Closing summary
Declaring “the world is counting on us,” President Joe Biden announced actions to address climate change and blamed Republicans in Congress for not doing their part to keep temperatures from rising to even more disastrous levels. At the Capitol, lawmakers heard an address from Ukraine’s first lady asking for more weapons to fight off the Russians, while senators are weighing a bill to codify same-sex and interracial marriage rights.
Here are some of the highlights from today:
- A bipartisan group of senators announced a deal on reforming loopholes in the electoral college that Donald Trump tried to exploit in the lead-up to the January 6 insurrection.
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Rudy Giuliani, an attorney to Trump, has lost his appeal against a subpoena from a Georgia grand jury.
- Trump called a top Republican lawmaker in Wisconsin recently and pressed him to decertify the results of the 2020 election in the state.
- Rusty Bowers, the speaker of Arizona’s House of Representatives who testified before the January 6 committee last month, has been kicked out of the Republican party.
- John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, gave his first interview since suffering a stroke.
As he described his experience with pollution during the speech in Massachusetts, Biden made a surprising allusion to having cancer, which he hasn’t mentioned in the past.
Biden was describing growing up near petroleum refineries, and how his mother would have to use her car’s wipers to get oil off the windshield when the weather would get cold. “That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up have cancer”, Biden said.
At 79 years old, questions about Biden’s fitness to serve as president are not new, and he’s followed his predecessors’ practice in sharing health updates from his doctor. In the most recent summary from November of last year, there was no indication Biden had cancer or any other major health issues. The closest it came was noting that “several localized non-melanoma skin cancers” were removed before he became president.
The White House has outlined the steps Biden plans to take to fight climate change, which do not include the emergency declaration some of his Democratic allies have called on him to make.
These include the creation of the first-ever Wind Energy Area in the Gulf of Mexico, which would cover 700,000 acres and generate enough electricity for three million homes, as well as steps to spur further wind developments off the Atlantic coast and Florida’s Gulf Coast. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will also spend $2.3 billion on infrastructure to make Americans more resilient to heat waves, floods, droughts, wildfires and other climate-driven disasters. There are also plans to help people pay for cooling costs.
'The world is counting on us,' President Biden says
Biden has concluded his remarks in Massachusetts, where he spoke at the site of a former coal-fired power plant in Somerset that will be turned into a cable manufacturing facility for the offshore wind industry.
“This Congress, not withstanding the leadership of that men and women that are here today has, failed in its duty,” Biden said. “So let me be clear: 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 for the appropriate proclamations, executive orders and regulatory power that the president possesses.”
“Again, it sounds like hyperbole, our children and grandchildren are counting on us,” he continued. “If we don’t keep it below 1.5 degrees centigrade, we lose it all. You don’t get to turn it around. And the world is counting on us.”
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Biden has taken Republicans in Congress to task for failing to pass legislation to fight climate change.
“My message today is this: since Congress is not acting as as it should, and these guys here are,” he said, gesturing to Democratic lawmakers in attendance, before continuing, “We’re not getting many Republican votes. This is an emergency, an emergency, and I will look at it that way.”
He repeated his pledge to “use my executive power to combat climate crisis in the absence of congressional action.”
Republicans have indeed been unreceptive to his administration’s attempts to fight climate change and spur investment in green technology. However, Democrats were hoping to use their dominance in the House and the Senate’s reconciliation procedure to pass some proposals fighting climate change unilaterally – until Joe Manchin said last week he wouldn’t support them.
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Biden: climate crisis 'literally a clear and present danger'
President Joe Biden has started his speech in Massachusetts, where he’s set to announce measures to fight climate change after his legislative agenda to address US emissions stalled.
“I come here today with a message,” Biden said as his speech began. “As president, I have a responsibility to act with urgency and resolve when our nation faces clear and present danger. And that’s what climate change is about. It is literally, not figuratively, a clear and present danger. The health of our citizens and our communities is literally at stake.”
Updated
The January 6 committee will hold its last scheduled hearing tomorrow, though its investigation continues. The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports on the latest development in the Secret Service’s allegedly accidental deletion of text messages from the time of the attack:
The Secret Service turned over just one text message to the House January 6 committee on Tuesday, in response to a subpoena compelling the production of all communications from the day before and the day of the US Capitol attack, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The Secret Service told the panel the single text was the only message responsive to the subpoena, the sources said, and while the agency vowed to conduct a forensic search for any other text or phone records, it indicated such messages were likely to prove irrecoverable.
House investigators also learned that the texts were seemingly lost as part of an agency-wide reset of phones on 27 January 2021, the sources said – 11 days after Congress first requested the communications and two days after agents were reminded to back up their phones.
Senators announce deal on electoral college reforms in wake of January 6
A bipartisan group of senators has just announced a deal to reform the procedure for counting electoral votes in order to prevent the sort of meddling that former president Donald Trump tried to pull off on January 6.
The lawmakers have agreed to two bills that would reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which governs how electoral votes are counted following a presidential election. Citing ambiguities in the law, Trump and his attorneys pushed his vice president Mike Pence to disrupt the counting of electoral votes that showed he lost the 2020 election, sparking calls for the 135-year-old law to be reformed.
“Through numerous meetings and debates among our colleagues as well as conversations with a wide variety of election experts and legal scholars, we have developed legislation that establishes clear guidelines for our system of certifying and counting electoral votes for President and Vice President. We urge our colleagues in both parties to support these simple, commonsense reforms,” the group of 16 senators said in a joint statement.
The first bill is called the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act, and would fix ambiguities in the existing law while clarifying when an incoming administration can access federal resources.
The Enhanced Election Security and Protection Act is the second proposal, and would up criminal penalties against people convicted of intimidating or threatening candidates, voters and poll workers, require election records to be preserved, help the US Postal Service deal with mail-in ballots and reauthorize for five years a commission that works with states to improve their voting practices.
“The prospect of large-scale violence in the near future is entirely plausible,” warns a new study that looks into the chances of political violence. Ed Pilkington digs into it:
One in five adults in the United States, equivalent to about 50 million people, believe that political violence is justified at least in some circumstances, a new mega-survey has found.
A team of medical and public health scientists at the University of California, Davis enlisted the opinions of almost 9,000 people across the country to explore how far willingness to engage in political violence now goes.
They discovered that mistrust and alienation from democratic institutions have reached such a peak that substantial minorities of the American people now endorse violence as a means towards political ends. “The prospect of large-scale violence in the near future is entirely plausible,” the scientists warn.
A hardcore rump of the US population, the survey recorded – amounting to 3% or by extrapolation 7 million people – believe that political violence is usually or always justified. Almost one in four of the respondents – equivalent to more than 60 million Americans – could conceive of violence being justified “to preserve an American way of life based on western European traditions”.
Most alarmingly, 7.1% said they would be willing to kill a person to advance an important political goal. The UC Davis team points out that, extrapolated to US society at large, that is the equivalent of 18 million Americans.
John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania lieutenant governor and Democratic candidate for US Senate, has said he has “nothing to hide” about his health after suffering a stroke, and expressed confidence he can beat the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz in a race key to deciding control of the chamber in November.
“I would never be in this if we were not absolutely, 100% able to run fully and to win — and we believe that we are,” Fetterman told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in his first interview since suffering the stroke in May.
The Post-Gazette reports: “Mr Fetterman, 52, said he has ‘no physical limits’, walks four to five miles every day in 90-degree heat, understands words properly and hasn’t lost any of his memory. He struggles with hearing sometimes, he said, and may ‘miss a word’ or ‘slur two together’, but he said it doesn’t happen often and that he’s working with a speech therapist.”
Fetterman enjoys consistent poll leads over Oz and has dramatically outraised him, despite Oz attracting the endorsement of Donald Trump.
You can read the interview here.
Updated
Pete Buttigieg fended off a Republican who used a transportation hearing to ask if Joe Biden’s cabinet had discussed using the 25th amendment to remove the president from office, saying: “I’m glad to have a president who can ride a bicycle.”
The transportation secretary was appearing in front of the House transportation committee on Tuesday. Amid discussion of policy, the Texas representative Troy Nehls decided to go in a more partisan direction.
“We now see the mainstream media questioning President Biden’s mental state, and for good reason,” Nehls said. “Sadly, he shakes hands with ghosts and imaginary people, and he falls off bicycles. Even at the White House Easter celebration, the Easter Bunny had to guide him back into his safe place.”
Aides stood behind Nehls, showing blown-up pictures.
Biden, 79, fell off his bike in Delaware last month, to considerable glee on the right.
He told reporters: “I’m good.”
But with the president beset by domestic and international crises, some compared his awkward moment with one in 1979, when Jimmy Carter, who would turn out to be a one-term Democratic president, was attacked by a rabbit while fishing from a boat.
Nehls asked: “Have you spoken to cabinet members about implementing the 25th amendment on President Biden?”
Buttigieg, a keen cyclist himself, said: “First of all, I’m glad to have a president who can ride a bicycle. And, I will look beyond the insulting nature of that question and make clear to you that the president of the United States …”
Nehls interrupted.
Buttigieg said, “Of course not,” then said Biden was “as vigorous a colleague or boss as I have ever had the pleasure of working with”.
The day so far
We’re expecting a major speech from Joe Biden soon on his efforts to fight climate change, which Congress lacks the votes to deal with. That doesn’t mean lawmakers aren’t busy; they’ve heard an address from Ukraine’s first lady asking for more weapons to fight off the Russians, and senators are weighing a bill to codify same-sex and interracial marriage rights.
Here’s what has happened today so far:
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Rudy Giuliani, an attorney to former president Donald Trump, has lost his appeal against a subpoena from a Georgia grand jury.
- Trump called a top Republican lawmaker in Wisconsin recently and pressed him to decertify the results of the 2020 election in the state.
- Rusty Bowers, the speaker of Arizona’s House of Representatives who spoke to the January 6 committee last month, has been kicked out of the Republican party.
Former president Donald Trump’s legal adviser Rudy Giuliani will have to talk to a Georgia grand jury sometime next month after his legal challenge against a subpoena failed, the Associated Press reports.
Earlier this month, the grand jury in Fulton county, which includes Atlanta, subpoenaed Giuliani and other members of Trump’s legal team as part of their probe into his campaign’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state, where voters chose Joe Biden.
Giuliani challenged the subpoena, but as the AP reports, he didn’t seem to put much effort into the appeal, failing to show up for a court hearing where he could explain why he shouldn’t have to testify.
The grand jury has also summoned Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, who has been challenging his subpoena.
Getting the Respect for Marriage Act through the Democratic-led House of Representatives is one thing, but could it pass the Senate? From what reporters on Capitol Hill are saying today, it doesn’t seem impossible.
The bill won the votes of all Democrats as well as 47 Republicans when it passed Congress’s lower chamber yesterday. Assuming Democrats unanimously support it in the Senate, it would need the support of 10 Republicans to overcome the inevitable filibuster blocking its passage. According to CNN, several Republican senators have already said they’d vote for it:
Thom Tillis, GOP senator from NC, told me he “probably will” support bill to codify same-sex marriage. Bill might get 60 votes, GOP senators say. Vote timing in Senate is unclear.
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 20, 2022
Thune told me he will take a “hard look” at bill
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 20, 2022
“But if and when (Schumer) brings a bill to the floor we’ll take a hard look at it. As you saw there was pretty good bipartisan support in the House yesterday and I expect there’d probably be the same thing you’d see” in Senate
Asked about some of his fellow Republicans saying a vote on same-sex marriage is just a messaging exercise, Rob Portman told me: It’s an "important message," and said: "I think this is an issue that many Americans, regardless of political affiliation, feel has been resolved."
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 20, 2022
Congress is working on a lot of bills at the moment as the Democratic majority tries to make the most of the time remaining before November’s midterm elections, in which they could lose control of one or both chambers. Yesterday, Lois Beckett reports that the House passed a measure to codify same-sex and interracial marriage rights - which are currently protected by a supreme court ruling that could be overturned:
The US House has passed a bill protecting the right to same-sex and interracial marriages, a vote that comes amid concerns that the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade could jeopardize other rights.
Forty-seven House Republicans supported the legislation, called the Respect for Marriage Act, including some who have publicly apologized for their past opposition to gay marriage. But more than three-quarters of House Republicans voted against the bill, with some claiming it was a “political charade”.
All 220 House Democrats supported the bill, which is expected to be blocked by Republican opposition in a politically divided Senate.
Zelenska concluded her remarks by describing the Russian invasion as terrorism, and linking it to America’s experiences with such attacks.
“America unfortunately knows from its own experience what terrorist attacks are and has always sought to defeat terrorism. Help us to stop this terror against Ukrainians, and this will be our joint great victory in the name of life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness of every person, every family,” Zelenska said.
“This is what I’m asking for and what my husband is asking for, not as a presidential couple but as parents and children of their parents. Because we want every father and every mother to be able to tell their child, go to sleep peacefully, there will be no more airstrikes, no more missile strikes. Is this too much to wish for?”
Lawmakers in the room applauded as she finished her speech.
Speaking through an interpreter, Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska told the stories of Ukrainians killed by Russia’s ongoing invasion, and appealed for more weapons from the United States.
“The war is not over. The terror continues, and I appeal to all of you, on behalf of those who were killed, on behalf of those people who lost their arms and legs, on behalf of those who are still alive and well and those who wait for their families to come back from the front,” Zelenska said.
“I’m asking for weapons, weapons that could not be used to wage a war on somebody else’s land, but to protect one’s home and the right to live a life in them. I’ve asked for air defense systems in order for rockets... not to kill children in their strollers, in order for rockets not to destroy children’s homes and kill entire families.”
Updated
Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska is now addressing House and Senate lawmakers in Washington.
The event has gotten underway, and you can watch it on the live feed embedded above.
Updated
Viewers of the January 6 committee’s hearings - and followers of Arizona state politics - will remember Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the house of representatives in the southwest state who told lawmakers last month about Donald Trump’s efforts to get him to overturn state’s election results in 2020.
Yesterday, the state Republican party kicked him out, though not, on its surface, for anything having to do with the January 6 inquiry. Rather, the party cited as the reason Bowers’ opposition to various bills in the state legislature and collaboration with Democrats. Here’s their full statement:
The @AZGOP Executive Committee formally censured Rusty Bowers tonight— he is no longer a Republican in good standing & we call on Republicans to replace him at the ballot box in the August primary. Full press release from AZGOP coming soon.
— Dr. Kelli Ward 🇺🇸 (@kelliwardaz) July 20, 2022
— Dr. Kelli Ward 🇺🇸 (@kelliwardaz) July 20, 2022
Bowers appears to know the deck is stacked against him. In an interview with NBC News this week, he said of his current re-election campaign: “If I pull this off, it’s going to be a miracle.”
Trump still trying to get Wisconsin Republicans to decertify 2020 election results
The 2020 presidential election was held 624 days ago, but a top Republican in Wisconsin said Donald Trump last week encouraged him to decertify the results of the polls in the state, which Biden won by a narrow margin.
Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, told Milwaukee broadcaster WISN that the former president called him and urged him to use a recent state supreme court ruling that ballot drop boxes are illegal to overturn the election results.
“The court case as you read it does not go back and say what happened in 2020 was illegal,” Vos told WISN. “It just says going forward it can’t happen.”
The speaker described the phone call as, “He makes his case, which I respect. He would like us to do something different in Wisconsin. I explained it’s not allowed under the constitution. He has a different opinion, and then he put out the tweet. So that’s it.”
Trump didn’t exactly tweet, since he’s banned from Twitter, but he did take to his Truth Social platform and attack Vos as a “RINO” or Republican In Name Only, who let Democrats “get away with murder.” The former president could go further. Vos is facing a primary challenge from another Republican, but Trump hasn’t announced an endorsement in the race - yet.
The climate crisis has reached the point where some of the fastest-growing American cities are increasingly uninhabitable, Oliver Milman reports:
The ferocious heatwave that is gripping much of the US south and west has highlighted an uncomfortable, ominous trend – people are continuing to flock to the cities that risk becoming unlivable due to the climate crisis.
Some of the fastest-growing cities in the US are among those currently being roasted by record temperatures that are baking the more than 100 million Americans under some sort of extreme heat warning. More than a dozen wildfires are engulfing areas from Texas to California and Alaska, with electricity blackouts feared for places where the grid is coming under severe strain.
San Antonio, Texas, which added more to its population than any other US city in the year to July 2021, has already had more than a dozen days over 100F this summer and hit 104F on Tuesday.
Victoria Bekiempis has more on the heat wave that’s striking the United States this week:
More than 100 million Americans are under either a heat warning about dangerous conditions or heat advisories amid record temperatures, as 85 major wildfires burn in 13 US states, scorching more than 3m acres.
Officials said on Tuesday that 14 new large fires were reported: seven in Texas, two in Alaska and two in Washington, as well as one each in Arizona, California and Idaho.
More than 6,800 wild-land firefighters, and other support staff, were deployed to fires across the US.
The sprawling blazes spread as record-high temperatures are poised to continue this week, leaving more than 100 million US residents under “excessive [heat] warnings or heat advisories”, the National Weather Service said Tuesday morning.
Nine Senate Democrats urge Biden to declare climate emergency immediately
Nine Democratic senators have today written Biden a letter urging him to declare a climate crisis immediately, which they say would give the executive branch extraordinary powers to lower America’s carbon emissions.
The letter comes ahead of Biden’s speech this afternoon where he’s expected to announce executive orders to fight climate change, but not declare an emergency. “For too long, we have been waiting for a single piece of legislation, and a single Senate vote, to take bold action on our climate crisis,” wrote the group of senators, which includes former presidential contenders Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren. “We urge you to put us on an emergency footing and aggressively use your executive powers to address the climate crisis, create good-paying union jobs in the United States, and liberate hard-working American families from volatile energy prices.”
They call on Biden to use powers under the National Emergency Act (NEA) to “immediately pursue an array of regulatory and administrative actions to slash emissions, protect public health, support national and energy security, and improve our air and water quality.”
Here’s more from the letter:
Declaring the climate crisis a national emergency under the NEA would unlock powers to rebuild a better economy with significant, concrete actions. Under the NEA, you could redirect spending to build out renewable energy systems on military bases, implement large-scale clean transportation solutions and finance distributed energy projects to boost climate resiliency. All of these actions would employ Americans in new and emerging industries while securing American leadership in global markets.
Joe Biden is announcing his executive orders to fight climate change during a week in which much of America is facing scorching temperatures.
The midwest is among the areas hardest hit:
Oklahoma City just hit 110°. Ties All time hottest temperature for July
— Damon Lane (@KOCOdamonlane) July 19, 2022
Massachusetts, where Biden will be speaking in the town of Somerset, is also not being spared:
[7/20 430 AM] Oppressive #heat & humidity will be the main story this week. A Heat Advisory has been extended through Thu 8 PM. In addition, there is the risk for strong to severe storms Thu afternoon into evening, with the main threat being damaging wind gusts. #MAwx #RIwx #CTwx pic.twitter.com/0IRfyrjTWl
— NWS Boston (@NWSBoston) July 20, 2022
Biden hasn’t said yet exactly what steps he will take to cut America’s carbon emissions, other than that he’ll use presidential executive orders to do what Congress will not. He’s found no support among Republicans for his steps to fight climate change, and Democrats’ efforts to pass a bill unilaterally collapsed last week when Joe Manchin, a West Virginia senator with extensive ties to the energy industry, said he wouldn’t take part in the effort.
Keep in mind that executive actions are frequent targets of litigation, and it would be no surprise if whatever Biden announces today gets taken to court - potentially even the supreme court, where conservatives are firmly in the majority and have shown a willingness to curb the government’s regulatory powers.
Biden prepares to announce climate orders after Congress fails to act
Good morning, US politics live blog readers. After it became clear last week that he lacks the votes to get Congress to pass his proposals lowering US carbon emissions, President Joe Biden will head to Massachusetts today to announce new steps to tackle climate change - though he won’t declare an emergency, as some of his allies have called for.
That’s not all that’s expected today:
- Expect to hear more about the Secret Service and its deletion of text messages following the January 6 insurrection. Last night, The Guardian reported the agency had turned over just one text message related to the insurrection that the House panel probing the attack sought.
- Olena Zelenska, the first lady of Ukraine, will address Congress at 11 am eastern time.
- The Senate judicary committee will at 10 am eastern time hold a hearing on preventing mass shootings that will feature testimony from the mayor of Highland Park, Illinois, where seven people were killed when a gunman opened fire at an Independence Day parade.
- Congress is considering a bunch of other bills, including a Democratic spending bill to lower prescription drug and health care costs, another to improve American technological competitiveness and a measure to codify same-sex marriage rights, which the House passed on Tuesday.
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