Talks continue on a compromise over infrastructure but GOP intransigeance on a Capitol riot commission does not bode well
It’s become a familiar process in the Joe Biden era.
Biden and Democrats say they will work with Republicans. Republicans say they want a seat at the negotiating table. Then the prospect of Democrats going alone begins to hover over the negotiations.
Continue reading...Weekend rallies with Roger Stone and Michael Flynn show key influence of libertarian helping to fund Arizona election audit
This Memorial Day weekend, several prominent conservative allies of Donald Trump, who have promoted almost nonstop his false narratives about the 2020 election results, are slated to hold rallies in Florida and Texas endorsed by the wealthy libertarian Patrick Byrne.
Billed as featuring the Trump confidant Roger Stone, the retired general Michael Flynn, Byrne and other pro-Trump stalwarts, the dual events underscore that Byrne – who has been leading private fundraising for the politically driven vote audit now under way in Arizona’s largest county – seems intent on funding and pushing conspiracy theories about the 2020 elections.
Continue reading...Pulitzer-winner Carol Leonnig anatomises an agency that has never truly lived up to its steely professional image
At times, the US Secret Service has resembled a bunch of pistol-toting frat boys on a taxpayer-funded spring break. In the words of a drunken supervisor speaking to his men in the run-up to a 2012 summit in Cartagena, Colombia: “You don’t know how lucky you are … You are going to fuck your way across the globe.”
Related: Trump family members got ‘inappropriately close’ to Secret Service agents, book claims
Continue reading...Unidentified aerial phenomena are getting serious attention on TV and from Barack Obama and Marco Rubio and next month the Pentagon is set to release a major declassified analysis
Nick Pope spent the early 1990s investigating UFOs for the British ministry of defence. Sequestered in a rarely visited government office – the “metaphorical basement” – he well remembers how his field of work was regarded.
“I would walk down the corridor and people would whistle the theme music to either Close Encounters of the Third Kind or the Twilight Zone,” Pope told the Guardian.
Continue reading...Bounchan Keola and Kao Saelee were facing deportation to Laos after spending decades in prison for teenage convictions
California’s governor has issued pardons to two formerly incarcerated firefighters who had been threatened with deportation to Laos after spending most of their lives in the US.
Gavin Newsom on Friday announced the pardons for Bounchan Keola, 39, and Kao Saelee, 41, who were both sent to US immigration authorities last year after spending decades in prison for teenage convictions and had battled wildfires as incarcerated firefighters.
Continue reading...Officials say the guns Samuel James Cassidy used to kill nine of his coworkers at a California rail yard appear to be legal
A gunman who killed nine of his co-workers at a rail yard in San Jose, California, had stockpiled weapons and ammunition at his home, including 12 guns and 22,000 rounds of ammunition, authorities said on Friday.
Investigators found the cache of weapons at the home of Samuel James Cassidy, the Santa Clara county sheriff’s office said in a news release. They also turned up multiple cans of gasoline and suspected molotov cocktails. Authorities have said that Cassidy set his house on fire using a timer or slow-burn device to coincide with his attack.
The guns he used to open fire on his co-workers appear to be legal, officials said. They have not said how he obtained them.
Continue reading...President’s budget proposal seeks to end Hyde amendment that limits insurance coverage of terminations for nearly 8m women
For the first time in nearly 30 years, a US president has released a budget that doesn’t ban federal funding for abortion.
On Friday, Joe Biden released his full budget proposal for fiscal year 2022, and in keeping with his campaign promise on abortion access, Biden did not include the Hyde amendment, an annual budget rider that bans federal Medicaid money from being used for almost all abortions. (There are exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest or that would threaten the pregnant person’s life.)
Continue reading...Analysis: one of America’s two major parties now falls outside the democratic mainstream but are Democrats taking the existential threat seriously?
The question now is not so much whether the Republican party can be saved any time in the foreseeable future. It is what Joe Biden and the Democrats should do when faced with a party determined to subvert democracy through any means necessary, including violence.
On Friday Republicans in the Senate torpedoed an effort to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the deadly insurrection by Donald Trump’s supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January, deploying the procedural move known as the filibuster to stop it even being debated.
Continue reading...Republicans killed effort to set up a 9/11-style inquiry into the 6 January attack despite broad support for such an investigation
Senate Republicans have blocked the creation of a special commission to study the deadly 6 January attack on the Capitol, dashing hopes for a bipartisan panel amid a Republican push to put the violent insurrection by Donald Trump’s supporters behind them.
Republicans killed the effort to set up a 9/11-style inquiry into the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob despite broad popular support for such an investigation and pleas from the family of a Capitol police officer who collapsed and died after the siege and other officers who battled the rioters.
Continue reading...Homeland security chief Alejandro Mayorkas says ‘any passport that we provide for vaccinations … [must be] accessible to all’
The Biden administration is taking “a very close look” at the possibility of vaccine passports for travel into and out of the United States, the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, said on Friday.
The Transportation Security Administration, which safeguards the nation’s transportation systems, is housed under Mayorkas’s department.
Continue reading...Microsoft says group targeted more than 15o American and foreign organisations using USAid account
The state-backed Russian cyber spies behind the SolarWinds hacking campaign launched a targeted phishing assault on US and foreign government agencies and thinktanks this week using an email marketing account of the US Agency for International Development (USAid), Microsoft has said.
The effort targeted about 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organisations, at least a quarter of them involved in international development, humanitarian and human rights work, the Microsoft vice-president Tom Burt wrote in a blog post late on Thursday.
Continue reading...Jacqueline Keeler, the author of a new book on standoffs with the government, tells Jason Wilson why the colonial relationship on which the US was founded needs to be renegotiated
In 2014, the writer Jacqueline Keeler started the #notyourmascot hashtag, a social media campaign highlighting the way sports teams use Native Americans mascots to perpetuate racist caricatures. In her current work, she investigates people who are falsely claiming Native ancestry for personal gain – including Susan Taffe Reed, the Native American program director who turned out not to be Native American.
“In all of this, the central issue is our domination by a colonial government,” she says.
Continue reading...A Pentagon whistleblower known for speaking out about UFOs is accusing his former agency of waging a disinformation campaign against him, a report says.
Luis Elizondo, who headed the Pentagon’s now-defunct Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, lodged a complaint with the defense department’s inspector general claiming malicious activities, professional misconduct and other offenses at the agency, according to Politico.
Continue reading...Marcus Rashford has spoken with the former US president Barack Obama to discuss the power young people can have to make change in society.
Rashford, the Manchester United and England striker, met virtually with the 44th president of the United States in a Zoom conversation organised by Penguin Books.
Continue reading...The California governor, Gavin Newsom, has spoken emotionally about the latest US mass killing, after an employee gunned down nine people at a San Jose rail yard and then killed himself as law enforcement arrived.
'There’s a numbness I imagine some of us are feeling about this. Because there’s a sameness to this,” he said. “It begs the damn question of what the hell is going on in the United States of America?'
It was the 15th mass killing in the nation this year, all of them shootings that have claimed at least four lives each for a total of 86 deaths, according to a database compiled by the Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University
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Democratic Senator Bob Casey signaled this morning that it may be time to move on from negotiating with Republicans and instead pass an infrastructure bill using reconciliation, allowing Democrats to circumvent the Senate filibuster.
Asked whether it was time to focus on setting up a reconciliation pathway for the infrastructure bill, Casey told CNN anchor Jim Sciutto, “I think we’re getting to that point, Jim. It’s an old expression, fish or cut bait.”
Me: “IS IT TIME TO MOVE ON TO RECONCILIATION (on infrastructure)?”@SenBobCasey: “I THINK WE'RE GETTING TO THAT POINT, JIM. IT'S AN OLD EXPRESSION, FISH OR CUT BAIT” pic.twitter.com/T0HLUKygrL
The Guardian’s Sam Levine and Daniel Strauss report:
After six months of aggressive Republican efforts to restrict voting access, Democrats are facing new questions about how they will actually pass voting rights reforms through Congress.
Related: ‘A ticking timebomb’: Democrats’ push for voting rights law faces tortuous path
Continue reading...To China’s fury, Joe Biden has ordered a review of rival theories about lab leaks and animal hosts
President Joe Biden has ordered US intelligence agencies to conduct a 90-day review of what is known about the origins of Covid-19 and whether it could have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan. So what does this mean for the lab leak theory?
Continue reading...Democrats have yet to convince their entire Senate caucus to back the House-passed For the People Act – let alone beat the filibuster
After six months of aggressive Republican efforts to restrict voting access, Democrats are facing new questions about how they will actually pass voting rights reforms through Congress.
The most recent hand-wringing comes as Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democratic senator, made clear earlier this month he still is not on board with the For the People Act, which would require early voting, automatic and same-day registration, and prevent the severe manipulation of district boundaries for partisan gain.
Continue reading...US trade representative announced plans to sue as Canadian officials face growing tensions with US
After a tumultuous four years living next door to Donald Trump, many Canadians had hoped that relations with their closest neighbour would mend under Joe Biden. The former president had slapped tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, threatened levies on the automotive sector, and called the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, “two-faced”.
But in recent weeks, Canadian officials have faced growing tensions with the US under Biden as leaders on both sides confront domestic political challenges.
Continue reading...Joe Biden has ordered the US intelligence community to 'redouble' its efforts studying the origins of coronavirus, adding that it will continue to press for China to participate in a full investigation. The deputy White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, confirmed the investigation would include any possibility the trail might lead to a Chinese lab. 'China wasn't transparent enough,' she said. 'We have been saying that for a very long time, that China needed to provide more access to the lab, cooperate more fully with the scientific investigators'
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