Category Archives: US Politics

Volodymyr Zelenskiy expected to urge jet transfer in address to US Congress

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Leaders prepare to welcome Ukraine president before Wednesday speech amid divisions over question of planes

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the president of Ukraine, will address Congress on Wednesday in what could prove his most powerful plea yet for the west to take a tougher line against Vladimir Putin.

Zelenskiy is expected to use the virtual address to urge members of the House of Representatives and Senate to intensify pressure on Joe Biden to allow the transfer of MiG-29 fighter jets from Poland.

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Ginni Thomas, wife of Clarence Thomas, attended rally preceding Capitol attack

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Conservative activist who runs a political lobbying firm, says she briefly attended rally but left before Trump addressed crowd

Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, has admitted attending a rally which preceded the January 6 attack on the US Capitol but denied helping to plan it.

In an interview with the Washington Free Beacon, Thomas, a conservative activist who runs a political lobbying firm, said she briefly attended the rally near the White House on 6 January 2021 but left before Donald Trump addressed the crowd.

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Biden adviser warns China will face consequences if it helps Russia evade sanctions

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Amid reports that Russia has requested military help in Ukraine, Jake Sullivan is due to meet China’s top diplomat in Rome on Monday

Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who is due to meet China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, in Rome on Monday, warned on Sunday that Beijing will “absolutely” face consequences if it helps Moscow evade sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.

The White House national security council declined to comment, however, on reports that Russia has asked China for military equipment since its invasion of Ukraine on 24 February.

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Biden adviser rejects Republican call to ‘close skies’ over Ukraine

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Rob Portman of Ohio urges US and Nato as US intelligence community says creating no-fly zone risks escalation of conflict

A senior Republican senator on Sunday urged the US and Nato to “close the skies” over Ukraine, hours after a logistics hub and training base for foreign fighters 11 miles from the Polish border was struck by Russian forces, killing 35.

“The message coming loud and clear is close the skies,” said Rob Portman, a senator from Ohio on a visit to Poland. “Because the skies are where the bombs are coming, whether it’s the missile attacks or the airplane attacks or with artillery.”

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Barr: Trump should not be president but ‘lesser of two evils’ compared to US left

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Ex-attorney general excoriates old boss in book but refuses to budge from vow to vote for him if he is Republican nominee again

Doubling down on his vow to vote for Donald Trump if he is the Republican nominee in 2024 despite writing in his new book that Trump is dangerously unsuited for the job, William Barr said: “Elections are binary choice, and unfortunately sometimes it’s choosing the lesser of two evils.”

Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press, Trump’s second attorney general added: “I believe that the progressive wing of the Democratic party is dangerous for the United States.”

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West Virginia Republicans miss own deadline to pass schools race bill

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Supermajority runs out of time to greenlight House version of bill but does pass abortion restriction

Republicans who enjoy a supermajority in the West Virginia legislature nonetheless failed to pass a controversial bill restricting how race is taught in public schools because they missed a midnight deadline in the final moments of the 2022 session.

Lawmakers spent weeks during the legislative session debating and advancing proposed bills similar to the Anti-Racism Act of 2022. It wasn’t immediately clear why Republicans waited until late on Saturday to take a final vote. The act had passed the Senate and House overwhelmingly and the vote was merely to greenlight the House version.

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‘Would-be tyrant’: Republican targeted by Trump at rally hits back

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Tom Rice faces Trumpist challenger because of vote to impeach over the deadly Capitol attack

A Republican congressman attacked by Donald Trump at a rally in South Carolina on Saturday called the former president a “would-be tyrant”.

Tom Rice voted to impeach Trump over the deadly Capitol attack and will face a Trump-endorsed challenger later this year.

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Beto O’Rourke calls Texas governor Greg Abbott an ‘authoritarian’ and ‘thug’

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The Democratic gubernatorial candidate compared his Republican opponent to the Russian president Vladimir Putin

Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate for Texas governor, has likened his Republican opponent to the Russian president Vladimir Putin, calling Greg Abbott an “authoritarian” and a “thug”.

As governor, Abbott has presided over draconian laws on issues including abortion, LGBTQ+ rights and voting rights. In February 2021, on his watch, a failure of the state energy grid during cold weather contributed to hundreds of deaths.

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Clarence Thomas: supreme court could be ‘compromised’ by politics

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The court is set to rule this year on divisive issues including abortion, gun control, the climate crisis and voting rights

The US supreme court could “at some point” become “compromised” by politics, said Clarence Thomas – one of six conservatives on the nine-member court after Republicans denied Barack Obama a nomination then rammed three new justices through during the hard-right presidency of Donald Trump.

“You can cavalierly talk about packing or stacking the court,” said Thomas, whose wife, Ginni Thomas, has come under extensive scrutiny for work for rightwing groups including supporting Trump’s attempts to overturn an election.

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‘Don’t Say Gay’: Disney clashes with DeSantis over Florida bill

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Entertainment giant suspends political donations as CEO apologises for silence and governor hits back with ‘communist’ barb

The Walt Disney Company is suspending political donations in Florida after its chief executive suffered huge blowback for not using the company’s vast influence in the state to try to quash a Republican bill that would stop teachers instructing early grades on LGBTQ+ issues.

The bill has sparked a spat between the tourism giant and the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who accused the company of being friendly with communist China.

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US and allies set to revoke normal trade relations with Russia over Ukraine war, says Biden – as it happened

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Bates only took one question before he was interrupted by the pilot asking passengers to take their seats. Shortly thereafter the feed your live-blogger was using to follow the mid-flight briefing cut out.

Asked to elaborate on what consequences Russia could face if it used chemical weapons against Ukraine, Bates deferred to the president’s remarks and said the “meaning was unmistakable”.

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Trump thought US troops were in Ukraine in 2017, ex-ambassador says in book

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Marie Yovanovitch, who was fired by Trump in 2019, reveals details of then president’s Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian counterpart

At an Oval Office meeting with the then Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, in 2017, Donald Trump asked his national security adviser if US troops were in Donbas, territory claimed by Russian-backed separatists, which Vladimir Putin last month used as pretext for a full and bloody invasion.

Describing the meeting in a new book, the then US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, writes: “An affirmative answer to that question would have meant that the United States was in a shooting war with Russia.”

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US census produced huge undercount of Latino population in 2020

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Census also undercounted Black and Native Americans, while overcounting non-Hispanic white people and Asian Americans

The 2020 US census undercounted America’s Latino population at more than three times the rate of the 2010 census, according to a report released on Thursday by the US Census Bureau.

The census also undercounted the nation’s Black and Native American residents, while overcounting non-Hispanic white people and Asian Americans.

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Idaho bill that criminalizes medical trans youth treatments passes house

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Bill aims to make gender-affirming care a felony and punishable by life in prison for anyone who helps a child travel out of state

Idaho’s house of representatives has passed a bill that would criminalize gender-affirming medical procedures for transgender youth and make it a felony punishable by life imprisonment for anyone who helps a child travel across state lines to gender-affirming healthcare.

The bill, approved on Tuesday, targets medical measures that include vasectomy, hysterectomy, mastectomy, puberty-blocking medication and supraphysiological doses of testosterone or estrogen.

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‘Traumatised and terrified, with nowhere else to go’: huge numbers of people stuck at US border

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Title 42, enacted under Trump and kept in place by Biden, has led to hundreds of thousands being denied their right to asylum since the start of the pandemic

When Henry Ruiz* and Raquel Hernandez boarded a bus heading north to America with their two young children, they knew there would be no going back.

It was June 2021, and a few weeks earlier Ruiz, a 28-year-old banana farmer from central Mexico, had been abducted by a group of armed men and taken to an isolated ranch where 15 others – 13 men and two women – were being held.

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Biden bans Russian oil imports in response to Ukraine invasion – as it happened

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Joe Biden said he is issuing this ban on Russian oil imports after “close consultation with our allies, especially in Europe”. He said the American people must understand that many of our European partners will not be able to join the US, a net exporter of energy, in this ban.

“We can take this step when others cannot, but we are working closely with Europe and our partners to develop a long term strategy to reduce their dependency on Russian energy as well,” he said.

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Democrats and Republicans agree on plan to suspend trade relations with Russia and Belarus – live

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Federal prosecutors were expected to make closing arguments today in the first jury trial of someone charged with joining in the 6 January attack of the US Capitol.

Guy Reffitt of Texas, the first of some 750 people charged with joining the riot to face trial in Washington, has been charged with carrying a semi-automatic handgun while on Capitol grounds and obstructing justice by threatening his children with harm if they reported him to authorities.

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Texas man could become first Capitol rioter convicted by jury as trial ends

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Department of Justice lawyers make closing arguments against Guy Reffitt, first of 750 people charged with joining riot to face trial

Federal prosecutors on Monday finished presenting testimony against a Texas man who is the first person to be tried on charges related to the riot at the US Capitol on 6 January last year.

Guy Reffitt told US district judge Dabney Friedrich he would not be testifying at his trial on charges that he stormed the Capitol armed with a holstered handgun and interfered with police.

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William Barr: Trump is full of bull – but I’ll vote for him

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Barr’s book reveals he told Trump he was ‘like a bull in a bull ring’ – in return, Trump calls his former attorney general a ‘horse’

Donald Trump’s second attorney general, William Barr, told the former US president he was “like a bull in a bull ring” and “someone’s going to come and put a sword through your head”.

In return, Trump called Barr a “horse” who had been “broken” by the radical left.

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