Ted Cruz urges Trump to back older retirement age for pilots

Worker groups oppose move, citing studies finding health risks and decline in cognitive skills with increase in age

Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who heads the US Senate’s commerce committee, has urged Donald Trump to support international efforts by an airline trade group to raise the mandatory pilot retirement age to 67 – despite opposition from a pilots association, which says such a move could increase travel risks.

In a letter first reported by Reuters on Sunday, Cruz asked Trump to support efforts the upcoming opening of a United Nations aviation meeting in Montreal.

Continue reading...

Monday briefing: The ‘toxic cocktail’ of climate denial, federal cuts and the Texas floods

In today’s newsletter: Amid at least 129 deaths and billions of dollars of damage, there has been little reckoning about the part global heating and cuts to public services may have played in the disaster

Good morning. The death toll from the catastrophic floods in Texas has climbed to 129, including at least 27 children and counsellors at Camp Mystic in Kerr County.

With more than 160 people still missing, authorities warn that the number of casualties is likely to rise. On Sunday morning, some search operations were cancelled as heavy rain and strong winds battered the state once again.

Israel-Gaza | An Israeli airstrike has killed at least 10 people, including six children, who were waiting to collect water in Gaza, Palestinian health officials have said. Dozens of others were killed in Gaza over the weekend in a separate strike near a food aid distribution site. Meanwhile, former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert has said that a proposed “humanitarian city” would be a concentration camp for Palestinians.

Health | Health officials have urged people to come forward for the measles vaccine if they are not up to date with their shots after a child at Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool died from the disease.

UK news | Charlotte Church, veteran peace campaigners, Trade unionists, activists and politicians, are among hundreds who have signed a letter describing the move to ban the group Palestine Action as “a major assault on our freedoms”.

Spain | Several people were hurt in a second night of anti-migrant unrest in the town of Torre Pacheco in south-east Spain after a pensioner was beaten up, authorities said.

NHS | Health secretory Wes Streeting will meet representatives from the British Medical Association this week as he looks to avert five days of strikes by resident doctors.

Continue reading...

Ted Cruz warns of midterm ‘bloodbath’ if Trump tariffs cause a recession

Texas senator’s comments another sign of Republican unease over ‘reciprocal tariffs’ and stock market plunge

Ted Cruz, the US senator from Texas, has warned that his fellow Republicans risk a “bloodbath” in the 2026 midterm elections if Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs cause a recession.

Cruz also warned that the president’s tariffs, if they stay in place for long and are met by global retaliation on American goods, could trigger a full-blown trade war that “would destroy jobs here at home, and do real damage to the US economy”.

Continue reading...

Civil rights groups condemn senator’s questioning of Arab American witness

Republican John Kennedy of Louisiana accuses thinktank director of supporting Hamas in heated hate crime hearing

A congressional hearing on hate crimes drew charges of the bigotry it was meant to address after a Republican senator told the female Muslim head of a thinktank to “hide your head in a bag” and accused her of supporting Hamas and Hezbollah.

John Kennedy, the GOP senator for Louisiana, drew condemnation from Democrats as well as Muslim, Jewish and civil liberties groups for the remark, aimed at Maya Berry, the executive director of the Arab American Institute, at a hearing staged by the Senate judiciary committee.

Continue reading...

Climate change deniers make up nearly a quarter of US Congress

Climate denialists – 23 in Senate and 100 in House – are all Republicans and make US an outlier internationally

US politics is an outlier bastion of climate denial with nearly one in four members of Congress dismissing the reality of climate change, even as alarm has grown among the American public over dangerous global heating, an analysis has found.

A total of 123 elected federal representatives – 100 in the House of Representatives and 23 US senators – deny the existence of human-caused climate change, all of them Republicans, according to a recent study of statements made by current members.

Continue reading...

US may restrict visas for Ugandan officials in wake of anti-LGBTQ+ laws

Antony Blinken says he’s looking to ‘promote accountability’ for Ugandan officials who have violated rights of LGBTQ+ people

The US may restrict visas issued to Ugandan officials in its latest condemnation to the African country’s enactment of stringent – and highly controversial – anti-LGBTQ+ laws.

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said that Joe Biden’s White House is “deeply troubled” by the Anti-Homosexuality Act, which was signed into law by Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s president, on Monday. Blinken said that he was looking to “promote accountability” for Ugandan officials who have violated the rights of LGBTQ+ people, with possible measures including the curtailment of visas.

Continue reading...

Texas attorney general impeached by Republican-led House in historic vote

Ken Paxton drew support from Donald Trump and Ted Cruz prior to the vote

Texas’ Republican-led House of Representatives impeached state attorney general Ken Paxton on Saturday on articles including bribery and abuse of public trust, a historic rebuke of a GOP official who rose to be a star of the conservative legal movement despite years of scandal and alleged crimes.

Impeachment triggers Paxton’s immediate suspension from office pending the outcome of a trial in the state Senate and empowers Republican governor Greg Abbott to appoint someone else as Texas’ top lawyer in the interim.

Continue reading...

Ted Cruz wants two-term limit for senators – and a third term for himself

Texas senator says he ‘never said I’m going to unilaterally comply’ with his own proposed restriction

Ted Cruz has introduced a bill to limit US senators to two terms in office, thereby removing from Washington “permanently entrenched politicians … totally unaccountable to the American people”.

On Sunday, however, he said he saw no problem with running for a third term himself.

Continue reading...

White House says Ted Cruz voted against highway project he touted as ‘victory’

Texas Republican hails ‘Ports to Plains’ highway he co-sponsored – but which was in spending bill he refused to back

The Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz called a new highway project “a great bipartisan victory” that will bring “jobs to Texas and millions of dollars to the state”.

The White House responded: “Senator Cruz voted against this.”

Continue reading...

Trump said sorry to Cruz for 2016 insults, Paul Manafort says in new book

In a memoir obtained by the Guardian, former campaign manager risks embarrassing powerful rivals with description of apology

Donald Trump made an uncharacteristic apology to Ted Cruz after insulting his wife and father during the 2016 campaign – only for the Texas senator still to refuse to endorse Trump at the Republican convention.

In a new memoir, Trump’s then campaign manager, Paul Manafort, writes: “On his own initiative, Trump did apologise for saying some of the things he said about Cruz, which was unusual for Trump.”

Continue reading...

Republicans who aided coup attempt sought blanket presidential pardons

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.

Continue reading...

Ted Cruz laments angry supreme court hearings a day after angry airport fracas

Texas senator filmed becoming confrontational with airport staff after missing check-in window for flight from Bozeman, Montana

In Washington on Monday, the Texas senator Ted Cruz complained that supreme court confirmation hearings have become increasingly angry and confrontational.

In Bozeman, Montana the previous day, however, the Republican was filmed becoming angry and confrontational with airport staff and an armed police officer.

Continue reading...

‘Weakness and surrender’: Ted Cruz seeks to move on from Tucker Carlson mauling

The Republican senator was widely mocked after being forced to walk back his description of 5 January as a ‘violent terrorist attack’

Ted Cruz used Twitter on Friday to accuse Joe Biden of signaling “weakness and surrender to Putin” over Ukraine – but the Texas senator could not escape a crisis of his own, stoked by widespread accusations of weakness and surrender in the face of the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, over remarks about the deadly Capitol attack.

On Wednesday, a day before the first anniversary of the attack by supporters of Donald Trump attempting to overturn the election, Cruz described “a violent terrorist attack on the Capitol, where we saw the men and women of law enforcement demonstrate incredible courage”.

Continue reading...

Ted Cruz condemns Big Bird for advocating Covid vaccines for kids

The Texas senator Ted Cruz led conservatives in condemnation of a prominent public figure for advocating Covid-19 vaccinations for children. Big Bird.

This week saw final US approval for five- to 11-year-olds to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Sesame Street, which has offered Covid advice before, duly deployed its popular characters to encourage parents to protect their children.

Continue reading...

Ted Cruz’s campaign may have spent $150,000 on copies of his book

Following One Vote Away’s publication, the Republican senator’s campaign spent large sums of money at US chain Books-A-Million

Ted Cruz’s campaign spent more than $150,000 at US book chain Books-A-Million in the months after the Texas senator’s book was published, Forbes has reported.

Cruz, who was prominent among the Republicans trying to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election, published One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History in September. A financial disclosure he filed on Monday, reported on by Forbes, shows he received almost $320,000 as an advance in 2020 from the book’s publisher Regnery Publishing.

Continue reading...

A room with a view: the Twitter account that spent a year staring into people’s homes

As the pandemic forced us inside and online, Room Rater was one Twitter account giving doomscrollers a well-needed levity break. A year on, co-founder Claude Taylor explains how he plans to keep going

With its stately lamp and verdant window view, Hillary Clinton’s “Zoom room” is nicer than most. So when Room Rater – a Twitter account which scores the video conference backgrounds of high-profile figures – gave it nine out of 10 last spring, Clinton took her disappointment to social media: “I’ll keep striving for that highest, hardest glass ceiling, the elusive 10/10,” she tweeted at the account.

Judging the backgrounds on video calls has been the armchair sport of the past year. Room Rater just happened to screengrab these moments. As we doomscrolled through bleak statistics online, it was cheering to see shots of Meryl Streep’s sterile shelves or the copies of Fahrenheit 451 and The Twits propped up behind Boris Johnson at a school in Leicestershire. Scrolling through the posts a year after it launched, these images have become emblematic of just how quickly coronavirus forced all of us inside and online.

Continue reading...

Republican senator Ted Cruz mocked for documentary-style trip to US-Mexico border

Texas lawmaker recounted his mission to shed light on what conservatives have dubbed an immigration crisis

Republican senator Ted Cruz has drawn criticism for taking a trip to America’s southern border as the conservative Texan politician once again became the butt of internet jokes and memes.

In the style of a wildlife documentary, Cruz captured his experience with the help of professional photographers and shared his recent journey to the US-Mexico border Thursday night on social media, where he aimed to shed light on what Republicans have dubbed a crisis.

Continue reading...

‘Shivering under a pile of six blankets, I finally lost it’: my week in frozen Texas hell

February was the peak of my pandemic depression – and then came the ‘Arctic blast’

As for so many, February was the peak of my pandemic depression. It nearly marked the first anniversary of the Covid lockdown, and the demise of my social life. But quarantining in San Antonio, Texas, brought an entirely new set of challenges.

My breaking point was around midnight last Tuesday, during the “Arctic blast” which, prior to last week, sounded like a refreshing juice-box flavor for children. Our house was 40F (4C). My father was outside boiling water on the grill so we could have a hot drink to get us through the night. My only link to the outside world was a horrendous internet connection, so I couldn’t even doom-scroll my way out of this frozen hellscape.

Continue reading...

Republicans eye federal funds to help pay Texans’ exorbitant energy bills

Texas Republicans will use federal funds to help pay exorbitant energy bills hitting ordinary Texans after a deep freeze crippled the state this week, a senior congressman said on Sunday.

Related: Texans rally to help neighbors amid big freeze as officials are caught cold

Continue reading...

Texas storm: Biden to declare major disaster to secure federal aid – live

Meanwhile, in New Mexico, a Democrat-led legislature has overturned a dormant 1969 ban on most abortion procedures.

History made. #SB10, affirming that decisions about abortion should remain with NM women, has passed both chambers of the #nmleg. Thank you to every New Mexican who has fought for this progress. #nmpol pic.twitter.com/OigA95YhMB

This November, you elected leaders to build a better future for all New Mexicans. Thank you to the voters, activists, and champions who fought for a New Mexico where abortion care is accessible for all. You made this win possible! #nmleg #SB10 #repealtheban pic.twitter.com/ltIrJ0ZFJv

Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has already indicated that he would oppose Neera Tanden’s to be director of the Office of Management and Budget, in part because of combative statements she has made on Twitter.

New: Manchin is opposing Neera Tanden's nomination for OMB: "I believe her overtly partisan statements will have a toxic and detrimental impact on the important working relationship between members of Congress and the next director of the Office of Management and Budget."

OMB: Biden tells reporters he will not pull @neeratanden nomination, will find the votes for her

WH press secretary Jen Psaki: "Neera Tanden is an accomplished policy expert who would be an excellent Budget Director and we look forward to the committee votes next week and to continuing to work toward her confirmation through engagement with both parties."

Continue reading...