Tag: news today usa

Chuck Schumer doesn’t typically lead his caucus into losing votes that divide Democrats. He made an exception for election reform. The Senate majority leader has run a 50-50 Senate for a year now, longer than anyone else. The whole time, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have consistently communicated to Schumer that he wouldn’t get their votes to weaken the filibuster, no matter the underlying issue. But his decision to force the vote on the caucus anyway — and get 48 Democrats on the record for a unilateral rules change dubbed…

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The Supreme Court has rejected former President Donald Trump’s bid to use executive privilege to block a House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection from accessing a trove of records created by Trump’s White House. The ruling on Wednesday opens up a trove of documents to congressional investigators who have sought them to determine Trump’s actions and mindset in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 attack, as well as what he did as his supporters were rioting at the Capitol. Among the documents sought by the committee are…

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On Tuesday night, New York Attorney General Letitia James lit up Twitter with the announcement that her office had “uncovered significant evidence indicating that the Trump Organization used fraudulent and misleading asset valuations on multiple properties to obtain economic benefits, including loans, insurance coverage, and tax deductions for years.” The series of tweets represented a rhetorical escalation in the New York attorney general’s office’s yearslong investigation of the Trump family company. “No one is above the law,” James wrote at the end of her last tweet. The Trump Organization, for…

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A group of big-dollar donors who have spent millions electing Kyrsten Sinema and other Democratic senators is threatening to sever all funding to her if she doesn’t drop her opposition to changing Senate rules in order to pass voting rights legislation. In a letter to the Arizona lawmaker, which was first obtained by POLITICO, 70 Democratic donors — some of whom gave Sinema’s 2018 campaign the maximum contribution allowed by law — said they will support a primary challenge to Sinema and demanded that she refund their contributions to her…

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The White House is working to sell frustrated House Democrats on a simple pre-midterms pitch: Stop focusing on what hasn’t gotten done yet and start touting the two big bills the party has passed so far. Democrats have already passed a pandemic aid package and infrastructure law totaling $2.4 trillion. Many lawmakers, however, remain determined to log another legislative achievement they can champion, worried that voters will be disappointed and disenchanted — following lofty campaign promises — if they don’t get more done. As President Joe Biden nears his one-year…

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Senate Democrats are set to take a doomed vote Wednesday evening to weaken the filibuster to pass elections and voting reform, pressing forward despite unflinching opposition from Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Wednesday’s vote is the culmination of several failed attempts to pass the elections reform legislation, which Republicans unanimously oppose. While progressives hoped the stalled elections bill would lead Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Sinema (D-Ariz.) to endorse weakening the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, the two senators remain unmoved. Despite its looming failure, the vote will put senators on record regarding a…

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One year ago, President Joe Biden stood in front of a U.S. Capitol that still bore the wounds of an insurrectionist siege, taking the oath of office at a time when the nation faced its greatest array of crises in nearly a century. He pledged that day to prove that the nation’s very democracy still worked, that he could restore unity to a divided country, tame a killer pandemic and steady a shaky economy. In the 12 months that have followed, unemployment has been slashed, a pair of transformative spending…

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Joe Biden pitched himself as the antithesis of Donald Trump, but the president is ending his first year in office with a similarly dismal report card from voters as his predecessor. Like Trump, more voters gave Biden a failing mark at the quarter mark of his term than those who awarded an “A” or “B” combined, according to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday. About 37 percent of those surveyed rated Biden’s performance as an “F,” compared to the 31 percent who gave either an “A” or “B” grade for…

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The Biden administration is planning to distribute hundreds of millions of free, high-quality masks through pharmacies and community health centers, a White House official said Wednesday. The 400 million newly available masks will be non-surgical N95s that are sourced from the government’s Strategic National Stockpile, as part of an effort to ensure Americans can access the more-protective masks during a record surge of Covid-19 cases. The initiative — which POLITICO first reported Tuesday evening — comes in response to growing pressure on the administration to encourage Americans to abandon cloth…

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BOSTON — Michelle Wu wakes up nearly every morning to protesters outside her home demanding the new Boston mayor call off her vaccine mandate for city workers. In Atlanta, Omicron-fueled staffing shortages are wreaking havoc on everything from Mayor Andre Dickens’ public-safety plans to residents’ trash pickup. In Cincinnati, Mayor Aftab Pureval and his team are scrambling to secure more Covid-19 tests as already strained city hospitals near capacity. With Omicron sending Covid cases and hospitalizations skyrocketing, new mayors across America’s major cities have had to kiss their honeymoon periods…

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The FDA’s decision to ease access to abortion pills is fueling a new push by anti-abortion rights groups to derail President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the agency, potentially endangering his confirmation. The effort has already swung some previously undecided Republican senators on Robert Califf’s nomination, like Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Roger Marshall of Kansas. Both initially praised Califf during his confirmation hearing in the Senate health committee and appeared inclined to support him before voting against advancing the nomination in committee over “pro-life issues.” “Just a few days…

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One year ago, President Joe Biden stood in front of a U.S. Capitol that still bore the wounds of an insurrectionist siege, taking the oath of office at a time when the nation faced its greatest array of crises in nearly a century. He pledged that day to prove that the nation’s very democracy still worked, that he could restore unity to a divided country, tame a killer pandemic and steady a shaky economy. In the 12 months that have followed, unemployment has been slashed, a pair of transformative spending…

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House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy once said that his vision was “to have government as innovative as Google, customer-centric as Apple, and as quick as Amazon.” Now, he’s the man charged with leading the GOP’s battle against Big Tech — a position that will become particularly important if his party wins back the House and he becomes speaker next year. He put out a policy framework last year to “stop the bias and check big tech,” laying out a plan to rein in giants like Google and Amazon if Republicans…

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In 2011, a former Pentagon strategist named Phillip Karber who was teaching at Georgetown University asked his students to study the Chinese tunnel system known as the “underground great wall.” The tunnel’s existence was well-known, but its purpose was not. Karber’s students turned to commercial imagery, blogs, military journals, even a fictional Chinese television drama to get answers. They concluded the tunnels were probably being used to hide 3,000 nuclear weapons. This was an astronomical number, about 10 times higher than declassified intelligence estimates and other forecasts of China’s nuclear…

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ALBANY, N.Y. — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, with less than six months on the job, turned Tuesday into a tour de force of her political and government prowess. In one day, the moderate Democrat reported shattering campaign fundraising records, saw one of her biggest potential primary opponents bow out and released a state budget packed with goodies for residents and special interest groups. And a statewide poll shows her crushing her foes. All of it comes just months after she succeeded Andrew Cuomo, who resigned amid a sexual harassment…

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Democrats admit they’re losing ground with Latino voters. But Latino Democratic leaders and operatives are increasingly worried that time is running out to do anything that would make a significant difference ahead of the 2022 midterms, when the party needs a robust Latino turnout to preserve its slim majorities in Congress. For years, those leaders have warned that the party needs to invest earlier in outreach, hire more Latinos for decision-making positions and talk to Latino voters about more issues than just immigration. But even after a presidential election marked…

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Senate Democrats will stick together on this week’s vote to push their voting and election reform bill past Republican opposition. Then they’ll focus on isolating two of their own centrists. The Democratic caucus is pressing forward with laying blame on Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) for the party’s failure to advance sweeping elections reform, thanks to their resistance to weakening the filibuster. The move carries considerable risk, given that Sinema and Manchin will be essential to any further success the party can muster this year — particularly…

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House Republicans are edging toward harder hits at President Joe Biden while he struggles to contain Covid’s Omicron variant. Just don’t expect it to become a centerpiece of their midterm-election messaging. That’s in part because the GOP has to walk a fine line on the pandemic — thanks to Donald Trump. After Biden and Democrats campaigned on a vow to help steer a virus-weary nation back to normalcy, arguing that the GOP failed to quickly respond when Covid first descended, Republicans now say Biden has proven himself unprepared to deal…

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STAR, Idaho — The Republican primary for governor was still months away, but in the packed city hall chambers in this Oregon Trail town 18 miles west of Boise, the campaign was already heated. Six candidates — two each for governor, lieutenant governor and secretary of state — had accepted the invitation from the county Republican women’s club to make their case to the 75 or so citizens who filled the folding chairs and stood at the back. Cowboy hats outnumbered face masks. The stakes in Idaho’s primary next May…

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Republicans are feeling so good about their chances of retaking Congress this fall that they’re already debating their governing relationship with President Joe Biden. And they’re divided over how to handle their potential big wins. With Biden and Democrats floundering right now, the GOP is increasingly favored to vault back to partial power in Washington by flipping the House, and potentially also the Senate, in the coming midterms. What comes next isn’t quite clear: Some Republicans are mulling ways to collaborate with Biden on issues like trade, energy or tech;…

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Democrats are back in a familiar spot this week, pushing hard for legislation they know will fail. And they’re grappling openly with what to tell their voters when they come up short. In many ways, Democrats’ bind on their election reform legislation is a sequel to the stalemate they’re trapped in on their $1.7 trillion party-line social spending plan. Both bills, which have no GOP support, pitted the party’s base and most of its members against Senate centrist resistance. But Democratic leaders set the stakes even higher for their bid…

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STAR, Idaho — The Republican primary for governor was still months away, but in the packed city hall chambers in this Oregon Trail town 18 miles west of Boise, the campaign was already heated. Six candidates — two each for governor, lieutenant governor and secretary of state — had accepted the invitation from the county Republican women’s club to make their case to the 75 or so citizens who filled the folding chairs and stood at the back. Cowboy hats outnumbered face masks. The stakes in Idaho’s primary next May…

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Donald Trump thumbed his nose at traditional retail politics, preferring large rallies and appearances on conservative TV. In defeat, he refused to deliver the familiar concession speech and instead falsely claimed that his Republican or Democratic opponents stole elections. Now it’s the presidential debates that are about to get a Trump makeover. They may never be the same again. With last week’s Trump-inspired threat to boycott 2024 debates sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates, the Republican National Committee began priming the electorate for a race in which the GOP…

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FLORENCE, Ariz. — Ray Kallatsa is a die-hard Trumper who “definitely” wants to see former President Donald Trump run for office again in 2024. So it was natural that he’d travel from Tucson to see Trump’s first rally of 2022. But as Kallatsa stood there on Saturday, pondering whom he would like to see as Trump’s next veep — from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to onetime national security adviser turned ardent conspiracy theorist Mike Flynn — an unorthodox idea came to him. “JFK…

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SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — One Saturday last fall, around the opening of South Dakota’s pheasant hunting season, a crowd of businesspeople and political benefactors who’d come to meet and hunt with the state’s governor, Kristi Noem, trickled back to the Sheraton for dinner and an auction. The whole weekend had been billed as a business recruiting event for South Dakota, and auction proceeds went to conservation efforts in the state. But the vibe was almost indistinguishable from a typical political fundraiser: an evening, closed to the press, where donors mingled…

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Clean energy advocates who have turned the wind and sun into an energy boom are hoping to do the same with a resource that lies thousands of feet below the ground: the Earth’s own heat. Geothermal energy has been used for decades to run power plants. But now, with the potential infusion of billions in federal money, it could be on the cusp of technological breakthroughs that allow it to grow from a tiny sliver of the energy market into a global force that helps to combat climate change. Backers…

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Drugmakers and patient advocacy groups are waging a campaign to cast Medicare officials as villains after the program limited coverage of a pricey new Alzheimer’s drug and demanded tougher criteria than the FDA to prove it works. Their goal is to strong arm the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services into covering Aduhelm, the $28,200-per-year drug, for far more people. The effort comes in response to Medicare’s decision to only cover Biogen’s new treatment for patients enrolled in ongoing clinical trials, effectively cutting off access to the first new Alzheimer’s…

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