Speculation and political parlor-gaming about Nancy Pelosi’s strategy have filled the informational vacuum
What is Nancy Pelosi thinking?
Related: Trump ex-adviser Michael Flynn should face up to six months in prison, say prosecutors – live
Continue reading...House to convene for the first time of the new year and a first true signal of when speaker might advance impeachment issue
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell reportedly plans to advance a set of rules for the looming impeachment trial without Democratic support.
Politico reports:
McConnell is on the verge of having sufficient backing in his 53-member caucus to pass a blueprint for the trial that leaves the question of seeking witnesses and documents until after opening arguments are made, according to multiple senators. That framework would mirror the contours of President Bill Clinton’s trial and ignore Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s demands for witnesses and new evidence.
No final decision has been made, but in a brief interview, McConnell said he would address the possibility of spurning Democrats on Tuesday afternoon.
Appearing at the US Capitol for the first time in 2020, House speaker Nancy Pelosi deflected reporters’ repeated questions about when she might transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate.
Entering the Capitol for the first time in 2020, @SpeakerPelosi is still mum on when she’ll send articles of impeachment to the Senate —> pic.twitter.com/8WlaSiCwvg
Continue reading...Mark Esper says memo on US troops’ ‘onward movement’ from Iraq is not accurate and ‘there’s been no decision’
Kari Paul here, logging off for the night. Here are today’s top events to make note of:
Pete Buttigieg is heading back to Iowa on Jan. 12 to do more campaigning ahead of the upcoming caucus there, his team announced on Monday.
According to the announcement, Buttigieg has now visited Iowa 21 times, with visits to 49 counties to hold 100 events across the state.
Continue reading...Ed Pilkington hears from some of the most influential journalists in the US on how hard lessons were learned after their coverage of the 2016 election. But will 2020 really be any different? Plus: Carol Anderson on voter suppression and the US election
Donald Trump’s election victory in 2016 came as a major shock to most news organisations in the US, which had all but anointed Hillary Clinton as the next president. But Trump’s ability to garner attention and break rules and norms had resulted in billions of dollars’ worth of free coverage, which he combined with an ability to wriggle out of serious scrutiny.
All this left a major challenge for how newsrooms across the US should cover his presidency, and how they should now cover his attempt to be re-elected. The Guardian US chief reporter, Ed Pilkington, has been working in partnership with the Columbia Journalism Review and spoken to 30 leading editors, reporters, TV executives and media commentators, asking for their reflections at the start of a year of election coverage. In this podcast, we hear from the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan, Univision’s Jorge Ramos, Teen Vogue’s Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Frank Bruni of the New York Times.
Continue reading...Elizabeth Warren has suggested Donald Trump ordered the drone assassination of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani to distract the American public from his own impeachment, taking the country “to the edge of war” for his own political purposes.
Related: Making of a martyr: how Qassem Suleimani was hunted down
Continue reading...Killing of Suleimani will help Trump among his supporters, but it could hurt him at the ballot box after promises of ‘America first’
“We have God on our side.” They have long been some of the most chilling words in the English language. Perhaps never more so than when uttered by Donald Trump in a re-election campaign.
The president made the claim at an Evangelicals for Trump rally at a megachurch in Miami on Friday night, a day after taking America to the brink of war with the killing in Baghdad of Qassem Suleimani, Iran’s top general and potential future leader.
Continue reading...The Minnesota senator is reaching out to Iowa’s smallest towns and rural settlements ahead of the vital February caucus and seeing increasing numbers
Craig Hiller, an Iowa farmer, had just enjoyed a hot chocolate on Amy Klobuchar’s campaign bus as it made a stop in the small town of Rockwell City, population just 2,100.
Hiller, whose state is the vital first one to cast ballots in the party’s nomination race to pick an opponent to Donald Trump, was impressed by the Minnesota senator, a fellow midwesterner who desperately needs a strong showing in Iowa to boost her 2020 presidential campaign.
Continue reading...Friday’s rally recognized Trump’s need to retain the loyalty of the evangelical voting bloc that propelled him to victory in 2016
They came to pray with their president, though in truth many came just to worship him. Donald Trump’s Friday launch of his so-called “coalition of evangelicals”, an attempt to shore up the support of the religious right ahead of November’s election, had the feel of any other campaign rally, except this time with gospel music.
An estimated 7,000 “supporters of faith” packed the King Jesus international ministry megachurch in Miami to hear the word of the president, and decided that it was good. The Maga hat-wearing faithful cheered Trump’s comments on issues calculated to resonate with his churchgoing audience, including abortion, freedoms of speech and religion, and what he claimed was a “crusade” from Democrats against religious tolerance.
Continue reading...The president delivered a truck load of red meat to his base – but has he considered what follows the immediate sugar rush?
The only predictable thing about Donald Trump is his unpredictability. Two days into the month of an impeachment trial and an election year, he gave the kaleidoscope a mighty shake with arguably the most consequential decision of his presidency.
Related: Iran crisis: McConnell lauds death of 'master terrorist' as Democrats question Trump strategy – live
Continue reading...Prime minister Shinzo Abe is trying to keep Donald Trump on side, but the Japanese people are watching with worry
Since the end of the second world war and the enactment of its pacifist constitution, Japan has deployed its forces overseas mostly on peacekeeping operations under UN auspices – and almost never to places where its troops are in harm’s way. But next month, the country will send a naval destroyer to the Middle East. On what is being described as an intelligence-gathering mission, the warship will patrol the Gulf of Oman, the northern part of the Arabian sea and a portion of the Bab el-Mandeb strait, following a series of attacks on oil tankers in the region – including one that was Japanese-operated.
In 2015, Abe passed unpopular legislation allowing Japan to exercise the right of collective self-defence
Continue reading...Killing of powerful Iranian general will have far-reaching consequences for Trump
In his long military career, Qassem Suleimani left the Middle East littered with corpses. Now he has finally joined them. His death has closed one gruesome chapter in the region’s endless conflicts, only to open another, which could well prove even worse.
No one can predict how this will turn out, perhaps least of all the two leading protagonists. Nothing about Donald Trump’s actions in the Middle East until now suggests that Suleimani’s assassination by drone outside Baghdad airport was part of a considered plan.
Continue reading...The White House said Donald Trump ordered an airstrike that killed the powerful Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. The attack came amid Iranian tensions with the US after thousands of Iraqis stormed the US embassy compound in Baghdad this week. The killing of Suleimani presents a dramatic escalation of an already bloody struggle between Washington and Tehran for influence across the region
Senate minority leader made remark on emails about the freeze on Ukraine’s military aid
Warren released a sweeping plan that, among other things, would raise the hourly minimum wage to $15 and ending a program that allows employers to pay disabled workers much less.
“Building economic security for people with disabilities means rewriting the rules of the economy to foster inclusivity, value their labor, and end labor market discrimination and exploitation,” the 2020 presidential candidate said in a statement.
Hillary Clinton has taken on a new role as a chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast.
For the former US secretary of state, senator and first lady, the role will be mostly ceremonial.
As Chancellor @HillaryClinton will have three main roles:
1.Presiding at degree congregations.
2.Ambassador.
3.Advisor, available to the @QUBVChancellor and senior management as a sounding board and to provide counsel and guidance.
More: https://t.co/6NlonwYmXK #LoveQUB pic.twitter.com/iJKuJl4bic
Key Democrats and election analysts say more needs to be done to ensure safe elections free from ‘foreign malicious actors’
Potential electronic voting equipment failures and cyber attacks from Russia and other countries pose persistent threats to the 2020 elections, election security analysts and key Democrats warn.
Related: Embassy protesters in Iraq deal symbolic blow to US prestige
Continue reading...Biden is too gaffe-prone; Sanders and Warren are too far left; Buttigieg, too young. But which one is capable of beating Trump?
Democrats overwhelmingly agree that their top priority in 2020 is to remove Donald Trump from office. But which of the many Democrats running for president is best suited to the task remains a source of deep anxiety and division less than five weeks before the Iowa caucuses.
After more than a year of campaigning, the Democratic presidential primary enters the final sprint before voting begins on 3 February in Iowa in a familiar but fluid state: Joe Biden in the lead, trailed by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren with Pete Buttigieg also showing signs of strength in the early states.
Continue reading...Tens of thousands of teachers walked off the job in Los Angeles, American women gathered for their third annual march in Washington, Iowans protested abortion bans, Texans declared Donald Trump ‘not welcome’ in El Paso and students in New York City rallied around Greta Thunberg in calling for action on climate change
Continue reading...Recent, high-profile defections have left the president and his campaign spooked about losing a key component of his base
The US president going to church on Christmas Eve should not have attracted much attention. But it was the specific church Donald Trump chose to attend on Tuesday that raised eyebrows.
Instead of attending his usual service at the liberal church in Palm Beach, Florida, where he married his third wife, Trump instead went to a conservative Baptist-affiliated church in West Palm Beach.
Continue reading...CBC removed president’s cameo in 2014 to save time, but Trump’s son says move is ‘pathetic’
Canada’s national broadcaster has riled Donald Trump’s conservative base by airing Christmas movie favourite Home Alone 2 without a scene involving the president.
The Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) says it removed Trump’s brief cameo – and eight minutes of the film in total – in 2014 to make room for commercials.
Continue reading...Donald Trump has been condemned for “vile and reprehensible” tweets that trivialize America’s homelessness crisis in an attempt to rebuke the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, the architect of his impeachment.
On Thursday the president, holed up at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida over Christmas, went on the offensive against Pelosi, whose home district includes San Francisco.
Continue reading...Donald Trump has launched fresh attacks on the congressional architects of his impeachment, even as the standoff intensified between Democrats in the US House and Republicans in the Senate over the president’s impending trial, and appeared set to last well into the new year.
And on a less grave note, Trump revealed in a video conference with US troops to deliver Christmas greetings that, despite it being the morning of 24 December, he had not yet bought his wife her Christmas present.
Continue reading...