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A vote to amend Fisa’s section 702 to prohibit warrantless surveillance in the House has failed.
The amendment, introduced by Arizona Republican representative Andy Biggs, failed after the yays and nays votes tied at 212-212.
Continue reading...Proposal sails through, with one vocal opponent saying gay first cousins do not risk having a child with birth defects
The Republican-led Tennessee legislature has overwhelmingly voted to send the Republican governor, Bill Lee, a proposal that would ban marriage between first cousins.
The statehouse cast a 75-2 vote on Thursday on the bill after the senate previously approved it without any opposition.
Continue reading...Planned bill to ban already illegal practice is latest Republican step to spread falsehoods about immigration and voter fraud
Donald Trump and the House speaker, Mike Johnson, plan to push for a bill to ban non-citizens from voting, the latest step by Republicans to falsely claim migrants are coming to the country and casting ballots.
Voting when a person is not eligible – for instance if they lack US citizenship – is already illegal under federal law. It is unclear what the bill Johnson and the former president will discuss in their Friday press conference at Mar-a-Lago will do to alter that. But it is one more way for the former president to focus on election security and to ding the Biden administration over the situation at the US-Mexico border, a key issue for likely Republican voters this November.
Continue reading...Fumio Kishida warns of risks from China in address to Congress and says Japan determined to do more to share responsibility
Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, on Thursday called on Americans to overcome their “self-doubt” as he offered a paean to US global leadership before a bitterly divided Congress.
Warning of risks from the rise of China, Kishida said that Japan – stripped of its right to a military after the second world war – was determined to do more to share responsibility with its ally the United States.
Continue reading...Senator and leading foreign policy voice in Democratic party tells the Guardian Biden has come to realise the limits of his influence
Senator Tim Kaine, a former vice-presidential nominee and leading foreign policy voice in the Democratic party, has said Joe Biden now understands that Benjamin Netanyahu “played” him during the early months of the war in Gaza but “that ain’t going to happen any more”.
In an interview with the Guardian on Tuesday, Kaine accused the prime minister of making Israel “dramatically less safe” and hurting its longstanding relationship with the US, and said the US president had come to realise the limits of his influence.
Continue reading...Former president says Arizona abortion ban went too far as Democrats note he appointed justices who ended Roe
The Arizona supreme court decision upended Donald Trump’s gambit on abortion, a day after the former president sought to neutralize the political issue by declining to support a national abortion ban.
Trump had hoped that his announcement on Monday would keep abortion rights mostly out of the conversation ahead of the November elections, but Tuesday’s ruling showed just how difficult it will be to do that, the Washington Post’s Dan Balz writes.
All abortion politics are national, not local. Abortion developments – new laws, new restrictions, new stories of women caught up in heart-wrenching and sometimes life-threatening decisions – are no longer confined to the geography where they take place. They are instantly part of the larger debate.
There is no safe harbor for Trump and the Republicans at this point. The abortion issue is no less complex and no less difficult for many Americans than it was while Roe was in force. But politically the winds have shifted, and done so dramatically.
Continue reading...The men pleaded guilty to state charges in brutal racist attack of Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker in January 2023
Six former Mississippi law enforcement officers – prosecutors said the group called themselves the “Goon Squad” – who tortured and abused two Black men in a racist attack were sentenced to between 15 and 45 years in prison on Wednesday.
Brett Morris McAlpin, formerly the fourth highest ranking deputy in the Rankin county sheriff’s department, was sentenced to 20 years. Christian Dedmon was sentenced to 25 years. Jeffrey Middleton and Daniel Opdyke were both sentenced to 20 years, while Hunter Elward was sentenced to 45 years and Joshua Hartfield was sentenced to 15 years.
Continue reading...Melina Abdullah joins former Harvard professor’s long-shot bid in US presidential race
The independent presidential candidate Cornel West announced on Wednesday that Melina Abdullah would serve as his running mate, joining the former Harvard professor’s long-shot bid in the US presidential race.
Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, helped to form the LA chapter of the group Black Lives Matter, and West praised her as “one of the great freedom fighters of her generation”.
Continue reading...Adam Schiff introduces bill amid growing legal battle over whether major AI companies have made illegal use of copyrighted works
A bill introduced in the US Congress on Tuesday intends to force artificial intelligence companies to reveal the copyrighted material they use to make their generative AI models. The legislation adds to a growing number of attempts from lawmakers, news outlets and artists to establish how AI firms use creative works like songs, visual art, books and movies to train their software–and whether those companies are illegally building their tools off copyrighted content.
The California Democratic congressman Adam Schiff introduced the bill, the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act, which would require that AI companies submit any copyrighted works in their training datasets to the Register of Copyrights before releasing new generative AI systems, which create text, images, music or video in response to users’ prompts. The bill would need companies to file such documents at least 30 days before publicly debuting their AI tools, or face a financial penalty. Such datasets encompass billions of lines of text and images or millions of hours of music and movies.
Continue reading...Republican senator says homeland security secretary is following position of party and will not vote to remove him if it goes to trial
Alejandro Mayorkas is not guilty of a high crime or misdemeanour, the Republican senator Mitt Romney said, making clear he will not vote to remove the US homeland security secretary from office if his impeachment goes to a trial.
“Secretary Mayorkas is following the position of his party and of the president who was elected,” Romney, from Utah and his party’s nominee for president in 2012, told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Lawyers had argued trial should be postponed while they seek a change of venue to move it out of heavily Democratic Manhattan
A New York appeals court judge has rejected former President Donald Trump’s request to delay his 15 April hush-money criminal trial while he fights to move the case out of Manhattan.
The decision came Monday, a week before jury selection was set to start.
Continue reading...‘Trump ally’ tells Axios federal charges all were precedent ex-president would need to prosecute Biden in turn
Donald Trump will seek to mount federal investigations and prosecutions of Joe Biden and his family if Trump wins re-election this year, the news site Axios reported.
“Everything you have seen from the Biden Department of Justice you can expect to see from the Trump DoJ,” a source “close to the Trump campaign” was quoted as saying.
Continue reading...‘If the United States threatened to suspend aid, maybe my son would be alive today,’ John Flickinger told the US secretary of state
When the US’s top diplomat called with condolences over the killing of John Flickinger’s son in the Israeli airstrikes on a World Central Kitchen aid convoy in Gaza, Flickinger knew what he wanted to say.
The grieving father told Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, that the killings by Israel in the Hamas-run territory must end – and that the United States needs to use its power and leverage over its closest Middle East ally to make that happen.
Continue reading...World’s most valuable chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor to set up third facility in Arizona using funding from Biden policy
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is to build its most advanced chips in Arizona after receiving a pledge of as much as $11.6bn in US government subsidy as part of Joe Biden’s efforts to attract computer chip production.
TSMC, the world’s most valuable chipmaker, says it aims to start producing the two-nanometre chips at a new factory in Phoenix, Arizona, by 2028.
Continue reading...In response, White House pushes back and rules out putting US monitors on ground after seven aid workers killed in Gaza
The White House has pushed back on comments by World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés that Israel is engaged in “war against humanity itself” following the Israeli drone strike attack that killed seven of his aid workers on 1 April, but ruled out putting US monitors on the ground in Gaza.
“There’s going to have to be some changes to the way Israeli defense forces are prosecuting these operations in Gaza to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” White House national security communications adviser John Kirby told ABC’s This Week said on Sunday.
Continue reading...Sandra Fish, who has covered politics since 1982, was asked to leave by security about an hour into the state party assembly
A politics reporter from the Colorado Sun was removed from the state Republican party assembly this weekend because the state party chair Dave Williams claimed her reporting on the party was “very unfair”.
The reporter, Sandra Fish, who has covered politics since 1982, received a text early morning on Saturday from a Republican party organizer saying she was no longer invited to attend the assembly. Fish went anyway, receiving a credentialed pass at the door until she was asked to leave by security about an hour into the event.
Continue reading...Letter by secretary of state warns party that Democratic National Convention is scheduled past the deadline to certify candidates
The Ohio secretary of state has sent a letter to the Ohio Democratic party warning that Joe Biden could be left off the November election ballot in 2024 unless the Democratic National Convention meets earlier or statutory requirements in the state are changed or exempted.
According to a letter sent from the Ohio secretary of state, Frank LaRose, a Republican, to Ohio Democratic party chair Liz Walters, the Democratic National Convention scheduled for 19 August where the party officially nominates its candidate for president is past the 7 August deadline to certify presidential candidates on the Ohio ballot.
Continue reading...Advocacy groups raise alarm over threat of third-party candidate: ‘anyone who divides the anti-Trump coalition is dangerous’
Celebrating the demise of No Labels as a third-party presidential election threat, two advocacy groups who mobilised against it have said they would now turn their sights on Robert F Kennedy Jr’s independent run for the White House.
Though it is hard to make solid predictions, a high-profile third-party run in 2024 unnerves both Republicans and Democrats who fear it might siphon off their votes. But the nervousness is especially pronounced among supporters of Joe Biden, who worry such a campaign could split the center and left and allow Donald Trump and his highly motivated rightwing base to win a return to the Oval Office.
Continue reading...Wrestler and actor endorsed president and Kamala Harris in 2020 but tells Fox News that for 2024 he will ‘keep my politics to myself’
The wrestler turned action star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson dealt a blow to Joe Biden, saying he would not repeat his endorsement of the president in his looming rematch with Donald Trump.
Johnson endorsed Biden in his first contest with Trump four years ago, saluting the former vice-president and senator for his “compassion, heart, drive and soul”.
Continue reading...Joe Cunningham says ‘I would vote for Biden over Trump’ after third-party group dropped effort to run own candidate
The national director of No Labels, the third-party group which on Thursday said it would not run a candidate in the US presidential election, will now vote for Joe Biden, not Donald Trump.
“Me, as a person?” Joe Cunningham told Fox News. “I would vote for Biden over Trump.”
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