A meeting to decide the fate of Pete Arredondo has been delayed and his leave is now unpaid, suggesting a dismissal is imminentSchool district officials in Uvalde, Texas, have cut off payments to their police force’s embattled chief, who had been on administrative leave from his job but was still being compensated.The decision on Friday comes amid scrutiny and criticism of how police handled the deadly attack at Robb elementary, where a gunman killed 21 people nearly two months ago. Continue reading...
Jury finds former Trump adviser guilty on two counts of criminal contempt for refusing to appear before House committeeSteve Bannon, the former top strategist to Donald Trump, was convicted on Friday in his contempt of Congress trial - a victory for the House January 6 select committee that referred him for prosecution as it continues to investigate the former president’s role in the Capitol attack.The jury in federal court took less than three hours to return its verdict and found Bannon guilty on two contempt charges stemming from his refusal to comply last year with a subpoena in the congressional investigation seeking documents and testimony. Continue reading...
White House seeks to create ‘teachable moment’ after president’s diagnosis on ThursdayThe White House physician has said Joe Biden’s mild Covid-19 symptoms are improving and that he is responding well to treatment, as the administration worked to portray the image of a president on the job despite his illness.Biden had an elevated temperature of 99.4F on Thursday, but that went down with Tylenol, according to a new note from Dr Kevin O’Connor. Continue reading...
Law allows people to sue anyone who distributes illegal assault weapons, parts used to build weapons or .50 caliber riflesCalifornia punched back Friday against two recent landmark US supreme court decisions as the state’s governor signed a controversial, first-in-the-nation gun control law patterned after a Texas anti-abortion law.The action by Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, comes one month after conservative justices overturned women’s constitutional right to abortions and undermined gun control laws in states including California. Continue reading...
Panel lays out its case that the 45th president orchestrated a plot to keep himself in office, but its work is not doneDuring the course of its landmark summer of hearings, the House select committee investigating the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol has sought to show that Donald Trump was at the center of a multi-layer conspiracy to seize a second term in office, accusing him of having “summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack”.Then, for 187 minutes on 6 January, the president let the firestorm he ignited burn, the panel argued in a gripping capstone presentation on Thursday. Continue reading...
Justices decline to freeze lower court order that blocked officials from changing deportation guidance from Trump eraThe supreme court will not allow the Biden administration to implement an immigration policy that prioritizes deportation of people arriving in the US illegally who pose the greatest public safety risk.The court’s order late on Thursday leaves the policy frozen nationwide for now. The vote was 5-4, with conservative Amy Coney Barrett joining liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and newcomer to the bench Ketanji Brown Jackson in saying they would have allowed the Biden administration to put in place the guidance. Continue reading...
Complaints from detainees and advocates reveal a disturbing pattern of physical abuse and ignoring medical needsIn August 2001, Bel’Or, a native of Congo, arrived at Philadelphia international airport with one suitcase, a visiting visa, and a dream to study at an American university. In the two decades that followed, he learned English and received a bachelor’s in finance from Temple University on a student visa. Then one night in 2018, as he returned from spending time with friends to mark the first anniversary of his wife’s death, he was arrested by police for a DUI. On 27 January 2020, Bel’Or (identified here only by his his first name for his protection) was placed in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody on non-deportable charges.Once detained, Bel’Or, who had long enjoyed his freedom as one of the 4.6 million Black immigrants in America, joined a new group: the more than 4,500 Black immigrants inside ICE facilities. ICE’s database lists about 25,000 detainees nationwide, but does not maintain reliable inmate demographics. Non-profits such as Freedom for Immigrants (FFI) and Black Alliance for Just Immigration estimate that roughly 20% of Black immigrants are waiting for deportation. Continue reading...
It’s not too late to avert the climate crisis from becoming even more deadly – but the window is closingHigh temperature records are being obliterated across western Europe, some of which had been previously set during the heatwave in 2003 that is estimated to have left tens of thousands dead. Raging wildfires are displacing thousands of people, one of the many compounding impacts of the climate crisis. This heatwave is another reminder that we have already breached unsafe levels of global heating.As our planet warms, these lethal heatwaves will become more frequent and more intense. In fact, we may look back on these years as some of the coolest, compared with what will come if we do not act now. Human life will encounter life-threatening impacts with increasing frequency and mounting consequences. Countless scientific reports have been conveying this reality for decades.Andrea Dutton is an international expert on climate change and sea level rise who is a MacArthur Fellow and a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Continue reading...
What was Trump doing in those crucial hours when democracy was on the line, when lives were in danger, when our very constitutional system of government hung in the balance? Absolutely nothingFor what was originally supposed to be the final January 6 hearing, the committee was faced with a difficult task. The ninth broadcast was meant to be the culmination of the investigation, with a primetime schedule that would allow the congresspeople to review their findings, repeat their sharpest analyses of Donald Trump’s legal violations and moral derelictions, and make their final case to their two most significant audiences – the American public, on the one hand, and the attorney general, Merrick Garland, on the other – that Trump’s conduct on and before January 6 merits prosecution.But they were also meant to do all of this through revelations of Trump’s own conduct at the White House in the hours while the riot unfolded, conduct that was remarkable not for Trump’s scheming but for his inaction. What was Trump doing during those crucial hours when democracy was on the line, when violence erupted, when lives were in danger and our very constitutional system of government hung in the balance? He did not intervene to stop the insurrection; he did not issue orders or offer help to the military and law enforcement bodies that could have quelled it. Mostly, he just sat on his ass.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...
The government has been slow to distribute tests and vaccines and has issued confusing recommendations: ‘it’s Covid 2.0’, Staley saysPeter Staley makes an unlikely member of the US public health establishment. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the Aids activist was arrested 10 times for dramatic protests against government agencies and healthcare companies that included blocking traffic, breaking into buildings, and chaining himself to the balcony of the New York Stock Exchange.But Staley’s years of criticizing the nation’s decision makers on health crises, particularly as part of the legendary Aids pressure group Act Up New York, have brought him into the fold. As the co-founder of the group PrEP4All, Staley has the director of the Centers for Disease Control, Rochelle Walensky, “on speed dial”. He regularly emails with the National Security Council’s pandemic chief, Raj Panjabi. And he has become close friends with Dr Anthony Fauci, who he says frequently turned to him for advice during the coronavirus pandemic. Continue reading...
The January 6 committee shared testimony showing that the ex-president rejected pleas from even his family. Plus, Twitter reacts to footage of Josh Hawley fleeing rioters
The gripping hearings have laid out a remarkably complex plot of a simple story: a president’s attempt to blindly retain powerAfter eight gripping hearings, the panel investigating the January 6 attack has completed its first phase of laying out one of the most consequential stories of the modern era: how America’s democracy came to the brink of collapse in the aftermath of the 2020 election.It was a story that at times seemed remarkably complex, involving the vice-president, justice department, advisers inside and outside government, state and federal elected officials, election workers, fringe legal theories and violent extremist groups. But at it’s core it was a very simple story: a president who was determined to stay in power and use whatever power he could to do so. Continue reading...
Fox News’ primetime stars chided Biden for contracting the virus they say he alleged couldn’t be caught with a vaccineOn Thursday night as the Congressional hearings into the January 6 Capitol riot drew to a close, Tucker Carlson directed his outrage at a president he felt had lied and was not being held accountable for falsehoods that shook popular faith in the American democratic system. But he wasn’t talking about Donald Trump inciting rioters to storm the Capitol. He was talking about Joe Biden getting Covid.Whilemillions of people last night tuned into America’s other TV news channels and heard testimony about what Trump did, or rather did not do, during the hours when the rioters stormed the Capitol, Fox News viewers saw the network’s primetime stars Carlson and Sean Hannity chide the “twice jabbed, double-boosted” president for contracting the virus they say he alleged couldn’t be caught with a vaccine. Continue reading...
The committee investigating the January 6 riots shared testimony showing that the ex-president rejected pleas from even his familyDonald Trump refused for hours to call off the deadly attack perpetrated by a group of his supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, the House select committee investigating the insurrection declared in its primetime hearing on Thursday.The committee shared testimony from former White House aides indicating that Trump repeatedly rejected pleas from his senior advisers and even his own family members – including his eldest daughter and adviser, Ivanka Trump – to immediately issue a statement calling off the mob swarming the Capitol. Continue reading...
The hearings of the House January 6 committee have presented extraordinary testimony about Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election and his supporters’ deadly assault on the US Capitol. Here are the key moments from the eight primetime hearings – in eight minutes
Whereas the first seven hearings set out unforgivingly what Trump had done, this one told a gripping story about what he did not doThey did it. They pulled it off. Anyone who feared that the January 6 committee’s season finale would turn into an anti-climax – more Game of Thrones than M*A*S*H – need not have worried. There were shocks, horrors and even laughs.The eight “episodes” have exceeded all expectations with their crisp narrative and sharp editing, a far cry from the usual dry proceedings on Capitol Hill. Each has recapped what came before, teased what is to come and compellingly joined the dots against Donald Trump. Continue reading...
The committee into the January 6 US Capitol riot showed Josh Hawley, the rightwing senator of Missouri, raising his fist in solidarity with the crowds massed before later playing security footage of him fleeing as rioters breached the Capitol
The 45th president was seen on video trying to record a speech after the attack on the Capitol the day beforeOuttakes from a filmed address given by Donald Trump the day after the Capitol attack and played on Thursday by the January 6 committee show the then-president insisting: “I don’t want to say the election’s over.”The never-before-seen footage was played in the ninth dramatic public hearing staged by the House committee, a session which focused on Trump’s refusal to act while the attack on the Capitol took place. Continue reading...
Trump never reached out to the FBI or the national guard to protect Congress. He rebuffed entreaties from his aides – including his own daughter – to end the crisis. That’s because he liked what he sawThursday night’s congressional hearing on the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol lived up to its billing as a season finale. A modern-day Nero, Trump watched reports of the invasion of the Capitol on Fox News from the comfort of his private White House dining room. The commander-in-chief ignored repeated calls to end the mayhem.“The mob was his people.” Trump never reached out to the military, the FBI, the defense department or the national guard to intervene. He rebuffed entreaties from Ivanka Trump, Mark Meadows and Pat Cipollone to end the downwardly spiraling situation.Lloyd Green is a regular contributor and served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 Continue reading...
Capitol security footage of the Missouri senator spurred laughter during the hearing and spawned online ridiculeThe House January 6 committee on Thursday played Capitol security footage which showed the Missouri Republican senator Josh Hawley, who famously raised a fist to protesters outside, running for his safety once those protesters breached the building. It prompted a flurry of online memes ridiculing Hawley fleeing from the very people he had earlier encouraged.Presenting the committee’s case, the Virginia Democrat Elaine Luria showed pictures of House members and senators leaving their chambers. Continue reading...
Zeldin, who is unharmed, was giving speech when a man climbed onstage and appeared to begin wrestling with himUS Representative Lee Zeldin, the Republican candidate for New York governor running against Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul, was attacked by a man who apparently tried to stab him at an upstate event Thursday, but the congressman managed to escape uninjured, his campaign said.Zeldin was giving a speech when a man climbed onstage and appeared to begin wrestling with the congressman, said Katie Vincentz, a spokesperson for his campaign. Continue reading...
Deadspin blew up the tropes and traditions of old-school sports media, changing the industry by challenging the accepted narrativeWill Leitch was sitting on a panel when he was confronted by an exasperated ESPN executive. Roughly six months earlier, Leitch, then the editor-in-chief of Deadspin, had published a leaked internal memo from the network – a massive 50-page intra-office Q&A about some programming items as well as tree planting, parking issues, and sleeping security guards at ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut.“It was just a reminder that ESPN – the most powerful force in all of sports then and now, but certainly even a larger percentage of it then – was just as banal and stupid and pedantic as your paper company in Omaha, Nebraska,” Leitch said.This article was originally published by Global Sport Matters, a project of the Global Sport Institute at Arizona State University. For more stories like this, visit the Global Sport Matters website. Continue reading...
Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republican lawmakers on the January 6 committee and an Air Force veteran, said Donald Trump 'did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home. He chose not to act'. Kinzinger added Trump violated his oath of office during the attack on the US Capitol
The 2021 playoffs had seven teams that had not reached the postseason the year before. Here are five candidates who may join the turnaround club this seasonAfter years of treading water, the Broncos were finally able to engineer a move for one of the game’s top quarterbacks this offseason, landing Russell Wilson in a blockbuster trade in March. Continue reading...
Capitol attack committee provides detailed account of insurrection and confirms this will not be final hearingThe January 6 committee returned to primetime on Thursday night, as the House panel investigating the Capitol insurrection held its eighth and final – for now, at least – public hearing.Like the first hearing, Thursday’s event took place in the evening, as the panel sought to capture the widest possible audience for its presentation. The first hearing, which was held last month, was watched by at least 20 million people. Continue reading...
The agency concluded ‘nothing of evidentiary value’ was found in the search under the bridge in the 47-year-old caseThe FBI found no evidence of missing Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa during a search of land under a New Jersey bridge, a spokeswoman said Thursday.The Pulaski Skyway now becomes another dead end in the decades-long mystery that has stretched from a Michigan horse farm to the east coast: where are the remains of one of America’s most powerful labor leaders? Continue reading...
Thomas Lane convicted of violating Floyd’s civil rights as Derek Chauvin, convicted of murder, pinned Floyd’s neck with his kneeA federal judge has sentenced former Minneapolis police officer Thomas Lane to two and a half years in prison for violating George Floyd’s civil rights, calling Lane’s role in the restraint that killed Floyd “a very serious offense in which a life was lost” but handing down a sentence well below what prosecutors and Floyd’s family sought.Judge Paul Magnuson’s sentence was just slightly more than the 27 months that Lane’s attorney had requested, while prosecutors had asked for more than five years in prison – the low end of federal guidelines for the charge Lane was convicted on earlier this year. He said Lane, who faces sentencing in September on state charges in Floyd’s killing, will remain free on bond until he must turn himself in on October 4. Continue reading...
Officer was able to fire one shot that injured 15ft reptile because its midportion, not head, was around the victim’s neckA police officer in Pennsylvania fatally shot a 15ft snake in the head on Wednesday as it was coiled around a man’s neck while he was in cardiac arrest.Just after 2pm, two officers from the Upper Macungie Township police department responded to a call that a male with a snake wrapped around his neck. Continue reading...
The drivers object to a law requiring companies to hire them as employees rather than independent contractorsTruckers protesting against a California labor law effectively shut down cargo operations at the Port of Oakland, one of the busiest in the US.The protest began on Monday, when hundreds of independent big-rig truckers blocked the movement of cargo in and out of terminals at the port. On Wednesday, port officials warned that the shutdown would further exacerbate the congestion of containers. Continue reading...
High price of natural gas increases costs for other products including steel, cement and glassThe price of natural gas in the US has risen by nearly half in the past month, as drought and the war in Ukraine continue to bite and millions of Americans turn up their air conditioners in a heatwave.Natural-gas futures jumped 48% this month, including 10% on Wednesday, to $8.007 per million British thermal units (btu). The rise has come as other energy costs, including oil, have begun to drop from their June peaks. Continue reading...
President had hoped to announce plans for 100,000 extra US police officers but speech in Pennsylvania cancelledJoe Biden had been poised Thursday to unveil a $37bn proposal for fighting crime, including funding to help US police departments hire and train an additional 100,000 officers over a five-year period, according to reports, though after contracting Covid he cancelled the speech where he planned to announce it.The US president’s Safer America Plan would form part of his proposed 2023 budget and would require a green light from Congress, CNN reports. As well as the additional officers, it would reportedly include the launch of a $15bn grant initiative for states and localities to assist them in preventing violent offenses, and to “ease the burden on police officers by identifying non-violent situations that may merit a public health response or other response.” Continue reading...
Press chief says Biden, 79, who has had two boosters, is taking antiviral Paxlovid, while first lady Jill Biden has tested negative Continue reading...
by Vincent Ni China affairs correspondent on (#61N5C)
US military advises against House speaker’s reported trip as president is due to talk to Xi Jinping for first time in four monthsJoe Biden has cautioned against the reported trip to Taiwan next month by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, saying the US military had assessed “it is not a good idea right now”.The Financial Times reported earlier this week that Pelosi would lead a delegation to Taiwan in August to show support for the democratically ruled island, which Beijing claims is a breakaway province. The trip was initially scheduled for April but was postponed due to Pelosi testing positive for Covid at the time. Continue reading...
Almost 10% of deaths were homicide while number of unsheltered people in Maricopa county has at least tripled since 2016As many as 500 homeless people died in and around Phoenix, Arizona, during the first half of 2022, with almost 10% of deaths due to homicide, according to new figures from the county medical examiner’s office.The number of unsheltered people in Maricopa county, which includes the state capital Phoenix, has at least tripled since 2016. Continue reading...
Between March 2020 and March 2022, more than 11,400 hate incidents against Asian Americans have been reportedForty years after Vincent Chin, a Chinese American man, was scapegoated and beaten to death by two white men in Detroit, angered over the loss of American jobs to Japanese companies during an economic downturn, hate incidents against Asian Americans continue to surge, a new study released Wednesday found.Between March 2020 and March 2022, more than 11,400 hate incidents against Asian Americans have been reported across the United States, a report found by Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition that tracks such incidents and advocates for combatting hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Continue reading...
Black Americans increasingly more likely to receive long prison sentences than white Americans, thinktank analysis suggestsThe gap between Black and white Americans serving time in state prison for long prison sentences is growing, a new analysis of state data shows.Between 2005 and 2019, the share of Black Americans newly sentenced to state prison for more than 10 years grew from about 13% in 2005 to 19% in 2019. By comparison, during that same period, white Americans taken to state prison for long sentences grew from about 12% to 15%, according to a new report by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan thinktank. Continue reading...
If the hearings end without consequences for Trump, the main takeaway will be: this is how much you can get away with in 2020s AmericaYou have to say this for America in 2022. They know how to put on a show. The January 6 hearings in Washington have made for riveting viewing. Someday the last days of Trump will be turned into a movie, and it will make a worthy successor to films about political collapse like Downfall or The Damned. The testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, a surprise witness – just like in the movies! – offered one hit scene after another: the president of the United States saying he didn’t much care whether his own vice-president was hanged; Trump lunging for the steering wheel; the ketchup dripping down the wall after he threw his lunch. The last planned public hearing is scheduled for Thursday. CNN describes the event as having “all the makings of a potential blockbuster”. But the hearings already have been a massively successful work of political spectacle; and that’s where their danger lies.The organizers of the January 6 hearings had no choice but to resort to showmanship. They clearly learned the lesson of the Mueller report. When Mueller gathered the findings of his investigation into the Trump campaign’s expectation to “benefit electorally” from Russian disinformation campaigns, he released them as a book. He may as well have put his findings in a bottle and thrown them into the sea. Americans don’t go to books to understand the world any more. They go to their screens. That’s one of the most prominent truths revealed by the Trump years: spectacle wins. The sheer capacity to gather attention is, by far, the most important force in US politics.Stephen Marche is the author, most recently, of The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future Continue reading...
In last month’s Oklahoma v Castro-Huerta, the court tore up centuries of legal precedent and Native sovereigntyIn 1886, the supreme court in United States v Kagama described states as the “deadliest enemies” of Native nations. The case concerned criminal jurisdiction on Indian reservations, but it also recognized the role states, and their citizens, played in fueling Native conflict and dispossession. It was a rare occasion in which the court acknowledged it was making Indian law in the context of great violence and suffering.Paradoxically, the court found that the very nation that waged wars of extermination and invasion against Native people also declared itself their sole guardian, protecting its “wards” from the “local ill feeling” of land-hungry whites flooding Native lands in the western states. And where the US constitution was lacking in language defining federal authority over Native nations, the court had invented it, for better or for worse.Nick Estes is a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. He is a journalist, historian and host of The Red Nation Podcast. He is the author of Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance Continue reading...
The Salt Eaters Bookshop centers culture and community in every element, quickly becoming a literary haven for its patronsAsha Grant sits on a church pew near a table covered in vintage magazines. In the months leading up to the opening of the Salt Eaters Bookshop, she sourced the pew online from a soon-to-be shuttered church and the coffee table belonged to her grandmother.Grant says she wanted the Inglewood, California, bookstore to be imbued with a sense of home and inclusion. Bright pink wallpaper with a pattern of Zora Neale Hurston adds a pop of color, and upon entering, there’s a mirror with photos of Grant’s maternal grandmother and great-aunt. A quilt draped behind the pew was a community project and allowed people to donate denim and stitch it together. Continue reading...
Republicans have maneuvered to keep both congressional and state legislative maps in place for this fall’s election despite the state supreme court striking them down seven times this yearHello, and Happy Thursday,When I called up Catherine Turcer on Tuesday, she mentioned that her daughter had just sent her a text message saying it must feel like she’s living the same day over and over again.The Trump administration sought to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census as part of an effort to change the way congressional seats are allocatedA bipartisan group of senators has introduced a bill to reform the Electoral Count Act. Continue reading...
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