Monday's news so far
That’s it for me tonight! Thanks for reading along. Here’s some of what we covered:
- A federal task force found that more than 3,900 migrant children were separated from their families under the Trump Administration. Only a fraction have been reunited.
- Stormy Daniels is hoping to share what she knows about the former president with NYC prosecutors and says her lawyers are already in touch about arranging her testimony.
- Video surfaced of a Republican state representative letting violent far-right rioters into the Oregon Capitol. His colleagues are now calling on him to step down.
- A new audio recording of a 2019 call between Rudy Giuliani and Ukrainian officials adds evidence to allegations that he tried to pressure them into investigating Joe Biden on unfounded claims.
New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has responded to Vice President Harris’s statement that Guatemalan migrants should not to come to the US, tweeting that it was “disappointing to see”.
This is disappointing to see.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 7, 2021
First, seeking asylum at any US border is a 100% legal method of arrival.
Second, the US spent decades contributing to regime change and destabilization in Latin America. We can’t help set someone’s house on fire and then blame them for fleeing. https://t.co/vADyh5H0bw
“It would be helpful if the US would finally acknowledge its contributions to destabilization and regime change in the region,” she continued. “Doing so can help us change US foreign policy, trade policy, climate policy, & carceral border policy to address causes of mass displacement & migration”.
Harris made the comment during a news conference held during her first foreign trip since taking office. She met with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei to discuss how the US can “help Guatemalans find hope at home” and emphasized that the US would continue to secure the southern border.
Audio recording surfaces of Giuliani pressuring Ukraine
Newly released audio from a 2019 phone call between Rudy Giuliani, US diplomats and a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has added credence to the claims that Trump’s longtime adviser pressured Ukraine to help the former president politically.
In the call — which occurred prior to the conversation between Trump and Zelenskiy that led to his first impeachment — Giuliani pushes the Ukrainians to publicly announce unfounded investigations into Joe Biden.
“All we need from the President [Zelenskiy] is to say, I’m gonna put an honest prosecutor in charge, he’s gonna investigate and dig up the evidence that presently exists and is there any other evidence about involvement of the 2016 election, and then the Biden thing has to be run out,” Giuliani said, according to the audio that was exclusively obtained by CNN.
So @CNN got audio of @RudyGiuliani pressuring Ukrainian officials into announcing a fake investigation into @JoeBiden pic.twitter.com/OJljFCcH6h
— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) June 7, 2021
He also reportedly promised that if the Ukrainians complied with his request it would “clear the air really well” and that he would talk to President Trump to make sure “misunderstandings are put aside”. He also added that it “could be a good thing for having a much better relationship”.
From CNN:
The new audio demonstrates how Giuliani aggressively cajoled the Ukrainians to do Trump’s bidding. And it undermines Trump’s oft-repeated assertion that “there was no quid pro quo” where Zelensky could secure US government support if he did political favors for Trump.
The call was one of the opening salvos in the years-long quest by Trump and his allies to damage Biden and subvert the 2020 election process — by soliciting foreign meddling, lying about voter fraud, attempting to overturn the results, and inciting the deadly January 6 assault on the Capitol”.
Giuliani is currently under investigation for his involvement in the Ukraine controversy, including claims that he violated lobbying laws in attempts to get information about the Bidens. He has denied all wrongdoing.
Updated
A Republican representative in Oregon may be ousted from his seat after video footage was published Friday showing he let violent protesters into the state capitol late last year.
On 21 December, far-right rioters descended on the statehouse, attacking police officers and assaulting journalists as lawmakers inside were meeting to discuss how to respond to the Covid crisis. Many of the demonstrators would also be among the mob that attacked the US Capitol on 6 January.
A video released on Friday shows representative Mike Nearman opening a door to the building, which was closed to the public, and inviting the rioters inside. In another video, Nearman tells protesters how to reach him.
Update: Rep. Mike Nearman "willing to have some consequences for what I did" but says OSP and Salem police also to blame for not keeping armed demonstrators out of the Capitol after Nearman opened a door for the demonstrators. https://t.co/zd68zviL5Z #orleg #orpol
— Hillary Borrud (@hborrud) June 7, 2021
Even members from his own party have called for Nearman to resign, the Associated Press reports, and all 22 Republicans in the House signed a letter calling for him to step down.
If he refuses, the House may vote to remove him. Oregon house speaker Tina Kotek introduced a resolution to expel Nearman with a two-thirds majority vote, and has assembled a committee to consider next steps.
From the AP:
In her resolution, Kotek said personnel who were authorized to be in the Oregon Capitol described the events on Dec. 21 as intense and stressful, terrifying and distressing.
‘Law enforcement officers were visibly injured and shaken due to the demonstrators’ action,’ Kotek added.
‘The severity of Representative Nearman’s actions and last week’s revelation that they were premeditated require a special committee to immediately consider expelling him from the House of Representatives,’ Kotek said. ‘He knowingly put the physical safety of everyone in the Capitol — lawmakers, staff and law enforcement — in jeopardy’”.
Updated
Stormy Daniels said today that she is eager to share her story with New York prosecutors investigating the Trump Organization and that her lawyers have been in contact.
“I have not been called to testify yet, but I’ve been very forthcoming since the beginning of all this that I would love nothing more than my day in court and to give a deposition and to provide whatever evidence that they need from me,” Daniels, said during an interview on CNN, adding that she still has emails and wire transcripts that could be used as evidence to indict the former president.
Daniels, an adult-film actress whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, alleges that she had an affair with Trump before he became president, a claim he denies. Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, was sentenced to three years in prison after admitting that he paid off Daniels and another woman on Trump’s behalf during the 2016 campaign.
Same! https://t.co/bRb33Uwuhz
— Stormy Daniels (@StormyDaniels) June 2, 2021
Manhattan prosecutors have been investigating Trump’s expansive company for two years, and District Attorney Cyrus Vance has convened a grand jury which will decide whether to indict Trump and other executives at the organization.
“I would tell them that I was approached. I would tell them that I have evidence,” she said, claiming she can prove that the money came from an account set up by Trump himself.
Updated
Gabrielle Canon here, signing on from San Francisco to take you through the news for the rest of the afternoon.
A federal task force has found that more than 3,900 migrant children were separated from their families at the border under the Trump Administration, according to a new report from ABC News.
“It is our moral imperative to not only reunite the families, but to provide them with the relief, resources, and services they need to heal,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who chairs the task force, said in a statement.
The Family Reunification Task Force, created by the Biden Administration in February, has been examining the previous president’s controversial “zero-tolerance policy” and is expected to release the official results of their investigation soon. But ABC reports that only a fraction of the children have been reunited with their families.
Currently, 62 family members of separated children have been approved to reenter the US, and roughly 400 children have been repatriated to their home countries.
From ABC:
The report cites the unfolding humanitarian crisis and the benefits of having behavioral health services available in the United States for allowing those family members to come into the United States, the source said.
Asked why so few families are currently in the process of being reunited, the Homeland Security official noted that it is a “giant task,” requiring coordination across several U.S. government agencies. But the “biggest hurdle” for the Biden administration has been getting parents “to trust the government again,” the official said.
Updated
Summary
Stay tuned for more as the west coast takes over the liveblog!
- The justice department recovered $2.3m in cryptocurrency that Colonial Pipeline paid in ransom to Darkside following a cyber-attack last month that brought the nation’s largest fuel pipeline offline.
- In Guatemala, vice-president Kamala Harris delivered a blunt message for migrants considering making the dangerous journey north: “Do not come.”
Updated
Idaho’s rightward political lurch has immersed the state’s Republicans in a political civil war from the grassroots to the executive mansion.
In late May, Republican governor Brad Little angrily revoked an executive order banning mask mandates in the state, which had been put in place by his own militia-supporting lieutenant governor during a period when she was deputizing for him.
Janice McGeachin ordered that Idaho cities and counties revoke mask orders, playing into a widespread fear among the far right that basic health measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus are a sign of government over-reach. Little called McGeachin’s action “tyranny” and a “stunt” and scuppered it after it had been in place for just a day.
Observers say the bizarre fight is symptomatic of a much wider problem in Idaho and the rest of America.
They fear that the political dynamics in Idaho – where far-right actors have won recruits and political momentum through uncompromising refusal to comply with public health measures – may presage a worrying direction of conservative politics in the country as a whole.
Some more on the cryptocurrency recovery: Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco noted that the “sophisticated use of technology to hold businesses and even whole cities hostage for profit is a decidedly 21st century challenge – but the old adage ‘follow the money’ still applies.”
In total, the Justice Department recovered $2.6m of the money that Colonial Pipeline paid in ransom.
Here's the seizure warrant that let DOJ recover $2.26 million of the $4.3 million that Colonial paid: https://t.co/PFuTDmjBAp pic.twitter.com/AXFyOdZ7qE
— Eric Geller (@ericgeller) June 7, 2021
Here, an FBI agent documented how they followed the money:
And here's an FBI special agent explaining how they traced the money: https://t.co/5AfVUWp0qe pic.twitter.com/2ynJlgq8AB
— Eric Geller (@ericgeller) June 7, 2021
More on the Justice Department cryptocurrency operation: last month’s cyber-attack on Colonial Pipeline was part of a growing ransomware trend in the US.
In fact, soon after the cyber-attack on Colonial Pipeline, another attack took meat-processing factories across the US offline. Basically, the way these attacks work is a group of cybercriminals will hack into company, or government’s, network, and scramble the data. The hacker then demands payment in exchange for handing back control of the system.
In the Colonial Pipeline case, a group called Darkside took responsibility for the attack.
“DarkSide is a ransomware-as-a-service network – that means developers who sell or lease ransomware to use in attacks, in return for a fee or share in the proceeds,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. “DarkSide and its affiliates have digitally stalked US companies for the better part of the year, and indiscriminately attacked victims that include key players in our nation’s critical infrastructure.”
“Today, we turned the tables on DarkSide.”
DOJ recovers millions in ransom paid by Colonial Pipeline
The Justice Department announced Monday that it has recovered millions in cryptocurrency paid in ransom by Colonial Pipeline.
Last month, the nation’s largest fuel pipeline confirmed it paid $4.4m to a gang of hackers who broke into its computer systems and took it offline.
“Ransomware attacks are always unacceptable, but when they target critical infrastructure, we will spare no effort in our response,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said.
Harris to would-be migrants from Central America to US: 'Don't come'
US vice president Kamala Harris said today that she had held “robust” talks with the president of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, on the need to fight corruption and deter undocumented immigration from Central America to the United States.
Reuters reports that:
Speaking at a news conference with Giammattei, Harris delivered a blunt message to anyone thinking of making the dangerous journey north: “Do not come.”
“We had a robust, candid and thorough conversation,” Harris said. “The president and I discussed that fundamentally, most people do not want to leave home, they don’t want to leave the place where the language they know is spoken.”
She said that a task force combining resources from the US Justice, State and Treasury departments would work with local prosecutors to punish corrupt actors in Central America.
The U.S. government has been pressing the “Northern Triangle” - El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras - to do more to tackle corruption in order to improve social conditions for its people and make them less eager to emigrate.
But those efforts have been undermined by corruption scandals and resistance to US-backed judges known for their commitment to fighting graft, as well as concerns that the region is drifting towards more authoritarian tendencies.
Harris is due to travel to Mexico after Guatemala for talks with the Mexican government on Tuesday.
Her Guatemala visit was her first overseas trip as vice president, part of her mission of tackling root causes of migration from Central America to the United States.
Disagreement has emerged over the best way to tackle corruption, with the United States giving recognition to anti-graft fighters the conservative government and its allies see as politically biased.
Giammattei said the fight against narco-trafficking needed to be an integral part of tackling corruption.
Meanwhile, Harris confirmed that the US would supply half a million Covid-19 vaccine doses to Guatemala.
Updated
The disgraced former New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner has given “informal advice” to some current contenders to lead the city, he said, though as a fraught mayoral election enters its final three weeks before primary voting, he refused to say who.
Weiner, who was sentenced to 21 months in prison in 2017 for sending explicit messages to a 15-year-old girl, told the New York Times naming the campaigns he had advised “would hurt them”.
Polling shows Eric Adams, Kathryn Garcia and Andrew Yang leading the running among Democrats in the strongly Democratic city, ahead of the primary on 22 June.
The three centrists have been aided by problems affecting leading left-wingers, although Maya Wiley, a progressive former counsel to current mayor Bill de Blasio, benefitted from an endorsement by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Saturday.
Weiner had been married to Huma Abedin, a key, long-time aide to Hillary Clinton, but his scandals ultimately destroyed the marriage.
Updated
Summary
- Joe Biden is preparing for his first foreign trip as president. He heads off to the United Kingdom on Wednesday ahead of the G7 summit, with planned meetings with Boris Johnson, the Queen and Vladimir Putin.
- The trip comes as a survey found that perception of the US’s global standing remains about the same in Europe as it did under the Trump administration, largely in part because of coronavirus response.
- In the first full White House press briefing in more than a year, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan addressed how the president will work on reestablishing the US’s standing abroad.
- At home, Democratic West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin penned a column stating his opposition to voting rights legislation in which he was expected to be a key vote.
Today’s White House press briefing is the first full press briefing in more than a year:
A "back to normal" White House press briefing room... 100% capacity pic.twitter.com/HxmmwFlxFJ
— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) June 7, 2021
Joe Biden has recently tasked vice president Kamala Harris to lead efforts on voting rights legislation. Press secretary Jen Psaki said voting rights remains a priority for the Biden administration, even with Democratic West Virginia senator Joe Manchin stating his opposition to the For the People Act in a column this weekend.
“The president knows he was elected to deliver for the American people and his view is that includes making voting more accessible for people across the country, making it easier and not harder to vote,” Psaki said. “Clearly Senator Manchin has stated his point of view in his opinion piece over the weekend, which many of you, it sounds like, have read, and so have we. The president’s view is that we need to move forward, not just with the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, but with legislation like the For the People Act.”
National security advisor Jake Sullivan said ransomware will be a priority topic at the G7 summit, as well as “speaking in a NATO context about cyberthreats as they relate to critical infrastructure”. This comes after cyber-attacks recently brought a gas pipeline and meat-processing factories across the US offline.
“One of the things we’d like to see out of G7 is the start of an action plan,” Sullivan said. “First, how to deal with increasing the robustness and resilience of our defenses against ransomware attacks collectively. Second, how to share information about the nature of the threat among our democracies. Third, how to deal with the cryptocurrency that lies at the core of how these ransom transactions are played out. And finally, how we collectively speak with one voice to those countries, including Russia, that are harboring or permitting cyber criminals to operate from their territories.”
PBS reporter Yamiche Alcindor asked Sullivan about “how President Biden plans to convince, especially our European allies, that former President Trump was an anomaly in some ways.”
“Our view going into this trip is that actions speak louder than words,” Sullivan said. “Showing that the United States is capable of turning the corner on the pandemic, showing that the United States is capable of making the dramatic investments that will pull us up and out of this economic recovery and help power global growth, showing the world that we are ultimately capable of making the investments in R&D and infrastructure, innovation and workforce, ultimately setting that foundation for this country will be the most effective way to show the rest of the world that the United States has the power and purpose to deliver as the world’s leading democracy. That’s what he’s going to try and demonstrate.”
My Q to @jakejsullivan: How will Biden convince US European allies that Trump was an anomaly & heal scars of his being hostile to G7 & NATO?
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) June 7, 2021
Sullivan: If US is able to show what it is capable of & show that we can effectively fight the pandemic, that will show where U.S. stands.
The unspoken elephant in the press room is a recent survey that found that Biden has not brought back the United States’ global standing to where it was before Covid-19 and Trump.
Sullivan went further on the point later in the briefing, saying he felt that Biden is going into this phase of rebuilding global standing from “a record of strength”.
“What President Biden can do is show the rest of the world what America is capable of,” Sullivan said. “If we can lead the world in ending the Covid-19 pandemic more rapidly, if the growth we are powering for the America people here at home helps power a global economic recovery, if we can help rally - as the president did with his climate leader summit - action on the climate crisis so we actually beat this thing ultimately, that is going to be the best way for people to say, ‘Man, the United States can do this’.”
National security advisor Jake Sullivan kicked off the White House press briefing today by outlining the first foreign trip for Joe Biden as president.
He addressed the Axios interview with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which he beseeched Biden to meet with him before he met with Vladimir Putin in Geneva on 16 June. Sullivan said he had just come from the Oval Office, where Biden had finished a phone call with Zelenskiy that they had planned in advance of the Putin meeting.
“They had the opportunity to talk at some length about all the issues in the US-Ukraine relationship,” Sullivan said. “President Biden was able to tell President Zelenskiy that he will stand up firmly for Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and its aspirations as we go forward. He also told President Zelenskiy that he looks forward to welcoming him to the White House here in Washington this summer as he returns from Europe.”
Updated
Fred Ryan, publisher of the Washington Post, has taken the Biden administration to task for seizing reporters’ phone records in leak investigations.
Though the Justice Department released a statement Saturday asserting that it “will not seek compulsory legal process in leak investigations to obtain source information from the media doing their jobs,” Ryan argued that the damage was done, and to the detriment of the country.
Over the years, revelations by confidential government sources have informed Americans of serious missteps by our leaders and institutions that possess great power but little accountability. The sinister experiments at the Tuskegee Institute, the controversial interrogations at secret CIA prisons and dangerous lapses in the Secret Service’s protection of the president are just a few of the countless stories that emerged because government sources, trusting reporters to keep their identities secret, served the public’s right to know.
Trump’s actions, and the expansion upon them during the Biden administration, pose a grave threat to our ability as a nation to keep powerful officials in check. With the revelation that the Justice Department has secretly obtained phone and email records at multiple news organizations to sniff out the identities of journalists’ sources, government employees who would otherwise come forward to reveal malfeasance are more likely to fear exposure and retaliation, and therefore to stay silent.
Trump backs Manchin on filibuster
In office, Donald Trump said Republicans in the Senate should scrap the filibuster, by which a minority can block the will of the majority, because it “allowed eight Democrats to control the country”.
Out of office, he has changed his mind – saying in effect it is good that Republican senators and a few Democratic allies can control the country in the precise same way.
The former president told Fox Business on Monday he supported the Democratic senator Joe Manchin in his refusal to budge on the issue.
“It’s a very important thing,” Trump said. “Otherwise you’re going to be packing the courts, you’re going to be doing all sorts of very bad things that were unthinkable.”
Faced with Republican opposition to federal voting rights reform – and other matters including the establishment of a commission to investigate the US Capitol attack – most Democrats favour scrapping the filibuster, under which most legislation must gain 60 votes to pass.
They will not be able to do so, in large part because Manchin, from West Virginia, and the Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema have set themselves against it.
On Sunday, Manchin also set himself directly against the voting rights legislation in question, the For the People Act, a move that pleased Republicans and enraged progressives.
Trump has direct experience of how the filibuster can frustrate a political agenda.
In July 2017, faced with the failure of attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, he tweeted: “Republican Senate must get rid of 60 vote NOW! It is killing the R Party, allows 8 Dems to control country. 200 Bills sit in Senate. A JOKE!”
Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, then Senate majority leader, refused to budge. Now the Senate minority leader, he is still immovable on the filibuster – as are Manchin and Sinema.
In his Fox Business interview, Trump also repeated his lie that his defeat by Joe Biden last year was the result of electoral fraud, a lie which stoked the deadly Capitol attack, after which Trump was impeached and suspended from major social media platforms.
Reporting the interview, the Daily Beast plumped for a succinct headline: “Fox Host Offers Absolutely Zero Pushback When Trump Spews Election Bullshit.”
Secretary of State Andrew Blinken is testifying before two House committees about the federal budget. At the moment, he’s in front of House Foreign Affairs Committee, testifying about everything from vaccine distribution to Israel.
Blinken says Biden administration is "looking very actively at every possible contingency" for safety of Afghans who helped U.S. military as U.S. forces work to leave by Sept. 11. Lots of concern about these thousands of people in U.S. Congress.
— Patricia Zengerle (@ReutersZengerle) June 7, 2021
Boris Johnson does not like term "special relationship"
While Joe Biden prepares for his first foreign trip, in which one of the first agenda items include meeting with Boris Johnson to affirm the US’s “special relationship” with Britain, Johnson has decided to make it clear that he doesn’t care all too much about the term “special relationship”.
Downing Street confirmed today that Johnson is not a fan of the term to describe US-UK relations, believing it seemed “needy and weak”.
“The prime minister is on the record previously saying he prefers not to use the phrase but that in no way detracts from the importance with which we regard our relationship with the US, our closest ally,” a Johnson spokesman said.
The term is credited to Winston Churchill.
Poll: US reputation as leading global power still suffers
As Joe Biden prepares for his trip to Europe, a survey found that he has not brought back the United States’ global standing to where it was before Covid-19, Reuters reports.
A poll of 11 countries conducted by the German Marshall Fund and the Bertelsmann Foundation found that Washington’s handling of the pandemic diminished many European’s views of the United States, particularly in France and Germany.
“The first three months of the Biden administration have not affected French and German views of US influence in the world,” the study said.
US research papers released in March talk about how the US under Donald Trump could have avoided nearly 400,000 deaths with a more effective strategy. Nearly 600,000 Americans have died from Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic.
Within the United States, since Biden has taken office, many seem to lean toward the perception that US influence abroad has risen, the survey found.
While most Americans consider the European Union as a reliable partner, only 51% of Germans see the US as one. In France, the number is 60%, and 67% in the United Kingdom.
Fewer than a quarter of Turks trust the United States.
Republican Alabama Representative Mo Brooks has been served with a lawsuit filed by Democratic California Representative Eric Swalwell accusing him and other allies of Donald Trump of instigating the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.
Swalwell’s legal team, which has already served Trump, Donald Trump Jr and Rudy Giuliani with the lawsuit, had stated previously that they had been having trouble getting in touch with Brooks. But this weekend, Brooks accused them of committing a crime in order to do so.
.@EricSwalwell Well, Swalwell FINALLY did his job, served complaint (on my WIFE).
— Mo Brooks - Endorsed By President Trump 🇺🇸 (@MoBrooks) June 6, 2021
HORRIBLE Swalwell’s team committed a CRIME by unlawfully sneaking INTO MY HOUSE & accosting my wife!
Alabama Code 13A-7-2: 1st degree criminal trespass. Year in jail. $6000 fine.
More to come! pic.twitter.com/d7ikQFdM10
Philip Andonian, an attorney for Swalwell, denied Brooks’ comments to CNN:
“No one entered or even attempted to enter the Brooks’ house. That allegation is completely untrue. A process server lawfully served the papers on Mo Brooks’ wife, as the federal rules allow,” he told CNN. “This was after her initial efforts to avoid service. Mo Brooks has no one but himself to blame for the fact that it came to this. We asked him to waive service, we offered to meet him at a place of his choosing. Instead of working things out like a civilized person, he engaged in a juvenile game of Twitter trolling over the past few days and continued to evade service. He demanded that we serve him. We did just that. The important thing is the complaint has been served and Mo Brooks can now be held accountable for his role in inciting the deadly insurrection at the Capitol.”
In his rush to accuse Swalwell’s team of entering his house unlawfully, however, it appears that Brooks also tweeted out his gmail passwords and his pin, which were written on a sticky note attached to his computer.
Jen Psaki, Biden’s White House press secretary, went on CNN’s Reliable Sources to talk about Fox News, Newsmax and other rightwing outlets.
She likened them to “propaganda pushers” and “representatives of the Russian and Chinese media asking questions directed by their government.”
“The things that get under my skin are when the premise of a question is based on inaccurate information, misleading information,” she said.
Psaki also defended the Biden administration against criticism for holding only one presidential press conference: “That may be driven more by the media than it is by the American public,” she said.
Biden has only held a single formal press conference since taking office in January. @PressSec won't commit to more. "He takes questions several times a week" in less formal settings, she notes pic.twitter.com/SiUeTdv7O6
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 6, 2021
The Supreme Court has declined to review a lawsuit challenging the country’s male-only draft registration policy as unconstitutional.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote essentially that Congress should take the lead on the issue on whether all genders should be required to register with the Selective Service System at age 18 and be considered for military service should a draft be called up again.
Sotomayor, Breyer, and Kavanaugh also have a statement on the court's decision not to hear a lawsuit challenging the male-only draft: pic.twitter.com/p506ziFtP2
— Matt Ford (@fordm) June 7, 2021
While the Trump administration had defended the policy, Joe Biden’s acting solicitor general Elizabeth B. Prelogar had advised the court not to take up the issue because Congress was considering including women in the draft registration, the Washington Post reports.
Manchin opposes voting rights bill, defends filibuster
In case you missed it, Democratic West Virginia senator Joe Manchin took out a column in the Charleston Gazette-Mail on Sunday to say that he would be opposing the For the People Act.
“I believe that partisan voting legislation will destroy the already weakening binds of our democracy,” wrote Manchin, who was considered a key vote to counter efforts by Republicans in state government to restrict voting rights.
Reaction was swift.
This is so on brand for this country. Record number of black voters show up to save this democracy, only for white supremacy to be upheld by a cowardly, power-hungry white dude. @Sen_JoeManchin is a clown. https://t.co/fCMuyoLer3
— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) June 6, 2021
Manchin’s op-ed might as well be titled, “Why I’ll vote to preserve Jim Crow.” https://t.co/pS1xEvkwEz
— Mondaire Jones (@MondaireJones) June 6, 2021
Manchin also used the column to reiterate his support of the filibuster, which gives 41 of 100 senators the ability to block action by the majority.
Democrats have argued that Republicans have repeated used the filibuster to support minority positions - last month, they used it to block the creation of a bipartisan, 9/11-style investigatory commission on the attack on the US capitol.
A study by the Center for American Progres found that Republicans used filibusters roughly twice as much as Democrats to prevent the other party from passing legislation.
Everything that I learned about what a Democrat stood for, makes me wonder why Joe Manchin is a member of our party? Why can’t he understand that Republicans do not want bipartisanship, they want to control and he continues to give them what they want?
— David Weissman (@davidmweissman) June 7, 2021
Updated
For a hot second this weekend, the Internet united as everyone lost their minds over a possible theory that Donald Trump may have worn his pants backwards at the North Carolina Republican Party’s state convention on Saturday night.
Images and video from his speech that appeared to show a lack of a fly at the front, as well as some odd wrinkling, had Internet sleuths questioning Trump’s fashion’s choices - and #TrumpPants trending on Twitter.
Others are noting this, but it can't be shared enough: Donald Trump gave his big speech today with his pants on backwards. Look close and tell me I'm wrong.pic.twitter.com/sRsoJVfyf8
— Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) June 6, 2021
But after reviewing 90 minutes of footage, Snopes declared that the theory was false.
The rally in question was a GOP convention in North Carolina. https://t.co/erf1sxGhEm
— snopes.com (@snopes) June 6, 2021
Biden preps for first foreign trip
Greetings, live blog readers.
We kick off the week with Joe Biden gearing up for the first overseas trip of his administration. Leaders are scheduled to begin arriving in Cornwall for the G7 summit on 11 June.
In addition to having discussions about the global health system, the climate crisis, trade and tax havens at the 47th summit, Biden is expected to meet with Boris Johnson to affirm the US’s “special relationship” with Britain.
He, accompanied by Jill Biden, will then go on to meet the Queen at Windsor Castle on 13 June.
Biden will meet Vladimir Putin in Geneva on 16 June, the first meeting after a cyber-attack, believed to have originated from Russia, took out meat-processing factories across the US. Secretary of State Tony Blinken told Axios that the meeting is “not in spite of” the cyber-attacks, but “because of them.”
Meanwhile, vice president Kamala Harris is in Guatemala for her first foreign trip as well, where she’s expected to focus on economic development, climate and food insecurity and women’s issues. She’s scheduled to fly to Mexico on 8 June.
