Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Idaho’s governor, Brad Little, has a bill signed into law that aims to restrict critical race theory from being taught as a subject in schools and universities.
The bill, H377, prevents teachers from “indoctrinating” students into belief systems that claim that members of any race, sex, religion, ethnicity or national origin are inferior or superior to other groups. Signed into law last week, H377 also makes it illegal to make students “affirm, adopt or adhere to” beliefs that members of these groups are today responsible for past actions of the groups to which they claim to belong.
The president said he has never seen internal party conflict like the one Republicans are experiencing at the moment and was in a ‘mini-revolution’.
Earlier on Wednesday Biden said: ‘I don’t understand the Republicans’ in regards to House Republicans’ efforts to oust Liz Cheney from her leadership role over her criticism of Donald Trump
We’re wrapping up today’s live US politics coverage for the evening. It’s been a day of major developments with global reach here in the United States, as well as sustained infighting within the Republican party over Republicans’ allegiance to Donald Trump and his lies. Here’s an updated summary:
This time, Elon Musk’s SpaceX prototype did not explode
SpaceX makes a statement with SN15 Starship landing, coming amid the bid protests on the NASA lunar lander contract. https://t.co/PQ4nrRtqU6
For Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship program more smoke, fire and shrapnel. But at least "the crater is in the right place." Next up: SN15. https://t.co/50DX5ONogF
Just months after ICU capacities were at zero in Los Angeles, the county has made a turnaround. But officials advise caution, and warn that vaccine hesitancy is catching up.
Republican who voted to impeach Trump under increasing fire from members of her own party who are loyal to former president
Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who voted to impeach Donald Trump, is coming under fire from members of her own party after her tweet that the former president did not lose the election unfairly. The spat illustrates the split between Republicans loyal to Trump and those willing to criticize the former president.
“The 2020 presidential election was not stolen,” Cheney tweeted. “Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.”
The US president, Joe Biden, has said it is time for corporations and the richest Americans to ‘start paying their fair share’ as he pitched his $4tn infrastructure and welfare plans at an event in Virginia.
Speaking at a community college in Norfolk, Biden made the case for increasing taxes on the wealthiest in the US to fund his $1.8tn American families plan and $2tn infrastructure plan. The packages would provide funds for childcare, invest in free universal pre-schooling and rebuild America’s transport and public housing.
‘I think it’s about time we started giving tax breaks and tax benefits to working class families and middle class families, instead of just the very wealthy,’ Biden said.
Mitt Romney was loudly booed at the Utah Republican party convention on Saturday, and called a 'traitor' and a 'communist' as he tried to speak. 'Aren’t you embarrassed?' the Utah senator asked the crowd of 2,100 delegates at the Maverik Center in West Valley City. 'I’m a man who says what he means, and you know I was not a fan of our last president’s character issues.'
Former president speaks as lone anti-Trump Republican seeks House seat in Texas special election
Ahead of a special election on Saturday to replace a Texas congressman who died after contracting Covid-19, former president George W Bush said the ascendancy of supporters of Donald Trump suggest Republicans “want to be extinct”.
The president has sought bipartisan support but not at the cost of delay and dilution of his bold policies
Joe Biden started his presidential campaign with promises to be a unifying force in Washington who would help lawmakers come together to achieve bipartisan reform. But over his first 100 days in office, Biden’s message to Republicans in Congress has been closer to this: get on board or get out of my way.
This willingness to go it alone if necessary appears to be a hard-won lesson from the early years of Barack Obama’s presidency, when Democrats negotiated with Republicans on major bills only to have them vote against the final proposals.
Joe Biden will also speak about gun violence during tonight’s speech, according to USAToday. On the presidential campaign trail, Biden pledged to reinstate the assault weapons ban and create a voluntary gun buyback program.
A White House official told the newspaper that Biden will talk about gun violence as an epidemic, which he has done in the past, and urge Congress to reinstate a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines.
The president’s plea appears to echo a similar one made by Obama at the State of the Union in 2013, two months after Sandy Hook, in which he told Congress victims of gun violence — many of whom were seated in the room — “deserve a vote.” Biden presided over the Senate chamber when a gun safety package failed to pass two months later.
Despite the uphill battle, Democrats are heeding the president’s call. Last week Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., reintroduced a bill to remove protections for manufacturers and sellers from consumer negligence lawsuits and allow victims of gun violence to pursue legal recourse. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., a key Democrat leading gun control efforts, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper last week that he’s made calls to almost half the Republican caucus “asking them to keep an open mind.”
The Guardian’s voting rights reporter, Sam Levine, has an alarming story this morning on Republican efforts to make it harder to vote in Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office:
Even as attacks on voting rights have escalated in recent years, the Republican effort since January marks a new, more dangerous phase for American democracy, experts say.
For Democrats it has been a hundred days of sweeping legislation, barrier-breaking appointments and daring to dream big. For Republicans, a hundred days in the political wilderness.
The party that just four years ago controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress now finds itself shut out of power and struggling to find its feet. As Joe Biden forges ahead with ambitions to shift the political paradigm, Republicans still have a Donald Trump problem.
Senate Democrats are pushing Biden to admit more refugees into the US.
Biden’s announcement earlier this month that he would not increase refugee admissions from the record low cap of 15,000 that Donald Trump set before leaving office. After intense pushback from advocates and Democratic lawmakers, Biden said he’d increase the cap by 15 May.
Sources say new CDC guidance relates to outdoor mask-wearing
Democratic president promises ‘new normal’ by Fourth of July
The Supreme Court accepted what will be a closely watched gun rights case today –it could have a major impact on gun rights across the country.
Here’s more from the AP:
The case marks the court’s first foray into gun rights since Justice Amy Coney Barrett came on board in October, making a 6-3 conservative majority.
The justices said Monday they will review a lower-court ruling that upheld New York’s restrictive gun permit law. The court’s decision to take on the case follows mass shootings in recent weeks in Indiana, Georgia, Colorado and California and comes amid congressional efforts to tighten gun laws.
"The outlook does not look good for gun safety laws at the Supreme Court...the Court could issue a radical Second Amendment ruling that jeopardizes future progress as well as lifesaving gun laws already on the books." @GiffordsCourage says in a statement.
Republican Alaska lawmaker Lora Reinbold is banned from Alaska Airlines flights, after she has repeatedly refused to wear a mask. Masks can help protect other people from exposure to Covid-19 and other illnesses, if worn properly.
The ban is a major problem for the lawmaker, because Alaska Airlines operates the only flight to and from the capital, Juneau. Instead, she had to make a 14-hour trek to get to work
We have notified Senator Lora Reinbold that she is not permitted to fly with us for her continued refusal to comply with employee instruction regarding the current mask policy,” airlines spokesman Tim Thompson told the Anchorage Daily News.
“This suspension is effective immediately, pending further review. Federal law requires all guests to wear a mask over their nose and mouth at all times during travel, including throughout the flight, during boarding and deplaning, and while traveling through an airport,” he said.
There are few who see the passing of meaningful new laws as a guaranteed outcome – but people are still talking
In the aftermath of Derek Chauvin being convicted of murdering George Floyd, it seems like there is momentum for the US Congress to pass some kind of police reform bill.
Hearings on policing have been held and point people on both the Democratic and Republican sides are in talks. By most metrics, Congress is in a comfortable position to pass some kind of bill meant to deter police brutality and prevent another George Floyd or Eric Garner.
John Kerry dismissed a question on whether he was concerned about Republican opposition to Joe Biden’s climate proposals.
The president’s special envoy for climate noted that many policies can be implemented through executive orders, combined with cooperation from the private sector.
John Kerry, Joe Biden’s special envoy for climate, said Donald Trump’s policies “destroyed” America’s credibility on the world stage when it comes to addressing climate change.
The former secretary of state noted that today, which is Earth Day, marks five years since he signed the Paris climate agreement in New York, with his granddaughter on his knee.
After nearly two decades of fighting, Biden has declared that the war in Afghanistan is coming to an end. The President plans to officially close the chapter by the anniversary of Sept. 11 this year, the New York Times reports.
But, it still remains unclear what that means for 40 remaining detainees still imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay. Layers for two of the prisoners reportedly told federal judges this week that their clients could not be held after the war ends and filed motions for their release.
One of the detainees, Khalid Qassim, 44, is a Yemeni man who has been held without trial at Guantánamo for nearly 19 years; he was captured in late 2001 or early 2002 and is being held as a Qaeda trainee who “may have fought for the Taliban in or near Kabul and Bagram, Afghanistan, before fleeing to the Tora Bora mountains in late 2001.”
The other, an Afghan named Asadullah Haroon Gul, who is about 40, was captured in 2007 by Afghan forces and turned over to the United States military. A basis for holding him is his past affiliation with a militia that made peace with the Afghan government in 2017, essentially breaking with the Taliban.
The House has passed legislation to curb presidential power to institute travel bans like those Trump imposed to limit entry into the US from predominantly Muslim countries.
The National Origin-Based Antidiscrimination for Nonimmigrants Act (or the NO BAN Act), which prevents presidents from issuing future orders based on religion, requires bans to be temporary, and will give Congress more oversight, passed the house 218-208.
The Muslim Ban was always wrong, needless, and cruel and failed to live up to the requirements laid out by the Supreme Court. Religious bans have no place in our country or our laws and today, we are voting to make sure this never happens again. pic.twitter.com/njTtTEBuiU
Although the travel ban has been reversed, we must ensure that no future presidents abuse their power through executive action. That’s why I voted in support of the NO BAN Act. No president should have the authority to discriminate against migrants based on their religion.
George W Bush has called the Republican party under Donald Trump “isolationist, protectionist and … nativist” – a judgment unlikely to make the former US president new friends on the American right.
Sequestered jury in Minneapolis began deliberations on Monday
National guard to assist Washington police in event of protests
Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd, said earlier today that he spoke to Joe Biden about the trial.
“He knows how it is to lose a family member,” Floyd told the “Today” show. “He was just letting us know that he was praying for us and hoping that everything would come out to be okay.”
“He was just letting us know that he was praying for us and hoping that everything would come out to be OK.” -Philonise Floyd, brother of George Floyd, on his phone conversation with President Joe Biden pic.twitter.com/OUEp6Lvbhw
Joe Biden addressed the Derek Chauvin murder trial moments ago in the Oval Office, as he prepared to meet with leaders of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
The president confirmed he spoke to George Floyd’s family yesterday, as the jury began its deliberations. Biden noted he wanted to wait to contact them until after the jury was sequestered.
After phone call with George Floyd's family, President Biden says he is "praying the verdict is the right verdict," adding that he is only speaking out because the jury is sequestered. https://t.co/zstpyxCqRkpic.twitter.com/RcrACo79DU
Before the 17th century, people did not think of themselves as belonging to something called the white race. But once the idea was invented, it quickly began to reshape the modern world
In 2008, a satirical blog called Stuff White People Like became a brief but boisterous sensation. The conceit was straightforward, coupling a list, eventually 136 items long, of stuff that white people liked to do or own, with faux-ethnographic descriptions that explained each item’s purported racial appeal. While some of the items were a little too obvious – indie music appeared at #41, Wes Anderson movies at #10 – others, including “awareness” (#18) and “children’s games as adults” (#102), were inspired. It was an instant hit. In its first two months alone, Stuff White People Like drew 4 million visitors, and it wasn’t long before a book based on the blog became a New York Times bestseller.
The founder of the blog was an aspiring comedian and PhD dropout named Christian Lander, who’d been working as an advertising copywriter in Los Angeles when he launched the site on a whim. In interviews, Lander always acknowledged that his satire had at least as much to do with class as it did with race. His targets, he said, were affluent overeducated urbanites like himself. Yet there’s little doubt that the popularity of the blog, which depended for its humour on the assumption that whiteness was a contentless default identity, had much to do with its frank invocation of race. “As a white person, you’re just desperate to find something else to grab on to,” Lander said in 2009. “Pretty much every white person I grew up with wished they’d grown up in, you know, an ethnic home that gave them a second language.”