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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
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Maanvi Singh (now), Joan E Greve and Martin Belam (earlier)

Liz Cheney retains House leadership role as vote on rightwing congresswoman's post looms – as it happened

Summary

Here’s a recap, from me and Joan E Greve:

  • The House will hold a vote tomorrow on removing Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, has just released a statement defending his refusal to remove Greene over her racist, antisemitic and extremist rhetoric. Nancy Pelosi has denounced McCarthy for his inaction, mocking him as a member of the “Q” party, an apparent reference to Greene’s support for the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory QAnon.
  • The House Republican caucus met discuss Greene and Liz Cheney, and voted to keep her in leadership. Some Republicans have said Cheney should step down as the House Republican conference chairwoman because she voted to impeach Donald Trump for incitement of insurrection in connection to the 6 January attack on the Capitol.
  • The Senate, which is divided 50-50 with vice-president Kamala Harris serving as a tie-breaker, has agreed that Democrats will chair committees, but Republicans will have equal representation as committee members. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had pushed for guardrails against Democrats terminating the filibuster, but that’s not part of the final deal. McConnell dropped his objections once it became clear that not all Democrats supported doing away with the filibuster in any case.
  • Ann Berry, a Senate aide who most recently served as the Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy’s deputy chief of staff, has been named secretary of the Senate. Berry, who has worked in the Senate for more than four decades, will be the first Black woman in that role.
  • Biden met with Senate Democratic committee chairs to discuss coronavirus relief. The president also had a phone call with House Democrats earlier today, as his team emphasizes the need to go big with the next relief package.
  • A memorial service was held for Brian Sicknick at the Capitol. Sicknick, a Capitol police officer, died last month after being injured during the 6 January insurrection. Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said of Sicknick, “He was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time on a day that the peace was shattered.”
  • The White House walked back comments from the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccinating teachers. The CDC director, Dr Rochelle Walensky, suggested schools did not need all teachers to be vaccinated before safely reopening, but the White House said the CDC is still working on official guidance for safe reopening practices.

McCarthy feigned ignorance of QAnon, pronouncing it “Q-on”.

“I don’t know if I say it right, I don’t even know what it is,” he said, despite having directly spoken about the conspiracy theory group and pronounced it correctly in the past.

McCarthy insisted that Marjorie Taylor Greene had denounced the conspiracy theory as well while speaking to her fellow Republican congressmembers. “I think it would be helpful if you could hear what she told all of us,” he said.

Updated

Liz Cheney departs after a House Republican Caucus meeting on Capitol Hill.
Liz Cheney departs after a House Republican Caucus meeting on Capitol Hill. Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters

“We really did have a terrific vote tonight,” Cheney said afterward. “Laying out where we’re going to do going forward, as well as making clear that we’re not going to be divided and that we’re not going to be in a situation where people can pick off any member of leadership.”

Republicans vote to keep Liz Cheney in leadership

Cheney will remain as House Republican conference chair after a 145-61 secret ballot vote.

Republicans spoke to the press afterward, addressing their discussion on Marjorie Taylor Greene as well.

“I denounce all those comments” by Greene, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said. “She came to our conference and said she denounced them as well ... the voters decided she could come and serve.”

“Members on every side of this issue aired their grievances,” said Steve Scalise of Louisiana said. “We came out much stronger.”

Updated

The House Republican caucus is now voting on whether Liz Cheney should remain in leadership.

It’s a secret ballot, so we might not know how everyone voted.


Republican showdown looms as divided party weighs fates of Cheney and Greene

Republicans faced a reckoning on Wednesday as leaders in the US House of Representatives confronted calls to punish two prominent congresswomen who represent clashing visions for a party struggling to chart a path forward since Donald Trump left the White House.

Those loyal to the former president are demanding Republicans oust Liz Cheney, the No 3 Republican in the House, from her leadership post as punishment for her vote last month to impeach Trump.

At the same time, Republicans are facing mounting, bipartisan calls to strip the newly elected congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia from her committee assignments in response to her history of bigoted and violent commentary on social media.

On Wednesday, as Republican leaders prepared for a showdown over the political fates of Greene and Cheney, House majority leader, Steny Hoyer announced that Democrats would move forward with a resolution to strip Greene of both her assignments.

A floor vote on the resolution would force Republicans to choose between defending or punishing the Georgia lawmaker who holds significant sway among the party’s base and the enthusiastic support of the former president.

The decision came after Republican House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, met on Tuesday evening with Greene, a devotee of the antisemitic conspiracy theory QAnon, who, prior to her election, indicated support for executing Democratic politicians. Hoping to avert the political perilous floor vote, McCarthy spoke to Hoyer by phone on Wednesday morning.

Read more:

Ann Berry will be first Black secretary of the Senate

Ann Berry, a Senate aide who most recently served as the Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy’s deputy chief of staff, has been named secretary of the Senate. Berry, who has worked in the Senate for more than four decades, will be the first Black woman in that role.

The Senate secretary supervises a number of day-to-day operations of the chamber, and examines and signs every act that the Senate passes.

“I have had the privilege of working in the US Senate for 40 years serving the American people,” Berry said in statement. “I am humbled by this opportunity to continue that service as secretary of the Senate. It will be an honor to work with senators and staff on behalf of the country to advance our common goal of representing this great nation.”

Updated

In a close, 218-212 vote, the House has approved a budget blueprint, forging a path for legislators to pass Biden’s $1.9tn coronavirus package via a process called reconciliation.

The blueprint process allows Democrats to pass major legislation over Republican objections. Republicans used the same process to cut taxes in 2017.

Legislative committees will use the budget numbers coronavirus relief blueprint to create more specific policies. The blueprint will include a round of $1,400 direct checks, a boost to unemployment programs, and other provisions.

Updated

Senate ratifies power-sharing agreement

The Senate, which is divided 50-50 with Vice-president Kamala Harris serving as a tie-breaker, has agreed that Democrats will chair committees, but Republicans will have equal representation as committee members.

Minority leader Mitch McConnell had pushed for guardrails against Democrats terminating the filibuster, but that’s not part of the final deal. McConnell dropped his objections once it became clear that not all Democrats supported doing away with the filibuster in any case.

Here’s my colleague Tom McCarthy’s explainer on what a filibuster is, and why some Democrats want to get rid of it:

Updated

Biden administration drops Trump-era discrimination lawsuit against Yale

The Biden administration announced on Wednesday it had dropped a discrimination lawsuit against Yale university, which alleged that the institution was illegally discriminating against Asian American and white applicants.

While a judge must still sign off on the decision, justice department officials noted in the two-sentence filing in the US district court in Connecticut that it would voluntarily dismiss the action that had been filed by Donald Trump’s administration in October.

Federal prosecutors under Donald Trump had argued the university violates civil rights laws when it “discriminates based on race and national origin in its undergraduate admissions process”, and that “race is the determinative factor in hundreds of admissions decisions each year”.

“Yale is gratified that the US justice department has dropped its lawsuit challenging Yale college’s admissions practices,” a spokesperson, Karen Peart, said. “We are also pleased that the justice department has withdrawn its notice of violation of Title VI and its notice of noncompliance.”

The department’s investigation – which stemmed from a 2016 complaint against Yale and its fellow elite universities Brown and Dartmouth – also found that Yale used race as a factor in multiple steps of the admissions process, and that the school “racially balances its classes”.

Before, department officials had signed on to a legal challenge of Harvard University’s race-based admission criteria on similar grounds. But a US court of appeals judge ruled that although the school’s admission process was flawed, it was not on account of racial bias or conscious prejudice.

In a statement, the justice department confirmed it had dismissed the lawsuit “in light of all available facts”, including the November 2020 decision to reject the Harvard challenge. Under current law, schools are responsible for demonstrating that their race-based application process follows legal guidelines.

The decision is the latest move by Biden’s justice department to change the White House’s official position on several cases pending in federal courts, including pausing arguments in cases involving the US-Mexico border wall and rulings on asylum policy.

Read more:

Updated

The justice department (DoJ) on Wednesday rescinded two controversial Trump administration memos that took aim at voting rights enforcement, CNN reported.

The first memo, issued in September, authorized officials to launch election investigations before results were certified. Longstanding DoJ policy had been not to open those election investigations until election results were finalized and Richard Pilger, the direction of the election crimes branch, moved to another position in the agency in protest. Federal prosecutors also had urged William Barr to rescind the memo.

The second memo, issued just before Barr left office in December, instructed the department’s civil rights division to presume any voting law that a locality returned to after a change to be lawful. Barr issued the memo after many states temporarily expanded voting access amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a brief memo Wednesday, Monty Wilkinson, the acting attorney general, said Barr’s guidance departed from longstanding department policies and practices. He wrote he has rescinded the memos to “return to the traditional principles governing department of justice operations in this area”.

Updated

Today so far

That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.

  • The House will hold a vote tomorrow on removing Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, has just released a statement defending his refusal to remove Greene over her racist, antisemitic and extremist rhetoric. Nancy Pelosi has denounced McCarthy for his inaction, mocking him as a member of the “Q” party, an apparent reference to Greene’s support for the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory QAnon.
  • The House Republican caucus is now meeting to discuss Greene and Liz Cheney. Some Republicans have said Cheney should step down as the House Republican conference chairwoman because she voted to impeach Donald Trump for incitement of insurrection in connection to the 6 January attack on the Capitol.
  • Biden met with Senate Democratic committee chairs to discuss coronavirus relief. The president also had a phone call with House Democrats earlier today, as his team emphasizes the need to go big with the next relief package.
  • A memorial service was held for Brian Sicknick at the Capitol. Sicknick, a Capitol police officer, died last month after being injured during the 6 January insurrection. Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said of Sicknick, “He was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time on a day that the peace was shattered.”
  • The White House walked back comments from the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccinating teachers. The CDC director, Dr Rochelle Walensky, suggested schools did not need all teachers to be vaccinated before safely reopening, but the White House said the CDC is still working on official guidance for safe reopening practices.

Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Updated

McCarthy defends refusal to remove extremist Greene from committees

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy has released a statement defending his refusal to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments over her racist, antisemitic and violent rhetoric.

“Past comments from and endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Greene on school shootings, political violence, and antisemitic conspiracy theories do not represent the values or beliefs of the House Republican Conference,” McCarthy said.

“I condemn those comments unequivocally. I condemned them in the past. I continue to condemn them today. This House condemned QAnon last Congress and continues to do so today.”

McCarthy went on to accuse House Democratic leadership of “choosing to raise the temperature by taking the unprecedented step to further their partisan power grab regarding the committee assignments of the other party”.

“I understand that Marjorie’s comments have caused deep wounds to many and as a result, I offered majority leader Hoyer a path to lower the temperature and address these concerns,” McCarthy said.

Steny Hoyer released a statement earlier today saying that McCarthy made it clear there was “no alternative” to moving forward with a full House vote to remove Greene from her committee assignments. The vote will take place tomorrow.

Updated

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy has been telling allies that he plans to defend Liz Cheney during this afternoon’s meeting, according to Politico.

Some Republicans have called on Cheney to step down as House Republican conference chairwoman over her vote to impeach Donald Trump for incitement of insurrection.

House Republicans meet to discuss Greene and Cheney

House Republicans are now holding a caucus meeting to discuss two of their members, Liz Cheney and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Both congresswomen have faced criticism from fellow Republicans in recent days, but they are each in the hot seat for very, very different reasons.

Greene has been denounced by members of both parties for supporting the antisemitic conspiracy theory QAnon and for spouting many racist and extremist beliefs. The House is expected to hold a vote tomorrow on removing Greene from her committee assignments.

Cheney, on the other hand, has been criticized by Trump loyalists for voting to impeach the former president over inciting the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol. Some Republicans have said Cheney should step down as the House Republican conference chairwoman.

The action that House Republicans pursue in connection to the two congresswomen could provide clues as to how the caucus will conduct itself now that Trump has left office.

Stay tuned for updates from the meeting.

Updated

Matt Gaetz, a Florida congressman who has been one of Donald Trump’s fiercest advocates in the House, suggested he would give up his seat to defend the former president in the impeachment trial.

Gaetz made the comment in an interview today with Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist.

“I love my district,” Gaetz told Bannon. “I love representing them. But I view this cancellation of the Trump presidency and the Trump movement as one of the major risks to my people, both in my district and all throughout this great country.”

Gaetz added, “Absolutely, if the president called me and wanted me to go defend him on the floor of the Senate, that would be the top priority in my life. I would leave my House seat, I would leave my home, I would do anything I had to do to ensure that the greatest president in my lifetime … got a full-throated defense.”

The House approved an article of impeachment against Trump last month, charging the then-president of incitement of insurrection in connection to the 6 January attack on the Capitol.

Ten House Republicans supported the article of impeachment, making it the most bipartisan presidential impeachment in US history.

Updated

More Senate Republicans are coming out to denounce the racist, antisemitic and violent rhetoric of congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Thom Tillis, a Republican of North Carolina, said in a new tweet, “It’s beyond reprehensible for any elected official, especially a member of Congress, to parrot violent QAnon rhetoric and promote deranged conspiracies like the Pentagon wasn’t really hit by a plane on 9/11. It’s not conservative, it’s insane.”

Republican Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota also said this afternoon that it would be “very hard” for him to support Greene staying on the House education committee, given that she has suggested school shootings were hoaxes. (Those suggestions, of course, have absolutely no basis in reality.)

The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, has refused to remove Greene from her committee assignments, so the Democratic leadership is moving forward with a full chamber vote to do so.

Updated

Pelosi mocks McCarthy as a member of the 'Q' party

Nancy Pelosi has just released a scathing statement about minority leader Kevin McCarthy’s refusal to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments over her racist, antisemitic and fringe beliefs.

The Democratic speaker’s press release identifies the Republican leader’s party and state affiliation as “Q-CA,” rather than “R-CA”.

“After several conversations and literally running away from reporters, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Q-CA) made clear that he is refusing to take action against conspiracy theorist Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Pelosi said in the statement.

“As a result, the House will continue with a vote to strip Greene of her seat on the esteemed House Committee on Education & Labor and House Committee on Budget. McCarthy’s failure to lead his party effectively hands the keys over to Greene – an antisemite, QAnon adherent and 9/11 truther.”

Pelosi noted that several Republicans, including No 2 Senate Republican John Thune, have outlined the need to denounce Greene’s racist and antisemitic rhetoric.

Quoting Thune, Pelosi said, “McCarthy has chosen to make House Republicans ‘the party of conspiracy theories and QAnon’ and Rep Greene is in the driver’s seat.”

Updated

Jim McGovern, the Democratic chairman of the House rules committee, said he believed removing Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments was “the minimum” that the House should do.

“I personally think she should resign,” McGovern said. “I don’t think she’s fit to serve in this institution.”

Other Democrats have also called on Greene to resign, but she has refused to do so, instead sending fundraising pitches linked to the outcry over her racist and anti-Semitic beliefs.

Congressman Ted Deutch, a Democratic member of the House rules committee, got choked up as he discussed the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school during today’s hearing.

Marjorie Taylor Greene has suggested the shooting was a hoax. That is of course not true. The shooting was real, and 17 people were killed in the attack.

The shooting took place in Deutch’s district, and the congressman started his comments by reading off the names of the Parkland victims.

“There are not words in the English language to properly describe how the remarks of Ms Greene makes these communities feel,” Deutch said. “This makes it so much worse.”

Updated

Tom Cole, the top Republican on the House rules committee, said he considered today’s hearing to be “premature”.

Cole described Marjorie Taylor Green’s racist, antisemitic and violent comments as “deeply offensive,” but he suggested the matter should be referred to the House ethics committee before she is removed from her committee assignments.

The House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, has already said the full House will vote on removing Greene from her committee assignments tomorrow.

Updated

House rules committee holds hearing on punishing extremist Greene

The House rules committee is now holding a hearing on removing Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia congresswoman who has voiced support for the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory QAnon, from her committee assignments.

Jim McGovern, the Democratic chairman of the committee, opened the proceedings by noting, “We have never had a hearing like this before.” McGovern said of Greene’s racist and fringe beliefs, “This is sick stuff.”

McGovern argued that serving on House committees should be seen as a privilege rather than a right and the chamber was required to hold its members to a certain standard.

“It is not about canceling anybody with different political beliefs,” McGovern said. “It is about accountability and about upholding the integrity and the decency of this institution. If this isn’t the bottom line, I don’t know where the hell the bottom line is.”

The Biden administration has said it cannot release the visitor logs from the Trump White House.

“We cannot [release them],” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said this afternoon. “That is under the purview of the National Archives, so I’d certainly point you to there.”

Reporters have asked the new administration about the visitor logs amid questions over whether Donald Trump hosted anyone who participated in the January 6 insurrection in the days leading up to the attack on the Capitol.

The Biden White House has pledged to release its own visitor logs every quarter, as Barack Obama’s administration did.

Leyland Cecco reports for the Guardian from Toronto:

Canada has designated the far-right Proud Boys group as a terrorist organization alongside Isis and al-Qaida, amid growing concerns over the spread of white supremacist groups in the country.

On Wednesday Bill Blair, public safety minister, also announced the federal government would designate the white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups the Atomwaffen Division, the Base and the Russian Imperial Movement as terrorist entities. The federal government also added offshoots of al-Qaida, Isis and Hizbul Mujahedin to its list.

“Canada will not tolerate ideological, religious or politically motivated acts of violence,” Blair said.

The move by the federal government follows allegations that the Proud Boys played a role in the mob attack on the US Capitol in January. During the 2020 presidential debates, when Donald Trump was asked to condemn white supremacist groups, he instead told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”.

In late January, Canada’s parliament unanimously passed a motion calling on the federal government to designate the rightwing Proud Boys as a terrorist group. The motion had no practical legal impact, but spoke to a growing worry over rightwing extremism in Canada.

Ahead of the announcement, Canadian officials told reporters that they had been monitoring the Proud Boys before the Capitol Hill attack, but the event helped with the decision to list the organization.

The White House press briefing has now concluded, after Jen Psaki took questions from reporters for about 45 minutes.

Shortly before the briefing ended, Psaki was asked about the Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik.

“I have not spoken with the president about RT or Sputnik,” Psaki said. “I think it’s pretty factual to say they are tools of propaganda who work on behalf of the Russian government.”

Jen Psaki said it was “too soon” to discuss the possibility of altering the Democratic presidential primary calendar.

The question came after reports emerged that Nevada Democrats were pushing to have the state vote first in the nominating contest.

Psaki would not weigh in on the matter, although she noted that Nevada is “a little warmer” than Iowa, which currently votes first.

White House walks back CDC director's comments about vaccinating teachers

Jen Psaki appeared to walk back comments from Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about teachers receiving coronavirus vaccines.

During the White House coronavirus response team’s briefing earlier today, Walensky said, “Vaccination of teachers is not a prerequisite for safe reopening of schools.”

But the White House press secretary said just now, “They have not released their official guidance yet from the CDC on the vaccination of teachers and what would be needed to ensure the safe reopening of schools, and so we’d certainly defer to that, which we’d hope to see soon.”

Psaki reiterated that Biden believes it is very important to get teachers vaccinated as quickly as possible. The president has said safely reopening schools is a top priority for him.

Updated

Jen Psaki was asked about reports that Joe Biden is considering limiting the $1,400 checks in his coronavirus relief package.

“Further targeting means not the size of the check but the income level of the people receiving the check,” the White House press secretary told reporters.

What that means is that most Americans would still be eligible to receive $1,400 if the package is passed. However, while the current package calls for phasing out the checks for individuals who make $75,000 or more a year, that income level may come down as negotiations continue.

Jen Psaki was asked about the Space Force, a day after the press secretary laughed off a question about the military branch, attracting criticism from Republicans.

“We are not revisiting the decision to establish the Space Force,” Psaki said. “They absolutely have the full support of the Biden administration.”

The Space Force was established with bipartisan support in Congress under the Trump administration.

Jen Psaki deflected a question about the House vote to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon-supporting Republican congresswoman, from her committee assignments.

“We’ve resisted speaking of her in this briefing room, and I’m not going to do that today,” the press secretary said.

The House is expected to vote tomorrow on whether to remove Greene from her committee assignments in response to her racist, anti-Semitic and fringe beliefs.

Jen Psaki denied reports that Joe Biden is more willing to negotiate with Republican lawmakers than some of his senior staffers.

“There is no one who’s going to tell him what to do or hold him back,” the press secretary told reporters.

Biden said earlier today that he believed his relief package would attract some Republican support, but congressional Republicans have generally voiced opposition to the $1.9 trillion price tag of Biden’s proposal.

Psaki said the White House considered Biden’s proposed package to already be bipartisan because it has the support of many Americans from both parties.

Joe Biden will visit the state department tomorrow, and Jen Psaki said the president’s remarks there would focus on thanking staffers for the work they do at home and abroad.

Psaki added that Biden would offer a broad overview of his foreign policy agenda.

Under the Trump administration, the state department suffered from low morale, as the then-president repeatedly denigrated diplomats as part of the “Deep State” out to get him.

White House warns against 'cost of inaction' on coronavirus relief

Joe Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, is now holding a briefing at the White House, and she opened it by addressing the negotiations over coronavirus relief.

Psaki noted that the president spoke to Democrats from the House and the Senate today to discuss the next relief package.

Psaki said Biden used the meetings to emphasize the need to go big with the legislation, warning that the “cost of inaction” on coronavirus relief was too high.

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar accused House Republican leadership of “fanning the flames” of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s racist and antisemitic beliefs by failing to hold her accountable.

Omar, one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, noted that Greene has specifically targeted her and Rashida Tlaib in the past, insisting they be sworn in to office using a Bible instead of a Qur’an. Greene also referred to the diverse class of 2018 House freshmen as “an Islamic invasion of our government”.

“Let’s be clear: this is a desperate smear rooted in racism, misogyny, and Islamophobia. Marjorie Taylor Greene has incited violence against her fellow Members of Congress, repeatedly singling out prominent women of color,” Omar, a Democrat of Minnesota, said in a statement.

“Republicans will do anything to distract from the fact that they have not only allowed but elevated members of their own caucus who encourage violence. It’s time to stop whitewashing the actions of the violent conspiracy theorists, who pose a direct and immediate threat to their fellow Members of Congress and our most fundamental democratic processes.”

Updated

DoJ drops discrimination case against Yale

In the new Biden-Harris administration, the Department of Justice today abandoned a case against Yale, after suing the Ivy League university and accusing it of discriminating against white applicants and also Asian American applicants in its efforts to admit more Black and Hispanic students, who are historically drastically underrepresented at the elite institution.

File pic of Old Campus at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
File pic of Old Campus at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Photograph: Michelle McLoughlin/Reuters

The Associated Press reports that the DoJ:

On Wednesday dropped its discrimination lawsuit against Yale University that had alleged the university was illegally discriminating against Asian American and white applicants.

The Justice Department noted in its filing that it was voluntarily dismissing the action, filed in October under the Trump administration. A judge must still sign off on it. Federal prosecutors had argued the university violated civil rights laws because it “discriminates based on race and national origin in its undergraduate admissions process, and that race is the determinative factor in hundreds of admissions decisions each year.”

“Yale is gratified that the U.S. Justice Department has dropped its lawsuit challenging Yale College’s admissions practices,” spokesperson Karen Peart said. “We are also pleased that the Justice Department has withdrawn its notice of violation of Title VI and its notice of noncompliance.”

In a statement, a Justice Department spokesperson said it was dropping the lawsuit “in light of all available facts, circumstances, and legal developments” and notified Yale on Wednesday that it had also withdrawn its determination letter that the university discriminated based on race and national origin.

But the spokesperson said the department’s underlying investigation, aimed at ensuring Yale complies with federal anti-discrimination laws, remains ongoing.

The Justice Department’s investigation which stemmed from a 2016 complaint against Yale, Brown and Dartmouth also found that Yale used race as a factor in multiple steps of the admissions process and that Yale “racially balances its classes.”

The Supreme Court has ruled colleges and universities may consider race in admissions decisions but has said that must be done in a narrowly tailored way to promote diversity and should be limited in time. Schools also bear the burden of showing why their consideration of race is appropriate.

Yale has said its practices comply with decades of Supreme Court precedent and that it considers a multitude of factors and looks at “the whole person when selecting whom to admit among the many thousands of highly qualified applicants.”

One of the lawyers on Donald Trump’s new impeachment defense team said today it would be “idiotic” and “insane” to dispute the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election result during the former president’s Senate impeachment trial next week.

A member of the global citizens movement Avaaz wearing a mask of Donald Trump holds a sign reading ‘Investigate me’, outside the Scottish Parliament.
A member of the global citizens movement Avaaz wearing a mask of Donald Trump holds a sign reading ‘Investigate me’, outside the Scottish Parliament. Photograph: Ian Georgeson/AP

He also said Trump hasn’t pressured him to make those arguments.

Bruce L Castor appears supremely confident of victory in the case.

In an interview he told Reuters:

“Injecting that into a case that is already a winner would be idiotic,” said Castor, noting: “It would be insane to do that.”

“Nobody has pressured me to make that defense,” Castor added, saying Trump was happy with a brief filed by Castor and his co-counsel David Schoen on Tuesday.

The two defense lawyers are preparing for trial before the U.S. Senate beginning February 9.

The chamber will consider an article of impeachment passed by the House of Representatives charging Trump with inciting the deadly January 6 storming of the US Capitol by his followers.

In their response to the charge on Tuesday, they argued that the Senate lacked authority to hold an impeachment trial for a president who has left office. Castor told Reuters that would be the primary defense argument.

Forty-five Senate Republicans backed a failed effort on January 26 to halt Trump*s impeachment trial for that very reason, in a show of party unity that some cited as a clear sign he will not be convicted.

Democratic lawmakers said in a brief on Tuesday that Trump pointed a mob “like a loaded cannon” at Congress and should be barred from holding public office in the future.

As Guardian US reported at the weekend, Castor is a former acting attorney general of Pennsylvania and a prominent Republican who has been slammed by advocates for victims of sexual crimes because of his stance against reforms involving help for past victims of Catholic priests and in the case of university football coach and predator Jerry Sandusky.

And Castor gained notoriety for declining to prosecute Bill Cosby more than a decade before the entertainer was eventually convicted in 2018, and also sued Cosby’s victim, Andrea Constand, in a case that was dismissed, and then was sued by Constand for defamation, which was settled.

Bruce Castor.
Bruce Castor. Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP

More background to Castor controversy here.

Updated

Today so far

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • The House will hold a vote tomorrow on removing Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments, majority leader Steny Hoyer just announced. Greene, who has voiced support for the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory QAnon, has been widely denounced for her racist and fringe beliefs.
  • Joe Biden is meeting with Senate Democratic committee chairs to discuss coronavirus relief. The president had a phone call with House Democrats earlier today, and he emphasized the need to “go big” with the relief package, according to multiple reports.
  • A memorial service for Brian Sicknick was held at the Capitol. Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer, died last month after being injured during the January 6 insurrection. Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said of Sicknick, “He was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time on a day that the peace was shattered.”

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Biden meets with Senate Democratic chairs to discuss coronavirus relief

Joe Biden is now meeting with the incoming Democratic chairs of some key Senate committees to discuss his proposed coronavirus relief package.

The president kicked off the Oval Office meeting by welcoming the Democratic senators to the White House, as reporters looked on.

“This is their new home for a while anyway,” Biden said. “And with a little bit of luck, the grace of God and the goodwill of the neighbors, and the crick not rising, it’s going to be longer than just four years.”

Asked whether he believed any Republican lawmakers would support his relief proposal, Biden replied, “I think we’ll get some Republicans.”

The White House meeting comes a day after the Senate advanced a budget resolution, paving the way for Democrats to pass the relief package using reconciliation, meaning they will not need any Republican support to get the bill to Biden’s desk.

House to hold vote on removing Greene from her committee assignments

The House will hold a vote tomorrow on removing Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia congresswoman who has voiced support for the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory QAnon, from her committee assignments.

The House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, just announced the planned vote in a tweet.

“I spoke to Leader McCarthy this morning, and it is clear there is no alternative to holding a Floor vote on the resolution to remove Rep. Greene from her committee assignments,” Hoyer said.

“The Rules Committee will meet this afternoon, and the House will vote on the resolution tomorrow.”

Greene has come under increasing scrutiny as recent reports have shed more light on her racist and fringe beliefs. A number of Democratic lawmakers have called on Greene to resign, but she has insisted she will remain in office.

The remains of Brian Sicknick, the Capitol Police officer who died as a result of his injuries from the January 6 insurrection, are now leaving the Capitol.

A memorial service was held for Sicknick at the Capitol this morning. Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and House speaker Nancy Pelosi both spoke at the service.

“He was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time on a day that the peace was shattered,” Schumer said of Sicknick.

Vaccination of teachers not required to safely reopen schools, CDC director says

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said she did not believe the vaccination of all teachers was required to safely reopen US schools.

Dr Rochelle Walensky told reporters at the White House coronavirus briefing, “Vaccination of teachers is not a prerequisite for safe reopening of schools.”

Many US schools remain closed due to concern about the spread of coronavirus in the classroom, putting strain on many American families.

Joe Biden has said the reopening of schools is a priority for his administration, but many teachers have said they do not want to return to the classroom until they have been vaccinated.

Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, encouraged people to safely watch the Super Bowl game this Sunday.

“Please watch the Super Bowl safely, gathering only virtually or with the people you live with,” Walensky said during the White House coronavirus briefing.

The CDC has previously warned that social gatherings with people from outside your household significantly increase your risk of contracting coronavirus.

Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, announced that the Biden administration is establishing two mass vaccination sites in California.

One site will be on the campus of California State University Los Angeles, and another will be at the Oakland Coliseum.

Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also expressed optimism about trends in the country’s coronavirus case count.

“We now appear to be in a consistent downward trajectory,” Walensky said.

Updated

White House coronavirus response team holds briefing

The White House coronavirus response team is now holding a briefing to update the public on vaccine distribution.

Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said that the country has averaged 1.3 million vaccine doses distributed per day for the past week.

“We are on track to meet the president’s goal of 100 million shots in 100 days,” Zients said.

Joe Biden set the 100 million doses goal in December, and he has since faced criticism that the goal is not ambitious enough to get all Americans vaccinated in a timely manner.

Moments ago, Democratic Senators Chris Coons and Tom Carper of Delaware emerged from an hour-long meeting with Joe Biden at the White House.

Carper said the trio discussed the need to confirm Biden’s cabinet nominees, as well as president’s coronavirus relief proposal.

“The main thing is getting people vaccinated. The main thing is to put the coronavirus in our rearview mirror,” Carper said.

Coons also addressed the need to deliver aid to American families and finance global vaccine relief, promising that a package would be passed in “weeks, not months”.

Senate chaplain Barry Black offered a benediction to close out the memorial service for Brian Sicknick, the Capitol Police officer who died of his injuries from the January 6 insurrection.

“We honor you for the life of Officer Brian G. Sicknick -- a hero, proved in liberating strife,” Black said.

After the ceremony concluded, a number of lawmakers marched past the urn holding Sicknick’s remains to pay their respects to the fallen officer.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi also delivered remarks at the Capitol memorial service for Brian Sicknick.

The Democratic speaker said Sicknick’s family remembered him as “the kindest of all” and “just a very special person”.

Pelosi noted that Sicknick’s service, both as a Capitol Police officer and during his two deployments overseas, made him “a patriot to his country”.

“We will never forget,” Pelosi said of the fallen officer. “We will remember his sacrifice.”

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer noted that two other Capitol Police officers have died by suicide since the January 6 insurrection.

Schumer encouraged all officers who are struggling with mental health issues to seek out services to help them.

After Schumer wrapped up his remarks, a choir sang a rendition of “America the Beautiful” to honor Brian Sicknick.

Capitol memorial service held for Brian Sicknick

The memorial service for Brian Sicknick, the Capitol Police officer who died as a result of his injuries from the January 6 insurrection, is underway in the Capitol rotunda.

Sicknick’s remains were moved to the Capitol last night, and Joe Biden paid his respects shortly after they arrived there.

Guests are seated during a ceremony memorializing Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick in the Capitol Rotunda.
Guests are seated during a ceremony memorializing Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick in the Capitol Rotunda. Photograph: Demetrius Freeman/AP

Speaking at the memorial service, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said Sicknick was known as “a peacekeeper -- not only in duty, but in spirit”.

“He was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time on a day that the peace was shattered,” Schumer said.

Kamala Harris has sworn in Pete Buttigieg as transportation secretary. The vice-president administered the oath as Buttigieg’s husband, Chasten, held a Bible for him.

Buttigieg is the first openly gay cabinet secretary to be confirmed by the Senate.

What a difference a year makes: the swearing-in ceremony comes exactly one year after the Iowa caucuses, when Buttigieg turned in an impressive performance.

Buttigieg and Harris ran against each other in the Democratic presidential primary, but Harris dropped out of the race before the Iowa caucuses. Both former presidential candidates later endorsed Joe Biden and have now joined his team.

Speaking to House Democrats in a phone call, Joe Biden emphasized the need to “go big” with the next coronavirus relief package, according to multiple reports.

The president also reportedly emphasized he would not back away from his pledge to deliver $1,400 checks to most Americans, saying he would not start his administration by breaking a promise.

On Monday, Biden met with a group of Senate Republicans who have proposed spending $600 billion on the package, while the president has called for $1.9 trillion in relief.

Biden reportedly told House Democrats that it was “not in the cards” to cut the package down to $600 billion.

The Senate advanced a budget resolution yesterday, paving the way for Democrats to pass the relief package using reconciliation, meaning they would not need Republican support to get it to Biden’s desk.

Senate to vote on power-sharing agreement later today, Schumer says

Senate leaders have reached a final deal on a power-sharing agreement, and the chamber will vote on the proposal later today, majority leader Chuck Schumer just announced.

“I am happy to report this morning that the leadership of both parties have finalized the organizing resolution for the Senate,” the Democratic leader said in a floor speech.

“We will pass the resolution through the Senate today, which means that committees can promptly set up and get to work with Democrats holding the gavels.”

Schumer and minority leader Mitch McConnell seemed to reach an agreement last week, but they continued to haggle over the final details until today, delaying the work of Senate committees.

Without an agreement in place to address the 50-50 split in the Senate, Republicans have maintained control of committee gavels. Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the judiciary committee, used that power to temporarily delay a confirmation hearing for Merrick Garland, the attorney general nominee.

Schumer pledged that climate change would be a major area of focus for Senate committees now that Democrats are in control.

“I’ve already instructed the incoming Democratic chairs of all relevant committees to begin holding hearings on the climate crisis,” Schumer said.

Pete Buttigieg, who was confirmed as transportation secretary yesterday, is on Twitter with a new handle to celebrate his new job.

Buttigieg, from the account @SecretaryPete, just tweeted, “I’m honored to serve as Secretary of Transportation and help build the kind of infrastructure that creates jobs, empowers all, and keeps travelers & workers safe. It’s time to get to work.”

While he was a presidential candidate, most voters knew Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, as “Mayor Pete”.

This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.

The White House has added two new events to the president’s schedule for this morning.

In a few minutes, Joe Biden will call in to the House Democratic caucus meeting to discuss coronavirus relief.

The president will also meet with Senate Democrats in a couple hours at the White House, where Biden will lead a talk about his proposed relief package.

The meetings come one day after the Senate advanced a budget resolution, paving the way for Democrats to pass coronavirus relief using reconciliation, meaning they will not need any Republican support.

US and Russia extend New Start nuclear treaty for five years – Blinken

An extremely short but important snap from Reuters here, that the US has extended the New Start nuclear treaty with Russia for five years.

“Extending the New Start Treaty ensures we have verifiable limits on Russian ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers until 5 February, 2026,” secretary of state Antony Blinken said in a statement.

President Joe Biden’s administration said last month it would seek the extension. The arms control treaty, which was due to expire on 5 February, limits the United States and Russia to deploying no more than 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads each.

Hallie Golden in Seattle reports for us on Colleen Echohawk’s aim to be Seattle’s first indigenous mayor:

Colleen Echohawk, a Native American woman and key advocate in Seattle’s homelessness crisis, is running for mayor of the Pacific Northwest city and laying the groundwork for it to potentially elect its first indigenous mayor.

Echohawk, an enrolled member of the Kithehaki Band of the Pawnee Nation and a member of the Upper Athabascan people of Mentasta Lake, is a progressive Democrat, but one, she said, “with strong roots in pragmatism”.

Her success in the race would be truly distinctive. It would mean the city that over 150 years ago approved an ordinance expelling the Native community, would be run by an Indigenous woman.

As the founder of the Coalition to End Urban Indigenous Homelessness, she said she launched her campaign after recognizing over the summer that the city needed to do much more to help its homeless population amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The status quo has been failing a lot of people in this city and we have to find ways to change, we need a fresh face up there in city hall and a prudent person who can make decisive visionary decisions because this is really a once in a generational chance,” said Echohawk, speaking to the Guardian from her campaign headquarters in the basement of her house.

Echohawk is not Coast Salish, but she has lived in Seattle for 24 years. And before she announced her candidacy, she said she called the leaders of a few of the region’s tribes – Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, Suquamish Tribe and Tulalip Tribes – to let them know she was considering a run.

“This is their territory and I will continue to lift them up in every way that I possibly can,” said Echohawk, who also founded the Chief Seattle Club, a non-profit aimed at supporting the city’s Native American and Alaska Native residents, through food, housing assistance and health care.

Read more of Hallie Golden’s report here: Colleen Echohawk aims to be Seattle’s first indigenous mayor: ‘We have to find ways to change’

Hundreds of Congressional staff members sign open letter urging Senators to convict Trump

Hundreds of staff who work in Congress have written an open letter to Senators urging them to convict former president Trump and prevent him from running for office again. The letter, posted to website Medium, is signed by 370 staff members. It reads in part:

We are staff who work for members of the US Senate and the US House of Representatives, where it is our honor and privilege to serve our country and our fellow Americans. We write this letter to share our own views and experiences, not the views of our employers. But on 6 January, 2021, our workplace was attacked by a violent mob trying to stop the electoral college vote count. That mob was incited by former president Donald J. Trump and his political allies, some of whom we pass every day in the hallways at work.

On 6 January, the former President broke America’s 230-year legacy of the peaceful transition of power when he incited a mob to disrupt the counting of electoral college votes. Six people died. A Capitol Police officer—one of our co-workers who guards and greets us every day—was beaten to death. The attack on our workplace was inspired by lies told by the former president and others about the results of the election in a baseless, months-long effort to reject votes lawfully cast by the American people.

As Congressional employees, we don’t have a vote on whether to convict Donald J. Trump for his role in inciting the violent attack at the Capitol, but our Senators do. And for our sake, and the sake of the country, we ask that they vote to convict the former president and bar him from ever holding office again.

You can read it in full here: An open letter from Congressional staff to Senate

Overnight there was quite the development over at the Pentagon, where defense secretary Lloyd Austin has dismissed every member of the Pentagon’s advisory boards. Dan De Luce reports for NBC News:

The move affects several hundred members of about 40 advisory boards, including dozens of people who had been named to the posts in the closing days of former President Donald Trump’s tenure.

Among those who were dismissed are highly partisan figures such as Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign manager; David Bossie, a former Trump deputy campaign manager; Republican former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; and retired Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata. Instead of singling out Trump appointees, the move applies to all board members, including those appointed before Trump’s presidency.

“I am directing the immediate suspension of all advisory committee operations until the review is completed unless otherwise directed by myself or the deputy secretary of defense,” Austin said in a memo released Tuesday.

Read more here: NBC News – Pentagon clears out advisory boards, citing concerns over last-minute Trump picks

With the country enduring the coronavirus pandemic, the regular highlights of the year have been affected in turn. There were plenty of warnings about Thanksgiving and the Christmas, and this morning Dr. Anthony Fauci has given a warning about the weekend’s SuperBowl.

Not for the limited numbers attending the game, but for those at home. Fauci has asked people to “just lay low and cool it” rather than hosting watch parties.

Associated Press report that Biden’s chief medical adviser said during a TV interview this morning that now isn’t the time to invite people over for watch parties because of the possibility that they’re infected with the coronavirus and could sicken others.

He says big events like Sunday’s game in Tampa, Florida, between the Kansas City Chief and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are always a cause for concern. But Fauci says the best thing people can do is watch the game on TV at home with the people in your household.

Ummm, well I guess Marjorie Taylor Greene subscribes to Politico’s Playbook too…

Also in newsletter-land, Giovanni Russonello has this summing up for the New York Times On Politics of how Donald Trump’s impeachment defense appears to be stacking up:

Trump’s lawyers denied that his statements in advance of the Capitol riot on 6 January amounted to an incitement of violence. But they also argued that the whole case was moot, saying that the Senate lacked the authority to try a former president.

In the filing, the lawyers did not repeat or seek to defend Trump’s baseless claims that the November election had been “stolen” from him and marred by widespread fraud. Instead, it fell back on a First Amendment defense, saying that Trump had been exercising his right to “express his belief that the election results were suspect.”

The filing also said that the Constitution disallowed the Senate from trying a former president after he has left office. This argument has been disputed by many constitutional scholars, and it runs counter to history: During Ulysses S. Grant’s administration, the Senate tried a cabinet official on impeachment charges after he had left office.

It is an intriguing argument that you can’t impeach a former president for crimes committed while they were in office, as it rather sets up the idea that any president can commit any number of high crimes and misdemeanors in their final few days in office, with no possibility of Congressional action over them.

Politico’s Playbook is this morning claiming to have the behind-the-scenes scoop on the Republican shenanigans over Marjorie Taylor Greene. They write:

Tuesday night with Greene, House minority leader McCarthy explained to the QAnon supporter that her controversial past statements were coming to a head. The problem, McCarthy told her: Democrats are threatening to force a vote to remove her from her committees — and that puts the entire GOP Conference in a bad spot. McCarthy tried to give Greene options, according to a person familiar with their talk: She could denounce QAnon and apologize publicly for espousing hurtful conspiracy theories and endorsing violence on Democrats. She could remove herself from the panel to spare her colleagues a vote on the matter. Or, she could face removal from her own GOP peers.

It must not have gone as well as McCarthy hoped, because he then called a late-night meeting with the panel that designates committee assignments to discuss removing Greene. According to our sources, the room agreed that a House vote on this issue would be catastrophic politically for their members who are already angry at being associated with Greene’s crazy statements. That must be avoided, they concurred.

McCarthy told the room he would speak with House majority leader Steny Hoyer to try to broker a deal. McCarthy would offer to remove Greene from one committee — Education and Labor — if Democrats back off a House floor vote to remove her from both. It is unclear whether Hoyer will go for this.

Civil rights lawyers Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke are poised for key roles in the Biden administration. Sam Levine writes for us:

On her last day at the justice department in 2017, Vanita Gupta considered taking a picture as she left the agency’s headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue. But she decided against it. Gupta, the outgoing head of the department’s civil rights division, once described as the “crown jewel” of the agency, didn’t really want to remember the moment, she told a reporter who was shadowing her for the day.

Jeff Sessions, then the incoming attorney general, was poised to unwind much of the painstaking progress Gupta, 46, and her colleagues had spent the last four years building. It was no secret that Sessions opposed the kind of court agreements the justice department used to fix unconstitutional policing policies across the country (“dangerous” and an “exercise of raw power” in Sessions’ eyes). Nor were there any illusions that Sessions would try very hard to enforce the Voting Rights Act, already on its last legs after the supreme court gutted a key provision in 2013 (Sessions described the landmark civil rights law as “intrusive”).

Many of those concerns came to pass. Trump’s justice department not only did little to enforce some of the country’s most powerful civil rights protections for minority groups, but in several cases it opposed them. It filed almost no voting rights cases and defended restrictive voting laws, tried to undermine the census, challenged affirmative action policies, sought to roll back protections for LGBTQ+ Americans, and limited the use of consent decrees to curb illegal policing practices. Gupta took a job as the head of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of civil rights groups across the country, where she became one of the leading figures pushing back on the Trump administration.

Joining Gupta in that effort was Kristen Clarke, a 47-year-old former justice department lawyer who leads the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, founded in 1963 to help attorneys in private practice enforce civil rights. As her group filed voting rights and anti-discrimination lawsuits across the country over the last few years, Clarke spent hours nearly every election day briefing journalists on reports of incoming voting problems. Reports of long lines, voting machine malfunctions, translator issues – no problem was too small. The monitoring sent a message that civil rights groups would move swiftly against any whiff of voter suppression.

Now, after years of leading the fight for civil rights from outside the justice department, both women are poised to return to its top levels, where they can deploy the unmatchable resources of the federal government. Last month, Joe Biden tapped Gupta to serve as his associate attorney general, the No 3 official at the department, and Clarke to lead the civil rights division. If confirmed by the Senate, Gupta would be the first woman of color to be the associate attorney general; Clarke would be the first Black woman in her role.

“They are both independently legit civil rights champions with a long deep history,” said Justin Levitt, who worked with Gupta at the justice department and knows both women well. “They’re going to make a really spectacular, really powerful team.”

Read more of Sam Levines’s report here: They took Donald Trump to task. Now they’re ready to reshape the justice department

Richard Cowan at Reuters describes the Republican party as facing an “identity dilemma” over “strikingly different” Reps. Liz Cheney and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Decisions made in the next couple of days by Congressional Republicans will send a strong signal nationwide, almost certain to alienate a chunk of their supporters.

Cheney, the No. 3 House of Representatives Republican, is facing heat for her vote to impeach former President Donald Trump, while Greene is in the hotseat for having supported conspiracy theories and online calls for violence against Democrats.

The 211 House Republicans who have been invited to a closed-door meeting also are expected to weigh both, though it is unclear if they will act today.

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy is being pulled in opposite directions from members of his rank-and-file, who have been riven for months over Trump’s insistence, without evidence, that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him and by the increasingly violent rhetoric among members of the Republican Party.

House Democrats, who hold a slim majority, were preparing to advance legislation on Wednesday relieving Greene of her committee assignments if House Republicans did not act promptly. Some Democrats called for her to be expelled from Congress.

Pressure has been intensified after Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came forward this week with an account of her experience while Trump supporters were raging through the Capitol.

Discipline against House Representatives is quite rare, though in early 2019, then-Representative Steve King was stripped of his committee assignments after the long-time Republican lawmaker was found to have uttered racist comments. King was defeated in a Republican primary election last June.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has posted in tribute this morning to Capitol police office Brian Sicknick, who was killed during the pro-Trump assault on the seat of US government on 6 January.

A federal judge will hear arguments today from a group of Apaches that has been fighting a proposed copper mine in eastern Arizona. Apache Stronghold recently sued the US Forest Service to try to stop the agency from turning over a parcel of land to Resolution Copper, a joint venture of global mining companies Rio Tinto and BHP.

The group is seeking an injunction until a judge ultimately can determine who has rights to that land and whether mining would infringe on Apaches’ religious practices. The Forest Service says it’s doing what Congress mandated.

Resolution Copper Mining’s east plant is seen from the Oak Flat recreation area near Superior, Arizona.
Resolution Copper Mining’s east plant is seen from the Oak Flat recreation area near Superior, Arizona. Photograph: Nancy Wiechec/Reuters

Felicia Fonseca reports for the Associated Press that Apache Stronghold contends the land belongs to Western Apaches under an 1852 treaty with the United States. John Welch, a professor and anthropologist who has worked extensively with Apache tribes, says he hasn’t found any evidence that would suggest otherwise.

The so-called Treaty of Santa Fe was one of a handful of treaties negotiated with a broad group of Apaches, and the only one ratified by the US Senate, said Karl Jacoby, a Columbia University history professor who has written about the treaty and isn’t connected to the lawsuit.

The treaty was meant as a peace accord at a time the US was acquiring territory from Mexico. It suggests that Apaches have a right to their territory but it doesn’t spell out that territory, Jacoby said.

“What’s been happening recently is Native people have been dusting off these treaties, and saying, ‘Look, you made this treaty, you can’t just walk away from it. You have to honor it, it’s in your constitution,’ which is the supreme law of the land,” he said.

Attorneys for the Forest Service said Apache Stronghold can’t assert ownership rights because it’s not a federally recognized tribe. Even then, the land isn’t held in trust for any Apache tribe.

In court documents, the agency said it doesn’t question the sincerity of the religious and historical connection that Apaches have to the land known as Oak Flat. “Congress has decided this land exchange should go forward, and any construction, mining or ground disturbance at the site is not imminent,” attorneys for the agency wrote.

Tribal councilman Wendsler Nosie, Sr. speaks with Apache activists in a rally to save Oak Flat back in 2015.
Tribal councilman Wendsler Nosie, Sr. speaks with Apache activists in a rally to save Oak Flat back in 2015. Photograph: Molly Riley/AP

Apaches call the mountainous area Chi’chil Bildagoteel. It has ancient oak groves, traditional plants and living beings that tribal members say are essential to their religion and culture. Those things exist in other places, but Apache Stronghold says they have unique power within Oak Flat.

The site is also popular for camping, hiking and rock climbing. Resolution Copper says it will keep the campground open to the public as long as it’s safe but eventually the area would be swallowed by the mine.

Apaches have camped out there in protest. Former San Carlos Apache Chairman Wendsler Nosie Sr., who leads Apache Stronghold and who has previously protested in Washington DC over the issue, has also moved to the site.

The Society for American Archaeology has said the area is of great significance archaeologically within the US Southwest.

Vivian Ho has interviewed Dr Richard Pan, who has experienced death threats and assault from anti-vaccine campaigners during his years-long attempts to improve access to vaccinations:

I was outraged, certainly, that people had tried to block other people from getting access to vaccines [at Dodger Stadium this weekend]. I think that event demonstrated a lie that anti-vaxxers often proclaim, that it’s about choice and freedom – yet here they were denying people their choice to get the vaccine and denying our community and our country the opportunity to be free from this terrible disease that has killed more people than world war two at this point.

A protest organized by Shop Mask Free Los Angeles rally against COVID vaccine, masks and lockdowns at the vaccination site at Dodger Stadium on Saturday.
A protest organized by Shop Mask Free Los Angeles rally against COVID vaccine, masks and lockdowns at the vaccination site at Dodger Stadium on Saturday. Photograph: Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times/REX/Shutterstock

When I first did my bill on educating people about vaccines back in 2010, they would put forth their myths, but generally, you could have a conversation. When it came to 2015 [when Pan sought to get rid of personal belief exemptions and allow only medical exemptions for vaccinations – legislation that ultimately passed], they engaged in death threats. You had death threats coming not just to me, but my staff and other legislators. Some legislators actually had to close their district offices because they worried about the safety of their staff. You had Robert F Kennedy come and call vaccines the Holocaust and use violent imagery. He did apologize for that, but then he subsequently used that analogy in other venues.

Then you move ahead to 2019, when I introduced senate bill 276 (which required medical exemptions be approved by the California department of public health, and ultimately passed). They stepped it up. Not only do they show up in large numbers, which is fine, that’s their right to do so, but then they engaged in things like pounding on the walls, basically sounding like they’re trying to break into the legislative chambers during debate.

They would try to interfere with the legislature by standing on chairs and screaming, or screaming in the galleries not just when we’re discussing the vaccine bill, but overall, just trying to stop the legislature from doing its business. They invited a militia to come join them at the state capitol, so they demonstrated an open tie to other extremist groups, and the death threats continued. But then one of the anti-vaxxers actually assaulted me on the street and livestreamed it on Facebook.

Read more here: Lawmaker who faced anti-vax attack: ‘The movement is growing more violent’

Yesterday there were 114,437 new coronavirus cases and 3,330 deaths. The Johns Hopkins University figures put the total US caseload at 26,413,033, and the total death toll at 446,551. These numbers have been revised up with fresh data since the live blog started today.

The national number of hospitalizations fell again, to 92,880, and are at their lowest level since 28 November according to the Covid Tracking Project.

26.8 million people have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, and more than 1 million doses are being administered daily, according to data from states and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Joe Biden’s administration has started discussions with the utility and automobile sectors about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, White House domestic climate change adviser Gina McCarthy has told Reuters.

The talks are part of a broad effort by the Biden administration that McCarthy will spearhead to engage every federal agency to decarbonize the US power sector by 2035 and the whole economy by 2050.

The United States is the world’s second-biggest greenhouse gas emitter behind China, with the power and transport sectors making up more than half of the emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

McCarthy’s first major task will be to come up with a 2030 emission reduction target under the Paris climate agreement before Biden convenes world leaders for a climate summit on 22 April.

“We’re already having conversations with the utility world and we’re having conversations with the car companies,” McCarthy said in an interview.

“The car companies understand now that the future for them is electric vehicles ... so we’re going to be sort of working to make sure that we move forward with some kind of an agreement on that and a strategy to get us out of the gate fast.”

The White House has met some major automakers - including General Motors Co - as it prepares to begin talks with the industry about revising vehicle emission standards through 2026 or beyond. GM said last week it aimed to sell only electric cars by 2035.

McCarthy will chair a task force composed of the heads of all Cabinet agencies to see what measures can be taken through regulation, budget appropriation and legislation to combat climate change, she said.

Input from that task force will help McCarthy come up with a feasible emission reduction target the United States can achieve by 2030 that her international policy counterpart, John Kerry, Biden’s special envoy on climate change, can submit to the United Nations.

Oil and gas companies will also face new proposed limits on methane emissions later this year, she said, after Trump withdrew previous rules late last year.

Joe Biden has set off at a cracking pace in terms of signing executive orders, limited as they are, as Tamara Keith reports for NPR:

In his first two weeks in office, President Biden has signed nearly as many executive orders as Franklin Roosevelt signed in his entire first month. And President Roosevelt holds the record.

Adding his signature to three executive orders on immigration Tuesday, Biden has now signed 28 executive orders since taking office. FDR signed 30 in his first month.

“By sheer volume, Biden is going to be the most active president on this front since the 1930s,” said Andy Rudalevige, a professor of Government at Bowdoin College.

But while the numbers are large, these actions aren’t barrier breaking. They call for the creation of task forces, direct agencies to begin a regulatory process or explore a policy change.

“A lot of what these orders consist of are plans to make plans, in a sense,” said Rudalevige. “There’s a lot of reviewing, reporting, sort of an urging to rev up that process, but it’s not a substitute for the process itself.”

Executive actions can’t create new laws — they have to exist within the constraints of the constitution and existing statute. They direct the executive branch to do what is already in its power. And as a result they can be, and often are, reversed by the next president. In fact, many of Biden’s actions take aim at things President Trump had done with a swipe of his Sharpie.

Read more here: NPR – With 28 executive orders signed, Biden is off to a record start

A push to unionize workers at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama is running into tough opposition as the retail giant, whose profits have boomed during the coronavirus pandemic despite concerns over worker safety, has launched an aggressive anti-union drive.

If workers at the BHM1 warehouse in Bessemer, near Birmingham, succeed in their efforts they would form the first union at an Amazon warehouse in the US.

The warehouse opened in March 2020, during the beginning of the pandemic. By the end of 2020, the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union said over 2,000 workers at the warehouse signed union authorization cards ahead of the election workers filed for in November 2020.

Ballots for the election are scheduled to be mailed out to around 5,800 Amazon workers on 8 February, with vote-counting scheduled for 30 March 2021. Lawyers for Amazon are currently trying to appeal the decision to allow the election to be carried out by mail, and have requested the election be delayed until their appeal is reviewed.

Ahead of the union election, Amazon has strongly encouraged workers to vote against the union through texts, messaging, an anti-union website and several anti-union captive audience meetings with workers at the warehouse.

In the texts, Amazon claims workers will “be giving up your right to speak for yourself” by signing a union authorization card and emphasizing union dues, claiming “unions are a business,” telling workers “don’t let the union take your money for nothing” and prompting them to visit their anti-union website DoItWithoutDues.com.

Amazon has also sponsored ads on Facebook featuring their anti-union website entitled “do it without dues” and telling workers to vote “no” in the union election.

“When it comes to this union busting, it’s severe. We’ve never seen anything like it on this level,” said Joshua Brewer, an organizer with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

Read more of Michael Sainato’s report here: Amazon intensifies ‘severe’ effort to discourage first-ever US warehouse union

Some Republicans have not minced their words about Marjorie Taylor Greene. Yesterday Sen. Todd Young called her “nutty” and “an embarrassment to our party,” saying:

The people of her congressional district, it’s their prerogative if they want to abase themselves by voting to elect someone who indulges in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and all manner of other nonsense. But I’ve got no tolerance for people like that. In terms of the divisions within our party, she’s not even part of the conversation, as far as I’m concerned.

Mike DeBonis and Paul Kane write for the Washington Post that the publicity hasn’t been all bad for her though:

Greene, meanwhile, boasted of raising more than $85,000 in the 24 hours following Mitch McConnell’s statement denouncing her late Monday and fired back at him on Twitter: “The real cancer for the Republican Party is weak Republicans who only know how to lose gracefully.”

But the criticisms have kept coming:

Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 GOP leader, said House Republicans faced a simple choice: “Do they want to be the party of limited government . . . or do they want to be the party of conspiracy theories and QAnon?”

Sen. Mitt Romney said “Our big tent is not large enough to both accommodate conservatives and kooks.”

Read more here: Washington Post – Senate Republicans move against ‘nutty’ House member in widening GOP rift

While the names in the frame may be Marjorie Taylor Greene and Liz Cheney, it is their drastically different loyalties to Donald Trump that make them the focus this week for the schism in the Republican party.

Barbara Sprunt and Claudia Grisales write for NPR that it is “a stark reminder of Trump’s continual hold on his party” even after the ransack of the US Capitol by his supporters.

Rep. Cheney, said in a statement ahead of the impeachment vote: “There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”

But backlash against her was swift, with many in her party calling for her removal from leadership. Trump loyalistRep. Matt Gaetz, even went to Cheney’s home state and urged her constituents to vote her out.

While House minority leader Kevin McCarthy has expressed support for Cheney, he also told Greta Van Susteren he has “concerns” over her impeachment vote.

McCarthy is also under pressure to take action against Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has long embraced conspiracy theories and has a history of being racist and anti-Semitic.

Democrats have pushed for her to be censured and have introduced a resolution to remove her from her committee assignments. McCarthy and Greene reportedly met on Tuesday evening, but no decision was announced.

Read more here: NPR – Republican discord once again has Trump at its center

Welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of US politics for Wednesday. Here’s where we are, and what we can expect today.

  • Congressional Republicans are expected to discuss today the futures of Liz Cheney and Marjorie Taylor Greene – the outcome could tell us which faction has the ascendency in the post-Trump party.
  • Some want Cheney ousted for backing Trump’s impeachment, others have called Greene’s links to QAnon and social media posts supporting a range of violent and bigoted ideas a “cancer” in the party.
  • Joe Biden signed a series of executive orders aimed at unraveling Trump’s immigration agenda. One order establishes a task force to reunite migrant families who were separated as a result of Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy.
  • Trump’s defense team and the House impeachment managers filed briefs ahead of next week’s Senate trial. The former president’s team claimed that he did not incite insurrection at the US Capitol last month. Prosecutors submitted an 80-page memorandum documenting how the then president called supporters to Washington and set them loose.
  • Joe Biden and Dr Jill Biden paid respects yesterday to Brian Sicknick, the Capitol police officer killed by the pro-Trump mob.
  • Yesterday there were 110,679 new coronavirus cases and 3,389 deaths. The national number of hospitalizations fell again, and are at their lowest level since 28 November.
  • There will be a coronavirus response team briefing at 11am EST (4pm GMT)
  • The Senate advanced a budget resolution, paving the way to pass coronavirus relief without Republican support. Democrats would only need 51 votes to get the bill through the Senate.
  • Elizabeth Warren will be joining the powerful Senate finance committee. The progressive Massachusetts senator has championed tax increases for the ultra-wealthy and will play a key role in making tax, trade, and healthcare laws.
  • The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions will hold a confirmation hearing for Miguel Cardona, education secretary nominee, at 10 am EST (3pm GMT).
  • White House press secretary Jen Psaki will give a briefing at 1:30pm EST (6:30 GMT).
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