Democrats sue Kansas officials over Republican redistricting law – live | US news

Daily Show host and comedian Trevor Noah is set to host the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner this year – after two years of the annual media shindig being cancelled due to the pandemic.

According to Politico:

“The announcement of Noah as the dinner’s featured entertainer represents a return to normalcy for the highly anticipated gathering of Washington journalists, politicians and elite society, which in the past drew big-name comedians to preside over the event known as “Nerd Prom.”

But after [Michelle] Wolf’s performance in 2018 — which saw the comedian savage Trump administration officials such as then-press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders — proved too polarizing for some attendees, the WHCA selected presidential biographer Ron Chernow to speak at the 2019 dinner. The dinner was then canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to coronavirus-related concerns.”

A person shot at a mayoral candidate today in Louisville, Kentucky.

While candidate Craig Greenberg was uninjured, a round came close enough to him to pierce his clothing. The suspect is in custody, but police have not released a motive.

This shooting takes place on the fourth anniversary of the Parkland, Florida shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school – the deadliest shooting in the country that killed 17 people.

Joe Biden issued a statement earlier today calling on Congress to pass more stringent gun control legislation.

Meanwhile, Washington is lifting its mask mandate in places like restaurants and businesses beginning 1 March, but it will remain in place for schools and healthcare facilities.

The Associated Press is reporting that Democrats have sued Kansas officials today over a Republican redistricting law that cost the state’s only Democrat in Congress some territory in her Kansas City-area district that she carried by wide margins in elections.

A team of attorneys led by Democratic attorney Marc Elias’ firm are arguing that Republican map drawers “explicitly set out to gerrymander the state in their favor” by splitting up two Democratic strongholds and heavily minority counties and redistricting their populations into heavily white and Republican districts.

Elias had promised that the new Kansas map would be challenged when the Republican-controlled legislature overrode the veto of the Democratic governor, Laura Kelly. Elias has been involved in lawsuits in multiple states, including Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio.

Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee are urging Joe Biden to hurry up and choose someone for his supreme court nomination while they still have the narrow 50-50 majority vote, the Hill reports.

Earlier this month, Ben Ray Luján, a 49-year-old freshman Democratic senator from New Mexico, suffered a stroke and will likely need to miss four to six weeks of work to recover.

With this one medical emergency already putting a strain on the Democrats’ narrow majority, Dick Durbin, chair of the Senate judiciary committee, told the Hill: “I think we understand the importance of the responsibility we have and we’re anxious to get this senate moving forward. We started to pick up speed recently and we want to continue that,” he said.

In sports news, there was a widely televised football game yesterday. During the Super Bowl half-time show, the rapper Eminem took a knee and held his head in apparent tribute to former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who took a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality during the 2016 season.

After other players followed suit – in other sports as well – the move became a cultural controversy, with many believing that Kaepernick has been blackballed by the league’s teams and owners for taking his stance.

Immediately after Eminem took a knee, rumors began flying that the National Football League had attempted to stop him from doing so ahead of the game – in 2020, following the widespread protests over the police murder of George Floyd, the NFL famously had to apologize for not listening to its players earlier in their peaceful protest.

Today, however, the NFL has come out strong in denying the rumors that it tried to stop Eminem from taking a knee.

“We watched all elements of the show during multiple rehearsals this week and were aware that Eminem was going to do that,” league spokesman Brian McCarthy said.

Meanwhile, majority leader Chuck Schumer is saying that a bill looking to reform the post office is set to hit the senate floor.

But Punchbowl News is reporting that senate likely won’t be able to take up the legislation until March: House clerks mistakenly enrolled the wrong version of the bill, meaning that Schumer filed cloture on the wrong version.

Today is the fourth anniversary of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people and wounded 17 more – the deadliest school shooting in the country.

Manuel Olivier, whose son Joaquin was one of the 17 killed that day, is now apparently on top of a construction crane a block from the White House, surrounded by police.

It is unclear if Olivier is staging a protest, but he has been outspoken in the past in his crusade against gun violence.

Joe Biden released a statement today acknowledging that “out of the heartbreak of Parkland a new generation of Americans all across the country marched for our lives and towards a better, safer America for us all”.

“Together, this extraordinary movement is making sure that the voices of victims and survivors and responsible gun owners are louder than the voices of gun manufacturers and the National Rifle Association,” the statement reads.

Biden continued: “I’ve asked Congress to pass a budget that provides an additional half billion dollars for proven strategies we know reduce violent crime – accountable community policing and community violence interventions. I have also requested increased funding for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the US marshals. And Congress must do much more – beginning with requiring background checks on all gun sales, banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and eliminating immunity for gun manufacturers.

“We can never bring back those we’ve lost,” Biden said. “But we can come together to fulfill the first responsibility of our government and our democracy: to keep each other safe. For Parkland, for all those we’ve lost, and for all those left behind, it is time to uphold that solemn obligation.”

Howdy, live blog readers. Happy Valentine’s Day.

All eyes in Washington continue to be on the growing threat that Russia will invade Ukraine, with Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, set to brief House and Senate leaders later today on the situation. Tune into our live blog on the tensions here for updates.

While Senate is in session today, Punchbowl News is reporting that the odds are pretty low on whether there could be any legislative action taken on sanctions against Russia ahead of military action. Though the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, told reporters last week that lawmakers were getting “closer and closer” to agreement on a Russia sanctions bill, the minority leader, Mitch McConnell, downplayed the impact of it, saying it was up to Joe Biden to decide the importance of such action.

Last week, the major hangup was over whether the sanctions would be imposed on all Russian banks and over Nord Stream 2, according to Bob Menendez, chair of the Senate foreign relations committee.