Pre-emptively branding as rigged an election you are likely to lose risks turning off GOP voters and undermining democracy
It was a pre-emptive strike against truth by some of the biggest names on the American right wing.
Former president Donald Trump warned that the ballot would be “rigged”. The Republican candidate Larry Elder predicted “shenanigans”. The conservative media star Tomi Lahren suggested that “voter fraud” was inevitable.
Continue reading...Police prepared for trouble at event near Capitol but only a few hundred attended as politicians and pro-Trump groups did not
Any passing American might have been forgiven for thinking they had stumbled on one of the great human rights struggles of our time.
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Continue reading...Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker of the US Congress, has likened the 6 January attack to 9/11, saying one had been an assault on US democracy from within and the other from the outside. Speaking at a Chatham House seminar in London on Friday, she also claimed the Republicans had been hijacked by a cult that believed neither in science nor government, making it hard for the US to be governed
Continue reading...The Republican senator Jim Risch pressed the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, over rumours someone in the White House has the ability to cut off the president's microphone when he speaks. While Blinken chuckled throughout the questioning, Risch continued to press his claims after an earlier video from the White House featuring Biden cut off during a briefing. 'It’s been widely reported that somebody has the ability to push the button and cut off his sound and stop him from speaking,' Risch said.
Blinken replied: 'Anyone who knows the president, including members of this committee, knows that he speaks very clearly and very deliberately for himself'
Continue reading...James Risch questioned the secretary of state about an official supposedly able to mute the president – ‘Who is that person?’
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, fought back laughter on Capitol Hill on Tuesday as the Republican senator James Risch relentlessly questioned him about a rumor that someone on the White House staff “pushes the button and cuts [Joe Biden] off mid-sentence” with a wireless device.
“Somebody in the White House has authority to press the button and cut off the president’s speaking ability and sound. Who is that person?” asked Risch, who was also former lieutenant governor of Idaho.
Continue reading...Analysis: the western alliance is the main victim – and China will win out unless US can soothe Paris’s anger
Fury in Paris at Australia’s decision to tear up plans to buy a French-built fleet of submarines is not only a row about a defence contract, cost overruns and technical specifications. It throws into question the transatlantic alliance to confront China.
The Aukus deal has left the French political class seething at Joe Biden’s Trumpian unilateralism, Australian two-facedness and the usual British perfidy. “Nothing was done by sneaking behind anyone’s back,” assured the British defence minister, Ben Wallace, in an attempt to soothe the row. But that is not the view in Paris. “This is an enormous disappointment,” said Florence Parly, the French defence minister.
Continue reading...Joe Biden has been called ‘fascist’ and ‘tyrannical’ for his Covid prevention measures but the public appears to be on his side
When Joe Biden announced sweeping federal coronavirus vaccine requirements for 100 million Americans, the White House was braced for objections from Republican opponents.
But this being 2021, the rightwing backlash has gone way beyond mere political debate into the realm of incendiary language that, analysts fear, could translate into direct and violent action.
Continue reading...The US, the UK and Australia have announced they are setting up a trilateral security partnership aimed at confronting China, which will include helping Australia to build nuclear-powered submarines. US President Joe Biden, UK prime minister Boris Johnson and Australian prime minister Scott Morrison announced the deal together virtually
California voters resoundingly reject choice to replace Democratic governor, who faced a battle for his political life
California’s governor, Gavin Newsom has prevailed in a historic recall election that had him battling for his political life. In a referendum on the governor’s leadership through the pandemic, voters resoundingly rejected the choice to replace him with a Trumpist Republican.
The Associated Press projected the results about 45 minutes after polls closed on Tuesday night. Newsom’s most popular challenger was Larry Elder, a rightwing radio host who drew comparisons to the former president and who attempted to sow baseless doubts about the election process.
Continue reading...California's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, has successfully fended off an effort to oust him from office in a special election. He overcame a Republican campaign to unseat him over his liberal policies on immigration, Covid-19 and crime.
Newsom, a first-term governor beset by challenges including the pandemic, extreme drought and severe wildfires, boosted turnout among Democrats with a flurry of late campaigning. In the final days of the race, he appeared alongside President Joe Biden and the vice-president, Kamala Harris, who formerly represented California as a US senator and attorney general
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Damien Gayle reports:
Facebook has kept internal research secret for two years that suggests its Instagram app makes body image issues worse for teenage girls, according to a leak from the tech firm.
Related: Facebook aware of Instagram’s harmful effect on teenage girls, leak reveals
Joe Biden will reportedly propose a target for 70% of the world’s population to be vaccinated within the next year at a global vaccines summit he intends to convene alongside the UN general assembly in New York this month.
The US president’s target, reported by the New York Times, is in line with ambitions set jointly by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the WTO and the World Health Organization (WHO) but is more ambitious than current performance and the targets set at the G7 meeting in Cornwall chaired by the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson. The G7 agreed to donate 870m doses of Covid-19 vaccines directly, with an aim to deliver at least half by the end of 2021.
Related: Joe Biden to propose target of vaccinating 70% of world in a year
Continue reading...‘The time is now for childcare, healthcare and climate action for all,’ the congresswoman wrote on Instagram
When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wore a white gown with the message “tax the rich” emblazoned in red to the Met Gala, one of New York’s swankiest events, she was sure to ruffle some feathers.
Related: The Met Gala 2021: eight key moments from fashion’s big night
Continue reading...General Milley worried about Trump’s ‘trigger point’ after the election and monitored him to prevent catastrophic military strike
Before and after the assault on the US Capitol on 6 January, the most senior US general took steps to prevent Donald Trump from “going rogue” and launching a nuclear war or an attack on China, according to excerpts of an eagerly awaited new book by the Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward.
Related: Senate Democrats pitch new voting bill in effort to break filibuster logjam– live
Continue reading...Hillary Clinton said the US was still in a 'real battle for our democracy' against pro-Trump forces on the far right who are seeking to entrench minority rule and turn back the clock on women’s rights.
Speaking at a Guardian Live event on Monday, Clinton said she believed there was majority support for Joe Biden’s agenda of huge investment in infrastructure and budget support for families. 'But the other side wants to rule by minority,' she told the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland
Continue reading...No one quite knows if the former president will run again, but stoking the fire flatters his ego and keeps the cash rolling in
The date Saturday 9 October 2021 might go down in political history. Or at least that is what Donald Trump would like you to believe.
That night, Trump will hold a rally in Iowa, the celebrated launchpad for US presidential candidates, the state that goes first in the major parties’ selection process and that is already drawing potential contenders for the Republican nomination in 2024.
Continue reading...President calls year-round fires an emergency country can no longer ignore as he advocates for rebuilding plan
Joe Biden travelled to California on Monday to survey wildfire damage as the state battles a devastating fire season that is on track to outpace that of 2020, the state’s worst fire season on record.
The president is using the trip to highlight the connection between the climate crisis and the west’s increasingly extreme wildfires as he seeks to rally support for a $3.5tn spending plan Congress is debating.
Continue reading...US secretary of state pushed back against criticism of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Blinked said the Biden administration inherited Donald Trump's deal with the Taliban but no plan for carrying it out
Continue reading...Speaking at a Guardian Live event, the former presidential candidate says the Capitol riot was a ‘terror attack’ that shows a new ‘internal threat’
Hillary Clinton has said that the US was still in a “real battle for our democracy” against pro-Trump forces on the far right, seeking to entrench minority rule and turn back the clock on women’s rights.
At a Guardian Live online event on Monday, Clinton fended off suggestions that the world was now witnessing the twilight of US democracy, but said: “I do believe we are in a struggle for the future of our country”.
Continue reading...Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff have written to complain about search algorithms that appear to spread misinformation
American senator Elizabeth Warren has accused Amazon of “peddling misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines and treatments” through its search and bestseller algorithms, after the online retail giant pushed a book by an author the New York Times called “the most influential spreader of coronavirus misinformation online”.
Searching for Covid-19 on the site gives the top result as Joseph Mercola and Ronnie Cummins’s The Truth About Covid-19, a title that claims to reveal how the “effectiveness of the vaccines has been wildly exaggerated”, how the virus was lab-engineered in Wuhan, and how “safe, simple, and inexpensive treatment and prevention for Covid-19 have been censored and suppressed to create a clear path for vaccine acceptance”.
Continue reading...Asa Hutchinson calls directive ‘unprecedented assumption of federal mandate authority’ as other governors threaten to sue
The political sparring match over Joe Biden’s new vaccine mandate continued on Sunday with one Republican governor blasting the measure as “counterproductive” and the White House insisting it was necessary to end the coronavirus pandemic.
Related: Northern Idaho’s anti-government streak hinders fight against Covid
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