Victory in the safe Democratic district will be interpreted by moderates as proof the party should hold centre ground and not shift to left
The Democratic establishment scored a major victory over the party’s progressive wing on Tuesday when Shontel Brown defeated Nina Turner in a primary election in Ohio.
Conceding defeat, Turner told supporters: “Tonight my friends, we have looked across the promised land, but for this campaign, on this night, we will not cross the river.”
Continue reading...Joe Biden has led calls from both parties for New York governor Andrew Cuomo to resign after an investigation found he had sexually harassed 11 women.
Related: Biden calls on Cuomo to resign after report corroborates harassment allegations – live
Continue reading...Eleven women have accused the New York governor of harassment – and investigators say their accounts have been corroborated
Months after New York governor Andrew Cuomo denied multiple allegations of sexual harassment, the New York attorney general’s office released a 165-page report on Tuesday that corroborates the allegations that made public over the last year.
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Richard Luscombe reports for the Guardian:
At least 70% of adults in the US have now received at least one Covid-19 vaccination shot, the White House announced on Monday, reaching a target Joe Biden originally said he had hoped to achieve by 4 July.
Related: US reaches Biden’s 70% first-shot goal as threat to unvaccinated people grows
Greetings from Washington, live blog readers.
Coronavirus hospitalizations continue to climb in the US, now reaching the levels of last summer’s surge in cases, as the highly transmissible Delta variant continues to spread across the country.
Update today, >51,000
Why can't the @CDCgov curate the data and partition it by vaccination status, as done in other countries?
We know it's >>90% unvaccinated, but this needs close tracking to determine extent of breakthrough illness, demographics, time from vaccination, etc pic.twitter.com/cBNx2hnZJK
Florida’s ban on mask mandates came under increasing scrutiny from public health officials on Sunday as the surging Delta variant pushed new daily cases of Covid-19 in the state to a record high.
Related: US vaccinations rise but White House frustrated with media ‘alarmism’
Continue reading...Evacuation flights start before visas are issued after insurgents make sweeping gains in provinces
America has launched emergency airlifts for Afghans who worked with its armed forces and diplomats, evacuating hundreds who are still waiting for their visas to the United States on military flights.
Only people in the final stages of a long, slow and bureaucratic visa process are eligible for the airlift, but bringing applicants to the continental US in large numbers is still unprecedented in recent years, officials working on the programme say.
Continue reading...The Senate convened for a rare weekend session on Saturday with the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, encouraging the authors of a bipartisan infrastructure plan to finish writing their bill.
Related: Trump tries to defend ‘just say the election was corrupt’ demand to DoJ
Continue reading...Donald Trump insisted on Saturday that when he told senior justice department officials to “Just say that the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me”, he was not attempting to subvert US democracy, but to “uphold the integrity and honesty of elections and the sanctity of our vote”.
Related: IRS must turn over Trump tax returns to Congress, DoJ says
Continue reading...The CDC has advised people to wear masks indoors regardless of vaccination status, prompting a political fight in several US states
On Wednesday, Georgia governor Brian Kemp used his official Twitter account to say his state “will not lock down or impose statewide mask mandates”.
Related: California expands Covid restrictions as Delta variant threat grows
Continue reading...Progressives had hoped for fewer Biden allies, more foreign service professionals
Joe Biden is sticking to tradition as he slowly fills the vacancies in the ranks of ambassadors across the world, focussing on mixing longtime career diplomatic officials with figures with strong ties to himself and the Democratic party.
Among Biden’s expected picks is Caroline Kennedy, former US ambassador to Japan, daughter of the former president, and longtime Biden friend, ally and donor, to be ambassador to Australia. He has picked the Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti, who was a prominent Biden surrogate on the presidential campaign trail, to be ambassador to India, despite a relative lack of foreign policy experience. And the president is also widely expected to name the former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel ambassador to Japan.
Continue reading...Department says House panel has ‘sufficient reasons’ for requesting returns as Nancy Pelosi hails ‘victory for the rule of law’
The US Department of Justice on Friday ordered the Internal Revenue Service to hand Donald Trump’s tax returns to a House committee, saying the panel had “invoked sufficient reasons” for requesting them.
Related: Trump pressured DoJ officials to falsely claim election corrupt, memos show
Continue reading...House speaker Nancy Pelosi noted in a letter to colleagues that only $3bn of $46bn allocated for rental aid in the American Rescue Plan had been spent
Here’s where the day stands so far:
Democratic congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, the chair of the House oversight committee, said the notes painted a damning picture of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the presidential election.
“These handwritten notes show that President Trump directly instructed our nation’s top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency,” Maloney said in a statement.
Continue reading...Congress members Joyce Beatty and Hank Johnson were previously arrested for participating in separate demonstrations
Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democratic representative of Texas, was arrested in Washington DC on Thursday while protesting lawmakers’ delay in passing legislation to protect voting rights, becoming the third member of the Congressional Black Caucus to be arrested for civil disobedience in recent weeks.
Related: Voting curbs enacted in 18 US states this year despite none finding widespread fraud
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The Federal Reserve chair said today that the Delta variant poses little threat to the economy, so far. At a news conference, chair Jerome Powell said:
What we’ve seen is with successive waves of COVID over the past year and some months now, there has tended to be less in the way of economic implications from each wave. We will see whether that is the case with the delta variety, but it’s certainly not an unreasonable expectation.”
Dining out, traveling, some schools might not reopen. We may see economic effects from some of that or it might weigh on the return to the labor market. We don’t have a strong sense of how that will work out, so we’ll be monitoring it carefully.”
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has said he will vote to move forward with the infrastructure bill:
Based on a commitment from Leader Schumer to Senators Portman and Sinema that the Portman-Sinema amendment to be filed will be the substitute amendment, I will vote to proceed to the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
Continue reading...The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, on Wednesday heaped disdain on the Republican minority leader’s criticism of Congress’s new mask requirement – a reversal of policy that reflected growing number of cases and fears about the highly-transmissible Covid-19 Delta variant at the Capitol.
Related: Bipartisan group reaches agreement on ‘major issues’ of infrastructure bill, Republican says – live
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Jamie Raskin of Maryland is next. A law professor, his descriptions of his experiences during the attack and management of the impeachment of Donald Trump that followed brought him to particular national attention:
Related: 'The moral centre': how Jamie Raskin dominated the stage at Trump's trial
Related: ‘I need a drink’ after Republican talks, says officer beaten in Capitol attack
Now we have Stephanie Murphy, a Florida Democrat, and more video, this time from Officer Hodges’ body camera.
There are clouds of smoke, police in riot gear, shouting, pushing. Hodges curls his lip as he looks up at the screen. One burly police officer is seen dousing his eyes with water, walking back through the police line. Now we have Officer Hodges stuck in a door, screaming. It is tough to watch.
Continue reading...Metropolitan police department officer Michael Fanone told the select committee investigating the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol how pro-Trump insurrectionists attacked him. 'I was grabbed, beaten, tased, all while being called a traitor to my country. I was at risk of being stripped of and killed with my own firearm, as I heard chants of "kill him with his own gun",' Fanone said.
He went on to say that a fellow officer later took him to a nearby hospital, where he was told he had suffered a mild heart attack.
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In a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation vaccine monitor, 23% of Republicans said they definitely won’t get vaccinated, while 16% of independents and 2% of Democrats said the same.
White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said local leaders, particularly in areas with low rates of vaccination, needed to lead outreach efforts to get people vaccinated.
Related: Fauci says health officials considering mask guidance revision for vaccinated
Continue reading...The speaker of the US House, Nancy Pelosi, intends to appoint a second anti-Trump Republican to the select committee which will investigate the deadly 6 January assault on the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump.
Related: Can Pelosi’s power play on Capitol attack panel thwart wrecking tactics?
Continue reading...Democrat Katie Hobbs says ‘this is nothing more than being a sore loser’ as ex-president heads to Phoenix for event
Arizona’s secretary of state had a message for Donald Trump before he appeared in Phoenix on Saturday: “Take your loss and accept it and move on.”
Related: Fox News backs Covid vaccination – a pity no one told Tucker Carlson
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