Category Archives: US Politics

Republican hardliner Steve Scalise drops out of House speaker race

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House unable to govern, with next steps uncertain, after Louisiana senator fails to secure his party’s support

The Republican congressman Steve Scalise is ending his bid to become the US House speaker after failing to secure enough votes to win the gavel.

“I just shared with my colleagues that I’m withdrawing my name as a candidate for speaker-designee,” Scalise said as he emerged from the closed-door meeting at the Capitol, where he first informed fellow Republican colleagues of his decision.

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House remains without speaker as Republican holdouts block Scalise

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Congressional business at a standstill as House majority leader drops out of speaker race on Thursday

The House of Representatives remained without a speaker on Thursday, as the fractious Republican majority refused to unite behind their party’s chosen nominee, congressman Steve Scalise of Louisiana.

A day after narrowly becoming House Republicans’ candidate for speaker in a secret ballot vote, Scalise moved no closer to overcoming the entrenched divisions on Thursday.

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Senator Bob Menendez charged with acting as foreign agent of Egypt

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New Jersey Democratic senator has resisted calls for his resignation in the middle of a corruption scandal

Federal prosecutors on Thursday filed a superseding indictment against the Democratic senator Bob Menendez, charging him with being an unregistered agent of the Egyptian government, a court filing showed.

The New Jersey senator has thus far resisted calls for his resignation. His trial on corruption charges will begin next May.

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Scalise scrambles for votes to become House speaker as hard-line Republicans hold out – US politics live

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Steve Scalise doesn’t yet have the support he needs from his own party to become speaker

Here’s a little more from South Carolina’s Republican representative Nancy Mace’s interview on CNN during which she said she would not vote for Steve Scalise as House speaker.

Mace, who has thrown her support behind far-right Ohio representative Jim Jordan, said that she “actually talked to Democrats who trust him at his word.”

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Dysfunction in Washington leaves Middle East without key US diplomats

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Having no US ambassador to Israel in place and Republicans holding up military promotions is a threat to democracy, experts say

Political turmoil in Washington has left the US without key diplomats across the Middle East and raised concerns that years of congressional dysfunction are taking their toll on US leadership.

A devastating weekend attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen shook the region and came at a moment when there is no US ambassador in place in Israel, Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon or Oman.

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Jim Jordan will vote for Steve Scalise to be House speaker, source says – live

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Jim Jordan plans to vote for the man who beat him, a source with direct knowledge tells the Guardian

Several former Ohio State University wrestlers are voicing their opposition towards Republican representative Jim Jordan’s speaker candidacy.

The former students have accused Jordan of ignoring sexual abuse and failing to protect them from a sexual predator while he was the team’s assistant coach.

“The first order of business under speaker Steve Scalise is going to be bringing a strong resolution expressing support for Israel. We’ve got a very bipartisan bill … ready to go right away to express our support for Israel.

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Republicans to introduce resolution to ‘rid the House of George Santos’

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New York lawmakers aim to expel the accused fraudster, who faces new charges under a superseding federal indictment

New York Republicans in the US House on Wednesday moved to expel one of their own: George Santos, the serial fabulist and accused fraudster who faces new charges under a superseding federal indictment.

“Today, I’ll be introducing an expulsion resolution to rid the People’s House of fraudster George Santos,” the GOP congressman Anthony D’Esposito said in a post on social media.

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Supreme court conservatives appear skeptical South Carolina Republicans discriminated against Black voters

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Court hears redistricting case after lower court ruled Republicans had unlawfully moved 30,000 votes out of a congressional district

The supreme court’s conservative majority appeared skeptical on Wednesday that South Carolina Republicans discriminated against Black voters when it redrew one of the state’s congressional districts to make it friendlier to the GOP.

During two-hours of oral argument on Wednesday, the court’s conservative justices aggressively poked holes in a three-judge panel’s ruling earlier this year finding that Republicans had unlawfully moved around 30,000 Republican voters out of South Carolina’s first congressional district to make it more Republican. Chief Justice John Roberts, a key swing vote on the court, seemed unconvinced by the evidence the lower court had accepted, saying at one point the challengers were asking the court to embrace arguments that “would be breaking new ground in our voting rights jurisdprudence”.

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Republicans nominate Steve Scalise to replace McCarthy as House speaker

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Scalise defeats Jim Jordan by 113 votes to 99 but falls short of threshold needed to be elected speaker on House floor

House Republicans nominated Steve Scalise to be the next speaker on Wednesday, a week after the unprecedented ouster of Kevin McCarthy. But a handful of objections to Scalise’s nomination left House Republicans unable to move to a final floor vote, making it unclear when a new speaker might be elected.

By a vote of 113 to 99, Scalise, currently the second-ranking House Republican, defeated a challenge from congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chairman of the judiciary committee and a far-right firebrand.

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Kari Lake, Trump ally and election denier, announces Senate bid in Arizona

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Republican who lost state governor’s race but never conceded has challenged her defeat in court, so far unsuccessfully

Kari Lake, the Republican candidate who lost the race for Arizona governor but never conceded her loss, announced a run for US Senate in the western state Tuesday.

A former TV news anchor, Lake made her move into politics by making repeated false claims about elections. She aligned closely with former president Donald Trump and has been floated as a potential running mate for Trump, who once praised Lake for her ability to constantly bring up election fraud.

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Two US House Republicans make their bid for the speaker’s gavel

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Party members will decide between Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan on Wednesday by secret ballot

Prominent Republican party members Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan made their pitches for the powerful role of speaker of the US House of Representatives on Tuesday amid mounting pressure from a war in the Middle East and another looming government shutdown. Lawmakers exiting a closed-door forum said neither Scalise, the House majority leader, nor Jordan, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, will have a clear advantage when Republicans begin to vote for a nominee by secret ballot on Wednesday.

“We’ve got two good leaders within our party, with good perspectives on where the party needs to go and an understanding and an emphasis on reuniting the party,” Mike Garcia told reporters. But before voting for a candidate on Wednesday, Republicans will have to decide whether to keep internal disagreements behind closed doors by requiring any nominee to win 217 Republican votes, enough to elect the next speaker on the House floor over Democratic opposition. Current rules require only a simple majority. “The first order of business is figuring out a rules change that works for the conference,” said congresswoman Kat Cammack.

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More charges for George Santos: stealing donors’ identities and credit cards

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New 23-count indictment accuses Republican congressman of charging contributors’ credit cards to fund his bank account

Federal prosecutors added major allegations to the indictment charging the House Republican George Santos with fraud and lying about his campaign finance disclosures, presenting evidence that he stole donors’ identities and charged thousands of dollars to their credit cards without their knowledge.

The new charges, revealed in a superseding indictment returned on Tuesday by a grand jury in New York, increases the legal peril for the embattled congressman, given that his former campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, last week pleaded guilty to defrauding the United States.

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Biden says Americans among hostages in Gaza and reaffirms support for Israel – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed. For our latest reporting on Israel-Hamas war, you can read our live coverage here.

Special counsel for the federal January 6 case has also requested that Trump be restricted from doing juror research and publishing the identities of jurors, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports.

The request is, in part, because of Trump’s previous use of social media to “attack others”, argued the special counsel.

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Former Maryland governor Larry Hogan doesn’t rule out presidential run

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Republican says party is ‘a train wreck’ after Matt Gaetz initiates removal of Kevin McCarthy from House speaker

The former Maryland governor Larry Hogan said he had not ruled out a presidential run, as he contemplated the “train wreck” his Republican party had become amid infighting in Congress and the ascendancy in primary polling of the 91-times criminally charged Donald Trump.

Hogan also called the Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, the instigator of last week’s historic removal of Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the US House, “a cancer on the party and on the Congress”.

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Robert F Kennedy Jr announces independent run for president; siblings condemn his ‘perilous’ campaign – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed. For our latest reporting on Kennedy’s presidential candidacy, you can read our latest report:

Robert F Kennedy Jr is expected to announce his independent run for US president at 12.00 pm ET in Philadelphia.

The 69-year-old has spent several months running for the Democratic nomination for the country’s highest office. He is the only challenge to Biden, who has a majority of the support within Democratic party.

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Robert F Kennedy Jr’s siblings condemn his ‘perilous’ presidential campaign

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Independent candidate’s three sisters and brother post joint statement denouncing his run as ‘dangerous to our country’

Robert F Kennedy Jr’s run for the White House as an independent candidate is “perilous” for the US, his siblings said in a statement on Monday, immediately following their brother’s campaign launch in Philadelphia.

“The decision of our brother Bobby to run as a third party candidate against Joe Biden is dangerous to our country,” said sisters Rory Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend; and brother Joseph P Kennedy II in a statement posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

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Top Republican urges party to end ‘civil war’ and elect House speaker this week

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Texas congressman Mike McCaul calls on House to unify and ‘move quickly’ because ‘we cannot paralyze democracy’

Republicans in Washington need to elect a new speaker “this week” and end the party’s “civil war” in the House that is sending a message to the world of dysfunction, especially amid the conflict unfolding in Israel, a senior GOP figure said on Sunday.

The Texas Republican congressman Mike McCaul, chairman of the House foreign affairs committee, urged his own party in the House to unify because “we have got to move quickly, we cannot paralyze democracy, especially when we have hotspots all over the world… and I’m just worried about the messaging this sends.”

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Biden to announce new military aid to Israel after Hamas attack, Blinken says

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US secretary of state also confirms that American citizens are among those killed and taken hostage

The Biden administration is preparing to send additional military assistance to Israel to ensure it has all it needs to rebuff the Hamas attack from Gaza, the US secretary of state Antony Blinken said on Sunday, as he confirmed that American civilians were among those killed and taken hostage.

Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union, Blinken said that extra help for Israel was likely to be announced by the end of the day. He said the US government had received reports of “several Americans” killed in the fighting, as well as “reports of missing Americans”.

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‘They didn’t stand up to Trump’: how the Republican party descended into disarray

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The GOP was once feared for its ability to unite and win – but Kevin McCarthy’s demise shows a party deeply divided

They are fresh-faced, suited and booted, the National Mall behind them and the world at their feet. Congressmen Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy and Paul Ryan smile out from the cover of Young Guns, their co-authored 2010 book about the next generation of conservatives. “This isn’t your grandfather’s Republican party,” said publicity material at the time.

Thirteen years later, the trio is neither young nor the future. Cantor (“the leader”) became Republican leader in the House of Representatives but lost his seat to a nascent rightwing populism. Ryan (“the thinker”) became speaker but retired early to escape a toxic political relationship with President Donald Trump. And this week McCarthy (“the strategist”) was ousted by some of the extremists he helped elect to Congress but could not tame.

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Ban on caste discrimination deemed ‘unnecessary’ by California governor

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Activists in the state are dealt a blow as Gavin Newsom says the state’s laws already offer civil rights protections

California activists against caste discrimination faced a defeat on Saturday as Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill that would add caste to a list of protected categories under the state’s existing anti-discrimination laws.

In a statement, Newsom called the bill “unnecessary”, explaining that California “already prohibits discrimination based on sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, and other characteristics, and state law specifies that these civil rights protections shall be liberally construed”.

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