‘Feels like the good old days’: Joe Biden welcomes Barack Obama back to White House – as it happened

  • Former president returns to mark 12 years of Affordable Care Act
  • Confirmation week continues for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson
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Ivanka Trump will testify before the January 6 committee this afternoon.

The Guardian confirmed that former president Donald Trump’s oldest daughter, and former senior White House adviser, will speak to the panel virtually.

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Senator forced to backtrack after saying Republicans will repeal Obamacare

Ron Johnson’s statement about scrapping Affordable Care Act if GOP wins control of Congress seen as open goal for Democrats

The Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson said Republicans should try again to repeal the Affordable Care Act if they take back power – then retreated, under fire from the Biden administration.

Speaking to Breitbart News, a far-right site, on Monday, Johnson said Republicans could “actually make good on what we established as our priorities” if they won control of Congress in midterms this year and the presidency in 2024.

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John Roberts is no longer the leader of his own court. Who, then, controls it?

Chief justice no longer sits in supreme court’s ideological center and has lost the power to cast the deciding vote in any ruling

When Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the decisive vote in 2012 that upheld Barack Obama’s signature achievement in office, the Affordable Care Act, he reportedly did so following after a month-long campaign by fellow conservatives to try to get him to join their side.

His decision to side with liberal colleagues inspired ire on the right but it ...

Joe Biden signs bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday – as it happened

  • ‘Great nations don’t ignore their most painful moments,’ president says
  • ‘It is time to move forward,’ Biden says after supreme court decision
  • Supreme court votes 7-2, preserving healthcare for millions
  • House votes to repeal measure that gave Bush authority to invade Iraq
  • New York grand jury stores up trouble for Trump Organization executives

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US failing to offer ‘Havana syndrome’ sufferers adequate care, diplomats say – live

  • Officials ‘invalidating our injuries and experiences’, letter states
  • Biden says US must redouble efforts to investigate virus origins
  • Senate Republicans want to lower cost of $1.7tn infrastructure plan

Michigan’s Democratic secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, was on the front lines of the protests and election disinformation fueled by Trump’s “Big Lie” about election fraud as the battleground state’s chief election official.

In a new interview with the Associated Press, Benson warns that the ongoing disputes and conspiracy theories around the 2020 election are only the beginning of what she sees as a sustained attack on American democracy that will culminate in a renewed attack on election legitimacy in 2024.

AP: Across the country, we are seeing several GOP-controlled legislatures seeking to exert more control over election officials. How concerned are you that we could end up seeing more of these outside ballot reviews like in Arizona or even takeovers of local election offices?

BENSON: I feel very strongly that the battles that we saw around 2020’s election ... was just the beginning of what is clearly turning out to be a multi-year, strategic, nationally coordinated, partisan assault on the vote in our country and on our democracy. And we will see another battle in the 2022 elections around that truth and around the security of the vote, around access to the vote. But it’s also all going to culminate, I believe, in an effort to try again in 2024 what those democracy deniers attempted to do in 2020 but failed. And in 2024, the bad actors, I believe, will be more coordinated, more strategic, better funded and will have the benefit of doing this work for a number of years. I’m deeply concerned about the future health of our democracy.

Democrats Move to Fulfill Biden’s Election Promise on Healthcare ‘Public Option’

Two Congressional Democrats are pushing to create a “public option” for healthcare coverage to compete with private health insurance plans, and aim to introduce legislation by the end of the year, NBC News reports.

A federal public option will help lower health care costs and guarantee that health care is a right not a privilege.@FrankPallone and I plan to work with our colleagues to craft comprehensive legislation to create a federal public option. https://t.co/Df0YmgEN35

Unlike 2009, @JoeLieberman isn't around to kill the public option. But now Democrats have thinner majorities, no hope of Republican support and are guaranteed to face an assault from health industry groups who are prepared to fight this. https://t.co/nMXYoQzPhG

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Republicans want to make it harder to pass ballot initiatives. That should alarm us | David Daley

State legislators are trying to make it more difficult for citizens to take action when their own representatives won’t

They walked through Michigan college football games dressed as gerrymandered districts. They crisscrossed Idaho in a decades-old RV dubbed the Medicaid Express. In Florida, they united black and white, left and right, Trump-loving “deplorables” and radical criminal justice reformers into a mighty moral movement to end an ugly vestige of Jim Crow.

Related: The...

The Ten Year War review: Obamacare, Trump and Biden’s battles yet to come

Jonathan Cohn’s study of the fight for healthcare coverage delivers depth, dish and much for Democrats to ponder

Once upon a time, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was unpopular, viewed by many as welfare redux. Barack Obama’s promise that “If you like your healthcare plan, you’ll be able to keep your healthcare plan”, didn’t exactly work out. By the middle of the 2010s, so-called Obamacare had cost the Democrats both houses of Congress.

Related: The Good American review: Bob Gersony and a better foreign policy

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Enough is enough: Republicans’ fealty to Trump imperils America itself | Jill Filipovic

When the president refuses to concede, it has a tangible impact on the nation’s future. Why are Republicans enabling this?

The Republican party has spent four years enabling Donald Trump: backing up his lies, defending his most egregious misbehaviors, shattering longstanding democratic norms to keep his, and by extension their, iron grip on power. But by refusing to push him to concede an election he clearly lost, they’re truly following him off a cliff – and threatening to take Amer...

Joe Biden names former Ebola tsar Ron Klain as chief of staff – as it happened

Waleed Shahid, the communications director for the progressive political action committee Justice Democrats, said Klain “understands the Democratic party has moved in a more progressive direction”.

Progressives and moderates came together to help elect Joe Biden. But post-election, the two camps have already begun to spar over the party’s future, with progressives saying that Biden should embrace more ambitious policy on climate change, policing and healthcare.

Ron Klain understands the Democratic Party has moved in a more progressive direction and that voters expect bold action.

Best of luck to @RonaldKlain as he manages a team to act on the biggest crises of our time.

Progressives will keep pushing. pic.twitter.com/rxytnuAIy4

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Barr tells prosecutors to pursue ‘clear’ fraud claims, without evidence – as it happened

  • Attorney general says investigations ‘may be conducted’ in some cases
  • President announces ‘Mark Esper has been terminated’
  • Biden gets to work as president-elect while Trump refuses to concede
  • US coronavirus cases surpass 10m as Ben Carson tests positive
  • Republicans back Trump challenge to Biden election victory
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Here’s a r...