‘It’s chilling what is happening’: a rightwing backlash to Biden takes root in Republican states

Biden may be president but Republican-controlled states are busy introducing reams of legislation that is anything but progressive

In his inaugural address in January, Joe Biden promised to use his presidency to “restore the soul of America”. He would unite the nation, defuse “anger, resentment and hatred”, and lead Americans back to a world where they treated “each other with dignity and respect”.

Six months later, Biden is still preaching the unity gospel, and regularly assures his fellow Americans that “there’s not a single thing we aren’t able to do when we do it together”.

Continue reading...

Biden condemns Trump’s claim of voter fraud: ‘The big lie is just that, a big lie’ – live

  • President deflects questions over the filibuster in voting rights speech
  • Biden: ‘The 21st century Jim Crow assault is real. It’s unrelenting’
  • Lawmakers arrive in DC to call for legislation to strengthen voting rights
  • Explainer: why did Democratic lawmakers flee Texas?

Texas Democratic lawmakers have fled their state in a desperate attempt to stop the Republican-run legislature from passing laws they say will suppress the vote of people of color.

The extreme move – which saw dozens of Democrats leave via planes and head to Washington DC – is the latest and wildest escalation in a fight over voting rights in the state and in America more broadly.

Related: Why did Democratic lawmakers flee Texas over voter restrictions?

As fires propagate throughout the US west on the heels of record heatwaves, experts are warning that the region is caught in a vicious feedback cycle of extreme heat, drought and fire, all amplified by the climate crisis.

Firefighters are battling blazes from Arizona to Washington state that are burning with a worrying ferocity, while officials say California is already set to outpace last year’s record-breaking fire season.

Related: American west stuck in cycle of ‘heat, drought and fire’, experts warn

Continue reading...

Texas Democrats flee the state to thwart voting restrictions law

Texas Democrats fled the state as part of an all-out effort to block Republicans from passing new restrictions on voting in the state.

The move, first reported by NBC News, escalates one of the most high-stakes battles over efforts to make it harder to vote in America.

Continue reading...

Texas Republicans advance voting restrictions at special session after Democrat walkout

Texans from across the ideological spectrum flocked to testify in person at public hearings convened by governor Greg Abbott

Hailee Mouch woke up at 2am Saturday morning so she could drive to her state’s capital city of Austin and testify at two competing public hearings on Texas’s restrictive voting bills.

She knew she had to return to the Dallas area to be at work by 6am Sunday. But she was determined to stay as long as possible to tell state lawmakers how their proposals would hurt democracy in the small city where she goes to college.

Continue reading...

Covid cases fall across US but experts warn of dangers of vaccine hesitancy

Health experts emphasize need for even those who have had disease to get inoculated

New cases of Covid-19 are declining across most of the US, even in some states with vaccine-hesitant populations.

But almost all states where cases are rising have lower-than-average vaccination rates and experts warned on Sunday that relief from the coronavirus pandemic could be fleeting in regions where few people get inoculated.

Continue reading...

Police arrest one suspect, hunting for another after Austin shooting leaves 14 injured

  • Incident occurred in early hours in entertainment district
  • Two victims in critical condition as one more suspect sought

Police in Austin, Texas, say they have arrested one man and are searching for another in connection with a shooting early on Saturday that injured 14 people in the city’s downtown entertainment district.

The Austin police department said in a news release that the US Marshals Lone Star fugitive task force assisted in making the arrest, but it provided no other details other than to say it is continuing to follow up on leads for the suspect still at large.

Continue reading...

Texas will build a wall along its border with Mexico, governor says

It is unclear if the state has the authority to construct a wall after Joe Biden stopped building projects on the border

The Republican Texas governor, Greg Abbott, has announced that the state will build a wall along its southern border with Mexico, sparking criticism from human rights and immigration advocacy groups.

Citing the Biden administration’s rollback of Trump-era immigration policies, Abbott announced the border wall plans amid other security measures including plans for Texas to construct its own detention centers and $1bn of the state’s budget being allocated to border security. Abbott also declared that more undocumented immigrants will be arrested and sent to local jails versus being turned over to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as Ice.

Continue reading...

Republican congressman suggests changing moon’s orbit to fight climate change – video

Texas Republican congressman Louie Gohmert asked a senior US government official if changing the moon’s orbit around the Earth, or the Earth’s orbit around the sun, might be a solution for climate change. The question was not posed to anyone from Nasa, but a senior forestry service official during a House natural resources committee hearing on Tuesday. Jennifer Eberlien, associate deputy chief of the National Forest Service, said she would have to 'follow up with you on that one, Mr Gohmert'

Continue reading...

Texas Republican asks: can we fix the moon’s orbit to fight climate change?

‘I’d have to follow up with you on that one,’ says forestry official Jennifer Eberlien to bizarre question from Louie Gohmert

The Texas Republican congressman Louie Gohmert has asked a senior US government official if changing the moon’s orbit around the Earth, or the Earth’s orbit around the sun, might be a solution for climate change.

Bizarrely, the question was not posed to anyone from Nasa or even the Pentagon. Instead it was asked of a senior forestry service official during a House natural resources committee hearing on Tuesday.

Continue reading...

‘A war on my body’: Texas valedictorian goes off script over new abortion law – video

On the day of her graduation, the Texas valedictorian Paxton Smith threw out her pre-approved speech and decided to use her platform to condemn the new extreme abortion ban in the state.

When addressing the graduating class of Lake Highlands high school, Smith criticised the 'heartbeat bill', a law passed by the state's governor, Greg Abbott, in May that prohibits abortions after six weeks, when most people do not know they are pregnant. The near-total ban makes no exception, even in the case of rape or incest.

'I am terrified that if I am raped, then my hopes and aspirations and dreams and efforts for my future will no longer matter,' Smith said.

Continue reading...

Texas valedictorian goes off-script to slam abortion ban: ‘it’s dehumanizing’

PaxtonSmith criticized the near-total ban on abortions signed into the state’s law in May, which makes no exception for rape or incest

The valedictorian at a Texas high school went off-script while delivering her graduation speech, criticising the state’s extreme abortion ban in an address that has since been widely shared on social media.

School administrators had signed off on Paxton Smith’s pre-written speech on how TV and media have shaped her worldview. But, when it came time to address the graduating class of Lake Highlands high school, she pivoted.

Continue reading...

Texas Republicans plot to resurrect restrictive voting bill after Democrats’ walkout

Governor Greg Abbott plans to call special session after Democrats block 11th-hour attempt to ram through bill to make voting harder

Republicans in Texas are already plotting to resurrect their fight for sweeping voting restrictions after Democratic lawmakers walked out of the state capitol and blocked an 11th-hour attempt to ram through legislation that would have made it harder to cast a ballot.

Texas governor Greg Abbott – who leads the state’s domineering Republican majority – has announced he will include the high-stakes issue on his agenda when he reconvenes the legislature for a rapid-fire special session. He called the failure of the bill “deeply disappointing”.

Continue reading...

Texas Democrats’ late-night walkout scuppers Republican efforts to restrict voting rights

SB7 bill that would introduce restrictions making it harder to vote fails to pass before midnight deadline after Democrats leave House

Texas Republican have failed in their efforts to push through one of the most restrictive voting measures in the US after Democrats walked out of the House at the last minute, leaving the bill languishing ahead of a midnight deadline.

The exodus came at the instruction of Chris Turner, the House Democratic chairman, who told colleagues at 10.35pm to “take your key and leave the chamber discreetly”, referring to the key that locks the voting mechanism on their desks, the Washington Post reported.

Continue reading...

11 Texas sheriff’s office employees fired after death of inmate

Six were also suspended after three-month investigation into death of Jaquaree Simmons, which was ruled a homicide

Eleven employees of a Texas sheriff’s office have been fired and six suspended following the death of an inmate who was hit multiple times in the head by detention officers, authorities said on Friday.

The Harris county sheriff, Ed Gonzalez, said he was “very upset and heartbroken” after a three-month investigation into the death of Jaquaree Simmons, 23, in February. Medical examiners ruled Simmons’ death a homicide from injuries to his head.

Continue reading...

Anti-abortion movement bullish as legal campaign reaches US supreme court

A case that could undermine the landmark Roe v Wade ruling and a punitive Texas law are the culmination of a decades-long push

The anti-abortion movement in the US is emboldened and optimistic after the supreme court announced it would hear a direct challenge to laws underpinning the right to abortion in the US, and Texas enacted a law intended to ban abortion after six weeks.

The high court decision to take up the case and the Texas move come during the most hostile year for reproductive rights in the nearly half-century since pregnant people won the constitutional right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy in the landmark 1973 case Roe v Wade.

Continue reading...

No Man’s Land review – well-meaning drama about US-Mexico relations

This contemporary western about a young Texan fugitive who flees south of the border is handsomely shot but didactic

Just north of the border between the United States and Mexico, the Greer family – patriarch Bill (Frank Grillo), mom Monica (Andie MacDowell), and grown sons Lucas (Alex MacNicoll) and Jackson (Jake Allyn) – work the land as ranchers. They raise cattle, ride horses and, being red-blooded Texan types, play sports – in Jackson’s case well enough that he’s got a chance to go pro as a baseball player. They also spend the odd evening riding the range with a vigilante militia group, rounding up immigrants who may have crossed the border illegally, to “help” the border patrols. On one such night, Jackson joins his dad and big brother, even though they try to keep him out of this sort of thing so he can get out of Dodge and become a sports hero – and what do you know, the dumb lug ends up shooting and killing a boy (Alessio Valentini) just a little younger than himself. In the back no less.

Ashamed, distraught and worried that his father will try to take the rap for him, Jackson confesses to local Texas Ranger Ramirez (venerable character actor George Lopez), but then bolts across the border to Mexico on his trusty horse Sundance. Soon, the fugitive is learning some life lessons and about what Mexico is really like, and he becomes a hired hand for a nice middle-class family. A flirtatious friendship blooms between him and the family’s pretty daughter, Victoria (Esmeralda Pimentel), while he tries not to get caught by the dead kid’s dad Gustavo (Jorge A Jimenez) and a skeevy people-trafficking “coyote” (Andres Delgado), who are out to get him.

Continue reading...

Texas executes Quintin Jones by lethal injection without media witnesses

Prison agency officials didn’t notify reporters, marking first time in at least 40 years that press wasn’t present at an execution

Texas inmate Quintin Jones was executed by lethal injection on Wednesday without media witnesses present.

The press could not witness the death of the 41-year-old because prison agency officials neglected to notify reporters it was time to carry out the punishment, according to the Associated Press. It was the first time in at least 40 years that media was not present at an execution.

Continue reading...

Judge dismisses NRA bankruptcy case in blow for US gun lobby

Federal court says claim was not filed in good faith, paving the way for legal bid by New York state to close the group down

A federal judge has dismissed the National Rifle Association’s bankruptcy case, leaving the powerful gun-rights group to face a lawsuit from New York state that accuses it of financial abuses.

The judge sitting in Dallas was tasked with deciding whether the NRA should be allowed to incorporate in Texas instead of New York, where the state is suing in an effort to disband the group. Though headquartered in Virginia, the NRA was chartered as a nonprofit in New York in 1871 and is incorporated in the state.

Continue reading...