Category Archives: US Senate

US Senate overwhelmingly approves Nato membership for Finland and Sweden

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In 95-1 vote, body supports ‘slam-dunk for national security’ after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

The US Senate delivered near-unanimous bipartisan approval to Nato membership for Finland and Sweden on Wednesday, calling expansion of the western defensive bloc a “slam-dunk” for US national security and a day of reckoning for Vladimir Putin.

The 95-1 vote for the candidacy of two European countries that, until Russia’s war against Ukraine, had long avoided military alliances took a crucial step toward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its 73-year-old pact of mutual defense among the United States and democratic allies in Europe.

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Democrats prepare for showdown over key spending and climate bill – as it happened

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Antony Blinken, secretary of state, said at global nonproliferation discussions at the United Nations today that a return to the 2015 nuclear deal remains the best outcome for the United States, Iran and the world.

Reuters is reporting that Blinken made a point to repeat a warning from the US that North Korea is preparing to conduct its seventh nuclear test.

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Lucas Kunce: ‘Populism is about everyday people coming together’

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Former US Marine with a progressive take on identity and masculinity hopes Missouri Democrats will pick him as their nominee for US Senate

Lucas Kunce thinks populism has been given a bad name. “It’s outrageous,” he says, “that people call the Josh Hawleys, the Eric Greitens, the Donald Trumps of the world populist. Populism is about everyday people coming together to have power in a system that’s not working for them. So do that, Josh Hawley. I mean, good Lord, what a charlatan.”

Kunce is running for the Democratic nomination for US Senate in Missouri, in the fight to take the state’s second seat in Washington, alongside Hawley. The primary is on Tuesday.

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House-passed assault weapons ban appears to be doomed in the Senate

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Bill would require support from at least 10 Senate Republicans, and it isn’t certain that all 50 Democratic senators are onboard

The assault weapons ban in America passed by the House appears set to be doomed in the Senate amid implacable Republican opposition to gun reform, even in the wake of a series of mass shootings in the US.

The legislation in the House, which would ban assault weapons for the first time since 2004, is interpreted as a sign that Democrats plan more aggressive gun violence prevention after a series of mass shootings using the military-derived weapons, including in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas.

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DoJ reportedly preparing court fight to get Trump insiders to testify – live

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Prosectors expect former president to try to invoke executive privilege to prevent his ex-officials from speaking

An impassioned plea from a 12-year-old girl has gone viral after she spoke to West Virginia Republican lawmakers during a public hearing for an abortion bill that would prohibit the procedure in nearly all cases.

On Wednesday, Addison Gardner of Buffalo middle school in Kenova, West Virginia, was among several people who spoke out against a bill that would not only ban abortions in most cases but also allow for physicians who perform abortions to be prosecuted.

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Joe Biden hails Senate deal as ‘most significant’ US climate legislation ever

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Proposal backed by centrist senator Joe Manchin also addresses healthcare, tax rises for high earners and cutting federal debt

Joe Biden has hailed a congressional deal that represents the biggest single climate investment in US history – and hands him a badly needed political victory.

In a stunning reversal, Senate Democrats on Wednesday announced an expansive $739bn package that had eluded them for months addressing healthcare and the climate crisis, raising taxes on high earners and corporations and reducing federal debt.

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Manchin announces deal with Democrats on major tax and climate bill

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News of agreement breaks deadlock two weeks after conservative Democrat had appeared to kill off Biden’s climate agenda

Democrat Joe Manchin announced on Wednesday afternoon that he has reached a deal with the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, on a domestic policy bill that would pay down national debt, cut energy costs and lower the cost of health insurance and prescription drugs, while supporting a “realistic” climate policy.

The development came almost two weeks after the West Virginia conservative senator had appeared essentially to kill off flagship climate action legislation when he came out against raising taxes on wealth Americans and refused to support more funding for climate action.

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Trump speaks in Washington DC for first visit since leaving office – as it happened

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Joe Biden’s daily health bulletin is a good one, as he continues to recover from the Covid-19 infection announced last week.

The president has improved enough to be able to resume his regular exercise routine, according to a Tuesday morning update from physician Dr Kevin O’Connor, reported by the Associated Press.

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Bipartisan Senate group reaches deal to reform Electoral Count Act

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Lawmakers agreed to two bills that will overhaul federal law and prevent presidential candidates from overturning election results

A bipartisan group of senators reached a deal on Wednesday to reform a federal law and prevent a future presidential candidate from overturning the will of the people and the result of a valid presidential election.

The lawmakers have agreed to two bills that would reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which governs how electoral votes are counted following a presidential election. Citing ambiguities in the law, Donald Trump and his attorneys pushed his vice-president, Mike Pence, to disrupt the counting of electoral votes that showed he lost the 2020 election, escalating calls for the 135-year-old law to be reformed. Even before the election, experts warned the law was ambiguous and could be exploited.

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‘The world is counting on us’: Biden vows to tackle climate ‘emergency’ – as it happened

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Zelenska concluded her remarks by describing the Russian invasion as terrorism, and linking it to America’s experiences with such attacks.

“America unfortunately knows from its own experience what terrorist attacks are and has always sought to defeat terrorism. Help us to stop this terror against Ukrainians, and this will be our joint great victory in the name of life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness of every person, every family,” Zelenska said.

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Biden pledges executive action after Joe Manchin scuppers climate agenda

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West Virginia senator refuses to support funding for climate crisis and says he will not back tax raises for wealthy Americans

Joe Biden has promised executive action on climate change after Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator who has repeatedly thwarted his own party while making millions in the coal industry, refused to support more funding for climate action.

In another blow to Democrats ahead of the midterm elections, the West Virginia senator also came out against tax raises for wealthy Americans.

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US gunmakers summoned to Congress to justify soaring profits from gun violence – as it happened

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Top Democrats ‘deeply troubled that gun manufacturers continue to profit from the sale of weapons of war’

Could Donald Trump have had the IRS carry out its most stringent audit on two of his political foes? That’s the question posed by a story published yesterday in The New York Times that says former FBI director James Comey and his deputy Andrew McCabe were both selected for random audits by the tax authority, which is run by an appointee of the former president.

A spokesman for Trump denied knowing anything about the matter, and experts quoted in the story wondered whether it was even possible for a president to order the IRS to carry out such an action. The coincidence is nonetheless abnormal. Here’s how one former IRS official put it to the Times:

“Lightning strikes, and that’s unusual, and that’s what it’s like being picked for one of these audits,” said John A. Koskinen, the I.R.S. commissioner from 2013 to 2017. “The question is: Does lightning then strike again in the same area? Does it happen? Some people may see that in their lives, but most will not — so you don’t need to be an anti-Trumper to look at this and think it’s suspicious.”

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Jan 6 committee hearings: Cheney describes possible witness tampering after ex-aide’s testimony – as it happened

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The Guardian’s Ashifa Kassam and Ramon Antonio Vargas report:

Fifty suspected migrants were found dead and at least a dozen others were hospitalized after being found inside an abandoned tractor-trailer rig on Monday on a remote back road in south-west San Antonio, officials have said.

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Roe v Wade: senators say Trump supreme court nominees misled them

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Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh said they would not overturn landmark abortion ruling, Susan Collins and Joe Manchin say

When the supreme court decided on Friday to overturn Roe v Wade, several senators who recently approved justices responsible for this decision said they felt deceived. These politicians pointed to prior statements from Trump appointees Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch; both male judges had claimed they would not overturn Roe.

“I feel misled,” the Maine senator Susan Collins told the New York Times. In a lengthy meeting on 21 August 2018, the Republican reportedly grilled Kavanaugh to explain why he could be trusted not to overturn Roe.

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Bipartisan gun control law sent for Biden’s signature after House vote

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Fourteen Republicans vote with majority for first major gun reform legislation in nearly 30 years

The US House on Friday passed a bipartisan bill to strengthen federal gun regulations, bringing an end to decades of congressional inaction and sending the historic legislation to Joe Biden’s desk.

Passage of the bill came a day after the supreme court overturned a New York law regulating handgun ownership, a significant blow for proponents of gun reform.

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Senate breakthrough clears way for toughening US gun laws

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Bill’s passing hailed as ‘long overdue step’ while package falls far short of more robust restrictions Democrats sought

The US Senate has easily approved a bipartisan gun violence bill that seemed unthinkable just a month ago, clearing the way for final congressional approval of what will be lawmakers’ most far-reaching response in decades to mass shootings.

After years of GOP procedural delays that derailed Democratic efforts to curb firearms, Democrats and some Republicans decided that congressional inaction was untenable after last month’s rampages in New York and Texas. It took weeks of closed-door talks but a group of senators from both parties emerged on Thursday with a compromise embodying incremental but impactful movement to curb bloodshed that has come to regularly shock – yet no longer surprise – the nation.

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January 6 hearings outlined ‘inner workings of political coup in service of Trump’, panel chair says – as it happened

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Committee ends fifth hearing, with next sessions expected in July

Gun rights have been in the news for weeks following two shocking mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York — a fact that has not escaped the supreme court.

In his concurrence with the majority opinion, conservative justice Samuel Alito connects the latter shooting with the concealed weapons regulation that the court struck down. “Will a person bent on carrying out a mass shooting be stopped if he knows that it is illegal to carry a handgun outside the home? And how does the dissent account for the fact that one of the mass shootings near the top of its list took place in Buffalo? The New York law at issue in this case obviously did not stop that perpetrator,” wrote Alito, who was also the author of the draft opinion overturning abortion rights that leaked in May.

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Republican senator faces backlash for work on gun bill after school shooting

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John Cornyn of Texas, lead negotiator on modest bipartisan reform proposal in Senate, was booed and heckled at party convention

In the aftermath of the Uvalde mass school shooting, the Texas senator John Cornyn is facing backlash from his own Republican party for being a lead negotiator on the bipartisan gun reform bill, the most significant legislation on gun control in America in decades.

At the state’s annual Republican convention recently held in Houston, Cornyn was booed and heckled – a visible sign he is losing support from those within his own party. He dismissed the taunting crowd as a “mob”.

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US Senators announce gun violence bill with bipartisan support

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The breakthrough in a 29-year stale mate on gun reform comes after two devastating mass shootings in Texas and New York

US senators have announced an agreement on a bipartisan gun violence bill, marking a small but notable breakthrough on gun control in the wake of recent mass shootings.

Nine days after Senate bargainers agreed to a framework proposal – and 29 years after Congress last enacted major firearms curbs – senators Chris Murphy, a Democrat and John Cornyn, a Republican, told reporters on Tuesday that a final accord on the proposal’s details had been reached.

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Ex-Trump adviser Peter Navarro pleads not guilty to contempt charges in January 6 case – as it happened

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President Joe Biden has cheered the Food and Drug Administration’s decision today to authorize Covid-19 vaccines for children younger than five years old, the last group of Americans that didn’t have access to the jabs.

“Today is a day of huge relief for parents and families across America. Following a rigorous scientific review, the Food and Drug Administration has authorized the first COVID-19 vaccines for kids under the age of five. As early as next week, pending recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), parents will finally be able to get their youngest kids the protection of a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine,” Biden said in a statement released by the White House.

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