Former president held rally in Cullman, Alabama, a city struggling to cope with cases and hospitalisations
At his rally in Alabama on Saturday night, Donald Trump heard the unusual sound of booing and jeering aimed his way, after he told supporters: “I recommend taking the vaccines.”
Related: Tennessee radio host who criticised vaccine efforts dies of Covid-19
Continue reading...The Republican Florida congressman Matt Gaetz eloped to southern California on Saturday, in order to marry Ginger Luckey in a small ceremony on Catalina Island.
Related: Trump booed after telling supporters to get Covid vaccine
Continue reading...Larry Elder doesn’t believe in gun control or the gender pay gap. He has risen to the top of the Republican field in the recall election for governor
Larry Elder is a confounding frontrunner in the Republican race to replace Gavin Newsom as California governor.
Related: Grizzly Flats: the California town leveled by the Caldor fire – in pictures
Continue reading...Ex-president to support of Mo Brooks, who is running for Senate and sympathised with man who threatened to blow up US Capitol
Donald Trump was due to stage a rally in Alabama on Saturday night, in a city that has declared a Covid emergency and in support of a congressman who both backed Trump’s attempt to overturn the election and this week sympathised with a man who threatened to blow up the US Capitol.
Related: Capitol bomb claim suspect charged with weapon of mass destruction threat
Continue reading...Some Texas Democrats dismayed their colleagues returned to make a quorum, but others hope their protest has drawn attention to voting rights
A last-ditch effort to stall Texas Republicans from passing sweeping voting legislation effectively ended on Thursday evening after enough Democrats returned to the state capitol in Austin to allow lawmakers to proceed on legislation.
Continue reading...
The US State Department has put out a joint statement from the foreign ministers of the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), after a meeting earlier today, appealing to the Taliban, effectively, in a display of resolve that appears undermined by the scenes on the ground in Afghanistan - and what is known of the Taliban.
We are united in our deep concern about the grave events in Afghanistan and call for an immediate end to the violence. We also express deep concerns about reports of serious human rights violations and abuses across Afghanistan.
We affirm our commitment to the statement by the UN Security Council on 16 August, and we call for adherence to international norms and standards on human rights and international humanitarian law in all circumstances.
Related: Afghanistan reports of torture and killing contradict Taliban’s promises
The Afghan people deserve to live in safety, security and dignity, and to build on the important political, economic and social achievements they have made over the last twenty years. We stand by civil society actors who must be able to continue to safely play their meaningful role in Afghan society. We call on all parties in Afghanistan to work in good faith to establish an inclusive and representative government, including with the meaningful participation of women and minority groups. Under the current circumstances, NATO has suspended all support to the Afghan authorities.
Any future Afghan government must adhere to Afghanistan’s international obligations; safeguard the human rights of all Afghans, particularly women, children, and minorities; uphold the rule of law; allow unhindered humanitarian access; and ensure that Afghanistan never again serves as a safe haven for terrorists.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
Continue reading...A week after Andrew Cuomo resigned as the governor of the state of New York, Jonathan Freedland revisits a conversation he had with Alexis Grenell back in March. The pair discuss how Cuomo rose to the top, and then fell spectacularly from grace.
Continue reading...President defends shots as millions worldwide are unvaccinated: US has ‘provided more to the rest of the world than all the rest of the world combined’
Joe Biden has said that he and first lady Jill Biden plan on getting a booster shot and is comfortable doing so while millions around the world remain unvaccinated because America has “provided more to the rest of the world than all the rest of the world combined”.
He added that the US will also provide an additional half a billion shots around the world within the first half of next year. Critics argue this remains a drop in the ocean in the context of what is needed.
Continue reading...
Joe Biden will host Israel’s new prime minister Naftali Bennett in Washington on August 26, the White House has just announced.
Students in Florida’s Broward County went back to school under a mask mandate today, even as their school board faced threats of severe penalties for defying Republican governor Ron DeSantis.
And school officials in Hillsborough and Miami-Dade counties planned to address the public health measure later Wednesday, hoping to reduce infections in classrooms.
In Miami, Florida’s largest school district with 334,000 students, a task force of medical experts recommended students should be required to wear masks when they return to classrooms next week.
Continue reading...Following One Vote Away’s publication, the Republican senator’s campaign spent large sums of money at US chain Books-A-Million
Ted Cruz’s campaign spent more than $150,000 at US book chain Books-A-Million in the months after the Texas senator’s book was published, Forbes has reported.
Cruz, who was prominent among the Republicans trying to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election, published One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History in September. A financial disclosure he filed on Monday, reported on by Forbes, shows he received almost $320,000 as an advance in 2020 from the book’s publisher Regnery Publishing.
Continue reading...The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, tested positive for Covid-19 on Tuesday, after weeks spent banning local mask requirements and meeting maskless crowds. The Republican is fully vaccinated against the virus and is not experiencing symptoms, his office said.
Texas has once again emerged as a hotspot for coronavirus, with only 314 available intensive care unit beds statewide. Paediatric ICUs are running out of space while children head back to class.
Continue reading...Greg Abbott, who was vaccinated in December, is at least the 11th governor to contract the virus
Texas governor Greg Abbott tested positive for Covid-19 on Tuesday, after weeks spent banning local mask requirements and meeting maskless crowds.
Related: Texas officials ask US government for mortuary trucks as Covid cases rise
Continue reading...A look back at the official photographs of Obama’s presidency shows his skill at conjuring a sense of pride and possibility – but today his victories seem narrow indeed
From the beginning, Obama’s team was invested in constructing a certain image of what would be deemed a “historic” presidency. During Obama’s campaign, the artist Shepard Fairey, who designed the famous “Hope” poster, was widely acknowledged as his key iconographer. But, in retrospect, who Obama was and what he represented endures in the public imagination thanks to the work of the White House photographer Pete Souza, a longtime photojournalist who first had the assignment under Ronald Reagan. Over time, Souza helped create a new image of race in the US. This was an image of a postracial nation, where postracial didn’t mean liberation – it meant a US where race was solely affect and gesture, rather than the old brew of capital, land and premature death. Progress would deposit us in a place where black would be pure style – a style that the ruling class could finally wear out.
In the thick of the 2008 primary, in an essay titled Native Son, George Packer argued that after a half century when “rightwing populism has been the most successful political force in America”, there was finally hope for an alternative. “Obama is a black candidate,” he wrote, “who can tell Americans of all races to move beyond race.” The ensuing years bore out the impossibility of that widely held belief, but it was already evident in the language. How could a single person be black and capable of moving everybody beyond race?
Continue reading...The departure of US forces was followed by a rout of Afghan government forces. Now, after 20 years of western intervention, Afghanistan is back under the control of the Taliban
It began with a steady trickle of military defeats. First Afghan government control was ceded to the Taliban in provincial towns and cities. Then, as the lack of resistance became apparent, bigger cities and regional capitals began to fall. Finally on Sunday the Taliban entered Kabul as the western-backed government fled the country.
The Guardian’s senior international correspondent, Emma Graham-Harrison, tells Michael Safi that it marks a stunning reversal for the Afghan government, which had begun negotiating a deal with the Taliban in recent months. And as deeply flawed as the government in Kabul has been for the past 20 years, it has created space for the education of girls and a free press. All of that is now in grave doubt as Afghans wait to see whether their new Taliban rulers plan to carry on where they left off in 2001. We hear voices from inside Afghanistan including reporter Zahra Joya, who was a child when US forces invaded in 2001 and drove out the Taliban. She describes her fears for what will come next.
Continue reading...President acknowledges his decision would be criticized by many but says he would not ‘shrink from my share of responsibility’
– Joan E Greve and Maanvi Singh
The South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham called Joe Biden after his victory over Donald Trump to tell the president he only joined attacks on his son, Hunter Biden, as a “bare minimum” to satisfy Trump supporters.
The detail was included in a lengthy profile of Graham and his Washington manoeuvres published by the New York Times. It said the call, intended to “revive a friendship damaged by [Graham’s] call for a special prosecutor to investigate the overseas business dealings” of Hunter Biden, was “short, and not especially sweet”.
Related: ‘Short and not especially sweet’: Lindsey Graham called Biden over Trump support
Continue reading...Governors of states such as Florida and Texas, where the Delta variant is surging, have made masks and vaccines a partisan issue, in a lethal mix of ignorance, irrationality and nihilism
The crowd gathered under a tent at the water’s edge, their tables decorated with the Stars and Stripes and checked tablecloths. In their midst in Austin county, Texas, last Saturday was the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, laughing with delight and playing the fiddle.
With the coronavirus roaring through the state and hospitals near breaking point, comparisons with Nero fiddling while Rome burned were irresistible, although journalist Alisha Grauso pointed out on Twitter: “Nero actually enacted sweeping relief efforts to try to quell the fire and also offer his people aid in the aftermath, particularly the lower class, so Abbott is somehow worse than a Roman emperor known today as being a psychotic tyrant.”
Continue reading...White population falls below 60%, underscoring what’s at stake as lawmakers begin drawing political maps
America’s white population declined for the first time while US metro areas were responsible for almost all of the country’s population growth, according to groundbreaking new data released on Thursday by the US census bureau.
Continue reading...Louisa Terrell, White House director of legislative, is the tip of the spear of Biden’s team as she fulfills one of the most difficult jobs in a deeply divided political landscape
In the early days of the Biden administration members of the new president’s White House legislative affairs team had a meet-and-greet with Senate Republicans’ chiefs-of-staff. At the head of this Democratic delegation was Louisa Terrell, Biden’s White House director of legislative.
Terrell, speaking to the audience of powerful Republican aides, laid out how she worked. She felt even in these politically polarized times compromise should be pursued. They wouldn’t agree on everything, but there were deals to be had. At the same time Terrell said, according to four sources with knowledge of this meeting, her team had a job to do and planned to do it.
Continue reading...
Joe Biden held a virtual meeting today with business, university and healthcare leaders to discuss strategies to get more Americans vaccinated against coronavirus.
The meeting included the CEOs of Kaiser Permanente, United Airlines and DESA, Inc., as well as the president of Howard University. All four have already announced vaccine requirements for their employees or students.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention said on Wednesday that pregnant women should get vaccinated after an analysis of data that showed no increased risk of miscarriage among women who received it.
The advice comes as hospitals in hot spots around the US are see disturbing numbers of unvaccinated mothers-to-be seriously ill with the virus, the Associated Press reports.
Related: CDC urges pregnant women to get Covid vaccine, finding no increased risk of miscarriage
Continue reading...Lawmakers approve Democrats’ budget resolution on party-line 50-49 vote hours after passing $1tn infrastructure bill
Democrats pushed a $3.5tn framework for bolstering family services, health and environment programs through the Senate early Wednesday.
The overnight vote advances Joe Biden’s plans for reshaping federal priorities, and came hours after passing a $1tn infrastructure package.
Continue reading...