List of All Articles with Tag 'us politics'

President Joe Biden has officially vetoed a resolution that would halt a Commerce Department rule temporarily suspending tariffs on solar panels imported from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam -- writing that passage "of this resolution bets against American innovation."

The Justice Department announced on Tuesday five criminal cases against people accused of stealing or illegally diverting American technology and materials for the Russian, Chinese and Iranian governments.

Anyone looking for clues at how talks to raise the nation's borrowing limit and avoid a historic default are progressing between President Joe Biden and congressional Republicans might be confused ahead of a high-stakes meeting at the White House on Tuesday.

The man suspected of attacking Virginia congressman Gerry Connolly’s staff with a baseball bat appears to have been captured on a doorbell camera chasing a woman with a baseball bat just minutes before the attack at Mr Connolly’s office. The footage, uploaded to Twitter, shows a woman screaming while running through a person’s backyard, while being chased by a man holding a bat. Just minutes later, around 10.50 am, on Monday a suspect turned up at Mr Connolly’s district office and attacked two of his staffers with a metal baseball bat, striking one on the head and the other on the side. It is unclear if the metal baseball bat used to attack the staffers was the same bat that appears in the doorbell footage video. The suspect was identified as 49-year-old Xuan-Kha Tran Pham by the City of Fairfax Police Department. According to a statement from Mr Connolly, the two staffers who were hit received “non-life threatening injures” and were transported to the hospital. One police officer also sustained minor injuries. “I have the best team in Congress. My District Office staff make themselves available to constituents and members of the public every day. The thought that someone would take advantage of my staff’s accessibility to commit an act of violence is unconscionable and devastating,” Mr Connolly said in a statement. Fairfax Police said they arrived within five minutes of the call to police and took Mr Pham into custody. He is currently being held at the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center without bail on warrants of one count of felony aggravated malicious wounding and malicious wounding. Police are unsure of the motive behind the attack on the staffers, but said they were coordinating with the US Capitol Police and Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Washington Field Office. The attack is the latest in a string of violent threats made against members of Congress. In February, Representative Angie Craig (D-MN) was attacked outside her Washington DC apartment. Last year, a man attacked then-Representative Lee Zeldin (R-NY) who was campaigning for governor at the time. In addition, a man broke into the San Francisco home of then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and assaulted her husband Paul Pelosi. Read More A suspect looking for a Virginia congressman attacked two of his staffers with a baseball bat. What happened? Congressman’s staffers hospitalised after baseball bat attack at Virginia office An assault on congressional staff shows how all too commonplace political violence has become What we know about baseball bat attack on Virginia congressman’s staff Biden to mark Jewish American Heritage Month with Broadway stars, speak out on antisemitism Man with baseball bat attacks Virginia congressman's staffers; suspect in custody

Donald Trump has lashed out what he described as “cockroaches” in Washington DC following the release of the Durham report. The 300-page report – from an investigation led by Trump-appointed Special Counsel John Durham – railed against the FBI for opening a probe into alleged ties between Mr Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Russian government. “THEY ARE SCUM, LIKE COCKROACHES ALL OVER WASHINGTON, D.C.,” the former president wrote on Truth Social in response to the findings. Meanwhile, Mr Trump’s name has cropped up in a bombshell lawsuit brought against Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and his former personal attorney. Mr Giuliani’s former aide Noelle Dunphy is suing Mr Giuliani for sexual harassment while she worked for him in 2019 and 2020. Mr Giuliani has strongly denied the claims. In the lawsuit, Ms Dunphy claims that she was told that he and then-president Mr Trump were offering to sell presidential pardons for $2m apiece. She also claims that she was forced to give Mr Giuliani oral sex while he was on speakerphone to Mr Trump. Read More Trump claimed the Durham probe would uncover the 'crime of the century.' Here's what it really found Trump says AOC ‘went crazy’ over CNN town hall as he slams Democrat’s relationship Rudy Giuliani said he and Trump were selling pardons for $2m apiece, ex-aide claims Trump tells former adviser Michael Flynn: 'We’re going to bring you back'

President Joe Biden is ready to discuss the debt ceiling with congressional leaders at the White House in a high-profile session with reverberations across the globe as early outlines of a potential deal begin to emerge despite painstakingly slow negotiations. Raising the stakes, the Tuesday afternoon session comes as Biden is preparing to depart for the Group of Seven summit in Japan where the U.S. leadership will be on the world stage later this week. The president and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are trying to strike a budget deal before the U.S. Treasury runs out of cash to keep paying the nation's bills, which could occur as soon as June 1. While Biden has remained upbeat that “we'll be able to do this,” McCarthy is prodding the president to move faster to avert a crisis. The Republican speaker says they need an agreement soon to avoid default. Expectations are low that a deal is that close at hand. Instead, it is more likely that staff talks will continue while the president is overseas. “I just don’t see the progress happening,” McCarthy told reporters Monday. But Biden was optimistic, saying over the weekend, “There’s a desire on their part as well as ours to reach an agreement." It's the second time in a week that Biden has met with McCarthy of California and other congressional leaders at the White House. Biden is confronting a politically divided Congress for the first time on the debt ceiling, a test for both the president and McCarthy, the new speaker, as they work to stave off an economic crisis that could come from a federal default. The meeting will also include Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Even as the Democratic president and the Republican speaker box around the politics of the issue — with Biden insisting he’s not negotiating over the debt ceiling and McCarthy working to extract spending cuts — various areas of possible agreement appear to be emerging. Talks have been under way at the Capitol for much of the past week, closed-door discussions where White House and congressional staff are discussing what it would take to craft a budget deal that would unlock a separate vote to lift the nation’s borrowing capacity, now set at $31 trillion. Among the items on the table: clawing back some $30 billion in untapped COVID-19 money, imposing future budget caps, approving permitting reforms to ease energy development and putting bolstered work requirements on recipients of government aid, according to those familiar with the talks. McCarthy has complained the talks are slow-going, saying he first met with Biden more than 100 days ago and that the president should be more focused on issues at home. "An American president should focus on the solutions of America," McCarthy said ahead of Biden's trip. But Biden has insisted Republicans must rule out default and consider budget issues separate from the need to raise the nation's debt limit. The president has said it took McCarthy all this time to put forward his own proposal after Republicans failed to produce their own budget this year. The debt limit must be lifted, as has been done countless times before, to allow continued borrowing to pay already accrued bills. Compounding pressure on Washington to strike a deal, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Monday that agency estimates are unchanged on the possible X-date when the U.S. could run out of cash — perhaps as early as June 1. But Yellen, in a letter to the House and Senate, left some opening for a possible time extension on a national default, stating that “the actual date Treasury exhausts extraordinary measures could be a number of days or weeks later than these estimates.” She said she would update Congress next week “as more information becomes available.” Time is dwindling. Congress has just a few days when both the House and Senate are in session to pass legislation. “It’s time for the principals to get more engaged, get their closers out there,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the Republican whip. “My impression is that they have too many cooks in the kitchen, too many people in the room and not the right people.” Details of a potential budget deal remain politically daunting, and it’s not at all clear they go far enough to satisfy McCarthy’s hard-right faction in the House or would be acceptable to a sizable number of Democrats whose votes would almost certainly be needed to secure any final deal. Republicans led by McCarthy want Biden to accept their proposal to roll back spending, cap future outlays and make other policy changes in the package passed last month by House Republicans. McCarthy says the House is the only chamber that has taken action to raise the debt ceiling. But the House bill is almost certain to fail in the Senate, controlled by Democrats, and Biden has said he would veto it. Biden did signal over the weekend that he could be open to tougher work requirements for certain government aid programs, which Republicans are proposing as part of the ongoing discussion. He has said he will not accept anything that takes away people’s health care coverage. An increase in the debt limit would not authorize new federal spending. It would only allow for borrowing to pay for what Congress has already approved. As June 1 approaches, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has warned of a “significant risk” of default sometime in the first two weeks of next month. The CBO noted that if the cash flow at the Treasury and the “extraordinary measures” that the department is now using can continue to pay for bills through June 15, the government can probably finance its operations through the end of July. That’s because the expected tax revenues that will come in mid-June and other measures will give the federal government enough cash for at least a few more weeks. ___ Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report. Read More Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Pence allies launching super PAC to back former vice president's expected 2024 candidacy South Korea and Japan use G-7 to push improvement in ties long marked by animosity Wisconsin judge allows for lawsuit against fake Trump electors to proceed

A long-awaited report by Republican-appointed special counsel John Durham failed to find the "crime of the century" that ex-President Donald Trump said targeted him at the center of the Russia investigation. But it delivered him a potential political payoff nonetheless.

Demographic change continued to chip away at the cornerstone of the Republican electoral coalition in 2022, a new analysis of Census data has found.

Colombian rebel leader Pablo Beltran said on Tuesday that peace talks between his National Liberation Army and the government have been put “on pause” due to remarks made last week by President Gustavo Petro. Petro questioned whether members of the rebel group's delegation in Cuba could effectively control the actions of their own commanders on the battlefield. He also said the younger leaders of the group, known as the ELN, were motivated not by political goals, but by drug trafficking profits. In an interview published on Youtube by the ELN’s communication team, Beltran said that delegations from both sides would have to meet to “examine” the comments by Colombia's president before issues like a ceasefire and rural development schemes can continue to be discussed. The negotiations began in November and have failed to produce any major breakthroughs so far. The ELN was recognized as “an armed rebel group” by Colombia’s government during the last round of talks which took place in Mexico, a designation that enables it to seek policy changes in peace talks instead of just negotiating reduced sentences for their crimes. Beltran argued that Petro’s recent comments are putting its status as a “political organization” in jeopardy. “If they are saying one thing in the negotiations, while the president says another we feel like we are stuck in the middle,” Beltran said. “So we are asking for an explanation.” During a speech to military officers on Friday, Petro described members of the ELN’s peace delegation as “elderly” leaders who were interested in discussing political changes. But he questioned whether younger ELN commanders who lead troops on the ground have the same kind of goals. “They may use the same banners,” Petro said. “But what motivates them is (profiting from) illicit economies.” Petro added that elderly leaders like Beltran were “willing to sit down and talk. But are they really in charge?” The ELN was founded in the 1960s by union leaders, students and priests inspired by the Cuban revolution. It is Colombia’s largest remaining rebel group and has been notoriously difficult for previous Colombian governments to negotiate with. In 2016, Colombia’s government signed a peace deal with the larger FARC group that ended five decades of conflict in which an estimated 260,000 people were killed. But violence has continued to affect rural pockets of the country where the ELN has been fighting the Gulf Clan and FARC holdout groups for the control of drug trafficking routes and other resources. Petro promised during his presidential campaign that he would seek peace deals with all of Colombia’s major armed groups by rolling out a strategy he described as “total peace.” But the Gulf Clan recently gave up on the peace talks, while negotiations with FARC holdout groups are still in preliminary stages. Read More Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide

Once seen as ascending toward a presidential campaign with momentum in his favor, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis finds himself on the cusp of an announcement that many of his supporters wished was already behind him.

A former aide to Rudolph Giuliani says he told her the ex-New York City mayor and then-president Donald Trump were offering to sell presidential pardons for $2 million apiece, according to court documents. The bombshell allegation was levied in a complaint filed against Mr Giuliani by Noelle Dunphy, a New York-based public relations professional who is suing him for “unlawful abuses of power, wide-ranging sexual assault and harassment, wage theft, and other misconduct” committed while she worked for him in 2019 and 2020. Mr Giuliani has strongly denied the claims in the lawsuit. Earlier it it was reported that Mr Trump was shown tweets from Democrats blasting CNN for hosting the town hall with him to psyche him up during the live broadcast. During the initial commercial break, Trump adviser Jason Miller showed the former president recent tweets backstage at the New Hampshire college where the event was hosted, according to Axios. Mr Trump grew more bellicose as the night went on after being shown posts by several people slamming CNN, including New York progressive Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ms Ocasio-Cortez tweeted 23 minutes into the event: “CNN should be ashamed of themselves. They have lost total control of this ‘town hall’ to again be manipulated into platforming election disinformation, defenses of Jan 6th, and a public attack on a sexual abuse victim.” “The audience is cheering him on and laughing at the host,” she added. Meanwhile, Mr Trump posted an oddly phrased Mother’s Day message attacking the parents of his main foes on Sunday, as he rushed to stick it to the “Radical Left Fascists”. Read More Trump news – live: Aides showed Trump tweets by AOC and Andrew Yang to psyche him up during break in town hall Jason Sudeikis reveals his Ted Lasso character was changed because of Donald Trump Prosecutor ends probe of FBI's Trump-Russia investigation with harsh criticism, but no new charges One of far-right Rep Paul Gosar’s top aides pledged his loyalty to white supremacist Nick Fuentes, report finds Rick Perry teases possible 2024 run against Trump

Clinton expressed sympathy for investigators, calling the questions, "really sad," adding, "I get it, you have to go down every rabbit hole."