The US House of Representatives is getting ready to vote on a new Speaker. This comes after the previous candidate, who was criticized by Donald Trump, decided to withdraw.
The entire group of lawmakers will decide on Wednesday whether Louisiana congressman Mike Johnson should be in charge.
Mr Johnson was selected as the candidate after three rounds of voting within the party on Tuesday evening.
The House has been without a leader and has not been able to pass bills since Kevin McCarthy was removed on 3 October.
Elise Stefanik, who is in charge of the House Republican Conference, announced that Mr. Johnson, who is 51 years old, has been chosen.
He was chosen as a replacement shortly after the last nominee, Majority Whip Tom Emmer, quit because he didn’t get enough support.
It is still not clear if Mr. Johnson can get the 217 votes he needs to win.
If he does not succeed, Republicans will have to start over and come up with a new plan.
In the earlier voting on Tuesday, he came in second place to Mr. However, the Minnesota representative decided to withdraw from the race after former President Trump criticized him on social media, calling him a “Globalist”.
According to Politico, Mr Trump made a phone call to someone just before Mr Emmer withdrew from the competition and said: “He’s finished. ” It’s finished or It’s the end. I caused his death.
But when Mr. Trump arrived at a New York court for his trial about fraud, he expressed confidence in Mr. Johnson’s chances and said “it seems like it will occur”.
“He said nobody has said anything bad about him. ” “Everyone enjoys his company, and everyone has a lot of respect for him. ”
In the last voting round on Tuesday, Mr. Johnson got 128 votes and Byron Donald, a Florida Republican, got second place with 29 votes.
The party has a slightly bigger number of members than the Democrats in the lower house of Congress. This means that their chosen candidate can only lose a small number of votes from their own party and still win.
“Sometimes democracy can be untidy, but it is the system we have,” said Mr. Johnson on Tuesday evening.
Dusty Johnson, a Republican from South Dakota, said to reporters: “It’s difficult to believe that someone can be elected right now. ”
Steve Womack, a Republican from Arkansas, expressed his disappointment in the current state of governance by saying, “It’s really unfortunate how things are being handled right now. ”
But Ralph Norman, a very conservative Republican from South Carolina, said, “This is how democracy appears. ”
Mr Johnson is a lawyer and used to host a talk radio show. He has been a member of the House since 2016. He used to be the chairman of the Republican Study Committee and is seen as a good friend of Mr. Jordan
In 2020, people saw Mr. Johnson as an important person in the effort to disagree with President Joe Biden’s win in the election.
A group of conservative lawmakers, led by some right-wing politicians, removed the previous Speaker, Mr McCarthy. The reason for their action was that he made an agreement with President Biden to ensure that the government had enough money to function.
Tag: US House of Representatives
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US House of Representatives to vote on Mike Johnson the proposed new Speaker
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US Democrats call for suspension of aid to Peru due to a “pattern of repression”
Democrats in the US House of Representatives have written a letter condemning the violent crackdown on protesters in Peru.
The Biden administration has been urged to halt all security assistance to Peru due to a “pattern of repression” against antigovernment protests that has resulted in more than 50 civilian fatalities by a group of Democrats in the US House of Representatives.
They requested in a letter shared with The Associated Press on Monday that the Biden administration halt its security assistance until it can certify that the crackdown in Peru has ended and the Peruvian officials accountable for violations of human rights have been brought to justice.
This week, Peru’s foreign minister is seeking international assistance for President Dina Boluarte’s government, which is coming under increasing pressure.
Peru’s foreign minister is in Washington, DC, this week seeking international support for President Dina Boluarte’s increasingly besieged government. Pressure has been mounting on Boluarte, formerly the vice president under ex-President Pedro Castillo, to resign the post she inherited last month when Castillo was impeached and arrested for his ill-fated attempt to close Peru’s Congress.
“Security forces have indiscriminately responded with almost no regard for protestors’ human rights,” according to the letter, which was signed by 20 mostly progressive House Democrats. “Rather than working to deescalate tensions, the Boluarte government has substantially increased tensions — including classifying protesters as ‘terrorists’ and limiting citizens’ right of movement.”
The US provides more than $40m annually to Peru in security assistance, according to the Washington Office on Latin America, a research nonprofit. The vast majority is aimed at helping Peru counter drug trafficking.
While protesters were initially demanding Castillo’s release from jail, the unrest has spread across the country, galvanising the support of many poor, Indigenous Peruvians who have benefitted little from Peru’s mining-driven economic boom.
Protesters demand that both Boluarte and Congress stand down and that new elections be held this year. Legislators rejected that on Friday. But after another protester died and Boluarte urged them to reconsider, Congress narrowly agreed on Monday to debate a proposal to hold elections in October, with 66 votes in favour, 49 opposed and six abstentions.
Meanwhile, as the protests stretch into their second month, beleaguered security forces have become more forceful.
Among the incidents cited in the letter, organised by Representative Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, was the national police raid on student dormitories at San Marcos University in Lima, which included the mass arrest of nearly 200 people. That shocked many Peruvians because campuses have long been off-limits to security forces except when crimes are being committed.
The campus invasion drew sharp condemnation from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which said it collected testimony from civil society groups who alleged law enforcement officers invaded the bedrooms of student leaders, slung racist remarks at Indigenous activists, and forced women to strip naked and do squats.
Officials from the United Nations and European Union have strongly condemned what they consider the disproportionate use of force. The Biden administration has been more measured, calling for impartial investigations into abuses while also expressing support for Boluarte’s efforts to restore calm and seek a political solution.
Amid the unrest, outgoing US Ambassador Lisa Kenna announced an additional $8m in US support for coca eradication efforts in the remote Upper Huallaga valley, part of the Amazon basin in Peru. Kenna has also met with the defence minister and other Cabinet members.
Such actions send an “ambiguous message”, according to the letter, which was also signed by representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, and Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, a longtime voice for human rights in Latin America.
“The US government can and must do more,” they wrote. “We believe our proposed actions would send a powerful signal in support of fundamental rights and help promote effective engagement for a political resolution.”
A copy of the letter was also sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
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US House Republicans vote to investigate the Biden administration
The establishment of a subcommittee to look into the alleged “weaponization” of government was approved by the US House of Representatives.
The United States House of Representatives, which is controlled by Republicans, voted on Tuesday to open an inquiry into what they refer to as Democratic President Joe Biden’s “weaponization” of the federal government. Democrats, on the other hand, have called it a partisan fishing trip.
Republicans have pledged to use their new majority to investigate former Republican President Donald Trump and his supporters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. These investigations were conducted by the US Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and other federal agencies.
The party-line vote on Tuesday aims to do just that, setting up a “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government”. The body is set to launch a wide-ranging probe of Democrat Biden’s administration, which Republicans accuse of “weaponizing” the FBI against Trump.
Republicans will also investigate claims that the Biden administration has pressured big tech companies to censor views that run contrary to White House policy. The bill establishing the panel said legislators would probe how the executive branch works with the private sector, nonprofit groups and other agencies “to facilitate action against” American citizens.
“We need to get to work now,” Republican James Comer, head of the Oversight Committee, said in a speech on the House floor. “We must expose the abuses committed by the unelected, unaccountable federal bureaucracy.”
Among the federal agencies pinpointed are those looking into Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat and alleged mishandling of classified documents. Trump has dismissed these probes as “witch hunts”.
Days after the August search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort for classified material, Republican Representative Elise Stefanik promised to launch a probe of “Joe Biden and his administration’s weaponization of the Department of Justice and FBI”.
“The FBI raid of President Trump is a complete abuse and overreach of its authority,” she said.
Democrats have raised concerns about a provision that authorises the committee to probe “ongoing criminal investigations”, which are generally outside the purview of congressional oversight.
“This is a violation of separation of powers, and it’s also very dangerous,” said Jerrold Nadler, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.
On Monday, the White House said that lawyers for Biden found classified documents at a Washington, DC-based think tank affiliated with the president.
Some Republicans compared that discovery to the criminal investigation into Trump’s removal of classified documents from the White House, though smaller numbers of papers are involved. Biden’s team said it turned the documents over upon discovery, while Trump resisted calls to return the paperwork and now faces an investigation into whether he obstructed justice.
Legal experts said federal law enforcement agencies would almost certainly reject any attempt by a congressional committee to obtain documents related to ongoing investigations.
Scott Perry, a Republican Judiciary Committee member whose phone was seized as part of the federal probe into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is among those who might seek a subcommittee seat. That would create a situation where he could seek to oversee a federal investigation into himself.
Republican Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, a former FBI agent, told the Reuters news agency he supported the creation of the subcommittee.
But, he added, handing over information on an active investigation was “inconsistent with federal law”.
“I’m going to keep an eye on this,” he said.
Source: Aljazeera.com -
US House panel votes to release Trump’s tax returns
Six years’ worth of Donald Trump’s tax returns will be made public, according to a committee vote in the US House of Representatives.
The decision by the US Supreme Court last month ends a nearly four-year legal battle by Democrats to obtain the documents.
Even though US presidents are not required by law to release their tax returns, they have been doing so voluntarily for decades.
The former president has made a significant effort to conceal his tax returns.
The US House Ways and Means Committee voted 24-16 on Tuesday evening to publish the documents, with all Democrats on the panel in favour and all Republicans opposed.
One of the committee members, Pennsylvania Democrat Brendan Boyle, said afterwards: “This is one of the most important votes I will ever cast as a member of Congress, and I stand by it 100%.”
But Kevin Brady, the ranking Republican on the committee, said Democrats had just “unleashed a dangerous new political weapon”.
“Congress’ enemies list is back,” said the Texas congressman. “Every American taxpayer who may get on the wrong side of majority in Congress is now at risk.”
It is unclear when the public will see the financial documents which stem from 2015-20, when Mr Trump was running for president and serving in the White House.
Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat on the panel, told CNN the release of the files could take “a few days” in order to redact personal information such as Social Security numbers.
The returns could offer a first-hand look into Mr Trump’s finances, including his assets, sources of income, charitable contributions and liabilities, including the possibility of loans owed to foreign entities.
In 2016, Mr Trump became the first major-party presidential nominee since Richard Nixon in 1972 to decline to publicly release his tax returns while campaigning for office. At the time, he said he would do so after an Internal Revenue Service audit had concluded.
However, on Tuesday Democrats on the panel said that Mr Trump was not actually under an audit in 2016, and that the Internal Revenue Service did not begin their official audit until 2019.
The House Ways and Means Committee had first sought the returns when Democrats took over the lower chamber of Congress in 2019. The committee, citing a federal law allowing it to request special access to individual tax returns, said the information was necessary as a part of a review of federal tax law.
Republican critics, however, have countered that such explanations were merely an excuse to access Mr Trump’s financial documents.
The Trump administration refused to co-operate with the committee’s request, prompting a drawn-out legal battle that ended when the US Supreme Court, in an unsigned opinion, upheld an appellate court ruling that the Democrats were entitled to the returns.
In 2020, the New York Times obtained leaked copies of 18 years of Mr Trump’s tax returns. In a series of articles on the topic, the newspaper reported that the president paid no federal taxes in 10 of those 18 years and only $750 (£615) in each of his first two years in the White House. It also disclosed that the then-president was in a fight with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9m tax refund he had claimed and owed more than $400m in debt due by 2024.
A representative of Mr Trump’s business empire denied the accuracy of the report at the time. Official copies of the former president’s tax returns, which are now expected to be released before Republicans take control of Congress on 3 January, should settle the matter.
The vote comes one day after a Democratic-led congressional panel asked the US justice department prosecute the former president for insurrection and other criminal charges related to last year’s riot by his supporters at the Capitol in Washington DC.