Member of Capitol attack committee says decision not to charge the two with contempt of Congress could ‘impede our work’California congressman Adam Schiff – a member of the select House committee investigating the deadly Capitol riots – said Sunday it was “a grave disappointment” that federal prosecutors opted against charging two former Trump White House officials who ignored subpoenas seeking information on the January 6 attack.Schiff said on CBS’s Face the Nation that he couldn’t see why the federal justice department would treat Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and communications coordinator Dan Scavino differently than it did ex-aides Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon. Continue reading...
Senator Chris Murphy says measures passed in Florida after Parkland shooting could attract Republican supportThe Democratic senator leading his party’s push for stronger gun laws said on Sunday he believed measures passed in Florida following the 2018 high school shooting in Parkland could attract Republican support and provide a workable template for action in Congress.Chris Murphy of Connecticut, speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, said he was optimistic that recent mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, could finally prompt enough bipartisan support for legislation that has previously proven elusive. Continue reading...
The program offers funds to minority-owned businesses, or those in low-income areas, as well as to companies that have trouble attracting financingA not-so-new federal program to help small businesses just began distributing funds this past week. How much? How does $10bn sound?That’s not a joke. The federal government is making available $10bn and all small businesses in the country are eligible for the money. This is not the paycheck protection program or the economic injury disaster loan program. Both of those Covid-relief efforts have expired. This is also not a loan program from the Small Business Administration. It’s from the treasury department. The program is called the state small business credit initiative, or SSBCI, and it works like this. Continue reading...
By failing to act boldly and face down the Russians, Nato ensures this conflict will run and runIt seems odd, to put it mildly, that Joe Biden is happy to supply Ukraine with advanced rockets as long as it does not fire them at Russia. Vladimir Putin can aim missiles at Ukrainians from across the border whenever he wants – but Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s troops can’t shoot back at their tormentors.Strange, too, that the UN is seeking Russia’s agreement for convoys to escort grain from Odesa and other Ukrainian ports. It’s Putin who is preventing 22 million tonnes of grain reaching the Middle East and Africa, where millions face famine. Don’t ask permission. Send a multinational force to smash his illegal blockade. Continue reading...
The former US secretary of state worries that it’s not enough to get things done. Candidates need brazen performancePerformative politics is on trial and, for all its successes, has begun to be found wanting. Boris Johnson’s electoral triumphs that delivered the debacle of Brexit and what is now obviously a zombie government have shown the limits of theatre and showmanship over substance, reason and integrity.However, mastery of “performative politics”, the term used by Hillary Clinton in an interview with me last week, has been until now a prerequisite for democratic success. Johnson is, or was, a master, the former US secretary of state acknowledged: the rumpled hair, artful self-deprecation and ever-present penchant to find the comic angle all a smokescreen to cover his ambition, entitlement and rightwing views. Masters also are Donald Trump, her husband, Bill, and Barack Obama, but the latter two both predated the worst of today’s social media. Continue reading...
There is very little competitive validity in the LIV Golf Series, with golfers willing pawns in the sportswashing exerciseThere is a key problem with the distribution of a $4m (£3.2m) first prize in a tournament that features a shotgun start. There will be no way of knowing if the winning putt at the Centurion Club on Saturday is to be holed on the 1st, 7th, 13th or any other green. Perhaps the conventional stroke-play format as used on mainstream tours is boring to some but at least people know where to be for the denouement.If this were the only potentially messy element of the LIV Golf Series, which makes its debut in Hertfordshire on Thursday, Greg Norman would have no cause to worry. Instead, confirmation that Graeme McDowell and Dustin Johnson would feature in the $25m event sparked the kind of backlash that was inevitable given bottomless financing from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The Royal Bank of Canada ended its sponsorship of both players. Golf, once such a safe domain for the corporate classes, now carries an element of risk as never before. Continue reading...
The first of eight congressional hearings will start on Thursday but emulating the impact of 1973’s Watergate sessions will be hard in today’s fractured media and political environmentOn Thursday the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol will open the first of eight hearings, marking the turning point when “one of the single most important congressional investigations in history”, as the Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney billed it, will finally go public.It will be the culmination of almost a year of intensive activity that, aside from a succession of leaks, has largely been conducted in private. More than 1,000 people have been called for depositions and interviews to cast light on the events of January 6, 2021, when hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in answer to Donald Trump’s call to “fight like hell” to prevent Congress certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory. Continue reading...
John Dean speaks on the 1972 Watergate break-in and why he has never been more concerned about US democracy than now“I’ve never escaped Watergate,” says John Dean, as once again he allows the years to melt away, the old faces to crowd in and the secret tapes to whirr in his mind. “There’s just no choice. I’m living in the bubble. It’s become a fact of life.”America has never escaped Watergate either. The biggest political scandal of the 20th century, and the only one to cause a presidential resignation, has become a byword for lost innocence and lost faith in institutions. Along with the Vietnam war, it marked the end of an era in which a president’s words were met with automatic trust rather than default scepticism. Continue reading...
With op-eds and speeches but no one-on-ones, observers say the president risks losing the public’s trust and reporters’ good willHe delivered a primetime address to the nation. He wrote two columns in leading newspapers. And he took some off-the-cuff questions from reporters. But once again Joe Biden did not this week sit down for an interview with a broadcaster or newspaper. Nor did he hold a press conference.The US president, who promised to rebuild trust and transparency after Donald Trump’s adversarial tenure, is facing criticism as Sunday marks 116 days since his last press interview. Continue reading...
The Washington conference, a high-level council of war, will be headlined by Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary generalBilderberg is back with a vengeance. After a pandemic gap of two years, the elite global summit is being rebooted in a security-drenched hotel in Washington DC, with a high-powered guest list that includes the heads of NATO, the CIA, GCHQ, the US national security council, two European prime ministers, a healthy sprinkle of tech billionaires, and Henry Kissinger.What a difference those two years have made. The western world order, which the Bilderberg group has been quietly nudging into shape for the best part of 70 years, is in all kinds of flux. Continue reading...
John Roemer, who sat on the Juneau county circuit court bench for 14 years, was found dead in his home by policeA retired Wisconsin judge was gunned down and killed in his home on Friday, and his suspected killer – a former defendant in his courtroom – shot himself in the basement, a government official familiar with the investigation said Saturday.The official confirmed John Roemer, 68, who sat on the Juneau county circuit court bench for 14 years beginning in 2004, was found shot dead in his home in the community of New Lisbon about 6.30am Friday. His alleged killer, identified Saturday as 56-year-old Douglas Uhde, was then discovered in the basement with a self-inflicted bullet wound, and was brought to a hospital. Continue reading...
The Abbott facility was closed in February after a recall involving bacterial infections in infants which led to a nationwide shortageThe baby formula manufacturer Abbott announced that it would resume production at a key Sturgis, Michigan, plant on Saturday, months after a shutdown at the facility spurred a nationwide shortage. The company in February recalled baby formula made at that plant, after four infants who consumed products from there developed bacterial infections, with two of the babies dying.Food and Drug Administration officials said they had encountered Cronobacter sakazakii bacterium at this plant. FDA and Centers for Disease Control testing determined the genetic sequence of these Cronobacter did not match that of bacterium in these infants – meaning they did not find a connection to Sturgis, CNN reported. Continue reading...
The Pennsylvania lawmaker’s condition is ‘stable’, says his doctor, and he should be able to return to the Senate campaign trailJohn Fetterman, the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and Democratic senate nominee, said Friday that he “almost died” after suffering a stroke on 13 May. Fetterman, whose health problems have reportedly prompted concerns about his campaign, also revealed that he had cardiomyopathy, which makes it more difficult for the heart to pump blood throughout the body.In a statement, Fetterman admitted that he had neglected his health. “As my doctor said, I should have taken my health more seriously. The stroke I suffered … didn’t come out of nowhere,” he said in a note, according to CBS News’s Ed O’Keefe. Continue reading...
The brothers helping run Kendal Nutricare on being ‘best mates’, working with their father and tackling a US shortageInstead of hanging out with venture capitalists or tech entrepreneurs as they used to, brothers Dylan and Will McMahon, and their father, Ross, headed to the Liverpool baby and toddler show last weekend to talk to parents about infant formula.Their family business, Kendal Nutricare, founded in 2015, is the only British baby milk producer, competing against multinational food giants Danone and Nestlé. UK market share for their Kendamil brand has jumped from 0.5% in April 2020 to more than 10% now. Continue reading...
Republican congressman said he would support measures limiting access to highly lethal firearms used in recent mass shootingsA Republican New York congressman who recently voiced support of gun control legislation announced on Friday that he will no longer seek reelection after receiving backlash over his stance.Chris Jacobs’ support of such legislation – which came in the wake of deadly mass shootings at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store and Uvalde, Texas, elementary school – had prompted his conservative and GOP colleagues to withdraw their support. Continue reading...
Mark Collins took his four grandsons to his ranch but within hours they fell victim to an escaped prisoner on a murderous rampageMark Collins had brought his four grandsons Waylon, Karson, Hudson and Bryson up to his ranch north-west of Houston on Thursday for what sounded like a southern boy’s dream: shooting guns, taking boats on big ponds and fishing.While Collins knew authorities had been looking in the general area for a convicted murderer with ties to a Mexican drug cartel who had broken free from a prison bus three weeks earlier, he may not have known that the fugitive had apparently burglarized a home next door to the ranch, according to family friend David Crain. Continue reading...
In a ‘newly unearthed’ interview, the Republican opined that porn is one reason why birth rates in the US are declining. Porn is not to blame – but blaming it is easyLike all Republicans, JD Vance thinks that banning guns is a very bad idea. On Thursday the Republican Senate candidate and bestselling author of the memoir Hillbilly Elegy tweeted a long explanation as to why Joe Biden’s ideas about gun control are misguided. Enacting new laws won’t do anything to improve the gun violence problem in the US, he tweeted. Bans don’t work.Arwa Mahdawi’s new book, Strong Female Lead, is available for order Continue reading...
Wasps are ecologically and economically important – and they don’t want to sting you, they just want your sugar and sausagesEvery summer, with the predictability of hay fever and impromptu barbecues, I am asked by friends, family, strangers and the media: “What’s the point of wasps?”Although some people will be starting to worry about wasps as they set out their jubilee picnics this bank holiday weekend, wasp complaint season usually kicks off in mid-August in the UK. It’s my summer holiday calibrator, and generally peaks just about the time when I’ve started to unwind from the busy chaos of my life as an academic. I’m not grumbling (my family does that for me); I never turn down the chance to evangelise about wasps. But I am beginning to sound like a stuck record. Continue reading...
Where past celebrations have been about unity, empire and nation, this is a preview of a very different BritainThat was the jubilee, that was. Well, almost. The celebration is not over yet. Lots of people had a good time and their enthusiasm overflowed. Lots of others were less bothered but enjoyed the show all the same. For a minority, it was historic and glorious; for a different minority, infantilising and awful. But the official revels now are almost ended. On Monday, it will be back to war in Ukraine, the cost of living and Tory MPs’ letters.How much, if at all, has Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee mattered in the larger scheme of things British? It’s easy to wax pompous about this on both sides. Enduring monarchical splendour? Merely bread and circuses? It doesn’t help that jubilees are such odd events, contingent and ephemeral. They follow no defined pattern, and have no constitutional significance. Those of us with grey hair are now enjoying, if that’s the right word, our fourth royal jubilee in 45 years. But our children and grandchildren may never see another one. Continue reading...
Bass built a reputation as a progressive but her views on divisive issues have led to protests from local organizersIn the summer of 1994, Tony Zepeda and dozens of other teenagers marched through the streets of Los Angeles dressed in fake prison uniforms and toting balls and chains.California had just passed its punitive Three Strikes law, which mandated 25 years to life in prison for a third felony conviction of any kind. Continue reading...
Much of America does not seem to be buying the optimistic vision that Biden and his team are sellingAs he celebrated the impressive May jobs report on Friday, Joe Biden went to great lengths to paint a rosy picture of the US economy. While acknowledging the difficult reality of high prices caused by near record-high inflation, Biden pointed to the 390,000 jobs created last month to argue that the US is in a strong economic position.“I know that even with today’s good news, a lot of Americans remain anxious, and I understand the feeling,” the US president said. “But there’s every reason for the American people to feel confident that we’ll meet these challenges.” Continue reading...
After Columbine, FBI training urged that fast action is critical to saving lives. Somehow that lesson hasn’t been learnedIt took more than an hour for police officers to enter and stop the gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers at Uvalde’s Robb elementary school last Tuesday in Texas.In that time, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos fired more than 100 shots while as many as 19 police officers stood outside waiting and desperate parents tried to break victims out of the school windows. It has been reported that one teacher and several children placed 911 calls while the gunman was inside the building. Continue reading...
Chelsea Becker, prosecuted for murder after her stillbirth, spent 16 months in jail: ‘Why did the hospital call police?’On 4 November 2019, TV stations across California blasted Chelsea Becker’s photo on their news editions. The “search was on” for a “troubled” 25-year-old woman wanted for the “murder of her unborn baby”, news anchors said, warning viewers not to approach if they spotted her but to call the authorities.The next day, Becker was asleep at the home she was staying in when officers with the Hanford police department arrived. Continue reading...
Decision marks major blow for House committee investigating US Capitol attackThe US Department of Justice will not pursue charges of criminal contempt of Congress against top former Trump White House officials Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino for refusing to comply with subpoenas in the congressional investigation into the January 6 attack on the Capitol.The decision – communicated to the counsel for the House of Representatives on Friday morning – marks a major blow for the House select committee investigating January 6, which had sought prosecutions for the two Trump aides in criminal referrals. Continue reading...
Two weeks after the election, David McCormick acknowledged that the statewide recount will not make up the deficit of votesDavid McCormick has conceded the Republican primary in Pennsylvania for US Senate to the celebrity heart surgeon Dr Mehmet Oz, ending his campaign more than two weeks after the election as he acknowledged an ongoing statewide recount wouldn’t give him enough votes to make up the deficit.McCormick, a former hedge fund CEO, said on Friday evening that he had called Oz to concede. Continue reading...
Navarro in custody after indictment on two counts of contempt of Congress after he defied subpoena issued by January 6 committeePeter Navarro, a top former White House adviser to Donald Trump, was taken into custody after being indicted by a federal grand jury on Friday on two counts of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena issued by the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack.The indictment against Navarro marks the first time that the justice department has pursued charges against a Trump White House official who worked in the administration on January 6 and participated in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Continue reading...
Gonzalo Lopez, who had links to a Mexican drug cartel, had been on the run since escaping prison bus and stabbing driverA convicted murderer with ties to a Mexican drug cartel killed four Houston-area children and their grandfather before police shot him dead on Thursday, more than three weeks after he escaped a prison bus in Texas and went on the run, authorities said.Officers said Gonzalo Lopez, 46, who escaped from custody while serving two life sentences, killed the five family members – all strangers to him – and stole their truck while they were at their weekend cabin. Continue reading...
Ex-vice-president’s chief of staff warned head of his Secret Service detail that Trump was about to turn on PenceA day before the deadly attack on the US Capitol, Mike Pence’s chief of staff warned the head of Pence’s Secret Service detail that Donald Trump was about to turn on his own vice-president, endangering his security.The news was reported on Friday by Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, who said she uncovered it during research for a book on Trump due out in October. Continue reading...
Matthew Lee Comiskey was charged on Friday with five felony counts for making interstate threats starting 31 August last yearA Florida man has been arrested for allegedly threatening the life of Lauren Boebert, the far-right Republican congresswoman from Colorado.Authorities arrested Matthew Lee Comiskey of Palm Beach county, Florida, on Friday and charged him with five felony counts of making interstate threats. Continue reading...
Vicky Umodu stumbled upon free listing including two sofas and a matching chair – and a surprise stashed in a cushionA California woman made a stunning discovery after bringing home a set of sofas that she found on Craigslist: more than $36,000 stashed inside a cushion.Vicky Umodu of San Bernardino was browsing Craigslist in search of furniture for her new home when she stumbled upon a free listing that included two sofas and a matching chair. Continue reading...
China has silenced dissent in the city, but exiles are finding ways to keep its spirit aliveThree years ago, Hong Kong rose up in an extraordinary defence of the freedoms that had been promised to it until 2047 on its return to China, but which were fast vanishing. The one in four people who protested were under no illusion that they would win. Yet nor did they anticipate quite how swiftly and ruthlessly the authorities would crush them and impose a draconian national security law.Matters have only got worse. The judiciary, media, academia and civil society are under unrelenting pressure. Last month, John Lee – the security chief who oversaw the crackdown – was voted in as Hong Kong’s new chief executive by the city’s election committee, made up of about 0.02% of the city’s population. He was the sole candidate. Days later, 90-year-old Cardinal Zen, Hong Kong’s most senior (and beloved) Catholic cleric, was arrested for his involvement with a fund that had provided legal and financial assistance to people prosecuted over the protests. Continue reading...
Huma Abedin says candidate and her team would feel obliged to laugh off offensive remarksWhen Hillary Clinton ran for the US presidency in 2016, she received sexist comments “on a constant basis” and her team had “no idea” how to deal with them, her former aide Huma Abedin has said.Abedin, who worked closely with Clinton on her campaign, recalled that the former secretary of state was deluged with openly sexist remarks as well as unhelpful advice, or instructions to emulate male politicians. Continue reading...
Analysis: Joe Biden called for action in a televised address after the mass shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo but power of the gun lobby and political calculation are likely to prevail“Enough!”Joe Biden repeated that word 11 times during a televised address to the American people on Thursday night as he lamented how schools and other public places in the US have been turned into “killing fields” by gun violence. Continue reading...
The reactions followed familiar party lines: Democrats agree it’s time to act, Republicans call the speech ‘divisive’Joe Biden’s impassioned plea for a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in America has met with mixed reactions from US lawmakers, whose views on his primetime call for action appeared to break down along familiar party lines.Some Democratic lawmakers responded to the US president’s address to the nation by praising his leadership on a crisis that has horrified many Americans in recent weeks, while some Republicans framed the president’s speech as liberal misdirection as they continue to support gun rights. Continue reading...
Late actor’s home since 1968 in the exclusive Brentwood neighborhood will probably be demolished for a new buildThe Los Angeles house of the late actor Betty White is officially off the market, selling for over $10.6m.White’s house, which is located in the Brentwood neighborhood, sold for a total of $10,678,000 on Thursday after being on the market only since April. Continue reading...
I'm enjoying the pomp of the event and the grandeur of those who hate it. There’s always something interesting about these royals, if you care to lookHarold Nicolson famously wrote that the Queen became Queen in 1952 “while perched in a tree in Africa watching the rhinoceros come down to the pool to drink”. She was wearing jeans. For much of the succeeding 70 years, she has been the one for whom royal safarists will wait patiently for a short glimpse, which they got on Thursday when she came on to the Buckingham Palace balcony dressed like a particularly fragile Wedgwood vase.The thing about royal pageantry is that even committed ironists wilt in the face of it. Mark Twain covered Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee, sent over to do the job for American readers by William Randolph Hearst, and only managed a single, final sentence of wryness after several thousand awestruck words. “One can enjoy a rainbow,” Twain reflected, “without necessarily forgetting the forces that made it.” Continue reading...
This authoritarian worldview is gaining momentum in America. What’s to stop its ideas taking seed in the UK?In British politics, the term “new right” conjures memories of the philosophy of the Thatcher years: individualism, free-market economics and a small state. In today’s US, it conjures a radical break with such views. Broadly speaking, denizens of the American new right advocate an industrial strategy, welfare programmes consistent with the traditional family unit, a crackdown on immigration and using the power of the state to enforce rightwing moral values. Its most worrying common strand is an apocalyptic fury at “woke” leftists and their supposed totalitarian hold over corporations, colleges and culture – with some proponents even believing that doing away with democracy would be a price worth paying to stop them.Although the new right is not synonymous with Donald Trump, it has certainly built on his authoritarian worldview and the scorched intellectual earth he left behind after setting fire to the Republican party. Key figures associated with the new right have hitched themselves personally to Trump’s wagon, while others have bolstered his conspiracies about the 2020 election. Its ideas are gaining serious momentum now, attracting many young adherents and inspiring a rush of trend pieces in mainstream US media. JD Vance, a new right darling, has just won the Republican nomination for a Senate seat in Ohio. Tucker Carlson, a big Vance booster, has built one of the most racist and possibly most successful shows in the history of cable news, as the New York Times put it.Jon Allsop is a freelance journalist. He writes CJR’s newsletter The Media Today Continue reading...
The fourth-quarter meltdown that was aberrant and confounding for the Warriors in Game 1 of the NBA finals was more like business as usual for the unbowed CelticsSometimes it’s hard to find the right words, whether competing in the National Spelling Bee or Thursday night’s other high-profile, high-pressure contest, the first game of the NBA finals.Al Horford kept it simple. No fancy phraseology, no straining for meaning. “My guys found me tonight and I knocked ‘em down,” Horford said on ABC after his central role in the Boston Celtics’ stunning and strange 120-108 victory over the Golden State Warriors. “A lot of fun.” Continue reading...
Thousands of people huddled together for protection move north as leaders gather for Biden’s Summit of the Americas in LALiozanys Comeja credits her survival to her teacup chihuahua, Mia. Originally from Venezuela, Comeja moved to Colombia five years ago, but decided to leave her new life behind this month due to the rising cost of living. She crossed the Darien Gap, a notorious stretch of jungle between Colombia and Panama, with Mia tucked in her backpack, eventually making her way across eight countries. Now, Comeja is hoping the dog will help her make it through the grueling final leg of their journey.Comeja has joined about 11,000 others who on Monday will leave Tapachula, a sweltering city on the Mexico-Guatemala border, and head north for the United States. It will depart as leaders from across the hemisphere gather in Los Angeles for the Summit of the Americas. Continue reading...
Democrats are heading into this year’s elections without having tried even basic steps to balance the chamber, including ending the filibuster or admitting liberal Washington DC as a stateWhat more can be said about mass shootings in America? We who find ourselves outraged anew by each fresh massacre have settled into a routine. There’s now a canon of essays and satirical pieces to share on social media; in conversations online and off, we offer familiar rebuttals to familiar Republican diversions and deflections. Democratic politicians, for their part, have just about perfected their own boilerplate language. “When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” Biden asked in his Tuesday speech on the Uvalde shooting. “When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?”For the first time since the Sandy Hook shooting a decade ago, the Democratic party has the power to do what needs to be done. It controls the White House. It controls the House of Representatives. And it controls the Senate, where a bipartisan group of senators has talked in recent days about measures – from universal background checks to incentives for states to allow the confiscation of guns from threatening individuals – that probably would not have a prayer if Republicans were in the majority. But they still might not even now. While we will not have a clear sense of where everyone stands until the Senate returns from a fortuitously timed holiday, gun control legislation faces the same basic obstacles that have hobbled the rest of the Democratic party’s agenda – the filibuster and the rhetoric of consensus.Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...
Community violence prevention workers have established a track record of successfully intervening in retaliatory gun violenceFor decades, US researchers have studied behavioral signs that could help identify people who are at risk of carrying out mass violence.They have looked at histories of drug abuse, interpersonal violence or “red flag behaviors” like posting images of firearms on social media and threatening their classmates or co-workers. Continue reading...
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