Category Archives: US Politics

Biden to address US Covid response as Omicron causes record hospitalizations – live

Posted on by

Joe Biden confirmed that his administration will order another 500 million at-home coronavirus tests to address the surge in cases caused by the Omicron variant.

That brings the total number of tests ordered by the administration to 1 billion, but the first batch of 500 million tests has not yet been distributed to Americans.

Continue reading...

Manchin and Sinema condemned for opposing filibuster reform urged by Biden – live

Posted on by

Joe Biden will travel to Capitol Hill tomorrow to join Senate Democrats’ meeting about the path forward for passing voting rights bills.

“President Biden is expected to attend tomorrow’s Senate Dem Caucus lunch to discuss the push to pass voting rights and potential changes to Senate rules,” a senior Democratic aide said.

Continue reading...

Biden urges Senate to eliminate filibuster in voting rights pitch: ‘I’m tired of being quiet’ – as it happened

Posted on by

The Republican who memorably resisted Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his election defeat in Georgia has said he will run for re-election on a platform of “integrity and truth”, against an opponent who as a churchman “should know better” than to advance the former president’s lies.

Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, became a household name after he turned down Trump’s demand that he “find 11,780 votes” in order to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the southern state. It was the first victory by a Democrat in a presidential race in Georgia since 1992.

Continue reading...

Capitol attack panel closes in on Trump inner circle with three new subpoenas

Posted on by

Subpoenas suggest committee examining whether Trump’s rally speech suggests White House had prior knowledge of attack plans

The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack closed in on Donald Trump’s inner circle on Tuesday, issuing subpoenas to three new White House officials involved in planning the former president’s appearance at the rally that preceded the 6 January insurrection.

The new subpoenas show the select committee is moving ever nearer to Trump in its investigation and suggests the panel is now examining whether the former president’s speech suggested that the White House had advance knowledge of plans to attack the Capitol.

Continue reading...

Fauci clashes with Rand Paul at Senate hearing as daily Covid cases soar

Posted on by

The daily infection rate hit a new record of 1.35m while 145,982 people were in hospital with coronavirus on Monday

The US recorded a record number of hospitalisations due to Covid-19, the Biden administration said, as daily infections soared to more than 1.35m. Nonetheless, politics dominated a Senate hearing on the pandemic on Tuesday, as Republicans attempted to use the disease for political gain.

Rand Paul of Kentucky clashed once again with Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser.

Continue reading...

Voters move to block Trump ally Madison Cawthorn from re-election

Posted on by

North Carolina group files candidacy challenge, citing Republican congressman’s alleged involvement in 6 January attack

A group of North Carolina voters told state officials on Monday that they want Republican congressman Madison Cawthorn to be disqualified as a congressional candidate, citing his involvement in the 6 January attack on the Capitol.

Cawthorn questioned the outcome of the presidential election during the “Save America Rally” before the Capitol riot later that day that resulted in five deaths.

Continue reading...

Democrats look to renew push for voting rights protections bill – live

Posted on by

Joe Biden spoke today to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, as the country continues to suffer through a bloody civil war that has attracted international condemnation for alleged war crimes.

“President Biden commended Prime Minister Abiy on the recent release of several political prisoners, and the two leaders discussed ways to accelerate dialogue toward a negotiated ceasefire, the urgency of improving humanitarian access across Ethiopia, and the need to address the human rights concerns of all affected Ethiopians, including concerns about detentions of Ethiopians under the state of emergency,” the White House said in a readout of the call.

Continue reading...

New York man charged with threatening to kill Donald Trump

Posted on by

Thomas Welnicki expressed interest in killing then president in interview with Capitol police in July 2020, complaint says

A New York man upset with what he perceived as Donald Trump’s threat to democracy was criminally charged on Monday with threatening to kill the former president, who he once referred to as Hitler.

According to an unsealed complaint, Thomas Welnicki, 72, from Rockaway Beach, expressed interest in killing the then president in an interview with US Capitol police in July 2020 and in several calls to the Secret Service the following year.

Continue reading...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announces positive Covid test

Posted on by
  • Progressive congresswoman ‘experiencing symptoms’
  • Office says political star had booster vaccine shot last year

The Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has tested positive for Covid-19.

In a statement on Sunday evening, the office of the New York progressive said she was “experiencing symptoms and recovering at home.

Continue reading...

‘It’s a huge political albatross’: Guantánamo Bay, 20 years on

Posted on by

The US-run enclave has proved hard to dismantle over two decades, a legal anomaly and lead weight wrapped around America’s global reputation

On 4 January 2002, Brig Gen Michael Lehnert received an urgent deployment order. He would take a small force of marines and sailors and build a prison camp in the US-run military enclave on Cuba’s south coast, Guantánamo Bay.

Lehnert had 96 hours to deploy and build the first 100 cells, in time for the first plane-load of captives arriving from the battlefield in Afghanistan on 11 January. The job was done on time: a grid of chain-link cages surrounded by barbed wire and six plywood guard towers manned by snipers. There were five windowless huts for interrogations. It was named Camp X-Ray.

Continue reading...

Is the US really heading for a second civil war?

Posted on by

With the country polarised and Republicans embracing authoritarianism, some experts fear a Northern Ireland-style insurgency but others say armed conflict remains improbable

Joe Biden had spent a year in the hope that America could go back to normal. But last Thursday, the first anniversary of the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol, the president finally recognised the full scale of the current threat to American democracy.

“At this moment, we must decide,” Biden said in Statuary Hall, where rioters had swarmed a year earlier. “What kind of nation are we going to be? Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm?”

Continue reading...

Strategy shift: Biden confronts Trump head on after year of silent treatment

Posted on by

President strikes different tone in tacit admission that ignoring the most powerful force in the Republican party is risky

In the first moments of his presidency, Joe Biden called on Americans to set aside their deep divisions inflamed by a predecessor he intentionally ignored. He emphasized national unity and appealed to Americans to come together to “end this uncivil war”.

Nearly a year later, as a divided nation reflects on the first anniversary of the 6 January assault on the US Capitol, the uncivil war he sought to extinguish rages on, stronger than ever. In a searing speech on Thursday, Biden struck a different tone.

Continue reading...

Democrats could still salvage Build Back Better – and perhaps their midterm prospects

Posted on by

Best-case scenario: a scaled down plan that saves popular programs and a billionaire tax to pay for it

Democrats were already facing a bleak landscape for this year’s midterm elections, with Joe Biden’s approval rating languishing in the low 40s and his party holding narrow majorities in both the House and the Senate.

Now, with Senator Joe Manchin’s refusal to support the Build Back Better Act, the chances of Republicans regaining control of the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate as well, appear higher than ever.

Continue reading...

Capitol attack panel investigates Trump over potential criminal conspiracy

Posted on by

Messages between Mark Meadows and others suggest the Trump White House coordinated efforts to stop Joe Biden’s certification

The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is examining whether Donald Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy on 6 January that connected the White House’s scheme to stop Joe Biden’s certification with the insurrection, say two senior sources familiar with the matter.

The committee’s new focus on the potential for a conspiracy marks an aggressive escalation in its inquiry as it confronts evidence that suggests the former president potentially engaged in criminal conduct egregious enough to warrant a referral to the justice department.

Continue reading...

Biden addresses pandemic: ‘We’re going to be able to control this’ – live

Posted on by

There’s been a lot of back-and-forth about the efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccine – which, reminder, while everybody here is highly educated in law, nobody is an epidemiologist – and Justice Elena Kagan went hard at Ohio solicitor general Ben Flowers.

“You said we understand that 18- to 29-year-olds, even though they’re not going to die or end up with very serious injuries, they can spread. You don’t doubt that, that they can spread to other people who are more vulnerable?” Kagan asked Flowers.

Continue reading...

Assault on American democracy has gained pace since US Capitol attack

Posted on by

Analysis: Republican strategy has focused on sowing doubt about 2020’s result, passing new laws and taking over key election offices

On 6 January 2021, it seemed like the stitching holding America’s democracy together might finally collapse. As armed supporters of a defeated president laid siege to the Capitol, the US Congress did something extraordinary – it suspended the official procedure to certify the winner of a presidential election.

The attack was eventually put down and Congress returned to officially certify Joe Biden’s victory. “They tried to disrupt our democracy. They failed,” Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, said when the Senate came back into session.

Continue reading...

Online extremist content surged before 6 January, says US agency

Posted on by

FBI and DHS flagged content that could ‘inspire violence by lone offenders against government officials’

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has warned of an increase in extremist content and threats against US lawmakers in the days leading up to the anniversary of the 6 January insurrection, according to a memo obtained by the Guardian.

The memo, sent on Thursday to state and local law enforcement, said that DHS had no indication of a specific and credible plot, but that the agency and the FBI had “identified new content online that could inspire violence, particularly by lone offenders, and could be directed against political and other government officials, including members of Congress, state and local officials, and high-profile members of political parties, including in locations outside of [Washington DC]”.

Continue reading...

Biden condemns Trump’s ‘web of lies’ a year on from deadly Capitol assault

Posted on by

Joe Biden on Thursday forcefully denounced Donald Trump for spreading a “web of lies” about the legitimacy of the 2020 election in a desperate attempt to cling to power, accusing the former president and his allies of holding a “dagger at the throat of American democracy”.

The US president condemned his predecessor’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election as a “failed” pursuit, but one that continues to imperil American democracy one year after the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol, when a violent mob of Trump loyalists breached the Capitol in an effort to stop the certification of Biden’s presidential election victory.

Continue reading...

No time for platitudes as Biden gives sharpest denunciation of Trump yet

Posted on by

Analysis: This was the moment the president realized the clear and present danger posed to US democracy by an ex-leader gone rogue

Here, at last, was the Joe Biden that anyone on vigil for America’s teetering democracy had been waiting for.

In historic National Statuary Hall at the US Capitol, a year to the day after it was overrun by an authoritarian mob, the US president gave his clearest dissection of “the big lie” and his clearest denunciation of his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Continue reading...

Joe Biden blames Donald Trump’s ‘web of lies’ for US Capitol attack – video

Posted on by

The US president spoke directly against Trump, saying the former president had created and spread a 'web of lie's that resulted in the deadly insurrection.

On the one-year anniversary of the 6 January Capitol attack, the US president said his predecessor had refused to accept the result of an election, like no former president had ever done

Continue reading...