Tim Walz pick excites hopes of taking US healthcare beyond Obamacare era

Advocates are enthused by Harris’s running mate, who as Minnesota governor called healthcare a ‘basic human right’

When Kamala Harris picked the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as veep for the Democratic presidential ticket, advocates for healthcare reform felt a jolt of electricity.

Here, they saw a man who proclaimed healthcare a “basic human right”, reformed medical debt collections, and who laid the groundwork for expanded government insurance and denied corporate health insu...

‘Say it to my face’ says Kamala Harris as she again challenges Donald Trump to debate – as it happened

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Kamala Harris’s campaign has announced a $50m advertising blitz ahead of the Democratic national convention next month with a television ad that portrays the presumptive Democratic nominee as “fearless”.

The 60-second ad will be the first in a series of paid media efforts ahead of the convention, which begins 19 August in Chicago.

We believe in a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by, but to get ahead. Where every senior can retire with dignity. But Donald Trump wants to take our country backward. To give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and end the Affordable Care Act. But we are not going back.

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Mike Johnson plans Republican mega-bill ready to push through if Trump wins

House speaker plans far-reaching bill including tax cuts and border security to make Trump ‘the most consequential president’

Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, is planning a sweeping ideological legislative drive that aims to make Donald Trump “the most consequential president of the modern era” if the Republicans win power in November.

A far-reaching bill containing a range of policy priorities at once – including tax cuts worth trillions, border security and rolling back Obamacare – is being prepared to avoid the mistakes the GOP believed happened early in Trump’s first term, when Johnson says the party wasted time because its victory over Hillary Clinton took it by surprise.

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‘Donald Trump is a symptom, not the cause’: Tim Kaine’s journey to healing

Hillary Clinton’s running mate experienced defeat by Trump. His new book documents his attempt to understand America

Jack Kemp. Joe Lieberman. John Edwards. Sarah Palin. Paul Ryan. All ran for vice-president of the United States and fell short. All had to confront the question: what next? The same fate befell Tim Kaine, whose turn as running mate to Hillary Clinton in 2016 ended in a catastrophic defeat by Donald Trump and Mike Pence. The US has not recovered, as polarisation, rancou...

Harris going on 2024 reproductive health access tour

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Republicans set to grill CDC director

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GOP on defense over abortion

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Trump hush-money grand jury set to meet again to consider criminal charges – live

Shifting the focus for a second to another investigation Donald Trump is wrapped up in, a federal appeals panel yesterday turned down his attempt to stop his attorney Evan Corcoran from turning over documents and testifying before a grand jury investigating the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago.

Special prosecutor Jack Smith, who is handling that investigation as well as the inquiry into Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, had won a court ruling last week allowing Corcoran’s testimony, which Trump challenged in the petition rejected by the US appeals court for the DC circuit yesterday.

In losing the appeal – a major defeat for Trump – Corcoran must provide additional testimony and produce documents to the grand jury hearing evidence about Trump’s potential unauthorized retention of national security materials at Mar-a-Lago – and possible obstruction of justice.

The obstruction part of the investigation is centered on Trump’s incomplete compliance with a subpoena in May that demanded the return of any classified-marked documents in his possession. That was after documents he returned earlier to the National Archives included 200 that were classified.

In June, Corcoran searched Mar-a-Lago and produced about 30 documents with classified markings to the justice department, and had another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, sign a certification that attested to compliance with the subpoena “based on the information provided to me”.

But, according to court filings, the justice department developed evidence that more documents that were marked as classified remained at the resort, along with “evidence of obstruction”. And when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, they found 101 such documents in a storage room and in Trump’s office.

TikTok’s chief executive Shou Zi Chew is set to be grilled by the House energy and commerce committee beginning at 10am eastern time, as Washington edges closer to an outright ban on the popular app.

The US Senate will continue working on legislation to repeal the legal authorizations for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 1991 Gulf war.

Happy 13th birthday to the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. Joe Biden will celebrate the occasion at the White House at 1pm, alongside Kamala Harris.

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Nancy Pelosi tells of ‘proud’ record as speaker in likely final press conference – as it happened

  • Outgoing House speaker praises ‘remarkable’ Joe Biden
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Nancy Pelosi has given what she suggests will be her final press conference as House speaker, telling reporters this is “maybe the last time I see you in this way”.

She’s been reflecting on some of the successes of her tenure, and paying tribute to Joe Biden and Barack Obama for most of them, fro...

The results of the midterms may determine if American democracy endures | Robert Reich

Republican ascendancy is always a possibility with US elections, but the perils this time are more extreme than ever

Coming into the home stretch before the 2022 midterm elections, I feel different than I’ve felt in the days before every election I’ve witnessed or participated in over the last three-quarters of a century.

In elections before this one, I’ve worried about Republicans taking over and implementing their policy preferences – against political rights in the dark days...