italian premier resigns
ROME» Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte resigned Tuesday after a key coalition ally pulled his party’s support over Conte’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, setting the stage for consultations this week to determine if he can form a third government.
Conte tendered his resignation to President Sergio Mattarella, who held off on any immediate decision other than to ask Conte to keep the government running in the nearterm, Mattarella’s office said. The president will begin consulting with leaders of political parties on Wednesday.
Conte hopes to get Mattarella’s support to try to form a new coalition government that can steer the country as it battles the pandemic and an economic recession and creates a spending plan for the 209 billion euros
($254 billion) Italy is getting in European Union recovery funds.
Judge bars Biden from enforcing 100-day deportation ban.
HOUSTON» A federal judge on Tuesday barred the U.S. government from enforcing a 100-day deportation moratorium that is a key immigration priority of President Joe Biden.
U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton issued a temporary restraining order sought by Texas, which sued on Friday against a Department of Homeland Security memo that instructed immigration agencies to pause most deportations. Tipton said the Biden administration had failed “to provide any concrete, reasonable justification for a 100-day pause on deportations.”
Tipton’s order is an early blow to the Biden administration, which has proposed far-reaching changes sought by immigration advocates, including a plan to legalize an estimated 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.
Dems plan aid package with or without GOP.
WASHINGTON» Senate Democrats are preparing to push ahead quickly on Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package even if it means using procedural tools to pass the legislation on their own, leaving Republicans behind.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told senators to be ready to vote as soon as next week on a budget reconciliation package that would lay the groundwork for swift passage. Coming so soon in Biden’s administration, the action provides a first test of Republican opposition to the White House priorities as well as to the new president’s promise of a “unity” agenda.
Senate filibuster fight cools for now.
WASHINGTON» Easing off a stalemate, the Senate moved forward Tuesday with a power-sharing agreement in the evenly-split chamber after Republican leader Mitch McConnell backed off his demand that Senate Democrats preserve the procedural tool known as the filibuster.
The procedural tool requires a 60-vote threshold to advance most legislation. Progressive Democrats see the tool as an outdated relic that can be used by the minority Republican Party under McConnell to derail Biden’s agenda, and they want to do away with it.
Angry farmers storm India’s Red Fort in challenge to Modi.
NE W DELHI» Tens of thousands of farmers marched, rode horses and drove tractors into India’s capital on Tuesday, breaking through police barricades to storm the historic Red Fort — a deeply symbolic act that revealed the scale of their challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
As the country celebrated Republic Day, the long-running protest turned violent, with farmers waving farm union and religious flags from the ramparts of the fort, where prime ministers annually hoist the national flag on the country’s August independence holiday. Riot police fired tear gas and water cannons and set up barricades in an attempt to prevent the protesters from reaching the center of New Delhi, but the demonstrators broke through in many places.
Blinken takes over State Department.
WASHINGTON» The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Antony J. Blinken as the nation’s 71st secretary of state, installing Biden’s longtime adviser with a mission to rejoin alliances that were fractured after four years of an “America First” foreign policy.
A centrist with an interventionist streak, Blinken was approved by a vote of 78-22, a signal that senators were eager to move past the Trump administration’s confrontational approach to diplomacy.