Half of Canadians have negative opinion of latest Liberal budget: poll
A new poll suggests the Liberals have not won over voters with their latest budget, though there is broad support for their plan to build millions of homes.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene swept into the District of Columbia jail to check on conditions for the Jan. 6 defendants, with Republican lawmakers handshaking and high-fiving the prisoners, who chanted "Let's Go Brandon!" -- a coded vulgarity against President Joe Biden -- as the group left.
A day earlier Speaker Kevin McCarthy met with the mother of slain rioter Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran who was shot and killed by police as she tried to climb through a broken window during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
And the House Republican leader recently gave Fox News' Tucker Carlson exclusive access to a trove of Jan. 6 surveillance tapes despite the conservative commentator's airing of conspiracy theories about the Capitol attack.
Taken together, the House Republicans can be seen as working steadily but intently to distort the facts of the deadly riot, which played out for the world to see when Donald Trump's supporters laid siege to the Capitol, and in the process downplay the risk of domestic extremism in the U.S.
In actions and legislation, the Republicans are seeking to portray perpetrators of the Capitol riot as victims of zealous federal prosecutors, despite many being convicted of serious crimes. As Trump calls for the Jan. 6 defendants to be pardoned, some House Republicans are attempting to rebrand those who stormed the Capitol as "political prisoners."
The result is alarming to those who recognize a dangerously Orwellian attempt to whitewash recent history.
"There's no question Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Republicans are attempting to rewrite history," said Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. "They're making light of what was a serious attack on our democracy."
The tour Greene led at the local jail Friday comes as nearly 1,000 people have been charged by the Justice Department in the attack on the Capitol -- leaders of the extremist Oath Keepers convicted of seditious conspiracy. The 20 or so defendants being held at the jail, many in pretrial detention on serious federal charges, are among those who battled police at the Capitol, officials said, in what at times was a gruesome bloody scene of violence and mayhem.
Greene told The Associated Press the idea she's trying to rewrite history is the "stupidest thing" she's ever heard of, especially since the assault on the Capitol has been captured in the 41,000 hours of video that McCarthy made available to Fox News.
"We can't rewrite it -- it's all on video," Greene told the AP.
"You can't change the history, but what we can do is expose the truth. That's what we need to do," Greene said.
The country has been here before -- in the aftermath of the Civil War, when the Lost Cause movement sought to reframe the battle over ending slavery in the U.S. as one of states' rights, and again in the years following the Civil Rights movement as critics of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. questioned his transformative legacy.
In the House under Republican control this year, the new leadership openly questions what happened on Jan. 6 as well as how the federal government is investigating and prosecuting extremists. Outside groups are raising money and rallying to the aid of Jan. 6 defendants.
This past week, a Republican-led Judiciary subcommittee probed the federal government's treatment of parents protesting school board policies -- sometimes violently -- as unfair. Next week, the new Republican committee on the "weaponization" of the federal government will delve into First Amendment free speech rights on social media.
McCarthy warned that the federal government is labeling parents as "domestic terrorists" for showing up at school board meetings, even though such prosecutions are extremely rare.
His was a reference to a 2021 Justice Department memo from Attorney General Merrick Garland responding to the National School Board Association's concerns about violent protesters at school board meetings. Garland had directed federal law enforcement to address what he called a "disturbing spike" in harassment of school officials.
Probing the matter, the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee released a report showing that in one federal investigation, the FBI interviewed a mom for allegedly telling a local school board "we are coming for you." In another, the FBI investigated a dad who opposed COVID mask mandates after a tipster to a federal hotline said he "fit the profile of an insurrectionist" because he "rails against the government" and "has a lot of guns and threatens to use them."
"Parents should have a right to go to school board meetings and not be called terrorists," McCarthy said.
While Greene has said the Capitol attack was wrong, at the jail visit Friday she said she believes there's a "two-tiered" justice system and that the Jan. 6 defendants are being "treated as political prisoners" for their beliefs.
Democrats on the tour said that is categorically false. While the local jail came has long been the subject of complaints -- the U.S. Marshals made plans to relocate 400 detainees after a surprise 2021 inspection found parts of the facility "do not meet the minimum standards" -- the Jan. 6 defendants have been housed in a newer wing that was not cited as problematic in the Marshals' statement.
The two Democrats who joined the tour as members of the House Oversight Committee said they both had visited detention facilities before. "It's probably as good as a jail can be," said Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, a former public defender.
Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California noted the way the Republicans led by Greene treated the Jan. 6 defendants as celebrities -- shaking their hands and slapping backs when the lawmakers arrived in the jail facility.
As they left, the defendants chanted the "Let's Go Brandon!" phrase against Biden, he said in a tweet.
"What is most important to remember is that while Marjorie Taylor Greene and others want to treat these folks as pseudo celebrities, some of these folks are insurrectionists," Garcia told reporters. "And we can't forget that."
A new poll suggests the Liberals have not won over voters with their latest budget, though there is broad support for their plan to build millions of homes.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
Appointing a trusted person to help with financial obligations can give you peace of mind. In his personal finance column for CTVNews.ca, Christopher Liew outlines the key benefits of naming a confidant to take over your financial responsibilities, if the need ever arises.
The federal government has added $36.4 million to a program designed to support people who have been seriously injured or killed by vaccines since the end of 2020.
Senators in Canada claimed $7.2 million in expenses in 2023, a nearly 30 per cent increase over the previous year.
A Winnipeg man said a single date gone wrong led to years of criminal harassment, false arrests, stress and depression.
A photographer who worked for Megan Thee Stallion said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that he was forced to watch her have sex, was unfairly fired soon after and was abused as her employee.
A Minnesota state senator and former broadcast meteorologist told police that she broke into her stepmother's home because her stepmother refused to give her items of sentimental value from her late father, including his ashes, according to burglary charges filed Tuesday.
Australian police arrested seven teenagers accused of following a violent extremist ideology in raids across Sydney on Wednesday, as a judge extended a ban on social media platform X sharing video of a knife attack on a bishop that started the criminal investigation.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a Grade 4 student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.