can ‘Never Trump’ Republicans gain party control – or is it a lost cause?

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As Liz Cheney’s defiance turns her into one of the movement’s leaders some insist the party was their home long before Trump while others say it’s time to move on

Sixteen minutes and out. The purging of Liz Cheney from Republican leadership in the House of Representatives did not even go to a secret ballot. Instead a voice vote was all it took to confirm the party’s capitulation to Donald Trump and his “big lie” about a stolen election.

But Cheney went down swinging, vowing to reporters on Capitol Hill: “I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office,” then using a high-profile TV interview to say of would-be challengers for her seat in Wyoming: “Bring it on.”

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Liz Cheney: McCarthy should testify about Trump’s views on Capitol attack

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Lawmakers agree to create bipartisan commission to investigate breach but questions remain over GOP support

The Republican House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, should testify before the commission to investigate the 6 January Capitol attack, the Wyoming representative Liz Cheney said on Friday, because he has “said publicly that he’s got information about the president’s state of mind that day”.

Related: ‘It’s hard to look at’: Donald Trump makes National Portrait Gallery debut

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AOC says Marjorie Taylor Greene is ‘deeply unwell’ after 2019 video surfaces

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The progressive representative says the Republican extremist’s behavior has ‘raised concerns’ among Democrats

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said the Republican extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene has a “fixation” on progressive members of Congress, and warned that Greene’s behavior has “raised concerns” among Democrats.

Greene, a Trump loyalist and a promoter of the QAnon conspiracy theory, was elected to the House in 2020, and has spent her first months in office harassing Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive Democrats.

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House Democrats and Republicans strike deal to investigate deadly Capitol insurrection – live

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  • Members of Congress agree to establish 10-person commission
  • Pro-Trump Elise Stefanik replaces Cheney as GOP conference chair

Here’s a quick summary of what’s happened so far today:

A new New York Times story points out just how influential Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s logo, with its bold, slanted text, was to future progressive candidates who emulated her poster’s style. It’s now seen all over the country in races big and small and was even used by a communist candidate in France.

Gavan Fitzsimons, a business professor at Duke University, told the Times that copycat posters are likely trying to get potential voters to subconsciously associate the candidate with Ocasio-Cortez.

NEW: The iconography of @AOC — my dive into how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s logo has formed a new graphical language for progressivism.

From KY to VA to NYC and even France, imitators abound.https://t.co/eakjRoSEZn pic.twitter.com/sw9Z6oM0hz

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Liz Cheney refuses to rule out run for president in bid to thwart Trump

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  • Leading Republican vows to do ‘whatever it takes’ to stop Trump
  • Cheney: ‘It’s an ongoing threat. Silence is not an option’

Liz Cheney has refused to rule out running for US president if it would prevent Donald Trump from ever taking charge of the White House again, saying she will do “whatever it takes” to stop her fellow Republican.

Cheney, who on Wednesday was ousted as House Republican conference chair by her colleagues, in a voice vote behind closed doors, was asked three times on NBC’s Today show in an interview aired on Thursday whether she would run to stymie a comeback by the former president.

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Republicans vote to remove Liz Cheney from leadership role over Trump ‘big lie’ criticism – live

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Taking over the White House briefing, Jen Psaki was asked for Joe Biden’s reaction to the ouster of Liz Cheney as House Republican conference chair for her criticism of Donald Trump and the “big lie” that there was widespread fraud in the presidential election.

The White House press secretary noted that more than 80 judges threw out lawsuits challenging the results of the election, confirming the legitimacy of Biden’s victory. She criticized Republicans for punishing Cheney and ignoring the violent fallout from Trump’s false claims, specifically citing the six deaths from the January 6 insurrection.

The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, is now holding her daily briefing with reporters, and she was joined by transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg and EPA administrator Michael Regan.

Buttigieg and Regan provided updates on fallout from the ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline over the weekend, which has caused gasoline supply issues in some east coast states.

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Liz Cheney vows to work to keep Trump from return to power – video

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After being voted out from her role as House Republican conference chair, Liz Cheney said she planned to ‘lead the fight’ to create a stronger party in the future. The congresswoman said: ‘I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office.’ Cheney was one of 10 Republicans in the House who voted to impeach Trump over the US Capitol breach

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Liz Cheney’s ousting proves the ‘big lie’ is the Republican party’s religion

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The ousting of Cheney snuffs out all doubt – Republicans don’t think they can win next year’s midterm elections without Trump

Lafayette Square, outside the White House, reopened this week to strolling couples, tourists and scampering children. After nearly a year sealed off by eight-foot metal fencing, it was one more sign of life in America getting back to normal.

Then there’s the danger. For more than three months it’s been tempting for many to assume that, with Joe Biden in the White House and Donald Trump off Twitter, democracy survived its near-death experience, recovered and checked out of hospital. But the ousting of Liz Cheney by the Republican party shows that the potential for a relapse is all too real.

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Liz Cheney castigates Republican colleagues for backing Trump – video

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The US representative Liz Cheney, speaking in the House a day before her expected ouster from a Republican leadership post, chastised her party colleagues for not standing up to the former president Donald Trump and his false claim that the November election was stolen. ’Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar. I will not participate in that,’ she said. 

Cheney, the No 3 Republican in the House of Representatives, was one of 10 Republicans in the House who voted to impeach Trump in January after he delivered a fiery 6 January speech to supporters, many of whom then stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to block certification of his election loss to Joe Biden

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‘We must speak the truth’: Liz Cheney defiant ahead of ouster from top Republican job

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The Wyoming representative stands by her opposition to Trump’s election lies as she prepares to be removed from No 3 House role

On the eve of a vote almost certain to remove her from a leadership role in the Republican party, a defiant Liz Cheney embraced her fall from party grace and offered a final appeal to her colleagues: “We must speak the truth.”

Republicans are poised to remove Cheney from her House leadership position over her refusal to support Donald Trump’s “big lie” that last year’s election was stolen from him. Cheney, a Wyoming representative who hails from a Republican political dynasty, was one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection” following the deadly 6 January attack on the Capitol.

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Trump’s grip over Republicans hardens as party cleaves to election ‘big lie’

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Far from losing influence over the party, critics say, Trump has in fact burrowed far into its DNA so that the two are now all but inseparable

Ron DeSantis was exultant. “The way Florida did it I think inspires confidence; I think that’s how elections should be run,” the state governor told reporters last November. “Rather than us be at the centre of a Bush v Gore in 2020, we’re now being looked at as the state that did it right.”

This boast of a smoothly run election just six months ago makes DeSantis’s actions this week all the more curious. The governor suddenly found it necessary to impose sweeping reforms that limit mail-in voting and ballot drop boxes – and signed the new law live on the Fox News network on Thursday with no other media allowed.

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Janet Yellen says US ‘will reach full employment next year’ despite poor jobs report – live

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  • Treasury secretary says US has made ‘remarkable progress’
  • Biden insists country is ‘moving in the direction’ on economy
  • Republicans look to oust Cheney as Trump allies push election lie

Hello everyone, this is Julia Carrie Wong picking up the blog from the San Francisco bay area, where we’re bracing for unusually early fire weather amid another climate crisis-fueled drought.

Suffice it to say that it's very unusual that NorCal has seen Red Flag Warnings straight through calendar this year. Vegetation is very rarely dry enough to trigger in spring, even with strong winds, but vegetation remains at/near record dry levels in many places. #CAwx #CAfire https://t.co/97rlEVhytM

That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Julia Carrie Wong, will take over the blog for the next few hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

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