Cheney and Kinzinger tee up possible January 6 subpoena for Ginni Thomas

Republicans on House committee suggest wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas could be compelled to testify

The House January 6 committee could subpoena Ginni Thomas, the wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, if she will not testify voluntarily about her involvement in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

The news, from panel member Liz Cheney, came two days after Trump’s former strategist, Steve Bannon, was convicted of criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with the committee. He faces time in jail.

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Biden ‘doing just fine’ after testing positive for Covid, White House says

Ashish Jha, coronavirus response coordinator, and physician Kevin O’Connor say president contracted BA.5 variant

Joe Biden is “feeling well” and “doing just fine” after testing positive for Covid, the White House coronavirus response coordinator said.

Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, Ashish Jha said: “So it is the BA.5 variant, which is about 80% of infections. But thank goodness, our vaccines and therapeutics work well against it, which is why I think the president’s doing well.

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Pete Buttigieg urges Republicans to back same-sex marriage bill

Senate Democrats hope at least 10 Republicans will support Respect for Marriage Act after 157 in House voted against it

The US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, has delivered an emotional appeal for Republicans to support a law protecting same-sex marriage as it heads for the Senate.

Democrats who control Congress aim to protect same-sex marriage amid uncertainty over which privacy based rights the conservative-dominated supreme court might target next, having overturned the right to abortion last month.

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Josh Hawley, senator who ran from Capitol mob, mocked by home paper

Kansas City Star editorial excoriates Republican as ‘laughingstock’ as memes based on January 6 video proliferate

Josh Hawley, the Missouri senator shown running from the mob he incited on January 6, is “a laughingstock” who should be afraid of what the Capitol attack committee might disclose next, a leading newspaper in his home state said.

Hawley was widely criticised for raising a fist to protesters outside Congress on 6 January 2021, then after the mob sent by Donald Trump failed to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election win, voting to object to results anyway.

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Trump and Pence duel in Arizona in fight for Republican future

Former president and his one-time wingman appear at rival events – and it’s all to play for as the US midterms approach

Eddie Palazuelos drove 200 miles and lined up for five hours under the baking sun to to see Donald Trump at a campaign event for candidates he is backing in the forthcoming Arizona Republican primaries.

It’s the fifth Trump rally the 27-year-old has attended since the former president lost the White House in 2020 – because Palazuelos vehemently believes the election was stolen. Any judge or lawmaker who concludes otherwise is “willfully ignorant”, he said, referring to the dozens of lawsuits and recounts nationwide which ruled out fraud.

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Inside the remote California county where the far right took over: ‘Civility went out the window’

In Shasta county the pandemic intensified political divisions, and many officials quit or were pushed out amid bitter tensions

At some point in the last two years, Janine Carroll started avoiding certain grocery stores in her hometown of Redding, California. The retired grandmother could hear the taunts people made to those like her who chose to wear a face mask to fend off Covid-19. “You never know anymore what the atmosphere is going to be when you walk into any given place,” she said.

Masks are just one symbol of the divisions gripping Shasta county, a remote, heavily forested region in far northern California that has long considered itself an outlier in a deep Blue state.

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January 6 panel says Bannon conviction is a ‘victory for the rule of law’ – as it happened

The former Trump adviser was charged with two counts of criminal contempt for refusing to appear before the House committee

If voters were to elect Donald Trump to another term in the 2024 presidential election, he is considering using bureaucratic maneuvers to remove potentially tens of thousands of civil servants across the US government and replace them with people who adhere to his ideology, according to a report from Axios.

That Trump expects his deputies to be unfailingly loyal to him is no secret, but during his time in the White House, they didn’t always do what he wanted. He intends to change that dramatically in a second term, according to the report, appointing staunch cabinet members and changing civil service regulations to allow him to dismiss up to 50,000 employees. He would replace these bureaucrats, who typically hold onto their jobs through presidential administrations, with people handpicked to support his “America first” ideology.

Trump signed an executive order, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” in October 2020, which established a new employment category for federal employees. It received wide media coverage for a short period, then was largely forgotten in the mayhem and aftermath of Jan. 6 — and quickly was rescinded by President Biden.

Sources close to Trump say that if he were elected to a second term, he would immediately reimpose it.

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House panel showed Trump conspired to seize the election – but was it illegal?

Panel lays out its case that the 45th president orchestrated a plot to keep himself in office, but its work is not done

During the course of its landmark summer of hearings, the House select committee investigating the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol has sought to show that Donald Trump was at the center of a multi-layer conspiracy to seize a second term in office, accusing him of having “summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack”.

In a dramatic capstone on Thursday, the panel argued that Trump betrayed his oath of office and was derelict in his duty when he refused to act for 187 minutes on 6 January as rioters carrying poles, bear spray and the banners of his campaign, led a bloody assault on the US Capitol.

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Bipartisan Senate group reaches deal to reform Electoral Count Act

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

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 unveils extreme heat plan – but doesn’t declare climate emergency

Initiatives are aimed at helping salvage the president’s tattered climate agenda after Joe Manchin delivered a major blow last week

Facing the disintegration of his climate agenda as ferocious heatwaves hit large parts of the world, Joe Biden has unveiled a new plan to push billions of dollars to US cities and states to help them cope better with extreme heat.

The president stopped short, however, of declaring a climate emergency.

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Aipac hails Democrat’s defeat for not being sufficiently pro-Israel

Donna Edwards, leading contender in Maryland primary for safe seat, lost after pro-Israeli groups poured millions to block her

Pro-Israel groups have heralded the defeat of a leading Democratic contender for Congress after pouring millions of dollars into blocking her election, for failing to be sufficiently supportive of Israeli government policies.

Donna Edwards, who was for months the favourite to win the primary for a safe seat in Maryland, lost to Glenn Ivey on Tuesday after the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and allied groups waded into the race.

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Ukraine’s first lady pleads with US for more weapons: ‘Help us stop this terror’

Olena Zelenska makes emotional appeal to Congress and asks for weapons to claim ‘joint great victory’ in war against Russia

The Ukrainian first lady, Olena Zelenska, appealed to US lawmakers on Tuesday to provide more help to her country as it struggles against a five-month-long Russian invasion she called “Russia’s Hunger Games”, saying US weapons could help assure a “joint great victory”.

“We remain completely broken when our world is destroyed by war. Tens of thousands of such worlds have been destroyed in Ukraine,” she said, through a translator, in an emotional 15-minute speech to members of the House and Senate.

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One in five US adults condone ‘justified’ political violence, mega-survey finds

As mistrust and alienation from democratic institutions peaks, researchers explore how willing Americans are to commit violence

One in five adults in the United States, equivalent to about 50 million people, believe that political violence is justified at least in some circumstances, a new mega-survey has found.

A team of medical and public health scientists at the University of California, Davis enlisted the opinions of almost 9,000 people across the country to explore how far willingness to engage in political violence now goes.

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Secret Service turned over just one text message to January 6 panel, sources say

House committee wants all communications from day before and day of Capitol attack but agency indicates such messages are lost

The Secret Service turned over just one text message to the House January 6 committee on Tuesday, in response to a subpoena compelling the production of all communications from the day before and the day of the US Capitol attack, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The Secret Service told the panel the single text was the only message responsive to the subpoena, the sources said, and while the agency vowed to conduct a forensic search for any other text or phone records, it indicated such messages were likely to prove irrecoverable.

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US House passes bill to protect right to same-sex and interracial marriage

The measure, partly a political strategy, forced Democrats and Republicans to record their view, and garnered bipartisan support

The US House has passed a bill protecting the right to same-sex and interracial marriages, a vote that comes amid concerns that the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade could jeopardize other rights.

Forty-seven House Republicans supported the legislation, called the Respect for Marriage Act, including some who have publicly apologized for their past opposition to gay marriage. But more than three-quarters of House Republicans voted against the bill, with some claiming it was a “political charade”.

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Democratic members of Congress arrested during pro-choice protest

The legislators were engaged in peaceful civil disobedience against the loss of abortion rights in front of the supreme court

Several prominent Democratic members of Congress were arrested on Wednesday during a protest in support of abortion rights in front of the supreme court, in the aftermath of the historic overturning of Roe v Wade last month.

The politicians gathered in front of the US Capitol before marching to the court building, chanting “our bodies, our choice” and “we won’t go back”.

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Biden considers declaring climate emergency as agenda stalls in Congress – live

Maryland is holding its primary elections today, and The Guardian’s Chris McGreal reports on the surprising involvement of pro-Israel lobbying groups in one of the races:

Pro-Israel lobby groups have poured millions of dollars into a Democratic primary for a Maryland congressional seat on Tuesday, in the latest attempt to block an establishment candidate who expressed support for the Palestinians.

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Ex-Trump aides expected to testify at primetime January 6 hearing

Matthew Pottinger and Sarah Matthews, deputy national security adviser and press aide respectively, to give evidence, source says

Two former White House aides are expected to testify at the House January 6 committee’s primetime hearing on Thursday as the panel examines what Donald Trump was doing as his supporters stormed the US Capitol, according to a person familiar with the plans.

Matthew Pottinger, former deputy national security adviser, and Sarah Matthews, a former press aide, are expected to testify, according to the person, who was not authorized to publicly to discuss the matter and requested anonymity.

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Pro-Israel hardliners spend millions to transform Democratic primaries

Critics say Aipac and its allies are seeking to influence Democratic politics with money from Republican billionaires

Pro-Israel lobby groups have poured millions of dollars into a Democratic primary for a Maryland congressional seat on Tuesday, in the latest attempt to block an establishment candidate who expressed support for the Palestinians.

A surge in political spending by organisations funded by hardline supporters of Israel, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), has reshaped Democratic primaries over recent months even though debate about the country rarely figures as a major issue in the elections.

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