Politics Now - USA

The twice-impeached former president made his first public appearance since leaving office. On Sunday, Trump was the main speaker at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). And according to a Fox News commentator, the event had the cult-like, MAGA hat-wearing attendees calling it TPAC instead of CPAC, because of their seeming undying devotion to him. So, even though Trump’s speech stretched over 90 boring minutes, he did not disappoint his diehard fans in attendance. However, whether they will admit it or not, other members of the GOP establishment may not have been as thrilled — especially those who’ve ever had a moment of integrity and stood up to him. Before Trump got around to naming names, he started his speech by first making some news and attempting to squash rumors that he wants to start his own political party. At CPAC Trump Claims GOP As His Own, Names Blacklist of Republicans Against Him https://t.co/zhAHvAePZO pic.twitter.com/R5M4FBzIab — Peter Wade (@br...

Virginia lawmakers approved a bill on Saturday that will legalize recreational marijuana in 2024. The compromise bill that delays retail sales of the drug for three years turns Virginia into the first Southern state to vote to legalize marijuana for adults, joining 15 other states and the District of Columbia. The bill still has to be signed by Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, who has been vocal about his support for marijuana legalization. “It’s been a lot of work to get here, but I would say that we’re on the path to an equitable law allowing responsible adults to use cannabis,” State Sen. Adam Ebbin told the Associated Press. Advertisement The House passed the legalization measure 48-43 while the Senate approved it 20-19. The bill was approved without a single Republican vote in either chamber. The bill, which would legalize possession of an ounce of marijuana or less by those 21 or older, calls for the creation of an independent agency to regulate the marijuana market. But lawmakers ...

President Joe Biden on Sunday offered his support for organizing efforts by Amazon workers in Alabama, though he stopped just short of endorsing the formation of a union. "Workers in Alabama — and all across America — are voting on whether to organize a union in their workplace. It’s a vitally important choice — one that should be made without intimidation or threats by employers," the president tweeted. "Every worker should have a free and fair choice to join a union." His tweet was accompanied by a video in which Biden addressed the workers involved. He told them that the choice whether to organize was their choice exclusively, and that there should be "no coercion" by the company.

In 1890, Mississippi became one of the first states in the country to call a constitutional convention for the express purpose of writing white supremacy into the DNA of the state. At the time, a majority of the registered voters in the state were Black men. The lone Black delegate to the convention, Isaiah Montgomery, participated in openly suppressing the voting eligibility of most of those Black men, in the hope that this would reduce the terror, intimidation and hostility that white supremacists aimed at Black people. The committee on which he sat went even further. As he said at the convention: “As a further precaution to secure unquestioned white supremacy the committee have fixed an arbitrary appointment of the state, which fixes the legislative branch of the government at 130 members and the senatorial branch at 45 members.” The majority of the seats in both branches were “from white constituencies.” Speaking to the Black people he was disenfranchising, Montgomery said: “I wish...

A group of Republicans has launched a new super PAC that aims to provide support for GOP lawmakers who voted to impeach or convict former President Trump Donald TrumpNoem touts South Dakota coronavirus response, knocks lockdowns in CPAC speech On The Trail: Cuomo and Newsom — a story of two embattled governors McCarthy: 'I would bet my house' GOP takes back lower chamber in 2022 MORE. Founders, including allies to Rep. Adam Kinzinger Adam Daniel KinzingerSunday shows preview: 2024 hopefuls gather at CPAC; House passes coronavirus relief; vaccine effort continues Trump Jr.: There are 'plenty' of GOP incumbents who should be challenged Trump endorses former aide against pro-impeachment Republican MORE (R-Ill.), an outspoken critic of the former president, started the PAC, which is called Americans Keeping Country First, The Washington Post reported on Sunday. The super PAC describes itself as the only one “dedicated solely to defending the members of Congress who took vot...

President Joe Biden today released a statement voicing support for workers in Alabama voting to form a union. “Today and over the next few days and weeks, workers in Alabama and all across America are voting on whether to organize a union in their workplace,” Biden said. “This is vitally important, a vitally important choice as America grapples with the deadly pandemic, the economic crisis and the reckoning on race - what it reveals (about) the deep disparities that still exist in our country.” However, his video address of a little more than two minutes was notable for a word he did not use - Amazon. The video released by the White House this evening, with Biden speaking and the presidential seal in the background, is the highest profile show of support for workers and union organizers in Alabama since the organizing drive began last fall at Amazon’s Bessemer fulfillment center. Previous shows of support have come from Sen. Bernie Sanders, candidate and activist Stacey Abrams, the NFL...

If anybody thought the January 6 insurrection and the ensuing second impeachment trial might’ve chastened Donald Trump, his CPAC speech on Sunday should have disabused them of that notion — and of any thoughts the former president would ever accept the reality that his loss to President Joe Biden was fair and legitimate. Trump’s first speech since leaving the White House was heavy on “the big lie” — the false and long-debunked claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him — that inspired the deadly insurrection aimed at overturning his election loss. “I may even decide to beat [Democrats] for a third time,” Trump said early on during his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), implying his loss to Biden was illegitimate while teasing the possibility of running again in 2024. That remark was met with a standing ovation. "I may even decide to beat [Democrats] for a third time" -- Trump pushes the big lie and gets a standing ovation pic.twitter.com/Lu5u...

Former President Trump continued to repeat false claim that the election was stolen. "I may even decide to beat them for a third time," said of the Democrats in a possible 2024 run. Trump lost both the Electoral College and popular vote in 2020. Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories. Former President Donald Trump on Sunday continued to repeat false claim that the election was stolen over a month after leaving the White House. During Trump's headlining appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Florida, Trump immediately lit into President Joe Biden, calling his tenure "the most disastrous first month of any president in modern history." While alluding to a possible 2024 presidential campaign, the former president still refused to acknowledge his election loss, which he spent months trying to overturn through various election pressure campaigns against GOP officials across the country. "As you know they just lost th...

As president, Donald Trump railed against the “deep state” working within the federal government to undermine his presidency. But before he left office, he quietly embedded dozens of his own political appointees in career government positions and appointed other loyalists to influential boards and groups — one of the final, but possibly most enduring, ways he attempted to remake Washington in his own image. Now, President Joe Biden’s administration is trying to root out some of those government employees, seeking to rid the broader federal bureaucracy of Trump loyalists who could hinder his agenda. There was nothing new about Trump’s attempts to convert political appointees to civil service employees, a process called “burrowing” by some government watchers; outgoing presidents have done it for years. (Civil service workers have protections that political appointees do not, and are harder for new administrations to fire.) But good-government advocates, government watchdogs and experts ...

Let our journalists help you make sense of the noise: Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter and get a recap of news that matters. Hours before former President Donald Trump reenters the public stage with a speech at CPAC, the country’s largest conservative political conference, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) warned fellow Republicans that the party will continue to lose if it continues to “idolize” the former president. Cassidy was one of seven GOP senators who voted to convict Trump at his impeachment trial earlier this month for inciting the violent insurrection on January 6. “Over the last four years, we lost the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the presidency,” Cassidy said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, adding that the last time such a losing streak occurred in four years was at the beginning of the Great Depression with then-President Herbert Hoover. If Republicans “idolize one person we will lose,” Cassidy noted. “And that’s kind of clear from the last election...

South Dakota governor and rising conservative star Kristi Noem was a big hit at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Saturday, where she bragged about her state’s response to the coronavirus during a headlining speech. But an interview she did hours later with CBS highlighted how her attempt to turn reality on its head doesn’t survive scrutiny. In reality, South Dakota’s laissez faire approach to the pandemic — including Noem’s refusal to enforce a mask mandate — has amounted to “a failed experiment in herd immunity,” as Bloomberg recently put it. The state has one of the 10 highest mortality rates in the United States. More than 1 in 500 residents has died since the pandemic began. And, as Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan noted during the CBS interview, South Dakota’s mortality rate has been the highest in the country since last July. Noting that the governor is a staunch conservative, Brennan pressed Noem to explain how someone who claims to care about the sanc...

You can expect the U.S. government to wage a war. That is what our government does best. Sometimes it feels like that is all it does. It’s how the U.S. government has described its actions against viruses, poverty, drugs and an assortment of other inanimate nouns. War is so overused it feels like the only metaphor around. But how else to describe the invasion of alien elements and their unwelcome occupation of local territory? When the Big Freeze came to Texas, the state’s leaders duly girded themselves for battle. But they weren’t the ones that rescued the Texans who found themselves besieged and waiting for rescue, huddled in collapsing houses as infrastructure failed. Instead, the people of Texas worked to save one another. The stewards of Texas — its guardians by law — went on television to shadowbox a foe of their own invention. They went to war against the specter of green energy. It was the only option. Their leaders were otherwise occupied, busy fighting not against the ice, or...

Politico is leading today with a story on the Republican Party’s rapid descent into an organization with no real policies or ideas. It’s a trend that even many conservatives have been noting with alarm for years, one that predated Trump’s ascent to the 2016 nomination but accelerated as Trump’s cult of personality began to dominate the GOP. It is now reaching its zenith in the GOP’s punitive obsession with new voter suppression laws to fix a “voter fraud” problem that does not exist except in conservative conspiracy theories. The proximate cause of the shift to this “policy wasteland” is supposed to be Trump’s sometimes heterodox, more often carelessly oblivious approach to governance, combined with a combative, oppositional approach to politics. The Republican Party didn’t even bother to craft a platform at its 2020 convention, functionally subjugating the organization’s intellectual cortex to Trump’s impulsive amygdala. The GOP base is still reeling from and often refuses to accept T...

Founders of the group, which include Kinzinger advisers, are also launching a sister nonprofit to “build a grass roots army,” according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post. Unlike traditional PACs, both organizations can accept unlimited contributions. Nonprofit groups are not required to disclose the identity of their contributors. AD Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) posted a video on Jan. 7, 2020, the day after pro-Trump riots at the Capitol, saying, “It is time to invoke the 25th Amendment.” (@RepKinzinger/Twitter) The effort will be up against significant head winds, as Trump still holds vast sway over the Republican Party — even after his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol in an effort to stop the certification of President Biden’s victory. AD The new groups, which aim to mobilize the kinds of anti-Trump donors who backed the now-embattled Lincoln Project, are being launched as the former president is planning to expand his political operation with his own super PAC. Kinzin...

Sen. Rick Scott, who objected to the official Electoral College vote count on Jan. 6, was unambiguous in his assessment of the 2020 presidential election on Sunday, acknowledging that President Joe Biden was the legitimate victor. Saying the issue had become a "kind of a loyalty oath for the Trump party," "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace asked Scott directly: "Did Joe Biden win this election fair and square?" “Absolutely," Scott replied. "Joe Biden is the president. We went through the constitutional process. Joe Biden won the election." The Florida Republican's comments come during the Conservative Political Action Conference, the primetime annual event of the conservative movement. Former President Donald Trump is expected to air grievances about the 2020 election and the Biden administration during his speech at the convention Sunday evening. Despite Sunday's admission that Biden won fairly, Scott, like most Republican lawmake...

CHICAGO (AP) — Democratic county leaders in Illinois want an investigation of Republican state Rep. Chris Miller after he displayed a decal of an anti-government militia movement on his pickup truck parked at the U.S. Capitol during the deadly insurrection in January. The Illinois Democratic County Chairs’ Association asked for a state investigation Friday after photos of Miller’s truck with a sticker for the Three Percenters surfaced on social media. Miller, a cattle farmer first elected in 2018, denied involvement with the group. He was in Washington, D.C., for former President Donald Trump’s speech on Jan. 6. A day earlier, Miller’s wife, freshman U.S. Rep. Mary Miller delivered a speech quoting Adolf Hitler that drew wide outrage. ADVERTISEMENT “My son received the sticker that was on my truck from a family friend who said that it represented patriotism and love of country,” Miller, of Oakland, said in a statement. “I have since removed the sticker.” Still, Kristina Zahorik, leader...

Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican senator, predicted on Sunday morning that Donald Trump will not be the party’s nominee for president in 2024, pointing to the number of seats lost by Republicans in the House and Senate over the four years Trump was in office. Cassidy was asked on CNN’s State of the Union show whether he would support Trump if the former president runs for another term in 2024, or if he would support him if he did run and won the Republican nomination to challenge Joe Biden. “That’s a theoretical that I don’t think will come to pass,” Cassidy said. He added: “I don’t mean to duck, but the truth is … I don’t think he’ll be our nominee.” Cassidy also warned his party against revolving around a single dominant figure. “If we idolize one person, we will lose,” he said. Sen. Bill Cassidy says he doesn’t think fmr. Pres. Trump will be the GOP nominee for president in 2024. "Over the last four years, we lost the House... the Senate and the presidency" which has...

The Bidens immediately greeted the White House staff upon entering the building on Inauguration Day. "Usually we meet them in the first days or first weeks, but never in the first minutes," a staffer said. Biden has publicly expressed some reservations about being waited on by residence staff. Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories. Whenever the presidency changes hands, the White House residence staff undertakes a herculean task on Inauguration Day — transforming the private quarters of the historic building for its newest occupants within the span of a few hours. For "lifers," the staff members who have served multiple US Presidents, the traditions and protocols inside the White House have been an enduring facet of their lives for decades. However, President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden upended a traditional interaction with the residence staff on their first day in the White House, according to The New Yorker. After entering the North Porti...

If I were to write a bad satire of 21st century capitalist greed, it might involve something like this: there is an app called “Griddy” (get it?) that is connected to everyone’s bank account. When something bad happens to you, Griddy adds interest to injury by sucking your account dry. “Why would anyone connect to this thing?” you might ask. Because without it their utilities are cut off. There is no limit to Griddy’s greed. It is an “apparasite,” a parasitic app whose job is to slurp up the contents of your bank account and send you cheerful messages about how it is creating value for you. A characteristic feature of our time is that you cannot satirize it, because anything you come up with already exists, or is about five minutes from existing. Griddy is a real app that connects Texans to their deregulated power grid and aims to “disrupt” the power market. Certainly it has disrupted the lives of Texas energy customers, who are having their savings accounts drained to pay the exorbita...

President Joe Biden has reportedly begun talks with lawmakers about infrastructure spending. His plan to rebuild roads and bridges may have a "hefty price tag," The Associated Press reported. Biden's team has used this month's harsh winter storm in Texas to talk about his plans. Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories. President Joe Biden and members of his administration have begun talking with congressional lawmakers about his plans to invest in the nation's infrastructure, according to The Associated Press. Billions of dollars would go to transportation and infrastructure projects as part of the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill passed by House lawmakers on Friday. But Biden's plans for rebuilding the nation's roads, highways, and bridges could have a much bigger price tag. As a candidate, Biden proposed a 10-year, $1.3 trillion investment. "Our nation's infrastructure is literally crumbling," the plan said. It continued: "It...

Republican congressman Paul Gosar appeared at a white nationalist political conference before attending the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), according to reports. The Arizona Republican appeared on-stage at the "America First Political Action Conference" (AFPAC) on Friday, following the far-right conference’s founder, Nicholas Fuentes. Mr Fuentes, an alleged white nationalist, said on Friday that the Capitol riot – in which five people died – was “awesome”, and that "white people are done being bullied". The AFPAC founder went on to add that if the country "loses its white demographic core, then this is not America anymore”. Mr Fuentes also mocked Republican congressman Madison Cawthorn, who uses a wheelchair, for not “standing up”, after he spoke at the mainstream conservative conference, CPAC, also taking place in Florida. The speeches were shared in videos to Twitter. Read more: CPAC interrupted as organisers forced to tell attendees to wear ...

Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, two men were seen hauling a gold statue of Donald Trump through the Hyatt Regency Orlando lobby. Clergy, coreligionists and people with eyes for easy metaphors all asked: Where’s the beef? It doesn’t take a doctorate of divinity to see the parallel to this ludicrous idol worship and the episode of the golden calf, in which a faction of the Israelites, left alone by Moses for roughly the period Trump’s been out of office, melted down their rings into a “molten calf” and made offerings to it. This made God (a Jealous God) angry, and Moses, too. I mean, our guy shattered the Ten Commandments when he saw what was going down. It’s pretty clear to see why. On those tablets, notarized by divine fire, one finds the line item, “Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” It’s kinda baffling how of...