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Liz Cheney: Trump Role in Capitol Riot ‘Most Serious Misconduct’ by Any US President

Congresswoman Liz Cheney, one of the leaders of the investigation into the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last year, said Sunday that Donald Trump engaged in the “most serious misconduct” of any U.S. president in history by inciting the mayhem and then refusing for more than three hours to call off the rioters.

Trump is broadly hinting at another run for the White House in 2024 but Cheney, the vice chairperson of the congressional investigative committee, told CNN’s “State of the Union” show on Sunday there is “no doubt in my mind he’s unfit” for elected office and “should never be close to the Oval Office again.”

Cheney, a vocal Trump critic, unleashed her latest broadside against her fellow Republican days after witnesses told the House of Representatives panel that Trump ignored entreaties from White House aides, Republican congressional supporters, conservative television commentators and family members to call off about 2,000 Trump-supporting rioters last year as they tried to keep Congress from certifying that Democrat Joe Biden had defeated him in the 2020 election.

Trump has often assailed the committee investigating his role in fomenting the riot by urging his supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell.” He has called the nine-member panel the “Unselect Committee of political Thugs and Hacks.”

Trump has criticized several of his former aides for turning against him and testifying about what they saw in the White House on the day of the riot as he watched it unfold on television while sitting in the dining room next to his office.

Trump told a political rally in Arizona on Friday night, “If I announced that I was not going to run any longer for political office, the persecution of Donald Trump would immediately stop. They’re coming after me because I’m standing up for you.”

The rioters rampaged into the U.S. Capitol, vandalized the building, scuffled with police and sent lawmakers and then-Vice President Mike Pence fleeing for their safety. In the midst of the insurrection, Trump derided Pence for not having “the courage” to block certification of the Electoral College vote showing Biden had won.

Trump never inquired about the well-being of his second-in-command even as some of the rioters chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!” and erected a gallows within eyesight of the Capitol. The committee said some of Pence’s security detail called their loved ones to say goodbye for fear they may not make it out of the Capitol alive as the rioters came perilously close to the vice president.  

Trump had privately and publicly demanded that Pence send the election results back to the states Trump narrowly lost so new electors favoring the 45th president could replace the official ones favoring Biden. Constitutional experts say that would have been illegal.     

In the United States, presidents are effectively chosen in separate elections in each of the 50 states, not through the national popular vote. Each state’s number of electoral votes is dependent on its population, with the biggest states holding the most sway. The rioters who stormed the Capitol tried to keep lawmakers from certifying Biden’s eventual 306-232 victory in the Electoral College.    

Last Thursday’s hearing was the eighth over the last two months, with the committee promising to hold more public sessions in September.

Cheney said the committee is still seeking testimony from Steve Bannon, a one-time Trump aide who was convicted Friday of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with the panel’s subpoena to testify. Shortly before his trial last week, Bannon said he was now willing to testify but no appearance has been scheduled.  

“I think it’s clear Steve Bannon has information the committee needs,” Cheney said.

She cited his commentary days ahead of the November 2020 election that Trump would declare victory the night of the election no matter the vote count at the time, which indeed Trump did. In the early hours after polls closed, Trump was ahead in the vote count but days later lost the election as mail-in ballots heavily favoring Biden were counted.

Cheney also noted that Bannon predicted on January 5, 2021, that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” leaving the investigative panel to wonder exactly what Bannon knew beforehand about the riot at the Capitol and from whom.

She said the committee is in negotiations to hear testimony from Virginia [Ginni] Thomas, a conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who worked with Trump aides to overturn the Biden victory.

Cheney said the committee hopes Ginni Thomas “will come in voluntarily,” but will consider issuing a subpoena if she does not.

 
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Native American News Roundup July 17-23, 2022 

Here is a summary of Native American-related news around the U.S. this week:

Haaland not hindered by leg injury

Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, is recovering from an injury she incurred while hiking in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park on Sunday.

An Interior Department statement released Monday said she had been treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for a broken tibia of her left leg. That didn’t stop her from returning to work Monday when she hosted tribal and Native Hawaiian community leaders as part of the administration’s Tribal Homelands Initiative.

Through that initiative, announced in November 2021, the Interior and Agriculture departments will partner with Native communities to give them greater say in how federal lands and waters are managed. According to an Interior Department press release, the group also discussed the impact of climate change in Indigenous communities, as well as ways that Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) can inform federal policymaking.

Statement from the Department of Interior 7/18/2022

Tribes fight to have Wounded Knee artifacts returned

The Washington Post reported this week on efforts by descendants of victims and survivors of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre to reclaim artifacts stolen from the graves of their ancestors and held for 130 years by the Barre Museum in Barre, Massachusetts.

The massacre occurred at a time when the government believed Plains tribes were plotting rebellion against their confinement on reservations. After tribal police killed Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull on the Standing Rock Reservation, his ally, Minneconjou Lakota leader Spotted Elk, fled south to the Pine Ridge Reservation with about 350 Lakota men, women and children.

The Army intercepted the travelers, who made camp along Wounded Knee Creek at Pine Ridge. On December 29, as the Army attempted to disarm the Indians, a shot rang out, triggering an Army attack that left as many as 300 Native Americans dead.

Soldiers and civilian contractors buried the dead in a mass grave. Many took “souvenirs” of clothing, weapons and hair, which made their way into museums and roadshows across the country.

A traveling salesman donated some of the items to the Barre Museum in 1892; the museum has been reluctant to give them up.

In 1993, a Barre Museum curator told The New York Times that museum officials feared repatriating the objects would “rip a page out of history and bury it.”

Native Americans fight for items looted from bodies at Wounded Knee

CDC reports increase in drug overdoses among Black and Native Americans

A new report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that in 2020, Black Americans and American Indian/Alaska Natives (AI/AN) died from drug overdoses at a much higher rate than white Americans. In just one year, overdose death rates increased 44% for Black people and 39% for AI/AN people. The drug overdose death rate for white Americans rose 22%.

The report says these deaths are being driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, which widened income inequalities and disrupted access to drug abuse prevention and treatment and recovery programs.

Overdose deaths are being driven by fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine and other illegally manufactured opioids.

Overall, 92,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2020, up 30% from 2019.

The study stressed an urgent need for culturally responsive, community-based prevention and treatment services, as well as medication such as naloxone, and access to harm-reduction services, including fentanyl test strips and syringes.

Vital Signs: Drug Overdose Deaths, by Selected Sociodemographic and Social Determinants of Health Characteristics — 25 States and the District of Columbia, 2019–2020

Freedmen want greater voice in Senate committee hearing

Leaders of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs have invited representatives of the Five Tribes to testify at a July 27 hearing on the status of their Freedmen, the lineal descendants of enslaved African Americans who in the early 1800s accompanied their Native American slaveholders along the Trail of Tears to present-day Oklahoma.

As VOA reported in 2021, the Five Tribes signed treaties in 1866 agreeing to abolish slavery and give the Freedmen “all the rights and privileges of native citizens.”

But Freedmen descendants in four of the Five Tribes are not permitted to vote or run for office in tribal elections and are denied federal housing, health and education benefits.

Freedmen advocates complain they were the last to know about the hearing.

“The Tribes knew about it two or three weeks before we did,” according to Eli Grayson, a descendant of Muscogee Creek Black Freedmen.

He told VOA that only one Freedmen spokesperson was invited to testify: Cherokee citizen Marilyn Vann, president of the Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes Association.

According to the Committee’s invitation, dated July 20, which Grayson posted on Facebook, Vann will be given five minutes to speak about the plight of Freedmen in all Five Tribes and must submit written testimony by July 25.

“It sounds to me like they want to talk to the Tribes and not to Freedmen,” said Grayson, who said three tribal leaders have so far accepted invitations to speak.

VOA reached out to a panel spokesman, who said it isn’t known who will attend.

“When we do know, we will post it on the committee website,” he said.

Five Tribes to testify at Freedmen hearing in U.S. Senate

Pope Francis to make ‘penitential pilgrimage’ to Canada

Addressing crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square on July 17, Pope Francis characterized his upcoming trip to Canada as “a penitential pilgrimage.”

Francis will travel to Canada on July 24, where he is expected to apologize for the abuses against Indigenous peoples in Catholic residential schools.

“Unfortunately, in Canada, many Christians, including some members of religious institutes, have contributed to the policies of cultural assimilation that in the past have severely harmed Native communities in various ways,” the pope said. “For this reason, I recently received some groups in the Vatican, representatives of Indigenous peoples, to whom I expressed my sorrow and solidarity for the harm they have suffered. And now, I am about to embark on a penitential pilgrimage, which I hope, with God’s grace, will contribute to the journey of healing and reconciliation already undertaken.”

According to the National Catholic Reporter, when Francis arrives in Edmonton, Alberta, he will not be greeted by political leaders but by First Nations elders and survivors of residential schools. From Alberta, he will travel to French-speaking Quebec City and Iqaluit, in the Arctic Canadian territory of Nunavut.

Earlier this year, from March 28 to April 1, Francis met with First Nations, Métis and Inuit delegations at the Vatican, and after hearing their testimony, he expressed “pain and shame” for the abuses they suffered at the hands of Catholic Church leaders.

The Pope’s words at the Angelus prayer, 17.07.2022

NDN Collective calls on Washington

Representatives from the South Dakota-based Indigenous-led NDN Collective were in Washington this week for talks with administration officials, lawmakers and federal agency leaders to discuss ways in which Indigenous communities can have a greater say in how public land is managed.

“We’ve heard commitments and recommitments to support bills — such as the Advancing Tribal Parity on Public Land Act and the Environmental Justice for All Act — that protect our sacred sites and double-down on consent and consultation in issues that will directly affect Tribal people and our communities,” a spokesman for the group told VOA via email.

On Wednesday, the group called on President Joe Biden to take “bold action on climate” by declaring a climate emergency and listening to decades long calls “to put an end to the era of fossil fuel extraction on our public lands.”

NDN Collective was founded in 2018 in Rapid City, South Dakota, with a stated mission to “Defend. Develop. Decolonize.” In 2020, the group received $12 million from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s Earth Fund. In March, the group filed a lawsuit against a Rapid City hotel owner and called for a citywide boycott of businesses with racist policies and practices.
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California Enacts Gun Control Law Inspired by Texas Abortion Ban

California’s governor signed into law Friday new gun control legislation modeled on a legal approach used in Texas to curb access to abortions.

Last year, well before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to an abortion, the Republican-controlled state of Texas enacted a new law allowing individuals to sue anyone helping to terminate a pregnancy, if a fetal heartbeat could be detected.

The Texas law allowed the individuals who filed the civil complaints, if they won their case, to receive “damages” of at least $10,000.

Officials in the heavily Democrat-leaning state of California, where there is solid support for abortion rights as well as for strict gun control measures, decided to push for new legislation that uses the same legal mechanism.

The law Governor Gavin Newsom signed Friday will allow individuals to seek $10,000 from any person or company that manufactures, sells or transports firearms that are banned in the state, which includes assault rifles and homemade so-called ghost guns.

State Senator Anthony Portantino, speaking at a news conference, was explicit that he and his bill co-authors had the Texas law in mind when they wrote their legislation.

“Frankly, if Texas can use a private right of action to attack women, we can use a private right of action to make California safer,” he said.

Court challenges to the California law, which is set to go into effect Jan. 1, 2023, are expected to follow from conservative organizations and the nation’s powerful gun lobby.

Newsom argued that it was the U.S. Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, that “opened the door” to such a move.

“The Supreme Court said this was OK. It was a terrible decision. But these are the rules that they have established,” he added.

The U.S. high court refused last year to halt the Texas abortion law from going into effect while challenges work their way through lower courts.

Similar Texas-style abortion restriction laws have since been enacted in several other Republican-led states.

Last month, a decision by the Supreme Court also expanded the right to carry concealed firearms around the country.

Newsom at the time called the decision “dangerous” and “shameful.”

Nearly 400 million guns were in circulation among the civilian population in the United States in 2017, or 120 guns for every 100 people, according to the Small Arms Survey.

More than 45,000 people were killed in 2020 by guns, about half of which were suicides, according to data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive.  
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Calls Rise in US Congress to Designate Russia a State Sponsor of Terrorism

As the war in Ukraine approaches the end of its fifth month and Russian attacks on civilian sites are reported on a near-daily basis, pressure is mounting on the Biden administration to officially designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism.

This week, according to reporting by Politico, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Secretary of State Antony Blinken that if he does not exercise the power delegated to him by Congress to make the designation, lawmakers themselves will do so.

Russia is already under crippling sanctions, imposed by the U.S. and a host of other countries, but official designation as a state sponsor of terrorism would up the ante in some significant ways. Where the international components of current sanctions have been carefully coordinated, the state sponsor of terrorism designation could trigger a stricter regime of penalties that could apply to third-country parties doing business with Russian individuals and companies.

In addition, the designation would waive Russia’s sovereign immunity in the U.S., opening the door for Americans harmed by the war in Ukraine to file civil lawsuits against the Russian government in U.S. courts.

Administration reluctant

Pelosi is the most senior lawmaker to advocate for the administration to take action, but she is not the first. Earlier this month, Senators Lindsey Graham, a Republican, and Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, traveled to Kyiv to highlight legislation they introduced in May that would make the designation official.

A bill with the same aim was introduced in the House by Representatives Joe Wilson, a Republican, and Ted Lieu, a  Democrat.

However, the Biden administration has appeared reluctant to take that step. In the past, a State Department spokesperson has said that the existing regimen of sanctions is sufficient to achieve the administration’s purposes.

Also, the state sponsor of terrorism designation would trigger “secondary” sanctions that the U.S. would have to apply to individuals and countries outside the U.S. who do business with Russia. Such a designation could complicate efforts to hold together a broad coalition of countries that are putting pressure on Russia to halt its aggression in Ukraine.

A potential new precedent

John Herbst, who served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2003-06, told VOA that, in his mind, there is little doubt that Russia has met the requirements to be designated a sponsor of terrorism.

“I believe that violence directed at civilians for political aims is one of the definitions of terrorism,” said Herbst, now the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “If that’s right, then clearly the Russian government is pursuing a policy of terrorism.”

However, he pointed out that in the past, nations subject to the designation have been no more than regional powers at most.

The U.S. currently considers four countries to be state sponsors of terrorism: Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria. In the past, the list has included Iraq, Libya, South Yemen and Sudan, but those countries have since been removed from the list.

Adding Russia to the list would be a significant departure from past practice and would set a new precedent.

A ‘blunt instrument’

Herbst, who has been a vocal critic of what he calls the Biden administration’s “slow and timid policy of supplying Ukraine,” said that he would support the state sponsor of terrorism designation for Russia but with some reservations.

“I support it, but it’s not my highest priority,” he said. “If the administration was completely sound on weapons and sanctions, we wouldn’t need it at all. Because they’re not, I can see the utility of the designation. But generally speaking, I’m not fond of blunt instruments myself. I’d rather have the flexibility.”

Ingrid Brunk Wuerth, the Helen Strong Curry Chair in International Law at Vanderbilt Law School, agreed that the sanctions that come with a state sponsor of terrorism designation may be more broad than is necessary to further punish the Kremlin, considering that “Russia is under an enormous amount of pressure from U.S. sanctions as it is.”

In addition, though, Wuerth said that she is particularly concerned about the effects of opening up Russia to civil lawsuits filed by Americans.

Loss of ‘bargaining chip’

In theory, U.S. claimants would be entitled to sue to recover damages against Russia — damages that could be paid out from Russian assets currently frozen in U.S. financial institutions.

In the past, she said, frozen assets have been used as a bargaining chip in negotiations with hostile foreign governments. For example, she pointed to the release of frozen Iranian assets as an element of the Algiers Accords of 1981, which ended a long-running U.S. hostage crisis in Iran.

“If we give the money that we have to American claimants, it’s not available as a bargaining chip against Russia,” Wuerth said. In addition, she said, because the law limits those eligible to file lawsuits to American citizens and employees of the U.S. government, it would mean that damages recovered by Americans would reduce the pool of funds available to compensate the Ukrainian government and its citizens.

Wuerth noted that the U.S. is not the only country holding frozen Russian assets, and that if others followed the United States’ lead and allowed their citizens to sue for damages, that would further erode the pool of money that might be used to directly aid Ukraine.

Zelenska address

The discussion about further actions to punish Russia’s aggression against Ukraine took place during the same week that Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, visited Washington and delivered an address to a bipartisan group of U.S. Congress members on Wednesday.

She said that Russia’s “unprovoked invasive terrorist war” is “destroying our people” and recounted the stories of some of the untold number of civilians, many of them children, who have died in the nearly five months since the war began.

“I am asking for weapons — weapons that will not be used to wage a war on somebody else’s land but to protect one’s home and the right to make up a life in that home,” Zelenska told lawmakers. “I am asking for air defense systems in order for rockets not to kill children in their strollers … and kill entire families.”

In her weekly press conference on Thursday, House Speaker Pelosi praised Zelenska’s speech, and made a further case that Russia’s actions in Ukraine have gone beyond waging war, crossing the boundary into war crimes.

Pelosi decried “the tragedy of what is happening to children and women and the rest in the course of this war, how the Russians have used rape as a weapon of war, when it is indeed a war crime.”

She alleged that rape, in particular, is happening not because of the decisions of individual soldiers, but on the orders of Russian commanders, as a means of “demoralizing” the Ukrainian people.

“Congress will continue to stand with Ukraine in their fight to defend democracy, not only for their own people, but for the world,” Pelosi said.
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Jan. 6 Probe: Trump ‘Chose Not to Act’ on Mob Violence

U.S. lawmakers investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol last year said then-President Donald Trump chose not to act for more than three hours as thousands of his supporters rampaged through the Capitol trying to block the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

“President Trump sat at his dining table and watched the attack on television while his senior-most staff, closest advisers and family members begged him to do what is expected of any American president,” Representative Elaine Luria, a Democratic committee member, said.

Representative Adam Kinzinger, another committee member, said Trump failed to act because the mob had stopped the certification.

“The count ground to an absolute halt and was ultimately delayed for hours. The mob was accomplishing President Trump’s purpose, so of course he didn’t intervene,” Kinzinger, a Republican, said. “President Trump did not fail to act. … He chose not to act.”

The nine-member House of Representatives committee investigating the mayhem showed a montage of videotaped testimony from key Trump White House aides, and presented live testimony from two more, to support their allegation that Trump watched the insurrection on television and did nothing to stop it for hours.

In his opening remarks, Representative Bennie Thompson, a Democrat who is the chairman of the committee, said, “For 187 minutes on January 6, this man [Trump] of unbridled destructive energy could not be moved. Not by his aides, not by his allies, not by the violent chants of rioters, or the desperate pleas of those facing down the mob. He could not be moved.”

Luria had told CNN earlier this week that the panel would explore “minute by minute” what Trump was doing for three hours and seven minutes on the afternoon of Jan. 6 — from the end of his speech at a rally urging his supporters to walk to the Capitol and “fight like hell” to finally telling them they should disperse.

“Within 15 minutes of leaving the stage, President Trump knew that the Capitol was besieged and under attack,” she said Thursday night.

Late into the hearing Thursday, Luria said Trump failed to take any action “for a cornerstone of our democracy” – the peaceful transition of office.

Vice-chairperson and Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican, said that Trump was confident that he could persuade his supporters that the election was stolen, which she said amounted to him “preying on their patriotism.” Cheney described Trump’s behavior on Jan. 6 as “indefensible.”

Cheney swore in two new witnesses — former deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews and former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger, both of whom quit the day of the insurrection in protest of Trump’s reaction to the riot.

Matthews provided details of what she saw in the White House that day, including whether Trump knew the violence had broken out when he took aim at then-Vice President Mike Pence in a 2:24 p.m. tweet complaining about Pence’s refusal to block certification of Biden’s victory.

Trump tweeted: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”

“He shouldn’t have been doing that,” Matthews said. “He should have been telling these people to go home and to leave and to condemn the violence.”

Trump had implored Pence both privately and publicly before the riot to send the election results back to the states he narrowly lost so new electors favoring Trump could replace the official ones favoring Biden. Constitutional experts say that would have been illegal.

In the United States, presidents are effectively chosen in separate elections in each of the 50 states, not through the national popular vote. Each state’s number of electoral votes is dependent on its population, with the biggest states holding the most sway. The rioters who stormed the Capitol tried to keep lawmakers from certifying Biden’s eventual 306-232 victory in the Electoral College.

Matthews said in a clip from her video deposition, “I remember us saying that that was the last thing that needed to be tweeted at that moment. The situation was already bad. And so, it felt like he was pouring gasoline on the fire by tweeting that.”

Pottinger told the panel that Trump’s tweet prompted him to resign.

“I read that tweet and made a decision at that moment to resign,” he said in his video deposition. “That’s where I knew that I was leaving that day once I read that tweet.”

Earlier videotaped witnesses at the hearings, including Trump’s daughter Ivanka, a White House adviser, said the president ignored their entreaties to publicly call off the rioters.

Trump eventually released a videotaped statement after 4 p.m. asking the rioters to leave the Capitol. In another tweet sent later, he appeared to justify the mob’s actions.

“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long,” he wrote. “Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

Trump, who has strongly suggested he will make another run for the White House in 2024, to this day claims he was cheated out of reelection. He has often derided the Jan. 6 investigative panel, posting a message Tuesday on his social media platform Truth Social that the committee “is a Fraud and a disgrace to America.”

Trump has said he would consider pardoning the more than 800 protesters arrested during the rioting if he becomes president again.

Thursday night’s public hearing originally was set to be the last, but now committee members say they are continuing to gather information about the riot. Cheney said in her closing remarks that there would be a new hearing in September.
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January 6 Committee Alleges Trump Actively Encouraged Rioters

The January 6 Committee wrapped up its first round of public hearings Thursday with a minute-by-minute examination of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s actions during the attack on the U.S. Capitol. As VOA Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, the investigation provided new insight into Trump’s actions.
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Biden Positive for COVID-19, ‘Fully Carrying Out His Duties’

The White House says President Joe Biden has tested positive for COVID-19 and is experiencing “very mild symptoms.” The president’s diagnosis comes amid another wave of the coronavirus in the United States, driven this time by the BA.5 variant.  VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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US Congress Moves Toward $52 Billion in Subsidies for Semiconductor Firms

The Senate this week took a key step toward passing a bill meant to provide $52 billion in subsidies to the semiconductor industry in the United States, part of an effort that lawmakers have characterized as protecting the country from supply shortages such as those that struck during the coronavirus pandemic.

The bill, called the CHIPS for America Act, also seeks to make the U.S. more competitive with China.

Semiconductors, commonly known as chips, are essential elements of modern manufacturing. They are used in computers, cellphones and automobiles as well as in various other capacities. During the pandemic, chip shortages slowed manufacturing in multiple industries to a crawl.

The legislation would create incentives for semiconductor manufacturers to build chip fabrication plants in the U.S. to bring back domestic production levels, which have fallen from more than one-third of total global capacity three decades ago to less than 12% now.

Discussing the legislation on the Senate floor, Senator Rob Portman, a Republican, said, “It is a plan to make America more competitive with China, and a plan to bring good jobs back to America.”

In a 64-34 procedural vote Tuesday, with more than a dozen Republicans voting with the overwhelming majority of Democrats, the Senate cleared the way for the legislation to come to a vote as soon as this week. The House of Representatives would need to pass the bill — which is still not in its final form — before President Joe Biden could sign it into law.

Making the case

Before the vote Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told his colleagues that the bill “will fight inflation, boost American manufacturing, ease our supply chains and protect American security interests.”

He added: “America will fall behind in so many areas if we don’t pass this bill, and we could very well lose our ranking as the No. 1 economy and innovator in the world if we can’t pass this.”

Senator John Cornyn, the most senior Republican to vote in favor of advancing the bill, used Twitter to make his case ahead of the vote.

“If the US lost access to advanced semiconductors (none made in US) in the first year, GDP could shrink by 3.2 percent and we could lose 2.4 million jobs,” he tweeted. “The GDP loss would 3X larger ($718 B) than the estimated $240 B of US GDP lost in 2021 due to the ongoing chip shortage.”

The money in the bill comes with significant strings attached. Companies accepting the subsidies must agree not to use the funds for to buy back stock, pay shareholder dividends, or expand manufacturing in certain countries identified in the bill. Provisions allow the government to “claw back” the funds if a recipient violates any of the bill’s conditions.

Second try

If the bill advances to the House, it would mark the second time a bipartisan group of senators tried to secure money for the semiconductor industry. Last year, the Senate passed a $250 billion package that included broader research and development funding.

When the House received the bill, it waited nearly a year to pass its own version and made a number of additions that Senate Republicans would not agree to. The bill never advanced.

Now, however, things might be different. In a letter circulated to members of the House Democratic caucus on Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in favor of the bill.

“With this package, the United States returns to its status as a world leader in the manufacturing of semiconductor chips,” Pelosi wrote, noting that the bill would create an estimated 100,000 well-paid government contracting jobs in the industry.

“Doing so is an economic necessity to lower costs for consumers and to win in the 21st Century Economy, as well as a national security imperative as we seek to reduce our dependence on foreign manufacturers,” Pelosi wrote.

Industry reacts

In an email exchange with VOA, Ajit Manocha, president and CEO of Semi, a global industry trade group, said, “We are pleased to see action to reverse the decline in the U.S. share of global semiconductor manufacturing capacity, which has fallen by 50 percent in the last 20 years and is forecast to shrink further.”

“The availability of robust incentives in other countries and the lack of a federal U.S. incentive have been key factors driving the location of more overseas manufacturing facilities,” Manocha added. “If the United States wants to maintain or increase its share of global semiconductor manufacturing capacity, the federal government absolutely needs to get in the game.”

Semiconductor Industry Association President and CEO John Neuffer said in a statement, “The Senate CHIPS Act would greatly strengthen America’s economy, national security, and leadership in the technologies that will determine our future.”

He added, “This is America’s window of opportunity to re-invigorate chip manufacturing, design, and research on U.S. shores, and Congress should seize it before the window slams shut.” 
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Jan. 6 Panel Concludes First Set of Hearings

The Jan. 6 committee will wrap up its first round of public hearings this week with a minute-by-minute examination of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s actions during the attack on the U.S. Capitol. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson looks at what happens next.
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Will Trump Be Prosecuted Over Role in January 6 Attack?

As the congressional committee examining the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol wraps up its first round of public hearings this week, the Justice Department faces rising pressure to prosecute former President Donald Trump in connection with the bloody assault.

The Justice Department has charged more than 800 Trump supporters involved in the riot and is investigating others tied to the plot.

But it remains unclear whether the department will take the unprecedented step of charging a former president based on the findings of a committee.

“We don’t know whether there will be prosecutions that are going to be a direct result of these hearings,” said William Banks, Board of Advisors Distinguished Professor of Law at Syracuse University.

That is not to say that Trump is not in legal jeopardy. When the nine-member committee held its first televised hearing on June 9, the panel’s vice chairperson, Republican Representative Liz Cheney, pledged to present evidence showing the former president was responsible for orchestrating a “sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power.”

Over the course of seven hearings, the bipartisan panel, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, sketched out that plan, offering its findings from more than 1,000 interviews and more than 125,000 documents.

What emerged was a picture of a losing president so possessed with holding on to power that he falsely claimed the election had been stolen despite being told otherwise by his own advisers; prodded the Justice Department to support his falsehood; pressed officials in battleground states to flip votes for him; pressured his own vice president, Mike Pence, to overturn the results; encouraged a mob of his supporters to descend on the Capitol; and, finally, failed to act as rioters stormed the Capitol.

Taken together, the committee’s findings appear to amount to a damning indictment of Trump’s conduct, conjuring the impression that the panel has generated all the evidence prosecutors need to indict the former president.

But whether the Justice Department thinks there is enough evidence to support an indictment remains to be seen.

Even those who think the Jan. 6 committee’s findings warrant criminal charges against Trump caution that the panel’s discovery represents one side of the story.

“The congressional hearing is one-sided in the sense that there was no one to cross-examine any of these witnesses or to seek to check the veracity of their sources and the like,” Banks said.

In a 12-page statement released after the committee’s second hearing last month, Trump made a similar point in his own defense.

“Why can’t they let the countervailing opinion be heard? Why are they hiding evidence from the public and only showing information that favors the Democrats’ tall tale?” Trump wrote, repeating his false claims that the election was stolen and rigged.

To be clear, the committee does not have the power to prosecute Trump or anyone else. That authority rests with the Department of Justice and, ultimately, with Attorney General Merrick Garland.

In an interview with ABC News on July 3, Cheney said that it was possible that the panel would refer Trump’s case to the Justice Department for prosecution, but that the department “doesn’t have to wait” for such a referral.

As the Justice Department continues to investigate people close to Trump, Garland has given little clue as to whether the department is probing the former president for his role in the Jan. 6 attack, saying earlier this year that prosecutors “will follow the facts wherever they lead.”

A spokesperson for Garland did not respond to an email requesting comment on calls for Trump’s prosecution.

Factors in Garland’s decision

In deciding whether to charge Trump, Garland must consider at least three questions, Banks said. The first is whether the Justice Department has enough evidence to win a conviction that would withstand appeal.

Among potential charges Trump could face are “obstructing an official proceeding” for his alleged efforts to block Congress’ vote count on January 6 and “conspiracy to defraud the United States” in connection with various schemes to overturn the results of a presidential election. A third possible charge — inciting a riot or insurrection — has diminished in recent weeks, according to Jonathan Turley, a conservative law professor at George Washington University School of Law.

Banks said the obstruction charge is “pretty straightforward.”

“There’s now quite a bit of documentary evidence as well as witness testimony at the hearings that suggest he was trying to stop Vice President Pence from carrying out his assigned task that day, as well as trying to change the slate of electors,” Banks said.

But some other experts aren’t convinced. Turley, who appeared as a Republican-invited witness during Trump’s first impeachment said the obstruction charge would be hard to make.

“The problem with that is that Trump was calling for people to go to Congress to protest the certification,” Turley said in an interview. “Democrats protested certification. Democrat members voted against certification of Republican presidents. You can’t say that that itself is obstruction.”

More harm than good?

The second question Garland would have to consider is whether indicting a former president at a time when the country is deeply polarized is “good for the country,” Banks said.

“Are we better off as a country to let it be and to try to move on and hope that nothing like this ever recurs?” Banks said. “That’s a tough job, and it’s the attorney general who’s in the driver’s seat.”

It is a question many legal scholars have debated in recent weeks.

Jack Goldsmith, a former assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, wrote in a recent opinion piece for The New York Times that prosecuting Trump “would be a cataclysmic event from which the nation would not soon recover.”

“It would be seen by many as politicized retribution,” Goldsmith wrote.

Banks said he was inclined to agree but became less so after former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony, which many legal experts believe bolstered the legal case against Trump.

“I think even though it will be very painful to experience yet another bout of our institutions with Donald Trump, I think it might be the most important thing that we could do at this time,” Banks said.

Turley said the decision to prosecute Trump should be based on evidence, not its social ramifications.

“The key is that you have to have a strong and unassailable case,” he said. “But if one exists, I don’t think that it makes any sense to give a president some constructive immunity from the criminal code. If the members have the evidence they said they had of a crime by President Trump, I would be the first to call for his indictment.”

A final consideration for Garland is whether, as a member of President Joe Biden’s administration, it is appropriate for him to charge Biden’s political rival, Trump.

“There might be an appearance that if he chooses to pursue an indictment of Donald Trump that it could be politically motivated,” Banks said.

Under Justice Department guidelines, Garland is required to appoint an outside prosecutor if he determines that investigation and prosecuting Trump will “present a conflict of interest” for the department.

“Indeed, that may well be forthcoming, but I think he would only do that if he answered the other two questions” regarding evidence and whether prosecuting Trump would serve the public interest, Banks said.
…

Biden Announces Climate Actions, Pledges More

President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced new steps to combat climate change and promised more robust action to come, saying, “This is an emergency and I will look at it that way.” 

The president stopped short, though, of declaring a formal climate emergency, which Democrats and environmental groups have been seeking after one Democratic senator quashed hopes for sweeping legislation to address global warming. Biden hinted such a step could be coming. 

“Let me be clear,” Biden said, “climate change is an emergency, and in the coming weeks I’m going to use the power I have as president to turn these words into formal, official government actions through the appropriate proclamations, executive orders and regulatory power that a president possesses.” 

Biden delivered his pledge at a former coal-fired power plant in Massachusetts. The former Brayton Point power plant in Somerset is shifting to offshore wind power manufacturing, and Biden chose it as the embodiment of the transition to clean energy that he is seeking. 

Executive actions announced Wednesday will bolster the domestic offshore wind industry in the Gulf of Mexico and Southeastern United States, and expand efforts to help communities cope with soaring temperatures through programs administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies. 

The trip comes as historic temperatures bake Europe and the United States. Temperatures reached 115 degrees in Portugal as wildfires raged in Spain and France, and Britain on Tuesday shattered its record for highest temperature ever registered. At least 60 million Americans could experience triple-digit temperatures over the next several days as cities around the U.S. sweat through more intense and longer-lasting heat waves that scientists blame on global warming. 

Calls for a national emergency declaration to address the climate crisis have been rising among activists and Democratic lawmakers after Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, last week scuttled talks on a long-delayed legislative package. 

White House officials have said the option remains under consideration. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Tuesday declined to outline a timetable for a decision aside from saying no such order would be issued this week. 

Gina McCarthy, Biden’s climate adviser, said Biden is not “shying away” from treating climate as an emergency. 

“The president wants to make sure that we’re doing it right, that we’re laying it out, and that we have the time we need to get this worked out,” she told reporters on Air Force One. 

Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said Tuesday that he was “confident that the president is ultimately ready to do whatever it takes in order to deal with this crisis.”

An emergency declaration on climate would allow the president to redirect federal resources to bolster renewable energy programs that would help accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels. The declaration also could be used as a legal basis to block oil and gas drilling or other projects, although such actions would likely be challenged in court by energy companies or Republican-led states. 

Such a declaration would be similar to the one issued by Biden’s Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, who declared a national emergency to build a wall on the southern border when lawmakers refused to allocate money for that effort. 

Talks with Manchin stall

Biden pledged last week to take significant executive actions on climate after monthslong discussions between Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, stalled. The West Virginia senator cited stubbornly high inflation as the reason for his hesitation, although he has long protected energy interests in his coal- and gas-producing state. 

For now, Manchin has said he will agree only to a legislative package that shores up subsidies to help people buy insurance under the 2010 health care law and allows Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices that will ultimately lower the cost of pharmaceuticals for consumers. 

The White House has indicated it wants Congress to take that deal, and Biden will address the climate issue on his own. 

The former Brayton Point power plant closed in 2017 after burning coal for more than five decades. The plant will now become an offshore wind energy site.

A new report says the U.S. and other major carbon-polluting nations are falling short on pledges to fight climate change. Among the 10 biggest carbon emitters, only the European Union has enacted polices close to or consistent with international goals of limiting warming to just a few more tenths of a degree, according to scientists and experts who track climate action in countries.
…

Senators Propose Changes to Electors Law After Capitol Riot

A bipartisan group of senators agreed Wednesday on proposed changes to the Electoral Count Act, the post-Civil War-era law for certifying presidential elections that came under intense scrutiny after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. 

Long in the making, the package introduced by the group led by Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Joe Manchin of West Virginia is made up of two separate proposals. One would clarify the way states submit electors and the vice president tallies the votes in Congress. The other would bolster security for state and local election officials who have faced violence and harassment. 

“From the beginning, our bipartisan group has shared a vision of drafting legislation to fix the flaws of the archaic and ambiguous Electoral Count Act of 1887,” Collins, Manchin and the other 14 senators said in a joint statement. 

“We have developed legislation that establishes clear guidelines for our system of certifying and counting electoral votes,” the group wrote. “We urge our colleagues in both parties to support these simple, commonsense reforms.” 

Both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell have signaled support for the bipartisan group, but the final legislative package will undergo careful scrutiny. 

Votes are not likely before fall. But with broad support from the group of 16 senators— seven Democrats and nine Republicans who have worked behind closed doors for months with the help of outside experts—serious consideration is assured. 

In a statement, Matthew Weil, executive director of the Democracy Program at the Bipartisan Policy Center, called the framework a “critical step” in shoring up ambiguities in the Electoral Count Act. 

After Trump lost the 2020 election, the defeated president orchestrated an unprecedented attempt to challenge the electors sent from battleground states to the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, when the vice president presides over certification. 

Under the proposed changes, the law would be updated to ensure the governor from each state is initially responsible for submitting electors, as a way to safeguard against states sending alternative or fake elector slates. 

Additionally, the law would spell out that the vice president presides over the joint session in a “solely ministerial” capacity, according to a summary page. It says the vice president “does not have any power to solely determine, accept, reject, or otherwise adjudicate disputes over electors.” 

That provision is a direct reaction to Trump’s relentless efforts to pressure then Vice President Mike Pence to reject the electors being sent from certain battleground states as a way to halt the certification or tip it away from Joe Biden’s victory. 

The bill also specifies the procedures around presidential transitions, including when the election outcome is disputed, to ensure the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next. 

That’s another pushback to the way Trump blocked Biden’s team from accessing some information for his transition to the White House. 

The second proposal, revolving around election security, would double the federal penalties to up to two years in prison for individuals who “threaten or intimidate election officials, poll watchers, voters or candidates,” according to the summary. 

It also would seek to improve the way the U.S. Postal Service handles election mail and “provide guidance to states to improve their mail-in ballot processes.” Mail-in ballots and the role of the Postal Service came under great scrutiny during the 2020 election. 

An Associated Press review of potential cases of voter fraud in six battleground states found no evidence of widespread fraud that could change the outcome of the election. A separate AP review of drop boxes used for mailed ballots also found no significant problems. 

The need for election worker protections was front and center at a separate hearing Wednesday of the House Committee on Homeland Security. Election officials and experts testified that a rise in threats of physical violence is contributing to staffing shortages across the country and a loss of experience at local boards of elections. 

“The impact is widespread,” said Neal Kelley, a former registrar of voters in Orange County, California, who now chairs the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections. “And, while the effects on individuals are devastating, the potential blow to democracy should not be dismissed.” 

Elizabeth Howard, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, told the committee that Congress needs to direct more money and support toward protecting election workers’ personal safety, including by funding local and federal training programs and providing grants to enhance security at election directors’ personal residences. 

Democratic New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, who recently reported a series of threats, told the panel the situation has become worse after former President Donald Trump’s attacks against the 2020 election result. 

“Unfortunately, we are still, on a daily basis—in my state and across the country—living with the reverberating effects of the ‘Big Lie’ from 2020,” she said. “And, as we all know, when it comes to leadership, what you say from the very highest echelons of government power in this country do have those reverberating effects.” 

Some Republican members of the committee condemned violence against election workers — and also drew a parallel to recent threats and intimidation directed toward some Supreme Court justices after their decision to overturn constitutional protections for abortion. 

GOP Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana rejected the notion that Trump and other election skeptics were solely responsible for the “atmosphere of mistrust” that grew up around the 2020 election.
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Ally of Ex-US President Trump Wins Republican Nomination for Maryland Governor’s Race

A supporter of former U.S. President Donald Trump was selected by Republican voters in the eastern state of Maryland as their choice for governor.

State legislator Dan Cox overwhelmingly won Tuesday’s preliminary elections, far outpacing his nearest opponent, Kelly Schulz, who once served in the cabinet of outgoing Republican Governor Larry Hogan. He is one of many Republican candidates endorsed by the former president ahead of the upcoming midterm elections who have supported Trump’s false claims that he lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden due to a fraudulent process.

Cox attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021 that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol aimed at stopping the official certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory, and called then-Vice President Mike Pence a “traitor” on Twitter before eventually deleting the post and apologizing.

The Republican contest was seen as a proxy battle between Trump and Governor Hogan, who was elected twice in the reliably Democratic-leaning state and has urged the party to move on from the combative ex-president. Hogan is widely considered by political observers as a potential candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Cox’s eventual Democratic opponent in the November general election was still undecided Tuesday night. First-time candidate and best-selling author Wes Moore was leading Tom Perez, who served as Labor Secretary under former President Barack Obama, but the final result will not be decided for several days until mail-in ballots are counted.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press
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US Capitol Riot Panel Expects to See Secret Service Texts

The U.S. congressional panel probing the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 of last year expects to be able to look at text messages sent by Secret Service agents from the day before the mayhem and as it unfolded, a member of the investigative committee said Sunday.

“We expect to get them by this Tuesday,” Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren told ABC’s “This Week” show. “We need all of the texts from the fifth and sixth of January.”

The riot unfolded as about 2,000 supporters of then-President Donald Trump, a Republican, stormed into the Capitol to try to block Congress from certifying that Democrat Joe Biden had won the 2020 election. The certification of the Electoral College vote showing Biden had turned back Trump’s reelection bid was delayed for hours as the rioters scuffled with police, vandalized the Capitol building and ransacked congressional offices.

Lofgren said the investigative committee needs the Secret Service texts “to get the full picture” of what occurred before and during the Capitol insurrection. The Secret Service said last week that some phone data was lost during a routine reset of iPhones, but that all the requested texts had been saved.

“I was shocked to hear that they didn’t back up their data before they reset their iPhones,” Lofgren said. “That’s crazy, and I don’t know why that would be, but we need to get this information.”

“We went into it trying to do our job. We were assigned the task as a committee of uncovering all of the facts about the sixth and all of the events leading up to the sixth so that we could report on that,” Lofgren said. “We hope to do it in a way that is accessible to all Americans.”

The Secret Service said last week that any “insinuation” that it intentionally deleted texts was false and that the committee had its “full and unwavering cooperation.”

The texts could be relevant to understanding how Trump berated his security detail about its refusal to drive him to the Capitol after he finished speaking at a rally near the White House, and just ahead of the time in the early afternoon when the first of the rioters breached the Capitol as lawmakers were starting to certify Biden’s victory.

Witnesses testifying before the committee and police radio communications show that Trump demanded to join his supporters at the Capitol but that his Secret Service detail refused to take him there out of fear for his safety in a volatile situation.

One witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, then a top assistant to Mark Meadows, Trump’s last White House chief of staff, testified about a secondhand account she heard that Trump attempted to grab the wheel of his limo to head to the Capitol, although the Secret Service has disputed her account.

In what could be its last public hearing, the committee is hearing testimony Thursday night about what Trump was doing for three hours and 17 minutes between the time he finished his rally speech contending, as he does to this day, that he was cheated out of another four-year term in the White House, and the time he issued a short video telling the rioters at the Capitol to leave the building.

Witnesses have already said that Trump watched the insurrection unfold on television, while ignoring entreaties from his aides and his daughter Ivanka, a White House adviser, to publicly tell the rioters to disperse.

At one point, according to insider accounts of his comments during the rioting, Trump voiced approval of the demonstrators who were chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” The then-vice president had refused to accede to demands by Trump to return the election results to legislatures in states that he narrowly lost so that pro-Trump electors could replace the official Biden electors.   

In the United States, presidents are effectively chosen in separate elections in each of the 50 states, not through the national popular vote. Each state’s number of votes in the Electoral College is dependent on its population, with the biggest states holding the most sway.

Eventually, Trump told the rioters, “I know your pain, I know you’re hurt. But you have to go home now; we have to have peace. We have to have law and order; we have to respect our great people in law and order.”

In another tweet sent later, he said, “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

After the rioters were cleared from the Capitol, lawmakers in the early hours of January 7, 2021, certified that Biden had won the election by a 306-232 margin in the Electoral College, and he was inaugurated as the country’s 46th president two weeks later.  
…

Biden Vows ‘Strong’ Climate Action Despite Dual Setbacks

President Joe Biden is promising “strong executive action” to combat climate change, despite dual setbacks in recent weeks that have restricted his ability to regulate carbon emissions and boost clean energy, such as wind and solar power.

The Supreme Court last month limited how the nation’s main anti-air pollution law can be used to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Then late Thursday, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia said he wants to delay sweeping environmental legislation that Democrats have pushed as central to achieving Biden’s ambitious climate goals.

Biden, who has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, compared with 2005 levels, said Friday that “action on climate change and clean energy remains more urgent than ever.”

If the Senate will not act to address climate change and boost clean energy, “I will take strong executive action to meet this moment,” Biden said in a statement from Saudi Arabia, where he met Friday with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Biden did not specify what actions he will take on climate, but said they will create jobs, improve energy security, bolster domestic manufacturing and protect consumers from oil and gas price increases. “I will not back down,” he promised.

Some advocates urged Biden to use the moment to declare a national climate emergency and reinstate a ban on crude oil exports, among other steps. Declaring a climate emergency would allow Biden to redirect spending to accelerate renewable energy such as wind and solar and speed the nation’s transition away from fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and natural gas.

Climate advocates, including some of Manchin’s Democratic colleagues in the Senate, slammed his opposition, noting that it was the second time he has torpedoed climate change legislation.

“It’s infuriating and nothing short of tragic that Senator Manchin is walking away, again, from taking essential action on climate and clean energy,” said Democratic Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota. “The world is literally burning up while he joins every single Republican to stop strong action to cut emissions and speed the transition to clean energy.”

Other Democrats said Manchin’s announcement that he cannot back the climate provisions in the Senate bill — at least for now — frees Biden of the obligation to cater to a powerful, coal-state senator eager to protect his energy-producing home state. Manchin’s vote is decisive in the evenly divided Senate, where Republicans unanimously oppose climate action.

“Free at last. Let’s roll. Do it all and start it now,” tweeted Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who has long pushed stronger action on climate. “With legislative climate options now closed, it’s now time for executive Beast Mode,” Whitehouse wrote.

Whitehouse suggested a series of actions Biden could take, including “a robust social cost of carbon rule” that would force energy producers to account for greenhouse gas emissions as a cost of doing business. The senator also urged Biden to require major polluters to use technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions and impose stronger pollution controls on cars, light trucks and heavy-duty vehicles.

Advocates also urged Biden to reject all onshore and offshore drilling on federal lands and in federal waters — a step he promised during the 2020 campaign but has not enacted — and restrict approval of natural gas pipelines and other fossil fuel projects.

Manchin, in a radio interview Friday, said climate activists want an immediate end to U.S. use of oil, coal and gas.

“That’s crazy,” he told West Virginia talk show host Hoppy Kercheval. “I’m not throwing caution to the wind. I think we need an energy policy that works for our country.”

Even before Manchin’s apparent rejection of the climate measures, Democrats had slimmed their down their plan from about $555 billion in climate spending to just more than $300 billion in a bid to secure his support. Proposed tax credits for wind, solar and nuclear energy, along with still-unproven carbon-capture technology, could reduce emissions by up to 40% by 2030, advocates said.

Manchin earlier had forced Democrats to drop two tax provisions he opposes: direct payments of clean energy credits and tax credits for drivers who purchase electric vehicles. Manchin forced other concessions last year, including killing a proposal that would have paid utilities that increase clean energy while penalizing those that do not.

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said he still hopes to salvage the clean energy tax provisions and said failure “really is not an option here.”

Manchin’s request to postpone action on the climate measure follows a June 30 ruling by the Supreme Court, which said in a 6-3 vote that the Clean Air Act does not give the Environmental Protection Agency broad authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

The ruling by the court’s conservative majority likely complicates the Biden administration’s plan to manage power plant pollution but does not eliminate its authority to regulate greenhouse gases. EPA Administrator Michael Regan has said the agency is moving forward with proposed rules for power plants in the coming months. 
…

Native American News Roundup July 10-16, 2022

Here is a summary of Native American-related news around the U.S. this week:

Interior secretary Haaland hears emotional testimony on boarding schools

U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland heard from former students of federally backed Indian boarding schools as part of a year-long “Road to Healing” initiative. At the Riverside Indian School in Anadarko, Oklahoma, July 9, elders from different states and tribes shared stories of physical and emotional punishment, sexual abuse and other indignities suffered as part of an educational program designed to sever children from families and tribes and assimilate them into mainstream U.S. society.

Tribal elders recall painful boarding school memories

Conservative magazine takes aim at Haaland boarding school initiative

An article in the July/August 2022 issue of American Conservative magazine slams the Interior Department’s Federal Indian Boarding Schools Initiative as “a thoroughly political scheme contrived by activists to stoke outrage regardless of the facts.”

“The most commonly cited complaint is that students were forbidden from speaking their native languages,” senior editor Helen Edwards writes. “Today it would be called immersion learning. The goal was not to eradicate Indian languages but to equip students to operate in the modern world, including as citizens.”

As for physical punishment of Native children in the schools, Edwards states that conditions “were, by the standards of the age, about average.”

Stirring Up Hatred Against Indian Boarding Schools

Episcopalians to examine role in Indian boarding schools

The Episcopal Church is acknowledging its role in “the intergenerational trauma caused by the Doctrine of Discovery, colonialism, genocide, ethnocide through the operation of Indigenous boarding schools, and other systems of white supremacy that have oppressed Indigenous peoples.” At a July 11 meeting in Baltimore, the church set aside $2.5 million to research its role in operating Indian boarding schools, gather testimony from survivors, and establish spiritual healing centers in Indigenous communities.

Episcopalians Approve Fact-Finding Commission on Indigenous Boarding Schools

Justice department makes violence against Indigenous women a priority

U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco is directing all U.S. Attorneys with Indian Country jurisdiction and all federal law enforcement partners to develop new plans to promote public safety in Indian Country.

“The new directive stresses that the department has a duty to investigate and prosecute serious crimes in Indian country, including domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking,” Monaco said at the close of a two-day meeting of the Trilateral Working Group on violence against Indigenous women and girls. “The directive also sets forth specific steps that U.S. Attorneys and law enforcement officers should take to ensure that their work is victim-centered and culturally and linguistically appropriate.”

Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco Delivers Remarks at the Closing Session of the Fourth Convening of the Trilateral Working Group on Violence Against Indigenous Women and Girls

Athletic legend Jim Thorpe reinstated as sole 1912 Olympic gold winner

Indianz.com reports that descendants of Native American sports legend Jim Thorpe are ecstatic over the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decision Friday to reinstate gold medals Thorpe won after spectacular performances in 15 pentathlon and decathlon events at the 1912 Stockholm Games.

At the time, King Gustave of Sweden declared Thorpe, a citizen of the Sac and Fox Nation in present-day Oklahoma, the “most wonderful athlete in the world.”

But the glory was short-lived. In 1913, the Amateur Athletic Union, the predecessor of the United States Olympic Committee deemed that he had infringed on the rules regarding amateurism because he had previously played minor league baseball and stripped him of his medals.

“We welcome the fact that … a solution could be found,” said Thomas Bach, the president of the IOC. “This is a most exceptional and unique situation, which has been addressed by an extraordinary gesture of fair play from the National Olympic Committees concerned.”

A moment 110 years in the making: Jim Thorpe wins restoration of Olympic awards

Tulalip Tribes take on vaping giant

The Tulalip Tribes of Washington State have sued e-cigarette giant Juul Labs Inc. (JLI), alleging the company and its affiliates illegally targeted teenaged tribe members with deceptive ads about the addictiveness of its fruit- and candy-flavored e-cigarettes.

The tribes’ 316-page complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle July 7, alleges that JLI and its affiliates deliberately targeted young tribal members through “a diabolical pairing” of notorious cigarette company advertising techniques and cutting-edge viral marketing campaigns designed to make nicotine “cool again.”

The suit says that as a result, use of Juul’s products “became rampant” among Tulalip tribal youth, with the percentage of 12th graders who reported consuming nicotine nearly doubling from 2017 to 2018.

Tulalip Tribes sue e-cigarette giant Juul for ads targeting youth

Tribes to Montana museum: ‘Give back Big Medicine’

The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSK) of the Flathead Reservation in Montana want the Montana Historical Society to return “Big Medicine” — a white bison that was born on the reservation in 1933. After his death in 1959, the bison underwent taxidermy and was put on display in the state museum in Helena. White bison are extremely rare and considered sacred by a number of Native American tribes.

“He inspired our people, and he represents hope for the future and positive things,” CSK Chairman Tom McDonald said. “If you think about when he came and the tough times that they lived through, it was seen as a sign of renewal.”

Decisions about the future of Big Medicine rest with the historical society’s board of trustees.

CSKT make pitch to bring Big Medicine back home to bison range

Navajo photographer looks at modern Native Americans through old lens

Native Americans have long decried their depiction in art and media as romantic relics of a vanishing past, particularly in the work of early 20th-century photographer Edward S. Curtis. Now, Navajo photographer Will Wilson is using a 19th-century process to produce tintype portraits of contemporary Native Americans.

“People don’t want to deal with the traumatic reality of history, of genocide, of attempted ethnic cleansing,” Wilson told Native News Online. “They’d rather see these noble, beautiful images of a ‘better time.’ I want to make the case that we’re still here doing interesting and important things.”

An exhibit of his work, In Conversation: Will Wilson, is currently on display through September 11, 2022, at the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington, Delaware.

Will Wilson Topples the Myth of the American Indian

 
…

Biden to Meet with Arab Leaders as US Seeks to Reassert Influence in Middle East

U.S. President Joe Biden meets Saturday with Arab leaders in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he will lay out his vision for U.S. engagement in the Middle East.

Biden will attend the GCC+3 Summit, meeting with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – plus Egypt, Iraq and Jordan.

He is also expected to discuss energy security with the leaders of the Gulf countries, but aides say there are not likely to be any announcements on oil output until next month’s meetings of OPEC+, a group of 13 OPEC members and 10 other oil producers, including Russia.

“I don’t think you should expect a particular announcement here bilaterally because we believe any further action taken to ensure that there is sufficient energy to protect the health of the global economy will be done in the context of OPEC+,” Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, told reporters Friday on the flight to Jeddah.

Biden and GCC+3 summit leaders are expected to announce an agreement to connect Iraq’s electric grid to the GCC’s grids through Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, thus reducing Baghdad’s dependence on Iran.

On Friday, Biden met with Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, and afterward Biden said they had a “good discussion” on ensuring adequate oil supplies to support global economic growth.

“I’m doing all I can to increase the supply for the United States of America, which I expect to happen,” Biden said.

Biden flew directly to Jeddah from Tel Aviv, just hours after the kingdom announced the opening of its airspace, effectively ending the country’s ban on flights to and from Israel. The gesture from Riyadh is part of a broader warming of relations between Israel and the Arab world as they align against Tehran.

Biden is claiming the move to be the result of his administration’s push toward a more integrated and stable Middle East region.

“That is a big deal. A big deal,” Biden said. “Not only symbolically but substantively, it’s a big deal,” Biden said, adding that he hopes the move will eventually lead to a broader normalization of Saudi-Israeli relations. The two countries currently do not recognize each other.

Biden said his talks with Saudi leaders help to reassert U.S. influence in the Middle East, part of a strategy of engaging the kingdom, whose poor human rights record he has condemned in the past.

“We’re not going to leave a vacuum in the Middle East for Russia or China to fill,” Biden told reporters following his meeting with the Saudis. “And we’re getting results.”

At the top of Biden’s meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed and other Saudi royals, both sides ignored shouted questions from the U.S. press, including, “Is Saudi still a pariah?” and “Jamal Khashoggi — will you apologize to his family?”

U.S. intelligence has concluded that the crown prince approved the brutal murder of Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and U.S. resident.

Biden, who during his presidential campaign said the kingdom should be treated as a pariah, told reporters he made his views on human rights and Khashoggi’s murder “crystal clear” to the crown prince, who in turn claimed, according to Biden, that he “was not personally responsible for it.”

“I indicated I thought he was,” Biden said he replied.

Biden’s Saudi visit “came across as a slap” in the face of all those who stand for human rights, said Agnès Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International in an interview with VOA.

“What President Biden is doing is suggesting that human rights are cheap and can be bargained out for a range of other impact,” she said.

Biden’s Middle East trip has also taken him to the West Bank, where he met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and Jerusalem, where he held talks with Israeli caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid.
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Biden Vows to Work for Independent Palestinian State

U.S. President Joe Biden met with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem on Friday before traveling to Saudi Arabia. Biden said he remains committed to an independent Palestinian state even if the time isn’t right to restart negotiations. Abbas condemned the Israeli occupation of the West Bank but said Palestinians are prepared to restart peace talks. Linda Gradstein reports from Jerusalem.
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US House Votes to Restore Abortion Rights; Senate Odds Dim

The U.S. House has voted to restore abortion rights nationwide in Democrats’ first legislative response to the Supreme Court’s landmark decision overturning Roe v. Wade. 

The bill has little chance of becoming law, with the necessary support lacking in the 50-50 Senate. Yet voting marks the beginning of a new era in the debate as lawmakers, governors and legislatures grapple with the impact of the court’s decision. 

The legislation passed 219-210. The House also passed a second bill to prohibit punishment for a woman or child who decides to travel to another state to get an abortion, 223-205. 

“Just three weeks ago the Supreme Court took a wrecking ball to the fundamental rights by overturning Roe v. Wade,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ahead of the votes, gathering with other Democratic women on the steps of the Capitol. “It is outrageous that 50 years later, women must again fight for our most basic rights against an extremist court.” 

Republicans spoke forcefully against the two bills, praising the Supreme Court’s decision and warning that the legislation would go further than Roe ever did when it comes to legalizing abortion. 

Urging her colleagues to vote no, Washington Republican Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers called abortion “the greatest human rights issue of our generation.” 

She said the Democratic legislation “has nothing to do with protecting the health of women. It has everything to do with forcing an extreme agenda on the American people.” 

By overturning Roe, the court has allowed states to enact strict abortion limits, including many that had previously been deemed unconstitutional. The ruling is expected to lead to abortion bans in roughly half the states. 

Already, a number of Republican-controlled states have moved quickly to curtail or outlaw abortion, while states controlled by Democrats have sought to champion access. Voters now rank abortion as among the most pressing issues facing the country, a shift in priorities that Democrats hope will reshape the political landscape in their favor for the midterm elections. 

This is the second time the House has passed the bill, which would expand on the protections Roe had previously provided by banning what supporters say are medically unnecessary restrictions that block access to safe and accessible abortions. It would prevent abortion bans earlier than 24 weeks, which is when fetal viability, the ability of a human fetus to survive outside the uterus, is generally thought to begin. It allows exceptions for abortions after fetal viability when a provider determines the life or health of the mother is at risk. 

The Democrats’ proposal would also prevent states from requiring providers to share “medically inaccurate” information, or from requiring additional tests or waiting periods, often aimed at dissuading a patient from having an abortion. 

The bill that would prohibit punishment for traveling out of state would specify that doctors can’t be punished for providing reproductive care outside their home state. Democratic Representative Lizzie Fletcher of Texas, one of the bill’s authors, said the threats to travel “fail to reflect the fundamental rights that are granted in our Constitution.” 

Democrats have highlighted the case of a 10-year-old girl who had to cross state lines into Indiana to get an abortion after being raped, calling it an example of how the court’s decision is already having severe consequences. 

“We don’t have to imagine why this might matter. We don’t need to conjure up hypotheticals. We already know what’s happened,” Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said Thursday on the Senate floor. 

“Should the next little 10-year-old’s right or 12-year-old’s right or 14-year-old’s right to get the care that she desperately needs be put in jeopardy?” 

The Constitution doesn’t explicitly say travel between states is a right, though the Supreme Court has said it is a right that “has been firmly established and repeatedly recognized.” Yet the court has never said exactly where the right to travel comes from and that could leave it open to challenge or elimination, as the right to an abortion was. 

Lawmakers in Missouri earlier this year, for example, considered making it illegal to “aid or abet” abortions that violate Missouri law, even if they occur out of state. The proposal was ultimately shelved. 

Democrats have teed up more bills for passage in the coming weeks. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland said Friday that the House will vote next week on legislation guaranteeing a right to contraception. 

Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, who supports instituting a nationwide ban on abortion, accused his colleagues across the aisle Thursday of seeking to “inflame” the issue of abortion. He said proponents of the travel bill should ask themselves, “Does the child in the womb have the right to travel in their future?” 

Only two Senate Republicans, Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, have been supportive of abortion rights, but they do not support the Democrats’ proposal, calling it too far-reaching. They have introduced alternative legislation that would bar states from placing an “undue burden” on a woman’s ability to obtain an abortion before fetal viability, among other provisions. 

When pressed Thursday on whether Democrats should work with the two senators, Pelosi pushed back, “We’re not going to negotiate a woman’s right to choose.” 

Since the court’s ruling last month, some activists have accused President Joe Biden and other top Democrats of failing to respond forcefully enough to the decision. Biden, who denounced the court’s ruling as “extreme,” last week issued an executive order intended to head off some potential penalties that women seeking abortion may face. His administration has also warned medical providers that they must offer abortion if the life of the mother is at risk. 

Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee has already launched a digital ad campaign to energize voters on the issue, warning that Republicans’ ultimate goal is to outlaw abortion nationwide. 

“We have to elect a couple more Democratic senators so that we can get around the filibuster so that we can pass legislation that truly impacts a woman’s right to choose,” she said. “There’s no halfway measure.” 

 
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Texas Sues to Block Federal Guidance on Abortions to Save Mother’s Life 

Texas sued the federal government on Thursday over new guidance from the Biden administration directing hospitals to provide emergency abortions regardless of state bans on the procedure that came into effect in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the lawsuit argued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was trying to “use federal law to transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic.”

The lawsuit focused on guidance issued Monday advising that a federal law protecting patients’ access to emergency treatment requires performing abortions when doctors believe a pregnant woman’s life or health is threatened.

The guidance came after President Joe Biden, a Democrat, signed an executive order on Friday seeking to ease access to services to terminate pregnancies after the June 24 overturning of Roe v. Wade, which recognized a nationwide right of women to obtain abortions.

Abortion services ceased July 2 in Texas after the state’s highest court, at Paxton’s urging, cleared the way for a nearly century-old abortion ban to take effect.

HHS said the guidance from its U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services agency did not constitute new policy but merely reminded doctors of their obligations under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act.

But in the lawsuit filed in Lubbock, the Republican-led state of Texas argued that federal law has never authorized the federal government to compel doctors and hospitals to perform abortions and that the guidance was unlawful.

In a statement, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called it “unthinkable that this public official would sue to block women from receiving lifesaving care in emergency rooms, a right protected under U.S. law.”

About half the states are expected to move to restrict or ban abortions. Thirteen states, including Texas, had “trigger” laws on the books designed to snap into effect if Roe v. Wade was overturned.
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Poll: Fewer Than Half of Republican Primary Voters Would Support Trump in 2024

Just over half of Republicans likely to vote in their party’s 2024 presidential primary say that they would prefer someone other than former President Donald Trump as the party’s presidential candidate, a poll released on Tuesday by The New York Times and Siena College found. 

After identifying Republicans likely to vote in the primary, the survey gave respondents a choice between Trump and five other potential GOP nominees. Only 49% of respondents chose Trump, despite the fact that the former president carried 94% of all Republican votes in the 2020 election, which he lost to current President Joe Biden. 

Trump’s closest challenger was Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who was chosen by 25% of respondents. Other potential candidates included Texas Senator Ted Cruz (7%); Trump’s one-time running mate, former Vice President Mike Pence (6%); former South Carolina governor and Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley (6%); and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (2%). 

Is Trump vulnerable? 

The biggest question raised by the poll is whether it indicates that Trump might be vulnerable to a challenge in the Republican primary elections in 2024. Experts said that the results should be read with caution. 

While Trump’s lack of a clear majority in the poll may raise some eyebrows, “He’s still pretty far ahead,” Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, told VOA. 

The importance of the poll, Kondik said, will depend heavily on how people — like DeSantis — choose to interpret it. 

“Part of actual vulnerability is the perception of vulnerability,” he said. “Does DeSantis, who is, at the moment, the most likely credible rival to Trump … see a path to victory? Does he think that that 50% or so is soft? Or is it stronger than that?” 

Comparison to Biden 

The data was released one day after findings from the same poll were published showing that the majority of likely Democratic primary voters would prefer that incumbent President Joe Biden not run for reelection in 2024. 

Both men enjoy relatively high personal approval ratings within their respective parties, with 85% of Democrats reporting a favorable impression of Biden and 80% of Republicans reporting the same feelings toward Trump. 

Biden’s 85% personal favorability ranking masks some degree of discontent within the party about his performance in office. Facing high inflation and having difficulty pushing his agenda through Congress, the poll showed that his job approval rating is at 70% among Democratic primary voters, a relatively low number for an incumbent president. 

In the data released Monday, the poll asked Democrats who said they would prefer a candidate other than Biden to say why they felt that way. The largest number, 33%, cited his age. Biden is 79, the oldest person ever to serve as president, and will be nearly 82 at the time of the 2024 election. 

The data released Tuesday did not contain any questions about why voters who didn’t select Trump chose a different candidate. Trump is currently 76, and will be 78 at the time of the 2024 election. 

In Monday’s release, all respondents were asked who they would vote for in 2024 if the two major party candidates were Biden and Trump. They preferred Biden by a margin of 44% to 41%. 

Different reactions 

On Monday, The White House reacted to the polling data with a shrug. 

“There’s going to be many polls; they’re going to go up, and they’re going to go down,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a briefing. “This is not the thing that we are solely focused on.” 

Trump was not so blasé. On Tuesday morning he released an angry statement criticizing The New York Times and accusing it of targeting him repeatedly over the years. 

“Fake polls, phony stories, and made up quotes — they are a disgrace to journalism and have set it back many many years. THE NEW YORK TIMES IS TRULY THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” he wrote. 

Trump’s base 

Among Republican primary voters, Trump’s strength varies greatly depending on the educational attainment of individual voters. Among those with a high school education or less, he commands 62% of the vote, with DeSantis a distant second with 19%. However, among voters with a bachelor’s degree or higher, Trump and DeSantis are deadlocked at 29% each. 

“It makes sense to me that the folks with four-year degrees might be a little more skeptical of Trump and maybe more toward DeSantis,” Kondik, of the Center for Politics, said. 

Kondik noted that there has recently been a large amount of positive coverage of DeSantis in “elite conservative media,” which is more broadly consumed by highly educated Republicans. 

“We know, also, that to the extent that Trump drove people out of the Republican Party, a lot of those folks are people that have four-year degrees.” 

Support for Trump’s election falsehoods 

The poll also found that a large majority of Republicans supported the actions that Trump took in the wake of the 2020 election, when he continued to spread false claims of election fraud after losing dozens of court challenges to election counts across the country. 

His efforts to challenge the election results resulted in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when thousands of his supporters stormed Congress as lawmakers were preparing to formally recognize Biden’s victory. 

Republican voters were asked if they thought Trump was “just exercising his right to contest the election” or if they believed “he went so far that he threatened American democracy.” The overwhelming majority, 75%, said that they believed Trump was just exercising his rights. Just 19% said he went too far, with the remainder declining to answer. 

Again, white Republican voters without a college degree were most likely to support Trump, with 80% saying he had been within his rights in his post-election actions. Among white Republican college graduates, that figure was 68%.
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Investigators: Trump Tweet Pivotal Motivation for Attack on US Capitol

U.S. lawmakers’ investigation into the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol resumed Tuesday with an examination of former President Donald Trump’s encouragement to far-right extremist groups to subvert the democratic process. As VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson explains, investigators argue Trump’s claims of election fraud directly led to the attack.
Produced by: Katherine Gypson
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Most Democrats Would Prefer Biden Not Run Again in 2024, Poll Finds

A large majority of Democrats would prefer that their party nominate someone other than incumbent President Joe Biden as its candidate in the 2024 presidential election, a new poll from The New York Times and Siena College found. 

The poll asked respondents who plan to vote in the Democratic primary elections whether they want the party to renominate Biden. Only 26% said that they would like to see Biden on the ballot again, compared to 64% who said they would prefer someone else. 

The poll’s findings paint a grim picture for the incumbent president, whose standing with the public is being battered by high inflation and the inability of his party to push its agenda through the closely divided Senate. 

In one of the survey’s only bright spots for the president, it found that among all voters, in a rematch of the 2020 election, with Biden facing former President Donald Trump in 2024, Biden would win 44% of the vote to Trump’s 41%. 

Age a major factor 

Democratic respondents who said they would prefer that the party nominate a different presidential candidate in 2024 were asked to explain why. One-third said that Biden’s age is a factor. At 79, Biden is already the oldest person ever to serve as president, and he will be nearly 82 at the time of the 2024 election. 

It was the oldest cohort of survey respondents, those over 65, who were most concerned about Biden’s age, with 60% citing it as their primary reason for wanting a different candidate. The youngest cohort, those aged 18 to 35, were the least likely to cite Biden’s age, with only 14% choosing it as their primary concern. 

Nearly as many respondents, 32%, cited Biden’s job performance as their reason. Twelve percent said they would simply prefer someone else, and 10% said that they don’t view the president as being “progressive enough.” 

Country seen moving in ‘wrong direction’ 

The new poll found that 77% of Americans believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction, versus only 13% who believe it is headed in the right direction. 

The stark assessment of the country’s trajectory held across all the different subgroups tracked by the poll. A majority of Republicans (89%), Independents (81%), and Democrats (63%) chose the “wrong direction.” When pollsters divided respondents by age, education, and ethnicity, majorities of each agreed with the negative assessment. 

The subgroup with the least negative assessment of the country’s path was Black Americans, 54% of whom said they believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, versus 30% who believe it is on the right track. White Americans were most dissatisfied with 82% viewing the country as moving in the wrong direction while just 9% see it as on the right track. 

Low approval of Biden 

Asked whether they approve or disapprove of how Biden is handling his job, only 33% of respondents said they approved. Among Democrats, the number was 70%, a low figure for a party’s incumbent president. Among Republicans, the figure was just 8%. 

The poll tried to separate respondent’s personal feelings about Biden from their sense of how he is performing as president. When asked if they have a favorable or unfavorable impression of Biden personally, the numbers were not much better. 

Only 39% said they had a favorable impression of the president, with 58% reporting an unfavorable impression. The partisan divide was stark, with 85% of Democrats reporting a favorable impression, compared to 30% of Independents and just 7% of Republicans. 

White House reacts 

Asked about the poll during a news briefing Monday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre noted that it also found that 92% of Democrats would vote for Biden in a rematch against Trump. More broadly, though, she said that the administration is not focused on polls. 

“There’s going to be many polls; they’re going to go up and they’re going to go down,” she said. “This is not the thing that we are solely focused on.” 

Instead, she said, the White House is focused on things like the bipartisan gun control legislation that Biden signed into law Monday, fighting inflation, and creating jobs

Bad sign for midterms 

Kyle Kondik, the executive editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, told VOA that Biden’s approval numbers in the new poll are significantly lower than those in most other public polling, but said they still reflect a troubling trend for the president and his party. 

“The numbers have been slowly slipping, really for a long time going back to last year,” he said. “There’s just been this erosion and the erosion continues. Whatever the bottom is, it doesn’t seem like he’s hit it yet.” 

It’s bad news for the Democrats, given that November’s midterm elections, which will decide which party controls Congress for the next two years, are only four months away. 

“Typically bad approval is a contributor to a bad midterm outcome for a president’s party,” Kondik said. 

Rumors of a primary challenge 

The news that many Democrats would prefer that Biden not run for a second term will fuel speculation that another Democratic leader might challenge the president in a primary election. 

While primary challenges to a sitting president are uncommon, they are not unheard of. In 1992, Republican President George H.W. Bush faced a primary challenge from conservative firebrand Pat Buchanan. In 1980, Democratic President Jimmy Carter was challenged by Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy. In 1976, Republican President Gerald Ford was challenged by Ronald Reagan, then the governor of California. 

In all three cases, the sitting president defeated his primary challenger. All three, however, went on to lose in the general election. 

While Biden insists that he will run again, and there are no prominent Democratic politicians who have publicly broken from Biden, experts said that if Biden’s numbers continue to decline, the likelihood that one or more Democrats will challenge him increases. If that happens, Biden will likely feel the need to take dramatic action to demonstrate that he remains in control of the party. 

“The problem of an unpopular incumbent is that his problems and limitations are concrete, but all his potential replacements’ advantages and disadvantages are hypothetical,” Chris Stirewalt, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told VOA in an email exchange. 

“As (California Governor) Gavin Newsom, (Illinois Governor) J.B. Pritzker and others are emboldened to position themselves for 2024, Biden will feel increased pressure to be more radical and confrontational,” he said. 

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden touted himself as a dealmaker who would find common ground between Democrats and Republicans to pass critical legislation. As president, he has signed into law bipartisan bills to overhaul American infrastructure and curb gun violence, both of which are broadly popular. But many Democratic priorities remain undone, from protecting voting rights to an ambitious plan to combat climate change, boost educational opportunities, and help working families.
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New US Capitol Riot Hearing to Focus on Extremist Group Links to Trump, Associates

The congressional panel investigating the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol last year is set to hear testimony Tuesday linking far-right extremist groups to the mayhem as they attempted to block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election over then-incumbent Donald Trump.

The House of Representatives committee has yet to say who will testify at its latest high-profile hearing, but one is expected to be Jason Van Tatenhove, a self-described “propagandist” for the Oath Keepers, an anti-government militia. Its members were among about 2,000 Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol.

Other testimony is expected to focus on the role played by the Proud Boys, a neofascist group. Five of its leaders have been charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with the insurrection at the Capitol and are awaiting trial later this year. The same charge has been filed against 11 Oath Keepers, three of whom have already pleaded guilty.

Trump has derided the committee’s investigation, calling its nine members — seven Democrats and two vocal anti-Trump Republicans — “political thugs and hacks.”

The question facing the investigative panel is showing what link, if any, the extremist groups had specifically to Trump, while more broadly detailing contacts they had with his political associates as he sought to retain power by upending the official state-by-state vote counts showing that Biden had won.

Central to the hearing is a tweet Trump sent to millions of his followers on Dec. 19, 2020, saying, “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

Representative Jamie Raskin, the committee member who will be handling much of the questioning Tuesday, told CBS News, “Donald Trump was, of course, the central figure who set everything into motion. He was the person … who identified January 6th as the date for the big protest, and he announced that in his tweet in the middle of the night of December 19th after a crazy meeting (with political aides), one that has been described as the craziest meeting in the entire Trump presidency.”

“And then just an hour or two later,” Raskin said, “Donald Trump sent out the tweet that would be heard around the world, the first time in American history when a president had called a protest against his own government, in fact, to try to stop the counting of Electoral College votes in a presidential election he had lost. Absolutely unprecedented. Nothing like that had ever happened before.”

“So, people are going to hear the story of that tweet and then the explosive effect it had in Trump world, and specifically among the domestic violent extremist groups, the most dangerous political extremists in the country at that point,” Raskin said.

Raskin told online news organization Politico, “Our investigation shows that there was a tremendous convergence of interests between the domestic violent extremist groups and the broader (Make America Great Again) movement” supporting Trump. “This hearing will be the moment when one sees both the convergence of efforts at a political coup with the insurrectionary mob violence. We see how these two streams of activity become one.”

Representative Zoe Lofgren, another committee member, told CNN on Sunday that Trump ally Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, for a short time in 2017 Trump’s national security adviser, were two possible links to the extremist groups.

The protesters who stormed into the Capitol ransacked congressional offices, scuffled with police and for hours blocked the certification of Biden’s victory. Eventually the Capitol building, a symbol of American democracy, was cleared of protesters, and Biden won the Electoral College vote by a 306-232 count.

In the United States, presidents are effectively chosen in separate elections in each of the 50 states, not through the national popular vote. Each state’s number of electoral votes is dependent on its population, with the biggest states holding the most sway.

More than 800 of the protesters have subsequently been charged with an array of offenses from trespassing to assaulting police officers, and more than 300 have pleaded guilty or been convicted in trials. Sentences have ranged from a few weeks in prison to more than four years. The sedition charges filed against the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers carry substantially longer terms.

At Tuesday’s hearing, the committee could also show videotaped segments of closed-door testimony that Pat Cipollone, Trump’s former White House counsel, gave the committee last Friday. He was often in close proximity to Trump in the days before the riot and as Trump watched it unfold on a White House television, refusing entreaties for more than three hours from aides and his older daughter, Ivanka, to call off the rioters.

At its most recent hearing, the panel heard testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, the top assistant to Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff, that Trump in the waning weeks of his presidency became increasingly angry and volatile regarding his re-election loss.

She testified that Trump knew some of his supporters at a rally near the White House were armed but still urged them to walk to the Capitol. Hutchinson said Trump berated his Secret Service detail for not driving him to the Capitol, and in December 2020, threw his lunch against a wall of a White House dining room when he learned that then-Attorney General William Barr had concluded there was no election fraud.

Witnesses at earlier hearings told the investigative panel that there were minimal voting irregularities, not enough to overturn Biden’s Electoral College victory.

In addition, Trump was told it would be illegal for then-Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally block Biden’s victory as Pence presided over the congressional Electoral College vote count. Still, Trump privately and publicly demanded the vice president block certification of Biden’s victory. To this day, Trump contends he was cheated out of another White House term.

Over the weekend, Trump said in a letter that he would allow one of his former aides, Steve Bannon, to testify before the investigative panel. He also said the committee had “allowed no Due Process, no Cross-Examination, and no real Republican members or witnesses to be present or interviewed. It is a partisan Kangaroo Court.”

Republicans blocked a full-scale probe that would have been patterned after the investigation of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.
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Ex-Trump Aide Bannon Offers to Testify in US Probe of January 6 Riot

Donald Trump’s former close adviser Steve Bannon has told the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that he is ready to testify, a change of heart days before he is due to be tried for contempt of Congress.

In a letter to the committee seen by Reuters, Bannon’s lawyer, Robert Costello, wrote to say the former president would waive the claim of executive privilege that Bannon had cited in refusing to appear before the committee. 

Bannon, a prominent figure in right-wing media circles who served as Trump’s chief strategist in 2017, is scheduled to go on trial July 18 on two criminal contempt charges for refusing to testify or provide documents.  

The letter from the lawyer said Bannon preferred to testify publicly, but Representative Zoe Lofgren, a committee Democrat, told CNN that ordinarily the committee takes a deposition behind closed doors.

“This goes on for hour after hour after hour. We want to get all our questions answered. And you can’t do that in a live format,” Lofgren said. “There are many questions that we have for him.”

Throughout the House of Representatives committee hearings, videotaped snippets of closed-door testimony by witnesses under oath have been shown to the public.

Trump has been chafing that none of his supporters have testified in his defense at the committee hearings, which, separate from the trial, are focused on the attack by Trump supporters seeking to stop the certification in Congress of Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden in the November 2020 election.

In a letter from Trump to Bannon seen by Reuters, Trump said he was waiving executive privilege because he “watched how unfairly you and others have been treated.”

The House panel is due to hold public hearings on Tuesday and Thursday this week.
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US House January 6 Panel to Hold Next Scheduled Hearing This Week

The select House of Representatives Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol by supporters of then-President Trump is set to hold its next scheduled hearing Tuesday. Committee members say the hearing will focus on white nationalist groups’ participation in the attack. As VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports, the seventh hearing follows a closed-door session last week with a former top White House lawyer.
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