Author: Syndicated

U.S. senators have undermined President Joe Biden’s push to defend voting rights against what Democrats have framed as an all-out assault by conservative states targeting racial minorities. Faced with a blockade from Republicans in the upper house complaining of overreach by the federal government, the ruling Democrats were unable to push through the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act that were passed recently by the House of Representatives. “I am profoundly disappointed that the Senate has failed to stand up for our democracy. I am disappointed – but I am not deterred,” Biden said...

On December 6, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it has closed an investigation into the 1955 murder of Black teenager Emmett Till. The case had been reopened in 2018, a year after the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act (the Till Act) was passed by Congress allowing crimes against Black people committed before 1970 to be reinvestigated. Till’s murder is often referred to as the “spark” for the Civil Rights Movement in the US. The photo of his disfigured face, which his mother had insisted on showing through an open-casket funeral, caused outrage throughout...

“Some Republicans say there were questions about the election in 2020. But that’s like saying somebody yells ‘fire’ in a theater when there is no fire. And then they look at all the people running out and say, you know, there’s a stampede. We should really look into that fire. But the fire was a total fiction.” – John Dickerson A year after the January 6 storming of the United States Capitol, a former U.S. counterterrorism official worries that lone-wolf-style attacks from far-right extremists could pose a major security challenge through 2022, echoing concerns from other analysts about the...

One year after Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington DC, the hard right, anti-democracy faction of the Republican base that led the attack threatens to overtake the party for the long term. This hard-right faction, loyal to former President Trump, minimizes, or supports, the violent storming of the Capitol on January 6. They have worked to systemically undermine America’s democracy in the months following the attack by installing into positions of power loyal proponents of Trump’s Big Lie and by passing a flurry of voter suppression bills. The few Republicans who oppose Trump or acknowledge the wrong...

Ex-President Donald Trump has said he will hold a news conference on January 6, on the first anniversary of the deadly riots that attacked the Capitol to protest his electoral loss, repeating unfounded claims about election fraud. With a congressional panel investigating the riots seeking answers from several of his associates, a defiant Trump slammed the committee on Tuesday, calling the attack on the Capitol a “completely unarmed protest of the rigged election.” Trump’s supporters had violently breached the Capitol on January 6 to prevent the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory, halting procedures and sending lawmakers into hiding....