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The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol today will examine the role far-right extremist groups played in fomenting the deadly insurrection and their ties to associates of Donald Trump.
The session, the seventh in a series of public hearings to present the findings of the committee’s year-long investigation, will focus on the connections between Trump, his allies and violent US groups such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who stormed the US capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral college victory in the 2020 election, House select committee aides told reporters yesterday.
Separately, the US justice department has charged members of the leadership of both groups with seditious conspiracy for their roles in instigating the assault on the Capitol.
The hearing, led by Democratic members of congress Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Stephanie Murphy of Florida, will also explore the role of the QAnon conspiracy theory, the aides said.
What will the select committee focus on? An aide said they would be paying attention to a meeting held on 18 December 2020, with the president and members of his legal team, including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.
What was happening at that point? At that stage, there was a growing schism in Trump’s inner circle between those who believed it was time for the president to accept his electoral defeat and those pushing for even more radical actions, such as seizing voting machines.
Uber paid academics six-figure sums for research to feed to the media
Uber paid high-profile academics in Europe and the US hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce reports that could be used as part of the company’s lobbying campaign.
The Uber files, a cache of thousands of confidential documents leaked to the Guardian, reveal lucrative deals with several leading academics, who were paid to publish research on the benefits of its economic model. The reports were commissioned as Uber wrestled with regulators in key cities around the world.
University economists were targeted in France and Germany, where enforcement by the authorities was increasingly fierce in 2014-15.
One report by a French academic, who asked for a €100,000 consultancy fee, was cited in a 2016 Financial Times report as evidence that Uber was a “route out of the French banlieues”, delighting Uber executives.
Why did the Uber whistleblower decide to speak out against the firm? Mark MacGann, a career lobbyist who led Uber’s efforts to win over governments across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, decided to expose the company, he says, because he believed Uber knowingly flouted laws and misled people about the benefits of the company’s gig-economy model.
Family of killed journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh demand meeting with Biden
The family of Shireen Abu Aqleh, the renowned Palestinian-American journalist killed during an Israeli military raid in the West Bank, is demanding a meeting with Biden during the president’s visit to Jerusalem this week after accusing his administration of shielding Israel from accountability for her death.
Abu Aqleh’s brother, Anton, wrote to Biden on Friday expressing his family’s “grief, outrage and sense of betrayal” after the US state department concluded that Israeli forces were “likely responsible” for shooting the Al Jazeera reporter in the head in the West Bank city of Jenin in May but “found no reason to believe that this was intentional”.
The letter to Biden said the state department assessment was a “whitewash” given the weight of evidence showing that Abu Aqleh “was the subject of an extrajudicial killing” by the Israeli military, including a UN report that said soldiers fired “several single, seemingly well-aimed bullets” at her and other journalists.
What else did the letter say? The family accused the White House of adopting the Israeli government’s conclusions and talking points in “an apparent intent to undermine our efforts toward justice and accountability for Shireen’s death”.
In other news …
Nasa has released an image of far-flung galaxies as they were 13bn years ago, the first glimpse from the most powerful telescope ever launched into space. The small slice of the universe has been captured by the James Webb space telescope, showing the light from many different twinkling galaxies.
Britain’s new prime minister will be announced on 5 September, as the starting gun was fired on a Tory leadership race that will see the hopefuls whittled down to two by Thursday. Candidates will now need 20 MPs backing them to enter the contest, in an attempt to speed up the process.
Biden has been heckled by the father of a mass shooting victim during a White House event celebrating the passage of a federal gun safety law. The president was making a speech when he was interrupted by Manuel Oliver, whose 17-year-old son, Joaquin, was killed in Parkland, Florida in 2018.
Iran is planning to supply Russia with hundreds of weapons-capable drones for use in Ukraine, according to a US official. Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, said the information supported views that Russia’s heavy bombardments were “coming at a cost to the sustainment of its own weapons”.
The Sri Lankan president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, has made a failed attempt to flee the country after airport staff stood in his way. Rajapaksa, who is due to officially resign tomorrow after months of demonstrations calling for him to step down, was reportedly trying to escape to Dubai last night.
Stat of the day: Nearly $2tn of damage inflicted on other countries by US emissions
The US has inflicted more than $1.9tn in damage to other countries from the effects of its greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new analysis that has provided the first measurement of its liability in the climate crisis. The huge volume of planet-heating gases pumped out by the US, the largest historical emitter, has caused such harm to other, mostly poor, countries through heatwaves, crop failures and other consequences that America is responsible for $1.91tn in lost global income since 1990.
Don’t miss this: Inside the ‘school’ for men caught paying for sex
In a church basement in downtown Waco, Texas, 11 johns – men who had been busted while attempting to procure sex – were avoiding each other’s gaze, keeping their heads down under their baseball caps and even more carefully evading the eyes of the man standing before them, writes Elle Hardy. They were taking part in a mandatory education programme for those convicted of first-time solicitation offences. “This won’t be a hugathon,” warned Brett Mills, coordinator of an anti-prostitution programme known as a “john school”. “We’re kind, but we’re not faint of heart.”
… or this: Would a ‘Black Friends’ fix it? TV’s white New York still needs a reckoning
Criticisms of the hermetically sealed Friends Universe have long been levelled at its co-creator Marta Kauffman – who, with her college chum David Krane, ran the show from 1994 to 2004. The Friends series finale, which drew 52 million viewers, was the most-watched episode of television in the 2000s. But despite the show’s universal appeal, Friends was regularly assailed for its whitewashing onscreen and behind the camera. Kauffman is seeking to make amends for the show’s lack of diversity – but she’s got a long way to go.
Climate check: Texans urged to save energy as extreme heatwave strains power grid
Texans sweltering under record temperatures and high humidity have been urged to conserve energy as the power grid struggles to cope with a surge in demand. It is not the only place facing similar problems. Power grids around the world are being tested this summer as the climate crisis leads to prolonged heatwaves and Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to squeeze fossil fuel supplies. “Climate resiliency is at the top of engineers’ and research communities’ minds,” said Le Xie of the Texas A&M Energy Institute. “We don’t yet know the best answers.”
Last Thing: Beachgoers flee sparring sea lions in viral video
A TikTok video showing dozens of San Diego beachgoers running and jumping out of the way of two fast-moving sea lions has generated nearly 10m views and generated conversations about whether the mammals were going after people and reclaiming picturesque La Jolla Cove’s narrow strip of sand. But a sea lion expert, Eric Otjen of SeaWorld San Diego, said what he saw was normal sea lion behaviour for this time of year, when males spar as breeding season gets under way.
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