The Capitol attack committee recommended that former Trump official Jeffrey Clark be held in contempt for failure to comply with a subpoena. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP
The Capitol attack committee recommended that former Trump official Jeffrey Clark be held in contempt for failure to comply with a subpoena. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP
The Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, that could overturn the landmark ruling in Roe v Wade, has officially been submitted to the supreme court following a morning of oral arguments. However, a final ruling is not expected until June 2022. Conservative supreme court justices signaled they support restricting abortion access in their questioning.
The first case of the Omicron variant has been identified in the US, Dr Anthony Fauci confirmed. “We knew it was just a matter of time,” Fauci said. The case was identified in California.
Stacey Abrams announced she will be running for governor of Georgia once again. “If our Georgia is going to move to its next and greatest chapter, we are going to need leadership,” Abrams said in her announcement video.
There appears to be little movement on Republicans and Democrats coming together on an agreement on a continuing resolution to fund the federal government and avoid a government shutdown by the 3 December deadline. In particular, a handful of Republicans in both the Senate and the House have been adamant that they will not vote to fund a government with a vaccine mandate
The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack recommended the criminal prosecution of former Trump justice department official Jeffrey Clark for his refusal to comply with a subpoena in the inquiry into the 6 January insurrection. Clark’s lawyers have told the committee that he is ready to appear for a deposition on Saturday. But he is expected to refuse to answer questions and assert his Fifth Amendment rights.
The committee unanimously voted to recommend Clark be held in criminal contempt of Congress. Next, the House will vote on whether to send the criminal referral to the DoJ.
However, Clark will be given an opportunity to appear in front of the committee on Saturday for a new deposition and could be spared the charge.
Jeffrey Clark’s lawyers have told the committee that Clark is ready to appear for a deposition on Saturday. But he is expected to refuse to answer questions and assert his Fifth Amendment rights.
“We will not finalize this contempt process if Mr. Clark genuinely cures his failure to comply with this subpoena this Saturday,” Liz Cheney said.
If Clark feels “that answering questions about his discussions with President Trump and others in November and December 2020 and January 2021 could incriminate him, and he, therefore, wishes to invoke privilege on that basis, the committee would certainly consider that”, she added.
Right now, the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is meeting to take up a criminal contempt referral for former Trump justice department official Jeffrey Clark, determining whether to punish his refusal to comply with a subpoena in the inquiry into the 6 January insurrection.
If the committee approves the criminal contempt resolution, it will head to the full House of Representatives, which could refer Clark for prosecution in a vote that could come as soon as next week.
Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the select committee, indicated that panel was seeking criminal prosecution to demonstrate their resolve in enforcing subpoenas, and to warn other Trump aides about the penalties for non-compliance.
The select committee’s recommendation would bring grave consequences for Clark.
Once passed by the House, the justice department is required to take the matter before a federal grand jury, which last month indicted the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon over his subpoena defiance.
A successful contempt prosecution could result in up to a year in federal prison, $100,000 in fines, or both – although the misdemeanor offence may not ultimately lead to his cooperation, and pursuing the charge could still take years.
Why the Mississippi abortion rights case is so important
Jessica Glenza
Today, the US supreme court heard oral arguments in what has been called the most important abortion rights case in almost half a century – a case that could redefine reproductive rights across the country and have repercussions abroad for generations.
Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization could lead to weakening or overturning the landmark 1973 supreme court ruling, Roe v Wade, which effectively legalized abortion in the US. If that were to happen, tens of millions people of reproductive age across the country would be affected.
What is happening at the supreme court?
In Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Dobbs refers to Dr Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi’s health department director, and the official who would enforce the law. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is the last abortion clinic in Mississippi, which is also known as the Pink House.
The highest court in the US will hear from attorneys in the case, which centers on whether Mississippi can outlaw nearly all abortions at and after 15 weeks gestation.
The case directly challenges the precedent in Roe v Wade, which guarantees the right to an abortion in the US.
Roe v Wade protects the right to an abortion up to the point a fetus can survive outside the womb, widely regarded as 24 weeks gestation. A full term pregnancy is 39 weeks gestation.
The court is now dominated by conservatives, with six of the nine justices leaning to the right. Abortion advocates see the Mississippi case as especially perilous for abortion rights because justices could have dismissed Mississippi’s law as unconstitutional under Roe. However, the court chose to take the case, indicating at least four justices see a reason to revisit the historic ruling. A decision is expected in June 2022, but the hearing on 1 December could provide clues as to the justices’ thinking.
What could happen to Roe v Wade?
Congress never enshrined the right to terminate a pregnancy in law. Instead, pregnant people in the US have relied on Roe v Wade for almost 50 years, and the precedent is now considered to be under threat.
The justices could decide to dismiss the Mississippi case, upholding Roe v Wade. However, abortion advocates worry that the court could instead rule in a way that may weaken or even overturn it.
The justices could decide that the 15-week law does not put a significant burden on people in Mississippi, and issue a ruling that would allow abortion to be banned at a much earlier stage of pregnancy. This is would considerably restrict abortion access and weaken Roe v Wade.
If Roe is overturned, 26 states are expected to move to outlaw abortion in various ways, through state constitutional amendments, “trigger” laws which go into effect as soon as possible should Roe be overturned, or limits on abortion beginning at six weeks gestation, before most know they are pregnant.
The US says it has evidence Russia has made plans for a “large scale” attack on Ukraine and that Nato allies are “prepared to impose severe costs” on Moscow if it attempts an invasion.
Speaking at a Nato ministers meeting in Latvia, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said it was unclear whether Vladimir Putin had made a decision to invade but added: “He’s putting in place the capacity to do so in short order, should he so decide.
“So despite uncertainty about intention and timing, we must prepare for all contingencies while working to see to it that Russia reverses course.”
He said he had found solidarity among his fellow Nato ministers in the Latvian capital, Riga, saying the alliance was “prepared to impose severe costs for further Russian aggression in Ukraine” and would “reinforce its defences on the eastern flank”.
While repeating the US position that Washington is “unwavering in our support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and committed to our security partnership with Ukraine”, the secretary of state stopped well short of saying the US or the alliance would intervene militarily. “Should Russia follow the path of confrontation, when it comes to Ukraine, we’ve made clear that we will respond resolutely, including with a range of high impact economic measures that we have refrained from pursuing in the past,” Blinken said.
He did not specify the nature of those measures, but most observers believe that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, intended to bring Russian gas to Europe, could be cancelled if there is another invasion. The new German coalition government is already sceptical about the scheme.
Blinken said the US would spell out the consequences to Russia’s leaders “at the appropriate time”. His remarks represent the strongest warning from the Biden administration so far, and were delivered a day before Blinken is due to meet his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Stockholm under increasingly tense circumstances.
‘Deluge of plastic waste’: US is world’s biggest plastic polluter
Oliver Milman
The US is the world’s biggest culprit in generating plastic waste and the country urgently needs a new strategy to curb the vast amount of plastic that ends up in the oceans, a new report submitted to the federal government has found.
The advent of cheap, versatile plastics has created “a global scale deluge of plastic waste seemingly everywhere we look”, the report states, with the US a leading contributor of disposable plastics that ends up entangling and choking marine life, harming ecosystems and bringing harmful pollution up through the food chain.
Plastic waste has increased sharply in the US since 1960, with the country now generating about 42m metric tons of plastic waste a year, amounting to about 130kg of waste for every person in America. This total is more than all European Union member countries combined. The overall amount of municipal waste created in the US is also two to eight times greater than comparable countries around the world, the report found.
Recycling infrastructure has failed to keep pace with the huge growth in American plastic production. Littering, dumping and inefficient waste disposal in landfills has caused up to 2.2m tons of plastic – including everything from plastic bottles and straws to packaging – to “leak” into the environment each year. The total waste may be even greater than this due to data gaps in tracking it.
Much of this plastic ends up, via rivers and streams, in the world’s oceans.
Worldwide, at least 8.8m tons of plastic waste enters the marine environment each year, the equivalent of dumping a garbage truck filled with plastic into the ocean every single minute. If current trends continue, scientists have estimated this total could leap to 53m tons annually by 2030, which is roughly half of the weight of all fish caught from the oceans globally each year.
The Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, that could overturn the landmark ruling in Roe v Wade, has officially been submitted to the supreme court following a morning of oral arguments.
The first case of the Omicron variant has been identified in the US, Dr Anthony Fauci confirmed.
Stacey Abrams announced she will be running for governor of Georgia once again.
There appears to be little movement on Republicans and Democrats coming together on an agreement on a continuing resolution to fund the federal government and avoid a government shutdown by the 3 December deadline. In particular, a handful of Republicans in both the Senate and the House have been adamant that they will not vote to fund a government with a vaccine mandate.
While House Republicans aren’t doing much when it comes to admonishing far-right congresswoman Lauren Boebert for her Islamophobic comments about congresswoman Ilhan Omar, House progressives will be pushing Democrat leaders for action:
House progressives plan to ratchet up calls to strip Lauren Boebert from her committee spots bc of her comments on Ilhan Omar — and will soon go public with a letter to that effect, per two sources
Dem leaders have not made a decision yet on how to proceed.
House Republicanswent full high school drama yesterday on Twitter, with Majorie Taylor Greene calling Nancy Mace “trash” and Mace calling Greene “batshit crazy” via emojis.
This comes because far-right congresswoman Lauren Boebert made Islamophobic remarks about Democrat congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who has since received death threats related to these remarks. Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger called Boebert “trash”, and called out House minority leader Kevin McCarthy for his silence on her remarks.
It appears McCarthy has finally weighed in - but not directly about the bigoted bullying. Instead, he’s just telling everyone in his party to behave.
GOP Rep. Don Bacon paraphrases McCarthy’s message on GOP infighting this AM: “Stop it. Quit acting like you’re in high school.”
If McCarthy’s private talks w/ MTG don’t work, “at some point, the conference as a whole is gonna be frustrated, speak up… I know that’s bubbling.”
“I’m not here to be a burden, but at some point you have to defend yourself too” - Bacon on attacks from MTG & co.
“We’re not here to get the most clicks, to be TV celebrities. We’re here to govern, and you don’t do that by calling each other names, tearing each other apart.”
Stacey Abrams announces that she is running for governor of Georgia
Democrat Stacey Abrams, who many have credited for being among those who helped turn Georgia blue in 2020, has announced that she will be running for governor once again.
“If our Georgia is going to move to its next and greatest chapter, we are going to need leadership,” Abrams said in her announcement video. “Leadership that knows how to do the job. Leadership that doesn’t take credit without also taking responsibility. Leadership that works hard. Leadership that measures progress not by stats but by our ability for everyone to move up and thrive. Leadership that understands the true pain folks are feeling and has real plans. That’s the job of governor.”
I’m running for Governor because opportunity in our state shouldn’t be determined by zip code, background or access to power. #gapol
More on government funding, the continuing resolution and a possible government shutdown: House majority leader Steny Hoyer, who told reporters yesterday that he planned to pass a CR in the House today, now doesn’t think it’s possible.
From colleague Jason Donner. Hoyer when asked if they could pass the CR to avoid a gov't shutdown today: "I don't think so."
Hoyer on an interim spending bill to avert a shutdown. Says "Schumer and McConnell are negotiating." He adds "It's incomprehensible today that we can't pass a simple CR."
Whew, a lot happening today. Let’s hop back to Congress, where a handful of Republicans are threatening a government shutdown over the vaccine mandate for the private sector.
To recap: In September, Joe Bidenannounced a federal mandate that all companies in the US with 100 employees or more must ensure either that their workers are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 or that they test negative for the coronavirus at least once a week. The deadline for this is 4 January.
Conservatives across the country have taken issue with this, ranging the gamut of being fully anti-vax to arguing that vaccinations are a deeply personal issue, one in which the government should not be involved. There have been several challenges in courts that have sided against the mandate - the White House has since been urging private companies to act on their own to set their own vaccine mandates, as many have already.
On top of all this, the federal government runs out of funding on 3 December - yep, two days from now. Congress must pass a stopgap funding bill, also known as a continuing resolution (CR), to prevent a government shutdown that would put hundreds of thousands out of work right before the holidays.
Since early November, some Republican senators have made it clear that they will not vote for any short-term funding of a federal government with a vaccine mandate. Other conservative members of Congress have since joined in.
Here’s a quick update on the situation:
Here's what Sen. Roger Marshall (one of a handful of conservatives who are threatening a brief government shutdown) want before agreeing to a quick vote on the continuing resolution. He told us he wants language in CR that would prohibit OSHA from enforcing vaccine mandate. BUT
Marshall would be OK with a quick final passage vote if there's an amendment to that effect with a 51-vote threshold. But Ds are likely to insist on a 60-vote threshold. So would he object to a quick vote to pass the funding bill if the amendment were set at a 60-vote threshold?
"We'll see," he said. "There's a long time between now and Friday. But at a minimum, I think at a minimum it deserves a 50-person vote." At GOP lunch, a number of senators told Marshall and Lee that their goal won't be achieved if there's brief shutdown. So I asked him about that
And he said: "Yeah, I think the folks back home want to know how hard we're fighting for them, that the jobs back home are as important as keeping the federal government open. That's the hypocrisy up here. It just seems like we have rules for back home that don't apply here."
