Politics
Hillary Clinton defies subpoena, skips deposition in congressional Epstein inquiry
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will vote next week to hold former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress after she defied a subpoena and failed to appear Wednesday morning for her scheduled deposition. It follows former President Bill Clinton’s refusal the day before to comply with a subpoena and sit for an interview with lawmakers as part of their investigation into Jeffrey Epstein — an outcome that resulted in Comer’s pledge to hold him in contempt of Congress…
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The president told a band of GOP hard-liners to lift their blockade of House floor business, but some are doubling down in new ways…
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LOS ANGELES — Despite months of controversy beforehand, Friday’s encounter in Seattle did not turn out to be much of a “Pride Match” at all. Expressions of sexual and gender identity were sparse in the crowd, perhaps due to the random lottery pairing of Iran and Egypt, which have two of the world’s least hospitable societies and most repressive governments towards LGBT people.
Chance has produced a political pairing today that has a much stronger political claim to a “Pride Match” designation: the opening round-of-32 fixture in Los Angeles this afternoon. Canada and South Africa will meet because of the tournament’s bracket architecture, but they are parallel pioneers in gay and lesbian rights — the first two non-European countries to legalize same-sex marriage.
Canada got there first. Courts in its most populous provinces began to rule in 2003 that restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, making it possible for gay men and lesbians to marry in much of the country. In 2005, the Liberal Party government led by Prime Minister Paul Martin introduced the Civil Marriage Act, creating a single legal standard for all provinces and territories. It passed a parliamentary vote on July 19, 2005, and became law the next day — placing Canada alongside the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain as the only countries that allowed same-sex marriage nationwide.
South Africa joined them the following year. In December 2005, the Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled that the common-law definition of marriage violated the equal-protection promises of the country’s post-apartheid constitution, which specifically protect people from discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation.” After the court essentially ordered Parliament to rewrite the law, lawmakers drafted the Civil Union Act, which passed and became law on November 30, 2006.
Now more than three dozen countries allow same-sex unions, including the World Cup’s three North American co-hosts and all of the tournament favorites including Argentina, France, Brazil, Germany, Portugal and England (which along with Wales legalized them in 2014). South Africa, however, remains the only country in Africa.
Canada and South Africa have different constitutional regimes and cultural traditions, but one person links their shared arc as pioneers in LGBTQ+ rights: Montreal human-rights attorney Irwin Cotler, who served on Nelson Mandela’s legal team before becoming Canada’s justice minister. In that role, he was the driving force with Martin’s government to codify same-sex unions through the Civil Marriage Act.
LOS ANGELES — President Donald Trump has stayed away from the World Cup after making himself the main character of the months leading up to it. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum prominently gave away her tickets to Mexico’s matches in what was seen as a populist rebuke to FIFA.
But one North American leader is reveling in the fact that his country is hosting the world’s top sporting event, and that its national team is doing well.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney attended two of Canada’s group-stage matches, a visible
and gave a locker-room talk to the team after its defeat of Qatar that spread widely on social media. Carney has been such an omnipresent component of his team’s group-stage run that its one defeat, against Switzerland, has been blamed on the “Carney Curse” because the prime minister briefly stepped away from his seat when a crucial goal was scored.
Carney has not said whether he is traveling to Los Angeles for today’s knockout fixture against South Africa, but he did use the match-up as an occasion to call President Cyril Ramaphosa, where the two men discussed “growing cooperation in agriculture and agrifood,” according to a readout provided by the prime minister’s office.
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