Biden administration seeks to expand health coverage to Dreamers

Proposal would allow Daca participants to access health insurance under Medicaid and Affordable Care Act exchanges

The Biden administration is seeking to allow immigrants known as Dreamers, who were brought to the US as children by undocumented parents, greater access to health insurance through federal programs, the White House said on Thursday.

The proposal would allow participants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or Daca, to access to health insurance under Medicaid and Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges, it said.

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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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PM’s meeting with Chinese president confirmed – as it happened

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Andrews rules out deal with the Greens and independents in event of minority government

Dan Andrews was also asked what would happen if Labor finds itself in a minority government situation – will it do a deal with the Greens?

No deal will be offered and no deal will be done.

And independents – no deals with independents?

No deal will be offered and no deal will be done.

So if you’re in a minority situation and you hold more seats than the Liberal party, what happens? You go back to another election?

Well, I think what the best thing to do, and what happens, Michael, is we work hard for the next 13 days, we work hard to put a positive and optimistic plan out there, and we’ll see what the verdict of Victorian voters is. I’m arguing, I’m urging people to vote for a strong, stable majority Labor government, to vote for your local Labor candidate.

The new SEC – government-owned, not private for-profit, but government-owned electricity, so owned by every single Victorian – creates nearly 60,000 jobs – 6,000 of those will be apprentices. It will be 100% renewable electricity. These companies can’t be relied upon to replace themselves. They’ll just put another profit machine in place. We need to make sure that we’re looking after pensioners, we’re looking after families and, indeed, businesses. And without electricity, there is no economy, so we have to replace them. And we choose to replace them with a public option – a government-owned option. An option that’s owned by every single Victorian.

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Republicans will try to impeach Biden ‘every week’, Adam Kinzinger says

Anti-Trump January 6 committee member warns of likely aggressive tactics if GOP retakes House in midterms

Republicans will try to impeach Joe Biden every week if they retake the House in November, a rare anti-Trump Republican congressman predicted.

Remembering repeated attempts to defund the Affordable Care Act under Barack Obama, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois said: “That’s going to look like child’s play in terms of what Marjorie Taylor Greene is going to demand of Kevin McCarthy.

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New Zealand budget 2022: Ardern offers $1bn in sweeteners to tackle cost of living ‘storm’

PM says budget, which includes major spending on climate and health care reform, aims to ensure long term ‘economic and social security’

Weekly $27 cash payments, fuel discounts and half-price public transport are among the short-term sweeteners offered up by New Zealand’s government in its latest budget, as it tries to juggle the cost-of-living crisis with big-ticket spending commitments, including $11.1bn of healthcare system reform and $2.9bn responding to the climate crisis.

“While we know the current storm will pass, it is important we take the hard edges off,” prime minister Jacinda Ardern said in remarks accompanying the budget’s release.

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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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Biden expected to announce ban of Russian oil imports – US politics live

Reports that a bipartisan bill seeking to ban the import of Russian oil could make it to a vote in the House this week

Senator Ron Johnson is now backtracking from his comments on Breitbart News Radio, in which he discussed repealing and replacing Obamacare - the Affordable Care Act - if Republicans win the White House and the House and senate majorities in 2024.

“For example, if we’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare — I still think we need to fix our health-care system — we need to have the plan ahead of time so that once we get in office, we can implement it immediately, not knock around like we did last time and fail,” he said on air Monday.

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Harry Reid obituary

Veteran Nevada senator who shepherded and protected Obamacare on its difficult passage into law

During a long, combative career in US political life, Harry Reid, who has died aged 82, made his most telling contribution as Democrat majority leader in the Senate. There, in 2010, he pushed through and then vigorously defended President Barack Obama’s groundbreaking healthcare reforms.

Given the huge strength of Republican feeling against “Obamacare”, the president needed a streetfighter to drive his measures through to the statute book – and Reid was the man for the job. Quietly spoken but toughened by a hard early life and years spent swimming in the shark-infested waters of Nevada politics, he fought through the deeply polarised atmosphere that surrounded Obama’s health reforms to shepherd the Affordable Care Act through the Democrat-controlled Senate.

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Harry Reid, who led Senate Democrats for 12 years, dies at 82

  • Nevada senator helped to pass Obama’s Affordable Care Act
  • Reid called Trump ‘the worst president we’ve ever had’

Harry Reid, who emerged from the unforgiving political landscape of Las Vegas, Nevada, to lead the Senate Democrats for 12 turbulent years, died on Tuesday at age 82.

Reid died Tuesday, “peacefully” and surrounded by friends “following a courageous, four-year battle with pancreatic cancer,” Landra Reid said of her husband.

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Republicans slap down Manchin’s voting rights compromise – US politics live

  • Mitch McConnell says proposal is ‘rotten to the core’
  • Manchin’s plan tries to attract bipartisan support in Senate

Christopher Staudinger reports for the Louisiana Illuminator and Floodlight, a nonprofit that partners with the Guardian:

One morning in September, word of layoffs began to spread quickly through Marathon Petroleum’s refinery in the small industrial community of Garyville, Louisiana.

Related: A US oil company cut nearly 2,000 jobs – and reaped $2.1bn in pandemic benefits

Greetings from Washington, live blog readers.

Most of the city’s attention was focused on the supreme court yesterday, as the justices dismissed a Republican challenge to the Affordable Care Act. However, there were also some significant developments on Capitol Hill.

Democrats can change the packaging, but their plan for a power-grab of America’s electoral system is still rotten to the core. My full statement: https://t.co/HLRuDSZ3lS

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