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US ‌Vice-President J D Vance took aim at Democrats in a partisan speech Thursday in a competitive Wisconsin ‌district, as the White House tries to protect a narrow Republican majority in the ‌House of Representatives ⁠ahead of the ‌November 3 midterm elections. Vance visited Plover, part of ‌Wisconsin's third congressional district, which lies at the heart of the region that first lifted Donald ⁠Trump to the White House in 2016.Democrats are targeting this district in their quest to regain control of the lower house of Congress, leaning on voters' dissatisfaction with the state of the economy. The district's incumbent congressman, Derrick Van Orden, won re-election in 2024 by less than three points.Van Orden sits in one of two Republican-held seats in Wisconsin that Democrats are targeting in the midterms. The former Navy SEAL senior chief is closely aligned ​with the president, whose polling on the economy has worsened since he retook office last January.Vance argued Democrats deserve blame for higher prices that started rising during the Biden administration."Hearing the Democrats talk about affordability ‌is like hearing an arsonist complain ⁠about fire," said Vance, ​speaking at a machining plant.Voters in the third district, located in the southwestern part ​of the state, delivered victories for a string of Democratic presidential candidates for decades, including Barack Obama, until Donald Trump carried the district in 2016. He also won the district by seven points in 2024, part of a sweep of battleground states that propelled him to victory over Democrat Kamala Harris.In Wisconsin, the vice-president visited a factory, Pointe Precision, and underscored the Republican president's economic message from Tuesday's State of the Union address. During that speech, Trump promoted his efforts on a sweep of kitchen-table economic issues from housing to healthcare and utility bills. But he stopped short ‌of acknowledging that many Americans are still ‌struggling with the high cost of ⁠food and housing. Just 36% of voters approve of how Trump is handling the economy, according ⁠to the most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll. Some ⁠Republican Party strategists have warned that without a more emphatic message on inflation, Republicans are at risk of losing control of Congress in November."J D Vance has a tough job today," said Mandela Barnes, a Democratic candidate in the state's competitive gubernatorial election, also set for November. "He’s got to look Wisconsin families in the eye and tell them this economy is working for them."The White House is ​set to showcase the president and top administration officials in competitive political areas to highlight Trump's economic agenda. He is expected to visit Texas on Friday for an event focused on energy and the economy.Vance's trip was his second in office to Wisconsin's third congressional district after a trip to La Crosse in August.National Democrats said this week they are ramping up spending in the district, where Van Orden won re-election in 2024 by fewer than three percentage points.Trump endorsed Van Orden in the 2026 race 10 months ago. The primary election to ‌pick his Democratic opponent ​will be held on August 11. 

Washington Tuesday marks five years since a mob overran the US Capitol, with rioters pardoned by Donald Trump retracing their steps even as Democrats revive hearings to hold the president accountable.The anniversary highlights a nation divided between irreconcilable accounts of an attack that reshaped American politics - one supported by official findings of a violent bid to overturn an election, the other portraying it as a protest unjustly criminalized."Five years ago today, a violent mob brutally attacked the US Capitol on January 6. Their mission was to overturn a free and fair election. We will never allow extremists to whitewash their treachery," top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries posted on X.Trump supporters gathered in Washington on January 6 2021, after the president urged them to protest Congress's certification of his election defeat to Joe Biden.Several thousand breached the Capitol grounds, overwhelming police lines and wounding more than 140 officers, smashing windows and doors, ransacking offices and forcing lawmakers into hiding as the electoral count was halted for hours.Inside the Capitol on Tuesday, House Democrats convened an unofficial hearing featuring police, former lawmakers and civilians who experienced the violence firsthand.Many involved in the original congressional investigation say the aim is not to relitigate the past but to prevent it from being erased - particularly after Trump returned to office and pardoned nearly all defendants charged in connection with the attack.Normalizing political violenceA new Democratic report documents dozens of pardoned rioters later charged with new crimes, and the party warns that the clemency risks normalizing political violence.Outside the building Trump supporters, including figures linked to the far-right Proud Boys, staged a march retracing the route taken by rioters in 2021.The event is being promoted by the group's former leader Enrique Tarrio, who was serving a 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy before Trump pardoned him.Organizers say it will honor those who died, including pro-Trump rioter Ashli Babbitt, and protest what they describe as excessive force by police and politically motivated prosecutions.The competing events mirror a broader political dispute, with Democrats saying Trump incited the attack to overturn the election. Republicans reject that view, instead citing security failures and criticizing the Justice Department.Trump alluded briefly to the riot in remarks at a House Republican strategy retreat, accusing Democrats and the media of misrepresenting his role in the violence.Republican leaders have dismissed Tuesday's hearing as partisan and have shown little appetite for formal commemoration.House Speaker Mike Johnson, an unswerving Trump ally, has yet to install a plaque honoring Capitol Police officers who defended the building that day, despite a federal law requiring it.And Republican investigator Barry Loudermilk has argued that January 6 has been used to advance a political narrative against Trump and his allies.The anniversary arrives against the backdrop of unresolved legal and historical questions.Former special counsel Jack Smith has said the attack would not have occurred without Trump, but abandoned the federal case after the Republican leader's reelection, in line with Justice Department policy barring prosecution of a sitting president.Trump was impeached soon after the riot by the Democratic-controlled House but acquitted by the Republican-led Senate. 

US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr said Thursday that firing a top government scientist was "absolutely necessary" as he faced blistering criticism from Democrats urging him to resign over his steps to curb vaccines.The Senate hearing, marked by sharp exchanges that often erupted into shouting matches, came days after the ouster of Sue Monarez, the former director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).Her dismissal, accompanied by several high-level resignations and hundreds of earlier layoffs, has plunged the nation's premier public health agency into turmoil.In his opening remarks, Kennedy tore into the CDC's actions during the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, accusing the agency of failing "miserably" with "disastrous and nonsensical" policies including masking guidance, social distancing and school closures.Kennedy said that the CDC, during the pandemic, had lied to Americans, pointing to recommendations on mask wearing, vaccine boosters and social distancing and statements that the vaccine would prevent transmission."I need to fire some of those people and make sure this doesn't happen again," he said."We need bold, competent and creative new leadership at CDC, people able and willing to chart a new course," he said, touting the health department's new focus on chronic disease and promoting prevention.Monarez, the CDC director whom Kennedy previously endorsed, accused the secretary of a "deliberate effort to weaken America's public-health system and vaccine protections" in a *Wall Street Journal op-ed Thursday.Kennedy's explanation for her firing – as he told Senator Elizabeth Warren – was simply: "I asked her, 'Are you a trustworthy person?' And she said, 'No.'"Once a respected environmental lawyer, Kennedy emerged in the mid-2000s as a leading anti-vaccine activist, spending two decades spreading voluminous misinformation before being tapped by President Donald Trump as health secretary in his second administration.Since taking office, he has restricted Covid-19 shots to narrower groups, cut off federal research grants for the mRNA technology credited with saving millions of lives, and redirected funding toward research on debunked claims linking vaccines to autism.Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee leading the hearing, set the tone by demanding Kennedy be sworn in under oath – accusing him of lying in prior written testimony when he pledged not to limit vaccine access."It is in the country's best interest that Robert Kennedy step down, and if he doesn't, Donald Trump should fire him before more people are hurt," Wyden thundered.However, Republican committee chairman Mike Crapo shot down the request, praising Kennedy's focus on chronic diseases such as obesity.The exchanges only grew more ill-tempered.Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell branded Kennedy a "charlatan" over his attacks on mRNA research, while Kennedy accused Senator Maggie Hassan of "crazy talk" and "making things up to scare people" when she said that parents were already struggling to get Covid-19 vaccines for their children.Vaccines have become the flashpoint in an ever-deepening partisan battle.Conservative-leaning Florida on Wednesday announced that it would end all immunisation requirements, including at schools, while a West Coast alliance of California, Washington and Oregon announced they would make their own vaccine recommendation body to counter Kennedy's influence at the national level.Republicans mostly closed ranks around Kennedy, though there was some notable dissent.Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician whose support was key to Kennedy's confirmation, criticised his cancellation of mRNA grants.He was joined by fellow Republican doctor Senator John Barrasso and Senator Thom Tillis.Cassidy pressed Kennedy on whether Trump deserved a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed, the public-private partnership that sped Covid-19 vaccines to market.Kennedy agreed that Trump should have received the prize but in nearly the same breath, praised hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, drugs championed by conspiracy theorists that have been proven ineffective against Covid-19.