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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Chris Stein

Democrats voice concerns over Biden’s Saudi trip: ‘Their values are not ours’ – as it happened

Donald Trump Washington D.C.
Joe Biden boards Air Force One in Maryland.
Joe Biden boards Air Force One in Maryland. Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Closing summary

Congress was at the center of the action today, where the January 6 committee announced the surprise postponement of its Wednesday hearing. Meanwhile, the top Senate Republican said he would support the gun control compromise reached with Democrats, while the House voted to approve a bill to improve security around the supreme court, sending it to the president’s desk.

Other top stories today:

The US politics live blog will return on Wednesday, with the supreme court set to announce more decisions at 10am ET.

Updated

The Republican Party is launching a nine-day “election integrity” tour throughout Wisconsin, less than two months before the battleground state’s primary elections.

The tour, which begins Wednesday, will start in La Crosse, Wisconsin and go through Wisconsin’s most liberal cities, including the state’s capital, Madison. Planned events will include an appearance from conservative former state Supreme Court judge Daniel Kelly.

The tour has already received pushback from those who say it is meant to spread lies that the 2020 election was fraudulent ahead of the primaries and November’s midterm election.

Republicans have argued that the roundtable events are meant to recruit poll workers, voting deputies, and other election day staff as well as connect campaign staff with volunteers.

The Capitol Police have determined that a Republican House representative did not give a tour to Trump supporters the day before the January 6 attack.

CNN reports that the investigation into Barry Loudermilk of Georgia was requested by the chair and vice chair of the House committee investigating the insurrection, over allegations he was seen hosting visitors on 5 January, 2021.

“There is no evidence that Representative Loudermilk entered the U.S. Capitol with this group on January 5, 2021,” Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger wrote to the top Republican on the House Administration Committee. “We train our officers on being alert for people conducting surveillance or reconnaissance, and we do not consider any of the activities we observed as suspicious.”

Following the attack on the Capitol, several Democrats accused their Republican colleagues of granting tours to people who went on to storm the building as Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden’s election win.

According to CNN:

Manger said the video shows Loudermilk with “a group of approximately 12 people which later grew to 15 people” walking through the Capitol office buildings on January 5. It also states that the group of visitors did not “appear in any tunnels that would lead them to the US Capitol.”

House Republicans suggested they may release video they believe exonerates Loudermilk of any insinuation that he led a so-called “reconnaissance” tour the night before the January 6 riot.

The House select committee declined to comment on Manger’s letter.

The letter the committee sent to Loudermilk last month indicated the panel has reviewed evidence that “directly contradicts” previous claims by Republican lawmakers who said security footage from the days before January 6 shows there were “no tours, no large groups, no one with MAGA hats on” at the US Capitol complex.

“Based on our review of evidence in the Select Committee’s possession, we believe you have information regarding a tour you led through parts of the Capitol complex on January 5, 2021,” Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, and Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming, wrote at the time.

Updated

The House has passed a measure to increase security for the supreme court, sending it to the president’s desk for his signature.

The Senate had unanimously approved the measure back in May, but the House delayed its passage. Republicans in the Senate began attacking Democrats over their failure to pass the measure following last week’s arrest of a man who is charged with planning to kill justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Vice-president Kamala Harris is meeting with attorneys and activists ahead of a widely expected supreme court decision that could weaken or overturn nationwide abortion rights.

CNN reports that Harris has been encouraged by people outside the Biden administration to lead the charge against any supreme court decision restricting abortion, as a way to better connect with voters. The network quoted an unnamed official as saying Harris’s “goals really have been around ensuring that people in this country have an understanding of what is at stake here.”

The supreme court will issue another batch of decisions on Wednesday beginning at 10 am eastern time, though it’s unknown if that will include the abortion case.

Updated

Republican Senate leader signals support for bipartisan gun compromise

The Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell said he will support the compromise measure on gun control reached with Democrats over the weekend.

The two parties have seldom found agreement on gun control legislation, and McConnell’s endorsement sends a positive signal that the proposal will win enough votes from his party to pass the evenly divided Senate.

“If it leads to a piece of legislation, I intend to support it,” McConnell said at a press conference. “I think it’s progress for the country, and I think the bipartisan group has done the best they can to get total support.”

While the bill hasn’t been written yet, it doesn’t go as far as many Democrats would like, such as by raising the age to buy an assault weapon to 21 from 18. Many of its provisions focus on improving mental health, as well as offering states money to implement programs intended to stop mass shootings such as those in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York.

One of Biden’s Senate allies has an idea for lowering gas prices: levy new taxes on oil companies’ profits.

Bloomberg reports that Democratic senator Ron Wyden will propose putting a 21 percent tax on petroleum companies with profit margins above 10 percent. The idea comes after the average gas price crossed the $5 a gallon level, which the White House has increasingly looked to blame on forces beyond its control, particularly the disruptions to global markets caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Progressive Democrats have meanwhile sought to convince voters that profit-seeking corporations are to blame for the overall spike in inflation Americans are feeling, and last week, Biden took aim at Exxon Mobil, saying the oil giant “made more money than God this year.

Wyden’s proposal, which has yet to be released publicly, would however need the approval of all 50 Democrats to make it through the Senate, and tweaks to the tax code were among the contentious issues the party couldn’t reach an agreement on during last year’s unsuccessful attempt to pass Build Back better.

From the article:

Taxing excessive oil company profits is one of many policy ideas under consideration in the White House, two administration officials said. Yet internally, aides remain concerned such a tax could hurt ongoing efforts to boost the supply of oil.

If combined with a gasoline rebate, a windfall profits tax would both deter supply and encourage fuel demand, said Kevin Book, managing director of research firm ClearView Energy Partners LLC. “It is the opposite of balancing the market.”

An idea out of Treasury to place a cap on the price of Russian oil, alongside European allies, has gained far more traction inside the administration.

Wyden’s plan would also impose a 25% stock buyback tax for oil and gas companies that repurchase their own shares, Wyden spokeswoman Ashley Schapitl confirmed. Both levies apply to oil and gas companies with at least $1 billion in revenue and would expire at the end of 2025, according to the people briefed on the plan.

Wyden also proposes to eliminate an accounting benefit, known as last-in first-out, or LIFO, that can deliver tax breaks for oil and gas companies with at least $1 billion in revenue starting in 2023.

There’s been another sentence handed down over the January 6 attack, this time of a former city councilmember in West Virginia.

Eric Barber was sentenced to 45 days in jail for entering the Capitol during the insurrection, as well as a seven-day suspended sentence for stealing a charging station belonging to C-SPAN, West Virginia’s MetroNews reported.

The former city councilmember in Parkersburg, West Virginia, also received 24 months of federal probation.

“You’re too old and you’re too accomplished and you’re too smart to get involved in nonsense like this,” federal judge Christopher Cooper said during the Thursday sentencing.

“This is not about the First Amendment. You are free to express your views. You’re free to support any political candidate or positions or issues that you want. I encourage that. But enough of this nonsense, OK?”

According to MetroNews:

Barber, 43, was being sentenced today in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after pleading guilty to two misdemeanors.

One is a count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol Building. The other is theft, an accusation that Barber stole a charging station belonging to a C-SPAN employee.

He has to pay $500 restitution as his share of damage to the Capitol that day, and he has to pay back C-SPAN a little less than $60 for the charger that he took home.

Barber was not accused of violence that day, but prosecutors noted that he wore a Kevlar helmet and went to Washington, D.C. to “go punch a Antifa terrorist in the face,” referring to the loosely-knit antifascist activists sometimes accused of violence themselves.

Prosecutors underscored that Barber entered the Capitol as sirens blared and broken glass was apparent, entering not only the areas that are commonly open to the public but also entering a restricted hallway outside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. Prosecutors said Barber wound up in that hallway twice — the second time after being told to leave. Barber said he was lost.

But Barber and his public defense attorney emphasized that he had expressed remorse about what happened that day to local media, to investigators, to Congress’s January 6th Committee and to the judge.

Judge Cooper took note of all those factors.

“It’s troubling that you still seem to have a mindset of ‘There’s a bully out there. I need to prime for the fight.’ You did not go for self-defense, but you went with the helmet, ready to punch somebody or affirmatively engage in violence,” Cooper said.

Barber sentencing memo began with a particularly direct quote.

Updated

There is still a lot of buzz about the House panel investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection by extremist supporters of Donald Trump, as reports spill out about disagreements over whether to refer Trump for criminal prosecution or just lay out the evidence and let others deduce, etc, as well as today’s abrupt postponement of Hearing No. 3.

Most of these tweets speak for themselves.

Larry Tribe.

George Conway, cheeky.

Conway on Zimmer

Scuitto on Trump

Updated

Midday summary

Much of today’s action has occurred in Congress, where the January 6 committee announced the surprise postponement of its Wednesday hearing. The Senate still doesn’t have the bill text of its gun control compromise to vote on, but the House is moving forward with the vote on a a bill to increase security for the supreme court, which the upper chamber has already approved.

Here’s what else is going on:

Republicans will be crucial in determining whether the bipartisan gun control proposal makes it through the Senate, and more lawmakers are reacting to the deal reached over the weekend.

Democrats are expected to back the proposal even though it doesn’t do all of what they want, such as raising the age to purchase an assault rifle to 21 from 18. To avoid a filibuster, at least 10 Republicans in the Senate will need to vote for the bill, which also must clear the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.

Updated

Biden has used his speech at the AFL-CIO convention in Philadelphia to promote his handling of the economy make a pitch for keeping Democrats in office.

As CBS News’s Ed O’Keefe reports:

The president also took special notice of a Republican proposal to make all federal legislation expire after five years, asking, “How well are you going to sleep at night knowing that every five years, Ted Cruz and the other ultra-MAGA Republicans are going to vote on whether you have Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid?”

Democrats in the Senate are raising their eyebrows at Biden’s decision to travel to Saudi Arabia, objecting to the country’s human rights record and worrying the visit won’t meaningfully lower gas prices.

As Oregon’s Ron Wyden told Manu Raju of CNN:

Here’s Maryland’s Ben Cardin, who referenced the murder of Jamal Khashoggi:

Kaitlan Collins, also of CNN, heard this from Illinois’s Dick Durbin:

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said the text of the gun control compromise reached by senators this weekend should come in the “coming days.”

Before the chamber can vote on the proposal, it needs to see a bill first, following this weekend’s announcement of an agreement that could pass the evenly divided Senate.

In a speech on the floor, Schumer said he spoke with Republican senator John Cornyn and Democratic senator Chris Murphy and “they are working with the urgency the situation demands and they are hopeful the legislative text can be finalized in the coming days,” Schumer said, before reiterating his pledge to bring the measure to a vote “as soon as possible.”

Updated

President Biden is currently addressing the AFL-CIO trade union federation’s Quadrennial Constitutional Convention, which you can watch here, as he looks to burnish his credentials among a key Democratic voting block. For The Guardian, Steven Greenhouse takes a look at the union drives at Starbucks and Amazon, which, if successful, would represent major prizes for organized labor.

In a historic win in December, baristas in Buffalo voted to make their Starbucks the first of more than 9,000 corporate-operated Starbucks in the US to unionize. Since then, 143 other Starbucks have unionized and workers at 120 other locations have petitioned for union elections.

In another historic victory, a vote count on 1 April showed that workers at an 8,300-employee Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York, had voted to make theirs the first unionized Amazon facility in the country. Since then, however, no other Amazon warehouse has even petitioned for a union election (although workers at a 1,500-employee Amazon facility in Staten Island later voted to reject unionization).

So why has the Starbucks union drive taken off like a rocket while the Amazon campaign is only inching along?

Isaiah Thomas, a pro-union worker at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, sees many reasons for the different pace – and said the biggest was the different size of the workplace. “There might be only 28 workers at a Starbucks, but 6,000 at our Amazon warehouse. In terms of what the organizing committee has to do at Starbucks, it’s not a lot of people. They can keep a close-knit friendship. They can coordinate things closely.”

The White House has confirmed that Joe Biden will meet Saudia Arabia’s crown prince and de-factor ruler Mohammed bin Salman on his visit to the country.

“Yes, we can expect the President to see the crown prince as well,” Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Air Force One.

The announcement is significant because relations between the two men have often been frosty. As my colleague Julian Borger reported, Prince Mohammed “reportedly declined to take a call from Joe Biden last month, showing his displeasure at the administration’s restrictions on arms sales; what he saw as its insufficient response to attacks on Saudi Arabia by Houthi forces in Yemen; its publication of a report into the Saudi regime’s 2018 murder of the dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi; and Biden’s prior refusal to deal in person with the crown prince.”

Prince Mohammed may also be banking on a return of Donald Trump to the White House in 2024, whose prior administration was much friendlier with Riyadh.

The postponed January 6 hearing will likely take place next week, committee member Pete Aguilar said.

Speaking at a press conference of the House Democratic Caucus Leaders, the California Democrat downplayed the impact of the hearing’s postponement.

“The schedule has always been fluid. So we’re going to move forward and have a Thursday hearing and then get ready for hearings next week as well,” he said, predicting the session originally set for Wednesday will “move to likely next week.”

He didn’t elaborate on the reasons for the change in schedule, but said, “We just want to make sure that you all have the time and space to digest all the information that we’re putting out there.”

The committee’s next hearing is scheduled for Thursday, June 16.

Sometime soon, perhaps as soon as tomorrow, the supreme court will hand down a decision that could dismantle or greatly weaken abortion rights codified by Roe v Wade. If that happens, The Guardian’s Poppy Noor reports that prosecutors in a number of states are preparing to act to keep abortion accessible.

Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, never thought she would have an abortion. But after finding herself pregnant with triplets in 2002, she faced an unenviable choice: abort one, or miscarry all three. “I took my doctor’s advice, which I should have been able to do,” she says in a phone interview.

Nessel plans to protect that same right for residents of her state if Roe v Wade is overturned this summer, as a leaked supreme court draft opinion indicates is all but certain.

If the draft opinion stands, 26 states are likely or certain to ban abortion. In Michigan, a 1931 law would be triggered, making abortion illegal in almost all cases except to save the life of the pregnant person.

Nessel says she won’t enforce the ban in Michigan, along with at least a dozen law enforcement officials across the country – a bold statement that sets the US up for a complex legal landscape with different enforcement regimes in different states, and even within them.

These officials are likely to face swift backlash from the right, including, in some cases, retaliation from state authorities who will demand they enforce the law as written. But they are determined to press ahead.

At its hearing yesterday, the January 6 committee built its case that Trump knew his fraud claims were baseless but pushed them anyway, fueling the attack on the Capitol. My colleague Lauren Gambino reports on how the hearing’s revelations may not be enough to dislodge belief in the “Big Lie” from the Republican party.

The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection charged on Monday that Donald Trump “lit the fuse” that fueled the most violent assault on the US Capitol in more than two centuries with his groundless claim that the election was stolen.

For those tuned in, the committee meticulously charted the origins and spread of Trump’s “big lie”, tapping a trove of evidence and interviews to show that the former president was told repeatedly that the election had been free and fair and peddled his myths anyway.

But in Republican politics and the conservative media ecosystem, Trump’s myth of a stolen election rages on, uncontrolled in the Republican party as it seeks to surge back into power in November’s midterm elections.

Updated

Wednesday's January 6 hearing postponed

The January 6 committee has announced the postponement of its hearing scheduled for Wednesday.

Committee member Zoe Lofgren blames technical reasons for the delay.

With gas prices at record highs, Biden to head to Saudi Arabia

It’s official: President Joe Biden will visit Saudi Arabia, a country he once vowed to turn into “a pariah” but which may play a crucial role in lowering US pump prices from their record levels.

The visit, which will be coupled with a trip to Israel, comes as Biden’s approval rating slumps due to a wave of inflation caused in part by energy prices that have risen since Russia invaded Ukraine. Saudi Arabia is a major oil producer, and Biden is looking for ways to increase the global oil supply to lower pump prices at home.

There’s no hint of this dynamic in the White House statement announcing the trip, which focuses on Saudia Arabia chairing the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) regional group.

“The President will... travel to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which is the current chair of the GCC and the venue for this gathering of nine leaders from across the region, at the invitation of King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud. The President appreciates King Salman’s leadership and his invitation. He looks forward to this important visit to Saudi Arabia, which has been a strategic partner of the United States for nearly eight decades,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wrote.

In Israel, Biden “will meet with Israeli leaders to discuss Israel’s security, prosperity, and its increasing integration into the greater region. The President will also visit the West Bank to consult with the Palestinian Authority and to reiterate his strong support for a two-state solution, with equal measures of security, freedom, and opportunity for the Palestinian people,” according to the statement.

Biden’s ire towards Riyadh has centered on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

Way back in 2020, a plank of Joe Biden’s successful presidential campaign was restoring bipartisanship in Congress. If all goes well for the president this week, he may soon have the chance to sign the types of compromise legislation he promised Americans.

Chief among these would be the gun control measure senators negotiated over the weekend, which looks like it can get the 10 Republican votes needed to overcome a filibuster by others in the party opposed to the legislation, and which the Senate majority leader has said will be put up for consideration as soon as possible.

More immediately, the House could today vote to increase security for the supreme court after a man was arrested on charges of trying to kill justice Brett Kavanaugh, ahead of the court’s expected rulings that could curb abortion and expand gun rights. The bill has already passed the Senate unanimously.

Biden’s supporters would also point to the Republican votes for last year’s infrastructure overhaul as a sign of his success in uniting the parties around issues affecting all Americans. But it’s worth pointing out the massive American Rescue Plan spending bill won no Republican support, nor did Build Back Better, the president’s marquee spending plan that ended up floundering because Democrats themselves could not find consensus over it.

Updated

Fraud claims proliferate among Republicans despite January 6 revelations

Good morning, US Politics blog readers. Over the past few days, the January 6 committee has used its hearings to make the case that former president Donald Trump bears responsibility for the attack on the Capitol. But while he’s the most prominent promoter of the baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen, an analysis published today by the Washington Post shows at least 108 Republicans candidates for statewide office or Congress also share that belief.

Here’s what else is going on today:

  • Senators are considering a bipartisan gun control compromise announced over the weekend that’s thought to have enough support to pass the evenly divided chamber. The bill has yet to be written, but it would represent Washington’s response to the mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York.
  • The House is expected to today approve a bill to increase security for the supreme court following the arrest of a man who was charged with planning to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
  • The January 6 committee is taking a break from its hearings today, but will convene again on Wednesday. Expect more reactions today from across Washington to yesterday’s hearing, which focused on Trump’s promotion of fraud claims that his own officials said were baseless.
  • Maine, Nevada, North Dakota and South Carolina will be holding primary elections ahead of the 8 November midterms, which will be decisive in determining the course of Washington politics over the next two years.
  • The Federal Reserve is beginning its two-day meeting and could decide to make a big interest rate increase to fight the runaway inflation that’s badly damaged Biden’s standing with voters. The central bankers announce their decision Wednesday at 2pm ET.
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