Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Ice accused of sending ‘defenseless babies into the burning house’ as deportations of 72 carried out in apparent breach of Biden order
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) deported at least 72 people to Haiti on Monday, including a two-month-old baby and 21 other children, in an apparent flagrant breach of the Biden administration’s orders only to remove suspected terrorists and potentially dangerous convicted felons.
The children were deported to Haiti on Monday on two flights chartered by Ice from Laredo, Texas to the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince. The removals sent vulnerable infants back to Haiti as it is being roiled by major political unrest.
The president has signed a number of executive orders during his first weeks in office, ranging from the pandemic to immigration – here’s what they are
The Covid crisis has turbo-charged profits and share prices. But are the big six now too powerful for regulators to ignore?
The coronavirus pandemic has wrought economic disruption on a global scale, but one sector has marched on throughout the chaos: big tech.
Further evidence of the industry’s relentless progress has come in recent weeks with the news that Apple and Amazon both raked in sales of $100bn (£72bn) over the past three months – 25% more than Tesco brings in over a full year.
Biden says predecessor shouldn’t have access to briefings, which are traditionally offered to presidents even after leaving office
Joe Biden has said that he doesn’t believe his predecessor, Donald Trump, should have access to any intelligence briefings due to his “erratic behavior”.
The House has just passed the Senate-approved budget resolution, paving the way for the chamber to take up Joe Biden’s coronavirus relief proposal in the coming weeks.
The House voted 219-209 along mostly partly lines to approve the resolution as amended by the Senate. Jared Golden was the only Democrat to vote against the measure.
The rule for S.Con.Res. 5 – Setting forth the congressional budget for the US Gov't for FY 2021 & setting forth the appropriate budgetary levels for FY 2022-2030 was adopted by a vote of 219-209.
S.Con.Res. 5 is hereby passed.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, fresh from being stripped of her committee assignments, seemed unrepentant on Friday morning, as she used a press conference to sum up the intertwining of the Republican party and Donald Trump.
“The party is his – it doesn’t belong to anyone else,” Greene told reporters in Washington this morning.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Trump and the GOP Party:
Joe Biden’s decision to end support for Saudi-led coalition seen as important step towards peace
Yemenis have cautiously welcomed Joe Biden’s announcement that the US is ending its support for the Saudi-led coalition fighting in the country’s complex war, saying the decision is an important step on the long road towards finding a peaceful solution to the conflict.
In his first foreign policy speech as president on Thursday, Biden announced a broad reshaping of US relations with the rest of the world, including his predecessor Donald Trump’s unquestioning support for Gulf monarchies with poor human rights records at home and abroad.
Here’s a recap of the day, from me and Joan E Greve:
Covid is killing Native Americans at a faster rate than any other community in the United States, shocking new figures reveal.
American Indians and Alaskan Natives are dying at almost twice the rate of white Americans, according to analysis by APM Research Lab shared exclusively with the Guardian.
Ice agents allegedly forced asylum seekers to agree to expulsion
Flight was due to leave from Louisiana at 3pm on Wednesday
US immigration and customs enforcement (Ice) canceled a deportation flight to west Africa because of allegations of brutality by Ice agents in the treatment of the deportees, the agency has said in a statement.
The statement emailed to the Guardian and the cancellation of the deportation flight, so that would-be deportees can be interviewed as witnesses, marks a dramatic change in tone by the agency, which has hitherto deflected and denied earlier allegations of human rights abuses.
State department says ‘atrocities’ against detained Uighur and Muslim women in region must be ‘met with serious consequences’
The United States government is “deeply disturbed” by reports of systematic rape and sexual torture of women detained in China’s Xinjiang camps for ethnic Uighur and other Muslims, and demanded serious consequences.
The US state department was responding to a BBC report, published on Wednesday, detailing horrific allegations rape, sexual abuse and torture, based on interviews with several former detainees and a guard. The interviewees told the BBC “they experienced or saw evidence of an organised system of mass rape, sexual abuse and torture”.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said she did not believe the vaccination of all teachers was required to safely reopen US schools.
Dr Rochelle Walensky told reporters at the White House coronavirus briefing, “Vaccination of teachers is not a prerequisite for safe reopening of schools.”
Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, encouraged people to safely watch the Super Bowl game this Sunday.
“Please watch the Super Bowl safely, gathering only virtually or with the people you live with,” Walensky said during the White House coronavirus briefing.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has been denounced as a “rogue agency” after new allegations of assaults on asylum seekers emerged, and deportations of African and Caribbean migrants continued in defiance of the Biden administration’s orders.
Joe Biden unveiled his immigration agenda on Tuesday, and his homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was confirmed by the Senate, but the continued deportations suggested the Biden White House still does not have full control of Ice, which faces multiple allegations of human rights abuses and allegations that it has disproportionately targeted black migrants.
A hastily executed transfer of nearly 200 people in California’s prison system set off a public health disaster that endangered the lives of thousands of prisoners and staff and led to dozens of deaths, according to a new report from the state’s office of the inspector general (OIG).
The report published on Monday, the third in a series examining the Covid-19 catastrophe in California state prisons, details the circumstances of a May 2020 transfer of 189 people from the California Institute for Men (CIM) in Chino, California, to San Quentin state prison in the Bay Area and Corcoran state prison in the Central Valley.
Ice condemned as ‘rogue agency’ after rights groups allege torture by agents and man deported to Haiti who had never been there
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has been denounced as a “rogue agency” after new allegations of assaults on asylum seekers emerged, and deportations of African and Caribbean migrants continued in defiance of the Biden administration’s orders.
Joe Biden unveiled his immigration agenda on Tuesday, and his homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was confirmed by the Senate, but the continued deportations suggested the Biden White House still does not have full control of Ice, which faces multiple allegations of human rights abuses and allegations that it has disproportionately targeted black migrants.
President decries Trump administration that ‘literally ripped children from the arms of their families’ as he signs executive orders
Joe Biden plans to create a taskforce to reunify families separated at the US-Mexico border by the Trump administration, as part of a new series of immigration executive actions signed at an Oval Office ceremony on Tuesday.
Biden condemned Donald Trump’s immigration policies as a “stain on the reputation” of the US.
Trump-appointed judge ruled against president’s 100-day suspension, raising questions over whether Ice will resist reform
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) is preparing to resume deportations of asylum seekers after a Trump-appointed Texas judge ruled against a 100-day suspension ordered by Joe Biden.
The ruling, in response to a challenge from a leading figure in the Republican effort to overturn the election result, marks the first shot in a legal rearguard action by Trump loyalists intended to stymie the Biden administration’s agenda.
The group of Senate Republicans who will meet with Joe Biden today have proposed their own $600 billion coronavirus relief package.
A package of that size would be about one-third as large as the relief legislation that Biden has proposed.
This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.
Here’s what the blog is keeping an eye on today: The president and the vice-president will meet with a group of Republican senators to discuss a coronavirus relief bill.
Officials work to pinpoint doses in pipeline between federal distribution and administration by states
The Biden administration has spent its first week in office attempting to manually track down 20m vaccine doses in the pipeline between federal distribution and administration at clinic sites, when a dose finally reaches a patient’s arm.
The Trump administration’s strategy pushed the response to the coronavirus pandemic to individual states and omitted pipeline tracking information between distribution and when the shot is actually administered, Biden administration officials told Politico.
The prospect that former president Donald Trump was ready to strike up on his own and split off from the Republican party appears to be receding, at least according to this report from Newsweek’s Jacob Jarvis. He writes:
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Trump met in Florida yesterday, and it was discussed that Trump would back Republican candidates for 2022.
“President Trump committed to helping elect Republicans in the House and Senate in 2022,” McCarthy said in a statement.
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley has told CNN he does not having any regrets over voting not to certify all of November’s election results, but also claimed that he was not attempting to overturn the election result – a statement that appears to contradict his earlier position. Manu Raju, CNN’s Chief Congressional correspondent, writes:
In the aftermath of pro-Trump rioters storming the Capitol seeking to stop the January 6 certification of Biden’s win, the first-term Missouri Republican senator has faced a barrage of criticism over his decision to contest the results of Pennsylvania. But Hawley has said he has “no” regrets, telling CNN: “I was very clear from the beginning that I was never attempting to overturn the election.”
Yet before 6 January 6, Hawley didn’t rule out the possibility that Congress could throw out the electoral results and keep Trump in office.
Elon Musk ought to turn his hand to printers, and if only Anthony Fauci could sort out US healthcare
The first full week under President Biden and life undergoes an immediate improvement: save for a few pieces about plunging membership at Mar-a-Lago, there are almost no photos of Himself on the front pages. The daily anger spike is gone, leaving in its place a flat, sour, hungover feeling, and a sense of not knowing quite what to do.
Obama-era diplomat Robert Malley will face task of repairing ties that worsened under Trump after withdrawal from nuclear pact
The Biden administration is expected name Robert Malley, a former top adviser in the Obama administration, as special envoy for Iran, according to multiple sources.
Malley was a key member of former Barack Obama’s team that negotiated the nuclear accord with Iran and world powers, an agreement that Donald Trump abandoned in 2018 in the face of strong opposition from Washington’s European allies.
In addition to rescinding the ‘global gag rule’ on Thursday, Joe Biden ordered funding restored to the UN population fund, UNFPA, which Trump stopped.
UNFPA said the US decision to restore funding will have an “enormous” impact on the agency’s work, particularly coming as the world continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic.
It was a big day for the country’s first second gentleman, or as he is also known, the SGOTUS (yes).
Today, Kamala Harris’s husband, Douglas Emhoff, tweeted that the title “second gentleman” has been officially recognized by Merriam Webster’s dictionary and wrote: “I might be the first, but I won’t be the last.”