Senate Democrats launch investigation into Trump’s reported offer to oil executives of regulatory rollback in exchange for donations
Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into Donald Trump’s reported offer to oil executives that if they donated $1bn to his campaign, he would roll back environmental regulations, if elected.
The joint investigation by the Senate budget and finance committees is targeted at the petroleum firms whose top executives were said to have attended that April dinner.
“Time and time again, both Mr. Trump and the US oil and gas industry have proved they are willing to sell out Americans to pad their own pockets,” finance committee chair Ron Wyden and budget committee chair Sheldon Whitehouse said in a joint statement.
Here’s more:
As Mr. Trump funnels campaign money into his businesses and uses it as a slush fund to pay his legal fees, Big Oil has been lobbying aggressively to protect and expand its profits at the expense of the American taxpayer. And now, emboldened by impunity, Mr. Trump and Big Oil are flaunting their indifference to U.S. citizens’ economic well-being for all to see, conferring on how to trade campaign cash for policy changes. Such potential abuses must be scrutinized.
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Here’s what else happened:
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Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into Donald Trump’s reported offer to roll back environmental regulations if oil executives raise $1b for him.
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Biden and attorney general Merrick Garland both declined to comment on Alito’s flag preferences.
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Elena Kagan, a liberal supreme court justice, dissented from the conservative ruling in the South Carolina case, and warned it would undermine future attempts to challenge racial gerrymanders.
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Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, squabbled with Biden after Senate Democrats tried and failed again to pass a bill to tighten immigration policy.
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Louisiana’s Republican-dominated legislature moved to restrict abortion medication – which the Biden campaign blamed on Trump.
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In a just-released statement, Joe Biden decried the supreme court’s ruling earlier today that South Carolina’s Republican leaders do not need to redraw their congressional map, despite claims that it excludes Black voters.
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“The right to vote is the foundation of American democracy. Key to that right is ensuring that voters pick their elected officials – not the other way around. The Supreme Court’s decision today undermines the basic principle that voting practices should not discriminate on account of race and that is wrong,” the president said.
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“This decision threatens South Carolinians’ ability to have their voices heard at the ballot box, and the districting plan the Court upheld is part of a dangerous pattern of racial gerrymandering efforts from Republican elected officials to dilute the will of Black voters.”
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Here’s more on the court’s finding:
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Senate Democrats tried once again this afternoon to pass legislation tightening immigration policy, with the goal of curbing the flow of people crossing the southern border. But, just as when they first tried to move the legislation in February in a gambit to win approval of a new military aid infusion for Israel and Ukraine, the attempt failed, thanks to the opposition of Republicans who say they want even stronger anti-immigration measures.
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In a statement following the vote, Joe Biden accused the GOP of indifference to the issue of border security:
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Congressional Republicans do not care about securing the border or fixing America’s broken immigration system. If they did, they would have voted for the toughest border enforcement in history. Instead, today, they put partisan politics ahead of our country’s national security.
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By blocking the bipartisan border agreement, Republicans in Congress said no to legislation that would hire more Border Patrol Agents, add more immigration judges and asylum officers to process cases in months and not years. They said no to new technology to detect and stop fentanyl from entering the United States, and no to resources to go after drug traffickers. They rejected an agreement that would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to temporarily shut down the border when the system is overwhelmed.
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Republican House speaker Mike Johnson alleged that Biden and his allies in the Senate are faking concern for immigration, and just want to shore up support before November’s election.
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After more than three years of claiming the situation at our southern border was not a crisis while millions of illegals poured in, Congressional Democrats are attempting to throw an election year Hail Mary to cover for their embrace of President Biden’s open border policies. In the absence of a substantive legislative solution, Senator Schumer should join House Republicans in demanding President Biden reverse course and use his executive authority to finally secure the border and protect American families.
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Left unmentioned by both parties were the well-documented efforts by Donald Trump to torpedo the legislation earlier this year, reportedly so he could campaign on frustration over immigration.
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Another issue Democrats face is that the party isn’t united on how to handle immigration. Yesterday, Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal and Nanette Barragán, leader of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, called the bill “inhumane”:
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This framework, which was constructed under Republican hostage-taking, does nothing to address the longstanding updates needed to modernize our outdated immigration system, create more legal pathways, and recognize the enormous contributions of immigrants to communities and our economy.
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While the investments in asylum officers and immigration judges are welcome and needed, these alone cannot address the negative effects of a new Title 42-like expulsion authority that will close the border and turn away people seeking asylum without due process. Such a policy will be a boon to cartels who prey on migrants and would do nothing to address the root causes of migration – which will continue to send immigrants to the border. It is worth remembering that under Donald Trump, such a policy was not only declared unlawful by the courts, but it also led to increases – not decreases – in illegal border crossing.
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At a press conference today, attorney general Merrick Garland repudiated a claim by Donald Trump that the federal agents who searched his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida two years ago were given the authority to kill him.
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The former president made the allegation in a fundraising email, but the attorney general said it was an “extremely dangerous” distortion of the department’s policies, which were also followed when Joe Biden’s home was searched for classified material:
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Attorney General Garland on former President Trump's claim that the Justice Department had authorization to kill him during the Mar-a-Lago raid: "That allegation is false and it is extremely dangerous." pic.twitter.com/mAEfeCejwF
— CSPAN (@cspan) May 23, 2024
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And here’s a recap of what exactly Trump was alleging:
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Louisiana’s Republican-dominated state legislature has moved to further tighten access to two prescription drugs used in medication abortion, the Associated Press reports.
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Here’s more on the move, which comes as we await a ruling from the US supreme court on whether mifepristone, one of the drugs targeted by the new Louisiana law, can remain available nationwide:
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Two abortion-inducing drugs could soon be reclassified as controlled and dangerous substances in Louisiana under a first-of-its-kind bill that received final legislative passage Thursday and is expected to be signed into law by the governor.
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Supporters of the reclassification of mifepristone and misoprostol, commonly known as “abortion pills”, say it would protect expectant mothers from coerced abortions. Numerous doctors, meanwhile, have said it will make it harder for them to prescribe the medicines they use for other important reproductive healthcare needs, and could delay treatment.
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Louisiana currently has a near-total abortion ban in place, applying both to surgical and medical abortions. The GOP-dominated legislature’s push to reclassify mifepristone and misoprostol could possibly open the door for other Republican states with abortion bans that are seeking tighter restrictions on the drugs.
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Current Louisiana law already requires a prescription for both drugs and makes it a crime to use them to induce an abortion in most cases. The bill would make it harder to obtain the pills by placing them on the list of Schedule IV drugs under the state’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law.
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The supreme court has allowed South Carolina’s Republican-drawn congressional maps to stay, at least for now, after the panel’s conservative majority turned away a request from challengers that they be thrown out for discriminating against Black voters. The decision was authored by Samuel Alito, a conservative justice who was yesterday revealed to have flown a flag associated with Christian extremism at a vacation property. It was the second rightwing flag to have reportedly been displayed at his properties, prompting the House’s top Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, among others, to call for him to recuse himself from cases dealing with January 6. Alito has not commented on if he will do that.
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Here’s what else is going on:
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