In the news today: As expected, two Democratic senators joined all Republican senators to filibuster a vote on voting rights protections that would stop the unconscionable new state laws intended to make voting more difficult and time-consuming.
Georgia has been one of the states most egregious in inventing new obstacles to the vote, citing conspiracists’ claims of “fraud” as justification.
An Indigenous woman who faced up to six months in prison after blocking border wall construction on sacred lands back in 2020 won her case on religious grounds this week.
Amber Ortega, a member of the Hia C-ed O’odham tribe, had been arrested and slapped with misdemeanor charges after trying to block construction near Quitobaquito Springs, located in Arizona’s Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
On the first anniversary of Joe Biden’s inauguration, I can’t help but think …
So?
And it has absolutely nothing to do with Pres. Biden himself. Seems like a nice guy, he’s done a lot of really good things already, and hopefully a few jackwagons in the U.S. Senate don’t hamstring him for the rest of his term.
But presidents come, presidents go. Like … the tide or whatever.
Yawn.
Republican state legislators in Kentucky are trying to push through the legislature a bill that would make crowdfunding bail and nonprofit donations to pay bail illegal.
In some exciting news to start off your weekend, President Joe Biden announced his latest round of judicial nominees on Wednesday. What’s so exciting about this? Well, the eight nominees Biden chose in his 13th round were not only majority women, but included a Muslim American woman who if confirmed would be the first Muslim American woman to serve as a federal judge.
The decision blocking Trump’s use of executive privilege in the Capitol riot investigation is also a “nail in the coffin” for the two former aides, said Neal Katyal.
She told BuzzFeed News it was a joke, adding that she’s “too short to see anyone’s yarmulke.
“This case is a disaster for the rule of law and a grave disservice to women,” the justice wrote in a scathing dissent.
The former president is under criminal investigation in Georgia for trying to coerce officials into overturning his election loss there
“It started as a joke, actually,” Elena Korngold told me. But late last month, the 40-something radiologist from Portland, Oregon, and her family decided that their unsanctioned scheme couldn’t hurt. Elena began the proceedings by unwrapping the sterile swab from a BinaxNOW rapid test for SARS-CoV-2, part of the family’s dwindling supply. She swirled the swab around the insides of each of her nostrils.
Last Thursday, a group of 20 mothers in Boston met up outside a local high school. Their goal wasn’t to socialize, drink wine, or even share COVID-related tips. They were there for one reason and one reason only: to stand in a circle—socially distanced, of course—and scream.“I knew that we all needed to come together and support each other in our rage, resistance and disappointment,” Sarah Harmon, the group’s organizer, wrote on Instagram before the gathering.
In a decision late yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that former President Donald Trump had no power to assert executive privilege to prevent the National Archives from turning over hundreds of pages of documents to the House committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021. The Court was right to do so; executive privilege permits a president to withhold information only when disclosure would harm the public interest.
The GOP is radicalizing against democracy, and Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema bucked their own party. U.S. democracy ultimately may not be able to fix itself.
As President Biden marks one year in office, we speak with former four-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader and The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel, who say Biden has failed so far to sell his agenda to the American people and bring about the transformative policy he campaigned on — from quelling the pandemic to passing his landmark Build Back Better legislation. The two also critique the U.S.
As President Biden marked one year in office this week, conservative Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema joined with Republican senators to block a proposed change to filibuster rules that would have allowed two voting rights bills to move forward, foreclosing the chance to stop hundreds of anti-voting laws passed after the 2020 election.
President Biden said Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin will pay a “serious and dear price” if he orders his reported 100,000 troops stationed along the Russian-Ukraine border to invade Ukraine, a scenario Biden says is increasingly likely. This comes as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Ukraine’s president on Wednesday, similarly warning Russia could attack Ukraine on “very short notice.
The administration said last week that Americans would be able to order up to four tests per residential address through the website and see tests ship within 7 to 12 days of ordering via the U.S. Postal Service.
The government reported Wednesday that the consumer price index, the most widely watched gauge of inflation, hit a four-decade high in December compared to the previous year.
The jump is the latest evidence that rising costs for food, rent and other necessities are heightening the financial pressures on America’s households.
The potential clash over the Fed’s plans to tighten monetary policy could be a harbinger of conflicts to come with Democrats and even some Republicans.
During Saturday’s synagogue attack in Colleyville, Texas, the gunman Malik Faisal Akram repeatedly called for the release of Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui, who is serving an 86-year sentence in a U.S. federal prison located just miles from the synagogue. Siddiqui was convicted in 2010 on charges that she intended to kill U.S. military officers while being detained in Afghanistan two years earlier. However, many questions remain unanswered about her time in U.S.
In the news today: Tonight saw the latest Senate battle to protect voting rights even as Republican-held state legislatures pass unprecedented rollbacks targeting those rights. What’s next is unclear, but Democratic leaders organized the vote tonight as a move to force the two Senate Democratic holdouts—as well as all Senate Republicans—on record for blocking the urgently needed protections.
Republicans are really on a roll, aren’t they? First, they support Donald Trump, then Vladimir Putin—and now they’re using the copious political capital they’ve built up with the pig-ignorant half of America to go all-in for COVID-19. I shudder to think what’s next. Maybe they can repeal car-seat laws so toddlers are free to catapult into chemical freight trucks, as God and the Founders intended.
On the eve of the January 6 insurrection, the twin special-election victories by Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff of Georgia gave Democrats the Senate majority they desperately wanted, and simultaneously burdened incoming President Joe Biden with something far more fickle: hope and expectations.
Tennessee Republicans are hoping to turn the “blue bastion of Nashville” red by splitting it up between two more Republican-strangled districts. Since every move the Republican Party makes seems to spit in the face of the law (at least for now, since so many right-wing activist judges have lifetime positions), the constitutionality of their gerrymandering moves is always in question.
We are two years into the pandemic, yet some Republicans do not understand the depth of the issue. Across the country, GOP members are not only failing to comply with safety regulations put in place to stop the novel coronavirus but in some cases even lying about test results. In one incident, a Utah lawmaker tested positive and lied about it—not once, but twice.
The Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program said it submitted a number of requests to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through the Freedom of Information Act back in 2017, seeking records on the mass detention agency’s use of solitary confinement. The practice has been condemned as torture by human rights advocates.
The former president’s son was interviewed by the New York attorney general’s office in its civil probe into the Trump Organization.
In an 8-1 decision, the court agreed that Trump cannot stop the release of White House records to lawmakers investigating the attack on the Capitol.
Iowa Rep. Ashley Hinson touted “game-changing” funding aiming to modernize locks and dams on the Mississippi River — even though she voted against it.