Politics Now - USA

“Let me be very clear to you: It will be peaceful,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said. “If Republicans lose, we will accept that result,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) told Fox News. “ … If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Joe Biden, I will accept that result.” “I think that the president will accept the result, but you’ve got to make sure that it’s fair,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said. Since then, Trump and the vast majority of congressional Republicans have yet to publicly accept the results of the presidential election nearly two months after it was called for Joe Biden. You can watch examples of Republicans promising that the president would accept the results of the election in the video above. Among the roughly three dozen congressional Republicans who have publicly acknowledged Biden’s win, many waited days or weeks after the election was called before doing so. It was a stark departure from the public congratulations that many of those same Republicans ...

Many experts said a truly stimulative package would have earmarked the payments for those who need it most — the unemployed. “We know where the pockets of need are,” said Greg Daco, chief economist at Oxford Economics. “Putting it there would be a much more efficient use of the stimulus.” And because the money will immediately be put to work — the jobless don’t have the luxury of saving it — it would also have a much bigger impact on the overall economy, through what experts refer to as the multiplier effect. In essence, each dollar given to a person in need is likely to benefit the economy more because it would be used to pay for, say, groceries or rent. “Providing $2,400 to a family of four in the same financial situation as they were at the end of 2019 doesn’t do much to boost the overall economy right now,” Mr. Daco said. “It’s not whether it’s a positive or not. It’s their potency that’s in question.” Individuals with an adjusted gross income in 2019 of up to $75,000 will receive ...

CHICAGO (AP) — Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced Thursday the forgiveness and expungement of about 500,000 criminal cannabis cases. Pritzker said he issued pardons for 9,210 low-level cannabis convictions, while Illinois State Police have wiped clean more than 492,000 non-felony cannabis-related arrest records. The actions by Pritzker and state police is mandated by the Illinois law that legalized the licensed sale of marijuana starting in 2020. The intent of the law is to reduce the impact of the war on drugs on minorities, who were disproportionately arrested and locked up for cannabis crimes. ADVERTISEMENT “We will never be able to fully remedy the depth of that damage,” Pritzker said. “But we can govern with the courage to admit the mistakes of our past and the decency to set a better path forward.” The law requires 47,000 cannabis-related arrest records created between 2013 and 2019 be expunged by Friday. With the expungement of all 492,129 cannabis arrest records, state polic...

Jeffrey Sprecher, husband of Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., is now a billionaire, according to Bloomberg, as his Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) saw its stock rise more than 22% in 2020. Continue Reading Below Sprecher is the CEO of ICE, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, and he owns approximately 1% of the company. The company's market value is more than $63 billion (market capitalization or market value is a common method of measuring the size of a publicly-traded company and it is calculated by multiplying the current stock price by the number of shares outstanding). Ticker Security Last Change Change % ICE INTERCONTINENTAL EXCHANGE INC. 115.29 +2.14 +1.89% As a result of its rising value, ICE continues to grow. Earlier this year it purchased Ellie May, which processes more than 40% of all new U.S. residential mortgages. With the explosion in housing sales during the pandemic and borrowing costs at record lows, Ellie May has been a booming business for ICE. GEORGIA SENATORS...

WASHINGTON — Vice President Mike Pence has asked a federal judge to reject a lawsuit filed by a group of Republicans who want to put the authority to overturn President-elect Joe Biden's election win in the hands of the vice president. Pence, in a 14-page filing by Justice Department attorneys Thursday evening, claimed the lawsuit should be brought against Congress. "[T]hese plaintiffs' suit is not a proper vehicle for addressing those issues because plaintiffs have sued the wrong defendant," the response states, continuing that Pence "is ironically the very person whose power they seek to promote." 'Wild Protests:' Police brace for pro-Trump demonstrations when Congress meets Jan. 6 to formalize Biden's win Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, and a group of other Republicans filed the suit against Pence this week, arguing that the vice president has the constitutional authority to decide which states' Electoral College votes to count. Pence is set ...

Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletter Joe Biden is expected to receive Secret Service protection with a new team that is more familiar to him and replacing some agents amid concerns that they may be politically allied with Donald Trump. In a changing of the guard as well as the man to be guarded at the White House, Biden’s security detail will undergo some staffing changes, the Washington Post reported on Thursday. Several “senior” Secret Service agents are poised to return to the president-elect’s protection team and Biden knows these agents well because they guarded him and his family during his time as vice-president, according to the article, echoed in a report by CNN, citing a law enforcement source. Trump removes Secret Service director amid ‘near-systematic purge’ of agency Read more Re-assignments and promotions are common during transition periods between presidential administrations and are meant to increase comfort and trust between a president-elect and his secu...

Sen. David Perdue of Georgia entered quarantine after contact with someone who tested positive for Covid-19, his campaign said Thursday, less than a week before the Republican's runoff election against Democrat Jon Ossoff. Perdue and his wife Bonnie have tested negative for the coronavirus, according to his campaign, which did not say how long the 71-year-old incumbent senator would remain in quarantine. His contest against Ossoff is one of two runoffs in Georgia on Tuesday that will determine whether Republicans or Democrats have majority control over the U.S. Senate starting next month. In the other race, incumbent Sen. Kelly Loeffler, Perdue's fellow Republican, faces Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock. Recent polling suggests tight races in each runoff. Perdue had been scheduled to appear with Loeffler at a New Year's Eve campaign rally and concert in Gainesville on Thursday afternoon. Guidelines issued by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention call for peopl...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell again blocked quick passage of increasing stimulus checks to $2,000, calling the proposal – which was a key demand of President Donald Trump – “socialism for rich people.” Thursday marks the third time McConnell has blocked Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., from quickly approving a House-passed bill that would increase one-time payments from $600 to $2,000 in the COVID-19 relief package the president signed into law Sunday. The blockade all but ensures Congress will be unable to pass legislation increasing the size of the one-time payments, at least until a new Congress convenes next week. The Kentucky Republican repeatedly bashed Democrats for following Trump’s demand for increasing the checks to $2,000 but ignoring the president's two other mandates: Repealing key legal protections for big tech firms and examining the president’s baseless claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. “Socialism for rich people is a terrible way to ...

Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., the unelected multimillionaire facing a tight runoff against Democratic rival Rev. Raphael Warnock next week, has submitted a number of irregular last-minute contribution reports with the Federal Election Commission, failing to disclose employment information for hundreds of donors in the final weeks of the campaign. For some donors, the reports show what appears to be misleading information about their employer or their position — including lobbyists and executives — some of them with notable names or corporate or personal ties to the appointed senator. One of the more glaring irregularities is a last-minute donation from Loeffler herself, in the amount of $67,200. While the wealthy former financial exec has made a public show of funding her own campaign, those donations have so far come in injections of millions of dollars. This $67,200 contribution is notable in that it parcels out to 24 donations of exactly $2,800 — the maximum allowable amount. Because ...

Donald Trump knows that nothing about the election he lost to Joe Biden will change on Jan. 6, yet he continues to exhort his supporters to come to Washington under the false hope that it will. “JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!” he tweeted this week. It was just the latest of such urgings. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley from Missouri said Wednesday that he will object next week when Congress convenes to certify the electoral college vote. The law says if a member of the House is joined by a senator both chambers must debate and then vote on the contest. Majorities in both the House and the Senate would need to support a challenge against a slate of electors, according to the Congressional Research Service. The challenge will fail because Democrats hold a majority in the House and because, you know, Trump lost. And there has been no proven fraud in spite of dozens of court challenges. Hawley is said to have his eye on running for president in 2024, however, and this could be a way of trying t...

In a closer look at President Donald Trump's last few months in office, The New York Times has published a detailed new report around how the outgoing US leader wanted to approach the worsening coronavirus pandemic. Overheard yelling at his son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner on 19 August, Mr Trump reportedly demanded to "do what Mexico does" when it comes to testing for Covid-19. "They don’t give you a test till you get to the emergency room and you’re vomiting," he said during a gathering of top aides in the Oval Office. The statement mirrors Mr Trump's past thinking around how the US coronavirus cases should appear: specifically, the fewer tests conducted, the fewer positive cases on record. The New York Times also reports that Trump was frustrated that Dr Francis S Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health, had said that it would still be a matter of days before the government could give approval for using convalescent plasma to treat Co...

This is striking. We’ve known for months that vaccines were coming. We know that vaccines only work when people get vaccinated. Every dose of vaccine not given risks more illness and potential death. The failure to vaccinate more quickly is tragic given that more than 3,000 Americans are dying of covid-19 every day. At the current rate, we will surpass 400,000 deaths by Inauguration Day. Operation Warp Speed now says it aims to vaccinate all Americans by June. But we will not get there unless we understand what is happening and what we need to do to fix it. How did we get from 100 million promised doses to just a few million people vaccinated? It is a lesson in misunderstanding American federalism and a failure of national leadership. The federal government and Operation Warp Speed saw their role as getting vaccines to the states, without considering what supports states would need to get vaccines to the people. The Trump administration is now blaming the slow rollout on states. This i...

After sardonically commending Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for his sudden concern about "socialism for the rich," Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday rejected the Kentucky Republican's attempt to attach that description to the push for $2,000 direct payments, which the Vermont senator noted would overwhelmingly benefit middle- and working-class Americans. "I'm delighted that after talking on the floor of the Senate for years about socialism for the rich, apparently that has gotten across to my Republican friends," Sanders (I-Vt.) said on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon. "Of course, that's what we do every single day. That's why we have the incredible level of income and wealth inequality that exists in this country... Decade after decade, we have used this body to provide massive tax breaks to the rich, to provide corporate welfare to corporations who don't need it." "I am delighted to hear the majority leader talking abo...

The US Food and Drug Administration recently approved of two COVID-19 vaccines for public use, and members of Congress were among the first in the nation to get vaccinated. But many Americans believe that elected officials should be among the last to get vaccinated, recent polling from Insider and SurveyMonkey found. According to the Library of Congress, the average age of members of the Senate and House of Representatives is 63 and 58, respectively — and several members are above the age of 75, a demographic the CDC suggests should be among the first to receive the vaccine. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Following FDA approval for two separate COVID-19 vaccines, members of the US Congress were among the first to get inoculated. Many members quickly accepted the opportunity — notably some who have underplayed the severity of the novel coronavirus, leading to waves of online backlash. But according to recent polling from Insider and SurveyMonkey, most Americans ...

Read: Republicans are going down a dangerous road It is one thing for Hawley to position himself as a populist, something he had done even before he was elected in 2018; it is quite another for him to knowingly engage in civic vandalism and, in ostentatiously unpatriotic ways, undermine established norms and safeguards. This is precisely what Senator Hawley is now doing—and he is doing so in the aftermath of Trump’s loss, when some political observers might have hoped that the conspiracy mindset and general insanity of the Trump modus operandi would begin to lose their salience. A longtime acquaintance of the Missouri senator explained to me Hawley’s actions this way: “Hawley never wants to talk down to his voters. He wants to speak for them, and at the moment, they are saying the election was stolen.” “He surely knows this isn’t true,” this acquaintance continued, “and that the legal arguments don’t hold water. And yet clearly the incentives he confronts—as someone who wants to speak ...

A bill to increase the amount of recently passed stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000 was blocked for a third day in a row in the GOP-controlled Senate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellKey test vote on Trump veto override set for Friday Jeff Stein: Battle over K direct payments 'putting tremendous pressure' on Republican caucus Dow closes at record in year-end rally MORE (R-Ky.) blocked an effort by Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer Chuck SchumerMcConnell blocks vote on K checks, signals new package New York Democratic Party chairman warns Ocasio-Cortez against challenging Schumer Sunday shows preview: COVID-19 relief waiting on Trump's signature; government continues vaccine roll out MORE (N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernie SandersFormer Sanders spokesperson outlines how House progressives can force a Medicare for All vote K stimulus checks bill blocked in Senate for second day Stimulus check, veto override debates weigh on ...

My mother used to be the poll supervisor in our home, in our living room. So that's always been part of my culture and part of who I am. And then you had part of the culture that was afraid to vote by mail because they figured in the South they would throw their ballots away. And so we're still confronted with some of that. But it's interesting that I think more and more of that will go away, as I deal with individuals and communities that sometimes cannot get to the polls or have various challenges in getting there, they are much more willing to take that ballot and to mark it in advance. There was some confusion and controversy this year over California's ballot collection law, labeled by some as “ballot harvesting.” The Republican party even set up their own private collection boxes in some counties. Does the state’s ballot collection law need any changes in your mind? I think at some point there will be a discussion about it — there should be — in the Legislature as...

The Democrats want it. The president wants it. The American public overwhelmingly wants it. And yet, despite seemingly being pressed by all imaginable sides to provide a paltry $2,000 in direct COVID-19 relief after nine months of inaction, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) proved Wednesday that he simply does not give a single dangling damn if you die penniless in the middle of a global pandemic. "The Senate is not going to split apart the three issues that President Trump linked together," McConnell declared, as he blocked attempts by Democrats to pass an clean bill providing every adult with $2,000 in coronavirus relief funds — an increase from the previously negotiated, and laughably insufficient $600 stimulus checks — by refusing to allow the Senate to take up the proposal alone. Instead, McConnell insisted, he would only consider the legislation if it came as part of a triune measure to address wholly unrelated issues: relief payments, an investigation into...

A recent poll conducted in Georgia by SurveyUSA of voters who do not plan to show up for next week's runoffs elections found that 55% of respondents who identify as "very conservative" said the reason they will stay home is because they believe the process is "rigged" — a concerning sign for Republicans who count on the outcome in order to maintain control of U.S. Senate. Georgia GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler will face off on Jan. 5 against Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, respectively. If both Republicans lose, the Senate would flip to Democratic control, leaving the left in charge of both chambers of Congress and the White House if President-elect Joe Biden is sworn into office as anticipated. What are the details? In its analysis of the results conducted for WXIA-TV, SurveyUSA wrote: Of those who are not voting in the US Senate runoffs, a disproportionate number are conservative. Of those who identify as "very conservati...

Biden's Incoming Press Secretary: Briefings Won't Be A Platform For Right-Wing Spin Enlarge this image toggle caption Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images President-elect Joe Biden's choice for White House press secretary says she will restore a tradition. Unlike her immediate predecessors in the Trump administration, Jen Psaki plans to take questions from reporters each day. Psaki has played similar roles before. She was the spokesperson for the State Department when John Kerry was secretary of state, then President Barack Obama's communications director, and she now speaks for Biden. "I think more than any point in history ... part of the job of the White House press secretary is to rebuild trust with the American people," she says in an interview with NPR's Morning Edition. President Trump's first press secretary falsely claimed the biggest inauguration crowd in history. His last made false claims about Tru...

Sen. Bernie Sanders is continuing his pressure campaign against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to get him to bring legislation upping the value of stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000 to the floor for a vote. In a rare Fox News appearance Wednesday, Sanders (I-Vt.) explained how he was working to turn up the heat on McConnell (R-Ky.), who said Wednesday he would not hold a vote on the $2,000 checks unless it was packaged with language repealing Section 230, which provides a legal shield to social media companies, and setting up an election fraud commission. The Vermont senator began by highlighting the rare moment of political agreement between himself and President Trump on the issue of direct payments. “He happens to be right on this issue,” the left-wing lawmaker told the network. “I think he is correct in saying that we are living in a terrible, terrible economic moment for tens of millions of working-class families. We fought very hard to get the $600 direct payment. Trump ...

Raising Some Questions about the Voting Machine Company Behind So Many Surprise Wins This Year After initially focusing on the surprisingly lopsided results of the senatorial election in Kentucky, DCReport broadened our scope to look at the electronic vote-counting software and electronic voting systems that we rely on to tally our votes. This prompted us to raise questions about Electronic Systems & Software (ES&S), America’s largest voting machine company. What we found was a revolving door between government officials and ES&S. Voting results in three states that saw surprising majorities by vulnerable incumbent Republican senators—Maine, North Carolina and South Carolina—were almost all tabulated on ES&S machines. Trump and his inept legal team barely have mentioned ES&S, focusing almost exclusively on competitor Dominion Voting Systems. Team Trump has been so vigorous in going after Dominion that it prompted us to look into how ES&S operates. What we have f...

The Presidential Inaugural Committee announced Thursday that it would host a nationwide memorial honoring those who have died from the coronavirus the day before President-elect Joe Biden is sworn into office. The committee said that cities and towns around the country will be invited to light up their buildings and ring church bells at 5:30 p.m. ET on Jan. 19 in a "national moment of unity and remembrance." A ceremony will also be held at the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool in Washington. "The inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris represents the beginning of a new national journey," Pili Tobar, a spokesperson for the inaugural committee, said. "However, in the midst of a pandemic — when so many Americans are grieving the loss of family, friends and neighbors — it is important that we honor those who have died, reflect on what has been one of the more challenging periods in the nation's history, and renew our comm...

On Wednesday, after Trump again insisted upon “$2000 ASAP!” in a tweet, McConnell said the proposal had “no realistic path to quickly pass the Senate” and refused to split the White House’s legislative wish list into separate measures. But that was exactly what Graham pressed the Republican leader to do on Thursday. “Here’s what I’d like: I’d like a stand-alone vote in the new Congress on the $2,000 check,” Graham said. “We have seven Republicans who’ve already said they would vote for it. We need five more. I think if we had the vote, we would get there.” The president, Graham added, “wants three things: a commission to investigate fraud, $2,000 checks, and to repeal Section 230. I’m urging Senator McConnell to give a stand-alone vote in the new Congress after January 3rd on all three measures.” Graham is likely to get little support for the proposal even after the new Congress convenes on Monday. Later Thursday morning, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin — another top Republican ally of t...

WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell all but shut the door on President Donald Trump's push for $2,000 COVID-19 relief checks, declaring Congress has provided enough pandemic aid as he blocked another attempt by Democrats to force a vote.The GOP leader made clear Wednesday he is unwilling to budge, despite political pressure from Trump and even some fellow Republican senators demanding action. Trump wants the recent $600 in aid increased threefold. But McConnell dismissed the idea of bigger "survival checks" approved by the House, saying the money would go to plenty of American households that just don't need it.McConnell's refusal to act means the additional relief Trump wanted is all but dead."We just approved almost a trillion dollars in aid a few days ago," McConnell said, referring to the year-end package Trump signed into law.McConnell added, "if specific, struggling households still need more help," the Senate will consid...