Jan. 6 panel delays hearing as Hurricane Ian aims at Florida
The House Jan. 6 committee has postponed a hearing scheduled for Wednesday as a hurricane hurtles toward the Florida coast. The committee had planned to hold what was likely to be its final investigative hearing Wednesday afternoon. But lawmakers decided at the last minute to delay it as it became clear that Hurricane Ian was churning on a collision course toward Florida, where it is expected to strengthen into a catastrophic Category 4 storm. The committee had not yet provided a specific agenda for the Wednesday hearing, but Rep. Adam Schiff said over the weekend it would “tell the story about a key element of Donald Trump’s plot to overturn the election.”
Senate passes spending package to help avert a government shutdown
The Senate voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to move forward with a temporary spending package needed to keep the federal government running past Friday, drawing closer to averting a shutdown after Democrats dropped an energy proposal that had drawn bipartisan opposition. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the majority leader, had tucked the energy measure into the must-pass bill to fulfill a promise Democratic leaders made privately to Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., in exchange for Manchin’s vote last month for the party’s major climate, tax and health care law. But the inclusion of the proposal, which would make it easier to build oil, gas, solar and wind infrastructure around the country, had rankled lawmakers in both parties.
Sedition trial of Oath Keepers gets underway
Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, and four other members of the far-right group prepared to present a novel defense as they went on trial Tuesday for seditious conspiracy in the attack on the Capitol last year. They intend to tell the jury that when armed teams of Oath Keepers made plans to rush into Washington from Virginia on Jan. 6, 2021, they believed they would be following legal orders from the president. Lawyers for the five defendants are set to argue that the Oath Keepers were waiting Jan. 6 for President Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which grants the president wide powers to quell unrest.
Senators push to reform police’s cellphone tracking tools
Civil rights lawyers and Democratic senators are pushing for legislation that would limit U.S. law enforcement agencies’ ability to buy cellphone tracking tools to follow people’s whereabouts, including back years in time, and sometimes without a search warrant. Concerns about police use of the tool known as “Fog Reveal” raised in an investigation by The Associated Press published earlier this month also surfaced in a Federal Trade Commission hearing three weeks ago. Police agencies have been using the platform to search hundreds of billions of records gathered from 250 million mobile devices, and hoover up people’s geolocation data to assemble so-called “patterns of life,” according to thousands of pages of records about the company.
Meta removes Chinese effort to influence US elections
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said on Tuesday that it had discovered and taken down what it described as the first targeted Chinese campaign to interfere in U.S. politics ahead of the midterm elections in November. Unlike the Russian efforts over the past two presidential elections, however, the Chinese campaign appeared limited in scope — and clumsy at times. The fake posts began appearing on Facebook and Instagram, as well as on Twitter, in November 2021. They mangled the English language and failed to attract many followers. Two Meta officials said they could not definitively attribute the campaign to any group or individuals.
Kremlin announces vote, paves way to annex part of Ukraine
Pro-Moscow officials say that residents in all four occupied areas of Ukraine voted to join Russia. The Kremlin-orchestrated votes have been dismissed by the U.S. and its Western allies as illegitimate. According to Russia-installed election officials, 93% of the ballots case in the Zaporizhzhia region were in support of annexation, as were 87% of ballots in the southern Kherson region and 98% in Luhansk. The preordained outcome sets the stage for a dangerous new phase in Russia’s seven-month war in Ukraine because it is expected to serve as a pretext for Moscow to annex the four areas. That could happen within days.
By wire sources