“We really did have a terrific vote tonight,” Cheney said afterward. “Laying out where we’re going to do going forward, as well as making clear that we’re not going to be divided and that we’re not going to be in a situation where people can pick off any member of leadership.”
Republican showdown looms as divided party weighs fates of Cheney and Greene
Republicans faced a reckoning on Wednesday as leaders in the US House of Representatives confronted calls to punish two prominent congresswomen who represent clashing visions for a party struggling to chart a path forward since Donald Trump left the White House.
Those loyal to the former president are demanding Republicans oust Liz Cheney, the No 3 Republican in the House, from her leadership post as punishment for her vote last month to impeach Trump.
At the same time, Republicans are facing mounting, bipartisan calls to strip the newly elected congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia from her committee assignments in response to her history of bigoted and violent commentary on social media.
On Wednesday, as Republican leaders prepared for a showdown over the political fates of Greene and Cheney, House majority leader, Steny Hoyer announced that Democrats would move forward with a resolution to strip Greene of both her assignments.
A floor vote on the resolution would force Republicans to choose between defending or punishing the Georgia lawmaker who holds significant sway among the party’s base and the enthusiastic support of the former president.
The decision came after Republican House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, met on Tuesday evening with Greene, a devotee of the antisemitic conspiracy theory QAnon, who, prior to her election, indicated support for executing Democratic politicians. Hoping to avert the political perilous floor vote, McCarthy spoke to Hoyer by phone on Wednesday morning.
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Biden administration drops Trump-era discrimination lawsuit against Yale
The Biden administration announced on Wednesday it had dropped a discrimination lawsuit against Yale university, which alleged that the institution was illegally discriminating against Asian American and white applicants.
While a judge must still sign off on the decision, justice department officials noted in the two-sentence filing in the US district court in Connecticut that it would voluntarily dismiss the action that had been filed by Donald Trump’s administration in October.
Federal prosecutors under Donald Trump had argued the university violates civil rights laws when it “discriminates based on race and national origin in its undergraduate admissions process”, and that “race is the determinative factor in hundreds of admissions decisions each year”.
“Yale is gratified that the US justice department has dropped its lawsuit challenging Yale college’s admissions practices,” a spokesperson, Karen Peart, said. “We are also pleased that the justice department has withdrawn its notice of violation of Title VI and its notice of noncompliance.”
The department’s investigation – which stemmed from a 2016 complaint against Yale and its fellow elite universities Brown and Dartmouth – also found that Yale used race as a factor in multiple steps of the admissions process, and that the school “racially balances its classes”.
Before, department officials had signed on to a legal challenge of Harvard University’s race-based admission criteria on similar grounds. But a US court of appeals judge ruled that although the school’s admission process was flawed, it was not on account of racial bias or conscious prejudice.
In a statement, the justice department confirmed it had dismissed the lawsuit “in light of all available facts”, including the November 2020 decision to reject the Harvard challenge. Under current law, schools are responsible for demonstrating that their race-based application process follows legal guidelines.
The decision is the latest move by Biden’s justice department to change the White House’s official position on several cases pending in federal courts, including pausing arguments in cases involving the US-Mexico border wall and rulings on asylum policy.
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at 5.51pm EST
The justice department (DoJ) on Wednesday rescinded two controversial Trump administration memos that took aim at voting rights enforcement, CNN reported.
The first memo, issued in September, authorized officials to launch election investigations before results were certified. Longstanding DoJ policy had been not to open those election investigations until election results were finalized and Richard Pilger, the direction of the election crimes branch, moved to another position in the agency in protest. Federal prosecutors also had urged William Barr to rescind the memo.
The second memo, issued just before Barr left office in December, instructed the department’s civil rights division to presume any voting law that a locality returned to after a change to be lawful. Barr issued the memo after many states temporarily expanded voting access amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
In a brief memo Wednesday, Monty Wilkinson, the acting attorney general, said Barr’s guidance departed from longstanding department policies and practices. He wrote he has rescinded the memos to “return to the traditional principles governing department of justice operations in this area”.
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at 5.18pm EST
McCarthy defends refusal to remove extremist Greene from committees
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at 4.56pm EST
