Politics

(WASHINGTON) — By gathering leaders Thursday from 112 of the world’s democracies — some healthy, some challenged — President Joe Biden has done the easy part of a campaign promise: He’s held a summit for democracy within his first year in office.

But to actually make meaningful progress pushing back on the global “democratic recession,” as his administration has warned of, will require far more than speeches, video meetings, and even a joint statement, which it’s unclear his summit will yield.

“Here in the United States, we know as well as anyone that renewing our democracy and strengthening our democratic institutions requires constant effort,” Biden said in opening remarks at the first “Summit for Democracy” Thursday morning.

In front of two video panels with 80 world leaders participating virtually, Biden declared democracy as “the defining challenge of our time,” citing “outside pressure” from autocrats.

“They seek to advance their own power, explore and expand their influence around the world and justify their repressive policies and practices as a more efficient way to address today’s challenges. That’s how it’s sold. By voices that seek to fanned the flames of social division and political polarization,” he said.

The president has cast the fight between democracies and authoritarian governments like China and Russia’s as pivotal to the 21st century — and said his administration will prove that democratic governments can still deliver for their publics.

Activists around the world are pressing the administration, along with their own governments, to demonstrate that this week — taking or announcing concrete steps like strengthening free and fair elections, countering corruption, bolstering a free press and combating disinformation, among other things.

While the guest list has drawn lots of attention, especially for some illiberal heads of government, it’s what the attendees agree on that will really matter, according to many experts — with some skeptical that there will be impactful commitments.

“The Biden administration is conceptually approaching it from the right lens in terms of looking inward and outward and being humble about the challenges that we’re facing” in the U.S., according to Marti Flacks, director of the Human Rights Initiative at the think tank CSIS. But “in practice, translating that into concrete commitments and actions that resonate domestically is very challenging.”

Those commitments will be tested over the next “year of action,” according to the administration, with a second summit the White House plans to hold in-person next year to take stock.

“The interval period between these two events — the virtual and hopefully the in-person — really gives us, I think, a rare opportunity to translate into action commitments that are going to be put on the table,” said Uzra Zeya, the top U.S. diplomat for democracy and human rights. “This is not a one-off event, but it’s really an ongoing engagement process that we hope will culminate in an in-person summit with new platforms and coalitions working together meaningfully.”

Democracy has been deteriorating consistently for the last 15 years, according to Freedom House, a Washington think tank that analyzes and rates governments. Its annual survey found this year that less than 20% of the global population lives in a country considered “free” in their analysis — the lowest percentage since 1995.

That includes the U.S., but there are worrying signs that American democracy is slipping, including partisan attacks on elections, dark money in politics and racial disparities, according to Freedom House — which ranks Belize, Mongolia and Romania’s democracies as stronger.

The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, a Swedish think tank, has gone even further, issuing a report last month that said the U.S. has fallen “victim to authoritarian tendencies itself, and was knocked down a significant number of steps on the democratic scale.”

Biden has leaned into that reality, urging the passage of voting rights legislation or historic investments in social programs. But more politically, he’s also gone after supporters of former President Donald Trump, who continued to spread unfounded conspiracies about election fraud, with a senior administration official blaming “Republican legislators” in particular for a “systematic assault.”

“The president has been forthright and clear about the challenges facing democracy here at home throughout his presidency, and I think you can expect him to do so as well at the summit,” the official said Tuesday.

The administration has also announced a series of steps in advance of the meetings — an indication of what kind of action it wants other countries to take. For example, the administration is collecting a group of countries that will commit to stop exporting and sharing technology that could be used to violate human rights, like artificial intelligence.

The Treasury Department is also moving to implement a policy that requires the disclosure of who controls shell companies and has proposed increased oversight of all-cash real estate deals — both of which corrupt foreign officials and other bad actors often use to hide money in the U.S. made illicitly overseas.

The White House also unveiled the first-ever strategy to counter corruption, laying out steps to do so that if “matched with appropriate resources… has the power to fundamentally change the calculus for kleptocrats,” according to Gary Kalman, director of the U.S. office of Transparency International, a German-based nonprofit advocacy group.

“In a world where corruption fuels authoritarianism, today’s strategy provides a forward-looking blueprint for bolstering government integrity and advancing democracy,” he added in a statement Monday.

But the strength of these public commitments will be heavily scrutinized. Already, there’s been criticism that some countries crafted theirs without any input from civil society.

“Having worked with parties and NGOs around the world, I was inundated with emails and calls pleading for advice as to how they could influence their own country’s democracy plan,” Laura Thornton, director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan U.S. advocacy group, wrote.

Biden will address the summit twice, with opening remarks Thursday and closing remarks Friday. The heads of the other 111 invited governments will make their own speeches, which are expected to include some announcements of how they’re strengthening democracy in their country.

But some of those leaders have checkered records when it comes to doing so.

Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte, for example, has weaponized a war on drugs and terrorism to crack down on dissent and journalists and to rule with violent impunity.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has sowed doubts about the country’s presidential election next year and threatened to not accept the results, along with attacking the judiciary, political opponents and the free press.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan will speak, but it’s the military that rules as “political arbiter — more powerful than either the judiciary or the elected government — and sets the constraints within which civilian politics play out,” according to Freedom House.

The Biden administration has defended its invitation list by saying it included a “regionally diverse set” of “established and emerging” democracies, according to Zeya, who added, “The invitation to join us at the summit — it’s not a mark of approval, nor is non-invitation from the summit a sign of disapproval from the United States.”

But if the administration invited them anyway because new “progress and commitments” from these countries “would advance a more just and peaceful world,” as Zeya said, it’s notable then that allies like Turkey and Hungary or neighbors in Central America’s “Northern Triangle” were left off the list.

Certain countries with authoritarian leaders will instead have their opposition leaders participate, including Belarus’s Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and Venezuela’s Juan Guaido, who the U.S. still recognizes as the country’s interim leader.

The administration also invited civic leaders, lawmakers and parliamentarians, journalists, and activists outside of government to address the summit outside of the leader speeches with dozens of side events. So while Duterte will get to pontificate, Filipino journalist Maria Ressa, who shared this year’s Nobel Peace Prize and has been jailed and harassed by Duterte’s government, also spoke Wednesday.

ABC News’ Justin Gomez contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows is suing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and members of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, after the panel moved to hold him in contempt for not cooperating with the probe.

Meadows is seeking relief “to invalidate and prohibit the enforcement of two overly broad and unduly burdensome subpoenas from a select committee of the U.S. House of Representatives … issued in whole or part without legal authority in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States,” according to the lawsuit filed Wednesday in D.C. District Court.

“Mr. Meadows, a witness, has been put in the untenable position of choosing between conflicting privilege claims that are of constitutional origin and dimension and having to either risk enforcement of the subpoena issued to him, not merely by the House of Representatives, but through actions by the Executive and Judicial Branches, or, alternatively, unilaterally abandoning the former president’s claims of privileges and immunities,” the lawsuit says. “Thus, Mr. Meadows turns to the courts to say what the law is.”

Jan. 6. committee chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., had said the panel would move to hold Meadows in contempt after Meadows failed to appear before the committee for his scheduled appearance Wednesday morning.

Following the filing of the lawsuit Wednesday, Thompson told reporters that the panel would move forward with holding Meadows in contempt next week.

On Tuesday, two sources familiar with the matter told ABC News that Meadows had informed the committee that he was no longer cooperating with the probe, after Meadows had earlier agreed to appear before the panel.

Meadows’ attorney, George J. Terwilliger II, told committee members in a letter that they had made an appearance for a deposition untenable because they have “no intention of respecting boundaries concerning Executive Privilege.”

In response, Thompson told Terwilliger in a letter Tuesday night that the committee has “no choice” but to recommend the former chief of staff be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate.

Thompson’s three-page letter says the committee believes Meadows has “no legitimate legal basis” to refuse to cooperate, given the content in Meadows’ memoir, which was published this week.

The letter also details some of the information and records Meadows has already provided to the committee, including emails from his personal account prior to Jan 6. regarding the election challenges, and data and text messages from his personal cell phone.

According to the letter, Meadows was messaging with one member of Congress about appointing alternate electors from key states to reverse the election results. “I love it,” Meadows replied, according to the letter.

The letter says Meadows also turned over messages he exchanged with a Jan. 6 rally organizer in early January, and another round of messages he exchanged about “a need” for then-President Trump to “issue a public statement that could have stopped the Jan. 6 attack.”

The letter also suggests Meadows may not have complied with federal record keeping laws, given the amount of records he produced from personal devices.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the committee, told ABC News that Meadows may have undercut his own argument against cooperating because of the reams of records he already turned over to the panel.

“He produced a number of documents to our committee, and we have a number of questions about those,” Schiff said. “Those are documents he clearly recognizes he has no viable claim of privilege about, and it’s hard to … reconcile how he can talk about Jan. 6 and his conversations about it and others for a book, but not to Congress.”

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(NEW YORK)  — Two families from Maine asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to expand taxpayer support for religious schools by requiring a state tuition assistance program to include sectarian as well as nonsectarian institutions.

The case, which has been closely watched by school choice advocates, could significantly expand religious liberties and clear the way for broader public support for religious education. Opponents say it risks unconstitutional entanglement of church and state.

During nearly two hours of oral arguments, the court’s conservative majority of justices appeared highly receptive to the families’ claims that Maine has discriminated on the basis of religion, in violation of the First Amendment, by disqualifying schools that “promote” a specific faith and teach subjects “through the lens of their faith.”

“Religious discrimination is religious discrimination,” said attorney Michael Bindas, representing the families. “Religious schools, after all, teach religion just as a soccer team plays soccer and a book club reads books. It’s only because of religion that they are excluded.”

Maine argues that its tuition-aid program is meant to subsidize a “rough equivalent of a public education” and its criteria are religiously neutral — discriminating not on the status or affiliation of the school but what it teaches.

“Maine has determined as a matter of public policy that public education be neutral,” said Maine deputy attorney general Christopher Taub. “[The families] are not being discriminated against.”

Since nearly half of Maine public school districts do not have their own schools, many either contract with other districts to provide education to residents or they provide tuition payments — roughly $11,000 a year — for “the approved private school of the parent’s choice at which a student is accepted.”

Of the roughly 180,000 school children in Maine, only about 5,000 attend private schools using state tuition aid. The plaintiff families want to send their children to Christian schools that overtly advocate religious beliefs and were excluded from the program.

The Supreme Court has said that states cannot use tax dollars to explicitly promote religion, nor can they target a religion or discriminate based solely on religious status. The gray area in between the two rules is where this case will be decided.

Chief Justice John Roberts suggested any state assessment of religious teaching in order to determine qualification for tuition aid would be inherently unconstitutional discrimination.

“We have said that that is the most basic violation of the — the First Amendment religion clauses, for the government to draw distinctions between religions based on their doctrine,” Roberts said.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the “neutral position” would be for the state to not consider religion at all in determining a school’s eligibility.

“Why isn’t it treating people neutrally to tell them you’re all equal citizens without respect to your religion, and so, too, all the schools that are accredited are equal without respect to their religion, whether you are secular, Catholic, Jewish, what have you, you’re all going to be treated equally?” he asked.

The court’s three liberal justices took a more critical approach, highlighting potential “strife” among citizens who oppose their tax dollars underwriting religious indoctrination and social values with which they may strongly disagree.

“The very point is they teach all subjects through the lens of religion,” noted Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Justice Elena Kagan insisted states should be allowed to make their own judgments on funding for religious schools based on local views.

“Why does the state have to exercise — have to subsidize the exercise of a right?” Kagan asked. “Essentially what Maine is saying here is like, all well and good if a locality or if a state wants to do this, but we weigh the interests differently, and shouldn’t we be allowed to weigh the interests differently.”

Bindas, arguing for the parents, insisted Maine’s approach is discrimination that cannot stand.

“This absolutely discriminates against parents. It says you can get an otherwise available public benefit you are statutorily entitled to so long as you don’t exercise a right that this Court recognized,” he said. “And this Court should not allow that to stand.”

The court is expected to hand down a decision next spring.

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(NEW YORK) — In the speech she says she would have given had she won the 2016 presidential election, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would have challenged the country and spoken to her mother about becoming the first woman elected to the White House, according to excerpts of a video made public Wednesday.

“Fundamentally, this election challenged us to decide what it means to be an American in the 21st century and by reaching for a unity, decency, and what President Lincoln called the better angels of our nature,” Clinton said as she read from a draft of her speech, quoting a line from Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address.

“We met that challenge. Today with your children on your shoulders, neighbors at your side, friends, old and new standing as one, you renewed our democracy. And because of the honor you have given me, you changed its face forever.”

Clinton is sharing the speech she never gave in a new online class being released through MasterClass, a subscription service where experts, celebrities, and politicians share video classes teaching skills. Her class, which releases on Thursday, is part of the platform’s “The White House” series where other politicians, including former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, are giving political insights and lessons, according to MasterClass.

Excerpts of Hillary Clinton’s class and the speech were aired on NBC’s “Today” broadcast, in an interview with “Sunday Today” host Willie Geist, and online on Wednesday. Clinton told Geist that she chose to revisit the speech because “I wanted to be as helpful as I could to the viewers and to the process of being in a MasterClass.”

In the video released by MasterClass, Clinton became emotional reading a section of her speech about her mother, Dorothy Rodham, who passed away in 2011.

Dorothy Rodham overcame a challenging childhood. Her parents sent her away by train at age 8 to live with her grandparents, and Rodham was forced to find work as a maid at age 14.

Clinton, chocking up, said, “I think about my mother every day. Sometimes I think about her on that train… I wish I could walk down the aisle and find the little wooden seats where she sat holding tight to her even younger sister. Alone; terrified. She doesn’t yet know how much she will suffer. She doesn’t yet know she will find the strength to escape that suffering.”

“I dream of going up to her and sitting down next to her, taking her in my arms, and saying look at me. Listen to me. You will survive. You will have a good family of your own and three children. And as hard as it might be to imagine, your daughter will grow up and become the president of the United States,” Clinton read.

The excerpts of the drafted speech also included the vision Clinton said Americans had of “a hopeful, inclusive, big hearted America. An America where women are respected and immigrants are welcomed; where veterans are honored, parents are supported, and workers are paid fairly.

“An America where we believe in science, where we look beyond people’s disabilities and see their possibilities, where marriage is a right and discrimination is wrong… we all have a role to play in our great American story. And yes, that absolutely includes everyone who voted for other candidates or who didn’t vote at all.”

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(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — House Progressives, led by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, said Wednesday they will introduce a resolution later in the day seeking to strip GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert of her two committee assignments in the wake of anti-Muslim remarks she made last month about Rep. Ilhan Omar.

The resolution, obtained by ABC News and first reported by The Washington Post, is co-sponsored by several House progressive members, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Pramila Jayapal, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, and Jamaal Bowman.

Their goal: to force Democratic leadership’s hand in punishing Boebert for repeatedly making Islamophobic and racist comments about Omar, likening her to a suicide bomber.

“I haven’t heard anything binding from leadership, which in and of itself is an embarrassment,” Ocasio-Cortez told the news outlet The Hill on Tuesday night. “This shouldn’t take this long; this should not drag on. It’s pretty simple. It doesn’t have to be a big huge thing. It’s pretty open and closed.”

In a video posted to Twitter last month, Boebert referred to Omar as a member of the “Jihad Squad” and claimed that a Capitol Police officer thought she was a suicide bomber in an encounter in an elevator on Capitol Hill.

Boebert later apologized on Twitter “to anyone in the Muslim community I offended,” adding that she had reached out to Omar’s office to speak with her directly, but the phone call did not go well.

Omar is one of only three Muslim members in Congress. She said she has received “hundreds” of death threats often triggered by Republican attacks.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said Boebert’s comments about Omar are “dangerous” and “indecent” and there have been discussions among the caucus about taking decisive action against Boebert. Pelosi has said that there are “different views” among the caucus regarding the appropriate response.

Leaders had discussed a resolution that would condemn Islamophobia, but House liberals, including Omar herself, are not keen to the idea, saying a resolution doesn’t go far enough.

Democrats have also called on Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy to condemn Boebert himself, but he has not done so.

“It’s the responsibility of Republicans to discipline their members,” Pelosi told reporters Wednesday when asked if she supported the new resolution from progressive members.

Pressley’s resolution would boot Boebert from her two spots on the House Committee on the Budget and the House Committee on Natural Resources. The resolution is not privileged, which means Democratic leadership does not have to put the measure on the floor for a vote.

“It is my expectation that Lauren Boebert is going to be held accountable,” House Democratic Caucus chairman Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Wednesday during a news conference.

“It would be a constructive thing if my friends on the other side of the aisle would handle their own business in terms of the out of control members. But we haven’t seen that level of accountability so far,” Jeffries said.

“At some point, I think the House as a whole is going to have to act,” he said, adding that “there is no hesitancy on our side” to take action against Boebert.

Late last month, the House voted to censure GOP Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona over a video he tweeted depicting violence against Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and President Joe Biden. He was also removed from his committee assignments.

Earlier this year, House Democrats also voted to remove GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments over what they said were her violent social media posts aimed at Democrats.

But there are concerns among members and staff about creating a messy precedent that would force Democrats to punish any member for making racist or false statements.

It’s unclear if Pelosi will be moved to act given the public outcry and pressure campaign from members. ABC News has reached out to her office for comment.

“For a Member of Congress to repeatedly use hateful, anti-Muslim rhetoric and Islamophobic tropes towards a Muslim colleague is dangerous. It has no place in our society and it diminishes the honor of the institution we serve in,” Pressley said in a statement.

“Without meaningful accountability for that Member’s actions, we risk normalizing this behavior and endangering the lives of our Muslim colleagues, Muslim staffers and every Muslim who calls America home. The House must unequivocally condemn this incendiary rhetoric and immediately pass this resolution. How we respond in moments like these will have lasting impacts, and history will remember us for it,” she said.

Muslim congressional staffers sent a letter this week urging Pelosi to take action against Boebert. The staffers said in a signed letter that they do not feel welcome or safe working on Capitol Hill knowing there are Islamophobic members in Congress who will go unpunished when they make harmful statements.

The letter, obtained by ABC News, was signed by the “Muslim staff of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate” who said that they decided not to include their last names to “avoid potential additional harm.”

It’s unclear how many staffers signed on to the letter.

“Witnessing unchecked harassment of one of only three Muslim Members of Congress – and the only visibly Muslim Member – we feel that our workplace is not safe nor welcome. We must now come to work every day knowing that the same Members and staff who perpetuate Islamophobic tropes and insinuate that we are terrorists, also walk by us in the halls of Congress,” the letter stated.

“Congress must categorically reject this incendiary rhetoric that endangers the physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing of Muslim staff across both sides of the aisle,” the staffers wrote.

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GUATEMALA) — Ruben spent four years in Chile working as a housekeeper at a hotel and despite his experience in the hospitality and tourism industry, he was unable to get a higher paying job. Originally from Haiti, he said he was skipped over for promotions and paid higher rent than lighter-skinned immigrants.

After years of struggling financially, and with the pandemic affecting the tourism industry, he decided to migrate to Mexico, where he said he now faces the same Xenophobia he tried to flee. He’s been in Tapachula, Chiapas, for three months waiting to be interviewed for a humanitarian visa.

“The situation is very difficult for all migrants, not only Haitians, there is no hope here,” he told ABC News in an interview conducted in Spanish. “There are no jobs and they don’t want to give us our papers. All we want to do is leave Tapachula and be in another city while we have our cases processed.”

Ruben is among the tens of thousands of migrants whose asylum claim has seemingly ground to a halt as Mexico’s leading refugee agency deals with an unprecedented number of requests for humanitarian visas.

Human rights organizations warn that as they wait for their cases to be processed, migrants have become easy targets for price gouging and criminals who scam them with the promise of a way out of the city. As the Mexican government puts mounting pressure on migrants to keep them from continuing north out of the state of Chiapas, migrants said they have been forced to live in makeshift shelters in the streets and in overcrowded homes.

ABC News is not reporting Ruben’s real name in order to protect his privacy as he waits to see if he’ll be given protection under a humanitarian visa.

Tapachula is known as the main port of entry for refugees in Mexico as it borders Guatemala. Still, the number of asylum requests as of the end of November is unprecedented. According to COMAR, the Mexican government’s agency that processes refugee status, at least 123,187 requests have been filed so far in 2021, surpassing the record set in 2019 of over 70,000. The majority of those requests, 73%, were filed in the state of Chiapas. Haitians are the leading demographic in asylum requests in Mexico, the agency said.

Andrew Bahena, who works with the international programs team at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Chiapas, has been documenting instances of discrimination and violence targeted toward the migrant community. Migrants are relegated to renting rooms in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. Those disparities are accentuated for migrants with darker skin tones like Haitians, the coalition said.

“If you’re a migrant and you’re just going to pay per person, there’s a certain stock of housing that you’re going to be living in, and it’s really hard to rent anywhere out of that once people understand that you’re a foreigner,” he said. “That happens with food where people get charged more for the same kilo of rice. The problems get worse as the system stops working.”

As the nation’s leading refugee agency, COMAR is the only entity able to grant refugee status and issue travel documents that allow migrants to move within the country freely. The agency’s director, Andres Ramirez, said they’re able to process up to 5,000 cases a month, less than a third of the requests that were filed in November alone.

“This year’s wave has been gigantic,” Ramirez told ABC News in Spanish. “In addition to the large quantity, some people who don’t fit the profile of a refugee as the law establishes have submitted requests because they don’t have other immigration alternatives.”

South American countries like Chile and Brazil have seen large quantities of Haitian migrants since 2010, when a devastating earthquake claimed more than 200,000 lives in Haiti. Those who are now fleeing Central and South American countries due to financial instability may have a harder time being granted refugee status in Mexico.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or ACNUR, as it’s known in Mexico, has been assisting the Mexican government in providing aid and temporary accommodations in three local shelters in Tapachula. Josep Herreros, a senior protection officer for UNHCR, thinks the congestion in the city can be eased by providing alternatives for people who do not qualify for refugee status, but still need support.

“People are suffering from the congestion,” Herreros told ABC News in an interview in Spanish. “This flow is what we call a mixed movement, where we have refugees who need protection and other migrants who have other needs. We think it’s important to provide alternatives to the asylum process.”

As another way of easing the congestion in Tapachula, the National Institute of Migration has been busing some migrants to other cities where they can continue their asylum process.

Buses have been departing from the Olympic Stadium but Arturo Viscarra, an attorney for CHIRLA, said those efforts have slowed to a “trickle” and thousands of people have descended upon the area. On Monday, Viscarra filmed how countless people took cover from the sun in makeshift shelters outside of the stadium.

“There’s this complete lack of response,” Viscarra said. “It’s both a result of the policies with the combination of the racism that makes it more difficult for Haitians to obtain work and housing.”

The National Institute of Migration did not respond to ABC News’ request for an interview.

Government checkpoints have been established outside of the city and throughout Mexico’s major highways, making it difficult for migrants to leave without the threat of being deported.

In recent months, groups of migrants sometimes referred to as “caravans” have formed in an effort to bypass the checkpoints and continue further into Mexico, with some hoping to reach the U.S. border, according to CHIRLA. In September, the U.S. Border Patrol was embroiled in a national controversy when images were published depicting mounted patrol agents using their horses to push back Haitian migrants as they attempted to cross the Rio Grande into Del Rio, Texas.

Ruben said he cried when he saw those images and felt disappointed in how the U.S. is treating Haitians. He has also grown increasingly frustrated with the asylum process in Mexico, but his dream is to settle in Mexico City and work in the tourism industry.

“I’m not trying to go to the United States; it’s not where I can have a better life,” he said. “I’m looking for a place where I can live peacefully. If I can realize my dream here in Mexico and have a good job, I’ll stay here.”

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(COLORADO) — Rep. Lauren Boebert, the gun-toting Colorado Republican who is under threat of being removed from her committee assignment for Islamophobic comments targeted at fellow lawmakers, faced more backlash on Wednesday after sharing a family photo showing her four children posing with guns in front of a Christmas tree.

“The Boeberts have your six, @RepThomasMassie!” Boebert wrote on Twitter late Tuesday, in apparent solidarity with GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a fellow gun enthusiast, who faced criticism for posting a similar photo last week of his family proudly holding firearms in front of their Christmas tree. Both families appeared smiling while heavily armed ahead of the holiday season.

 

The Boeberts have your six, @RepThomasMassie!

(No spare ammo for you, though) pic.twitter.com/EnDYuXaHDF

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) December 8, 2021

 

“Santa, please bring more ammo,” Massie’s photo with his wife and six kids posted Dec. 4 was captioned.

 

Merry Christmas! 🎄
ps. Santa, please bring ammo. 🎁 pic.twitter.com/NVawULhCNr

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) December 4, 2021

 

“(No spare ammo for you, though),” Boebert added in her Dec. 7 tweet.

On the heels of Massie’s post last week but ahead of her own, Boebert offered her support to her colleague’s photo, tweeting, “That’s my kind of Christmas card!”

Boebert and Massie, appearing to share the photos of their families brandishing firearms in an apparent appeal to their bases, did so within a week of a mass shooting at a high school in Michigan that killed four students and left at least eight seriously injured. That shooting came days after the father of the 15-year-old suspect allegedly purchased him a gun as an early Christmas present.

Democrats have been quick to criticize both the photos of Boebert and Massie — with Democratic Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez mocking Boebert early Wednesday in a tweet that garnered nearly 100,000 likes and counting.

“Tell me again where Christ said “use the commemoration of my birth to flex violent weapons for personal political gain”?” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response to the photo. “lol @ all the years Republicans spent on cultural hysteria of society ‘erasing Christmas and it’s meaning’ when they’re doing that fine all on their own.”

“When you pose in front of a Christmas Tree and can name all those guns but can’t name the gifts of the Wise Men,” the New York progressive added.

 

When you pose in front of a Christmas Tree and can name all those guns but can’t name the gifts of the Wise Men 🥴🥴🥴

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 8, 2021

 

The backlash to Boebert’s photo comes as Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., plans to introduce a resolution on Wednesday to strip the Colorado Republican of her House committee assignments over her anti-Muslim remarks aimed at Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., — with the aim of forcing House Democratic leadership to punish Boebert before the end of the year. Omar said over the weekend she is confident House Speaker Nancy Pelos will take “decisive action.”

It’s far from the first time Boebert, a freshman in this Congress, has faced criticism.

The Colorado Republican who owns a gun-themed eatery called “Shooters” released a political ad earlier this year showing her walking around the Capitol, verbally attacking congressional Democrats and ending with the sound of a gunshot. She is also facing questions from Democrats over her potential ties to pro-Trump supporters that were present at the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.

The pro-democracy, progressive media PAC MeidasTouch tweeted late Tuesday that it would not post the “deranged” image of Boebert and her children “holding weapons of war” and instead, listed those killed last week in Michigan to “honor the teens who were murdered due to this fetishization of guns.”

 

We will not be posting the deranged photo of Lauren Boebert and her young children holding weapons of war.

Instead, let’s honor the teens who were murdered due to this fetishization of guns:

Hana St. Juliana, 14.
Tate Myre, 16.
Justin Shilling, 17.
Madisyn Baldwin, 17. pic.twitter.com/IdQnHXobNA

— MeidasTouch.com (@MeidasTouch) December 8, 2021

 

ABC News’ Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) —  Rep. Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the Jan. 6 committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol, says the committee will move to hold Mark Meadows in contempt after the former Trump chief of staff failed to appear before the panel for his scheduled appearance this morning.

On Tuesday, two sources familiar with the matter told ABC News that Meadows had informed the committee that he is no longer cooperating with the probe, after Meadows had earlier agreed to appear before the panel.

Meadows’ attorney George J. Terwilliger II told committee members in a letter that they had made an appearance for a deposition untenable because they have “no intention of respecting boundaries concerning Executive Privilege.”

In response, Thompson told Terwilliger in a letter last night that the committee has “no choice” but to recommend the former chief of staff be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate.

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(GUANTANAMO) — Through its nearly two-decade existence, the Guantanamo Bay detention center has sparked intense, partisan debate. At a Senate hearing on closing the camp, the first of its kind in roughly six years, lawmakers could find little common ground apart from dissatisfaction with the Biden administration.

In his opening remarks, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the chairman of the chamber’s Judiciary committee, expressed his frustration with the president’s lack of response to Democrats’ calls to shut down the military prison.

“I am disappointed. Disappointed that the president and attorney general have yet to respond to my letters,” he said. “And I’m disappointed the administration declined to send a witness to testify at today’s hearing on how they’re working to close Guantanamo.”

Although the White House says shuttering the facility, located within the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, is a goal, so far it has taken few steps toward accomplishing it and has declined to set a timeline.

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the committee’s top ranking Republican, also lamented that the White House had not supplied any witnesses to testify on reports from the intelligence community or the administration’s progress toward shuttering the prison.

“No one from the administration has come to defend the president’s plan to close Guantanamo,” he said. “And I’m not sure there is a plan.”

Grassley accused the Biden administration of taking a “no plan approach” during this summer’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“I fear that his plan to withdraw from Guantanamo Detention Facility may be no different,” he said.

Although Guantanamo has earned a dubious reputation as an indefinite holding space for war on terror suspects and a battleground over the admissibility of testimony obtained through enhanced interrogation techniques many equate to torture, Republicans argued Afghanistan’s return to Taliban control has intensified the need for the detention camp.

Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., said “229 of the 729 released from Gitmo have gone back to the fight. This is nuts,” citing the number of former Guantanamo detainees the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has either confirmed or suspected of re-engaging in terrorist activities.

Durbin objected to that statistic, noting recidivism rates are much lower among former detainees released after 2009, when current rules for transfer were put in place by Congress. The chairman also noted that of the 39 men still imprisoned in Guantanamo, more than two-thirds have never been formally charged with a crime.

“How can that possibly be justice?” he asked.

Even in cases where charges have been levied, such as that of the alleged mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the process of the military tribunal has been a source of anguish for many. Mohammed was arraigned nearly a decade ago, and while pretrial hearings drag on, the trial itself doesn’t yet have a set start date.

Colleen Kelly, a witness at the hearing who lost her brother Bill when the North Tower of the World Trade Center was struck by a hijacked jet, testified that she and many other family members of those lost on that day now want to see a plea agreement reached in the hopes it provides some level of closure, even if it means taking the death penalty off the table for the defendants.

“Family members want a measure of accountability and justice before our deaths,” she said.

Chief Defense Counsel for Military Commissions Brig. Gen. John Baker, another witness, argued that the ongoing cases must be brought to “as rapid as a conclusion as possible.”

“Notice I don’t say as just a conclusion as possible. It is too late in the process for the current military commissions to do justice for anyone,” he said, calling the proceedings a “failed experiment” and noting they had only resulted in one final conviction.

As for the other detainees, beyond partisanship, a dearth of practical options for their relocation is a major hurdle, even for those who already met the criteria for transfer.

In the past, administrations have engaged in sometimes years-long negotiations with countries receiving prisoners to secure some level of security assurance. Congress’ requirements for transfer and destabilization in the Middle East have left few viable options.

“We can’t get countries to take them and give assurances they’ll keep an eye on them,” Jamil Jaffer, the founder and executive director of the National Security Institute, testified.

But the man who opened the camp– Maj. Gen. Michael Lehnert — maintains it is past time for the camp to close.

“The issue isn’t whether to close Guantanamo, but how,” he said, adding that the White House should appoint a person to tackle the task and set a deadline. “I was given 96 hours to open it — 96 days to close it seems reasonable.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Republican-led efforts to repeal President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate on private businesses will once again get a vote in the Senate Wednesday, and this time a repeal is expected to pass.

The Senate will likely vote Wednesday on Republican Sen. Mike Braun’s effort to repeal the mandate on private sector businesses with more than 100 employees. Every Republican signed onto the proposal.

Republicans are bringing up the repeal for a vote using a procedural tool called the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to overturn rules created by federal agencies and only requires 51 votes to pass the Senate.

The bill would still need to go over to the House, where it is unlikely to be brought up by Democratic leadership. Republicans could use a procedural tool to push a vote on the measure early next year, but it’s unclear if they’d have the votes to do it.

But during a press conference on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that if Congress were to send the repeal to Biden’s desk, he’d strike it down.

“We certainly hope the Senate, Congress will stand up to the anti-vaccine and testing crowd. We’re going to continue to work to implement these,” Psaki said. “If it comes to the president’s desk, he will veto it.”

Still, this won’t be a party-line vote in the Senate. As vaccine mandates lag in popularity nationwide, some moderate Democrats are expected to back the repeal effort during Wednesday’s vote, giving it the necessary votes to clear the Senate.

At least two Democrats are also expected to vote to end the mandate: Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. and Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont.

“I will strongly support a bill to overturn the federal government vaccine mandate for private businesses. I have long said we should incentivize, not penalize, private employers whose responsibility it is to protect their employees from COVID-19,” Manchin said in a statement last week.

He’s been on the record repeatedly about his opposition to mandates on private businesses, though he supports the mandate for federal employees.

Braun, in an MSNBC interview, said he’s spoken to three or four other swing state Democrats who may also vote with Republicans.

“Anybody that is listening to their people back home, this doesn’t poll when it’s vaccine or job,” Braun said. “Even when you say vaccine or get tested or job, most of the people that are digging in regardless of their reasons aren’t viewing it as an option.”

Every Republican is expected to support the repeal, following last week’s party-line vote to zero out funds for the mandate during government funding negotiations last week.

Most Democrats will vote to keep the mandate in place. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, in a press conference Tuesday, said the vote is “anti science” and “anti common sense”

“It’s ridiculous, it makes no sense, and Democrats think it is the wrong way to go,” Schumer said.

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